David F. Ruccio
Four items serve to frame my discussion of economic representations:
An important component of Empire, the much-discussed book by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, is an analysis of contemporary economic relations. According to Hardt and Negri, the "new reality of capitalism" that is being organized by multinational and transnational industrial and financial corporations involves the production not only of commodities but also of subjectivities. Central to this process of "biopolitical production" are three aspects of "immaterial labor": "the communicative labor of industrial production that has newly become linked in information networks, the interactive labor of symbolic analysis and problem solving, and the labor of the production and manipulation of affects." The result is that, today, "productivity, wealth, and the creation of social surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguistic, communicational, and affective networks."
Economic issues and themes are theorized and discussed by a wide variety of scholars who have degrees in subjects and who work in academic departments other than economics. These scholars (such as Hardt and Negri) often use concepts and approaches, like biopolitical production and immaterial labor, that are alien to those trained within the "official" discipline of economics. And while the formulations used by academic noneconomists have originated more in dialogue with Marxian theory than the "mainstream" of the economics profession (by which I mean the varieties of neoclassical and Keynesian thought that have been dominant in the field for the past century), the present relationship between these discursive forms and those of heterodox, radical economic theory is less than certain.
An ethical economy is both portrayed in and performed by the narrative of the Marquis de Sade's story of Justine. David Martyn (1999) argues that Sade portrays ethical relations in economic terms by showing that beneficence and generosity are caught up on relations of exchange, and thus petty and calculating, while injury and theft, which involve no recompense, appear as magnanimous and liberal. He also demonstrates that the legend of Justine cannot be contained in the "same pattern of economic exchange that governs the other ethical themes of the novel," since it is impossible to determine whether it will constitute a "gift" or a "theft" of virtue with respect to the reader.
Academic noneconomists often discover economic implications not only in the content of cultural expression but also in the very form of such expression, thereby blurring the strict boundary between metaphor and its other which is so much a part of academic (especially mainstream) economics. Such formulations are also guided by the search for an alternative economic system and an "antieconomics," the attempt to carve out a space not governed by the strict economic logic of capitalist exchange and of the economic theories that celebrate such a system. At the same time, the use of figures of exchange (and circulation, distribution, and so on) as the primary means by which the economy of texts is rendered may end up supporting the neoclassical "subjectivist" view of economic value, thus reenshrining preference, utility, and individual choice as the fundamental principles upon which any economic discourse needs to be established.
Community currency and local trading schemes-such as Ithaca Hours, Toronto Dollars, and the M15 LETSystem (in Manchester, England)-are increasingly common in the United States and around the world. In the case of Ithaca hours, organizers and participants argue that a local currency serves to "stimulate local production of goods"; "strengthen awareness of our community's skills and give us more control of the economy"; "increase the core of employment which provides for local needs"; help us "see and feel that we're part of doing this"; "make people think more about what money is," as "an exchange of energy and resources"; and "develop a system of abundance, sharing, and cooperation."
Economic activists, such as those who are involved in designing and participating in local currency systems, produce and disseminate theories of the economy that are often different-in both form and content-from those of the official discipline of economics. Academic economists often consider such formulations to be an "ersatz" economics, as a mostly random set of irrational elocutions lacking both structure and consistency. The alternative is to recognize "everyday" economic theories and statements as having their own discursive structure.
From the song "A Bird in the Hand," by Ice Cube:
I didn't have no money so now I have to hunch the
Back like a slave, that's what be happenin'
but whitey says there's no room for the African
Always knew that I would boycott, jeez
but welcome to McDonald's can I take your order please
Gotta sell ya food that might give you cancer
cuz my baby doesn't take no for an answer
Now I pay taxes that you never give me back
what about diapers, bottles, and Similac?
Do I gotta go sell me a whole lotta crack
for decent shelter and clothes on my back?
Or should I just wait for help from Bush
or Jesse Jackson, and Operation Push?
Everyday economic discourses can be found in a wide variety of sites, including many of the genres of so-called popular culture. The languages of economy that are expressed in diverse styles of music, from rap to country and western, are often attacked by academic economists, who bemoan the low level of economic knowledge among the general citizenry. The fact that everyday languages of economy may in fact hold pride of place in the minds of the public means that nothing short of a frontal attack must be waged by academic economists to rid public discourse of the erratic shamanism implicit in everyday economics. Economic literacy campaigns, starting in grade school, are thus designed to replace "ersatz" economic knowledge with the methods and conclusions of economic "science."
