Everyone's at it!
The Rentier Economy & the Morality of the Cultural Industries
A talk by Jeremy Valentine
(from Media, Communication & Sociology; QMU, Edinburgh)
Thurs 17 April, 6pm - all welcome
Venue:
STUC (Scottish Trades Union Congress)
333 Woodlands Road
Glasgow G3 6NG
Written in the spirit, but not the style, of Mandeville's ‘The Fable
of the Bees’ (1705) Valentine begins with a critical analysis of theoretical
claims that reduce culture to economy by virtue of the meaningful and embedded
nature of the latter.
There are two aspects of this critique:
- Firstly, an internal one directed at the assumption of a telos of homogeneity
in cultural economy approaches. Even though the notion of economy is broadened
everything is located within an equilibrium.
- Secondly, an external one which draws attention to the coincidence between
cultural economy approaches and contemporary political rhetorics of 'creative
economy'.
Both aspects naturalise historically specific relations of production through
the category of culture and both privilege and generalise cultural industries
as the leading edge of wealth production.
Valentine argues that both approaches are organised by a disavowal of the
political dominance of the economic category of rent and the regimes of
rights and fees on which it depends.
Following a discussion of the problem of rent for capitalism - from Smith
via Marx and Keynes to Buchanan - Valentine outlines the role of rent in
contemporary neo-liberal capitalism and its links to practices of 'value
capture'. He concludes with a discussion of the possible reasons for the
valorisation of culture in contemporary neo-liberalism and in particular
the example of the cultural industries in the formation of moral subjectivity.There
will also be a MINI BOOKFAIR in conjunction with Glasgow's Radical Independent
Bookfair project (RIB) - http://www.ribproject.orgEvent also supported by:
Variant - http://www.variant.org.uk
Autonomi - http://www.autonomi.tv
Electron Club - http://www.electronclub.org
City Strolls - http://www.citystrolls.com
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