These four items are specific examples of a larger trend, what I consider to be a rich and diverse (and, perhaps, growing) pattern of "economic talk" outside the official discipline of economics. Almost every discipline, especially in the humanities and social sciences, includes a large number of scholars who engage in economic analysis-by analyzing economic events, deploying economic metaphors in social and cultural analysis, or using economic theories and concepts to analyze texts, artworks, and other cultural artifacts. Additionally, activists outside the academy have taken up and become participants in debates concerning a wide variety of economic issues, from globalization and sweatshop production to community development and living wages. More generally, popular culture-in genres as diverse as music, television, and novels-is replete with references to and representations of economic themes and issues.
This ubiquity of economics, inside and outside the economy, is not matched by a sustained discussion among the various groups. Academic economists rarely acknowledge, let alone read and engage with, the economic analyses carried out by academic noneconomists. By the same token, scholars in disciplines other than economics often refer to economics as a singular method or set of conclusions, thereby overlooking or ignoring the variety of theoretical approaches that together make up the discipline of economics. And, for the most part, neither group within the academy has taken seriously the languages and discourses of economy that are produced and disseminated by economic activists and others outside the academy.
Let me try to state up front what I think is at stake in this project. I am not interested in examining economic representations (across the disciplines and outside the academy) merely in order to promote more or "nicer," more respectful dialogue among the participants-although those of you who know me will probably agree that my predilection is toward more rather than less talking. But I do want to explore the implications of the idea that economic knowledges don't solely or necessarily originate in or spread out from a center within the academy. Thus, in my view, economic theories and approaches can be seen as being produced, learned, and contested in many different sites, including academic departments other than economics and nonacademic venues, and to be embedded in many different practices, again both inside and outside the academy.
One of the consequences of "decentering" economic knowledge is that it opens up the possibility of investigating both the content of the different knowledges that are located in various sites and practices other than the official discipline of economics and the different discursive structures-the different methods and protocols, the different narrative strategies and rules of formation-of these academic and nonacademic economic theories and statements. To be clear, I do not see myself as a romantic who sees every alternative to the mainstream and every pronouncement of non-experts as containing the real truth that is being concealed by ideologues who are simply protecting their domain of power. For me, the sociologist's discourse or statements emanating from the so-called person in the street have no epistemological privilege in revealing a blunt truth that the experts are too blind or too partial to see. Rather, I am interested in the ways knowledges produced mostly in sites distant from the headquarters of academic economics are, in fact, discourses whose rules of formation and discursive regularities can be recognized and discussed.
A second consequence-especially with respect to approaches formulated and followed by academic noneconomists-is that we can focus our attention on the specificity of their contribution to economic thought, on the relation of this contribution to the larger field, and, perhaps most importantly (at least for me), on the ways in which these contributions intervene in the debates and differences that already exist within the confines of the existing profession. One issue in which I am keenly interested is the extent to which these formulations are understood as an "antieconomics." On this last score, I am mostly concerned with which economic discourses "within" the discipline such terms as ethical economy (along with libidinal economy, economy of desire, and so on) oppose, partially reformulate, or extend.
A third consequence, particularly where everyday economics is concerned, is that we can begin to unearth and examine knowledges of existing economic arrangements and imaginaries of alternative economies that are hidden within or behind, that in one way or another exceed, "official" ideas about the economy. By official ideas I not only mean mainstream, "neoliberal" celebrations of private property and free markets to which so much attention is directed these days; I'm also referring to heterodox (including Marxian) conceptions of a monolithic, hegemonic global capitalism. Thus, we may find that everyday economic discourses represent the modern-day equivalent of a Bakhtinian carnival, which includes, on one hand, stylized parodies of (and even attacks on) all sorts of official academic languages and pronouncements and, on the other hand, conceptual strategies and ways of seeing that pave the way for alternative practices and institutions.
I suppose that, in the end (in that "lonely hour of the last instance"), what I am looking for are ways in which existing conceptions of both the discipline of economics and "real" economic relations and institutions can be denaturalized, made different from themselves, and new ones can be produced. Granting recognition to and exploring the content and rules of formation of economic representations outside the official discipline of economics comprise one way of creating a new discursive space to accomplish that objective.
Economics and Economic AnalysisBefore we go any further, don't we need to be clear, or at least come to some agreement, on what is and is not "economic"? For my part, I am not particularly interested in invoking a specific definition of or in defining the boundaries of "the economy" (and, thus, of "economic" analysis). On one level, I am content to work with a pretty common-sense view of the economy, i.e., more or less what "we" and "they" take to be the economic dimensions of the social world. So, e.g., I am willing to consider discussions of things like money, exchange, production, labor, and so on as pertaining to the economy. On another level, I want to defamiliarize common-sense notions of economy (and of economic analysis) by appropriating and producing alternative representations of those issues and themes. On still another level, I tend to think of the economy in terms of aspects of activities and institutions rather than the activities and institutions in their entirety. Thus, e.g., in my scheme, teaching and factories include but are not reduced to their economic aspects. What this means is that I want to find or produce the economy in lots of different social practices and settings and, at the same time, to distinguish it from culture, politics, and nature. |
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Terms such as biopolitical production, immaterial labor, and ethical economy-not to mention the cosmic economy of sharing, libidinal economy, trading crowd, symbolic economy, and commodity biography-are extremely popular and productive in a wide variety of academic discourses. I will not attempt to survey the many other economic concepts and discourses that are utilized by scholars (anthropologists, sociologists, literary and cultural critics, geographers, and others) in disciplines other than economics. But I do want to note, from the start, that these formulations (and many others, with which they are intertwined and commingle) are produced and circulate mostly outside the margins of the official discipline of economics; they have, it seems, only a tenuous relationship to the discourses that comprise not only the mainstream but also the heterodox branches of academic economics. Most academic economists, in other words, have not treated (and, in most cases, would not treat) such concepts as deserving of serious attention.
The first thesis I want to entertain is that practitioners within the official discipline of economics have left a theoretical vacuum that has been filled by noneconomists. What I mean is that some combination of the methods (the economists' "toolkit") and modes of presentation, along with the statements and perceived ethical and political commitments, of academic economists (especially those of the mainstream) has created a space that noneconomists interested in economic issues and themes have come to occupy as their own, with a distinct set of discourses and procedures.
There is another, not unrelated, sense in which the economic theories proffered by noneconomists are "parasitic" on the discipline of economics: as I see it, the goal of many such approaches is to find a sphere that defies economic logic, an outside of the Market and of the formal economic logic that is said to characterize it (according to which neoclassical economics is seen as nothing more than the expression or representation of a logic imposed by "the economy"). These valiant attempts to escape the constraints of commodity space (I am thinking of the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Baudrillard, and Bataille and the vast cultural/economic anthropology literature organized around Mauss's notion of the gift) locate in capitalism's other-in use-value, primitive exchange, desire and pleasure, in excess and violent destruction of meaning and things, and so on-the power to oppose or to elude the workings of capitalism markets and the notion of utility, scarcity, and reproduction that are thought to be the spheres of "economic theory" proper.
At the same time, I don't want to reduce these discourses to the status of merely being the negative complement to official economics. I have found the economic analyses carried out by many noneconomists to be useful and fecund in their own right: in bringing the issue of representation squarely back into economic discourse, in problematizing the distinction between culture and economy, in calling into question the forms of reduction and essentialism practiced by economists (including in heterodox traditions within the discipline, perhaps especially orthodox Marxists), the particularization of economic events by focusing on "singularities," and much more. I am particularly interested in elaborating theories of consumption and distribution (including the role of desiring bodies and unproductive expenditure) that rival the elaborate treatment of labor and production within at least some schools of thought within the discipline of economics.
Still, I note with some concern that one of the outcomes of the tension between the goal of uncovering a realm in which markets, capital, and self-interest have not penetrated and the fear that such a space is no longer discursively possible is a privileging of figures of exchange and circulation as the primary means by which the economy (whether of texts or of society) is rendered. One of the consequences of this move is to downplay or "forget about" other dimensions of the economy-such as the spheres of production and labor-and to leave them in their current state. One of our challenges is to rethink these spheres, to locate and overcome the forms of reduction and essentialism to which they have been subject, and to make them different from themselves.
I have begun to collect examples of what academic economists refer to (and often criticize and even attack) as "ersatz" economics and what I prefer to call "everyday" economics. Right now, I have two groups of examples: artifacts of everyday economics, which run the gamut from fairytales to photography, and everyday economic songs, in a variety of genres from Motown to rock (with a few miscellaneous compilations thrown in for good measure). A third category, which I have not yet compiled, would include examples from the work of economic activists, all those folks who are involvedin contesting existing economic arrangements (from globalization to sweatshops) and/or designing new ones (from local currencies to farm-community alliances).
Investigating everyday economics can be significant for a number of different reasons. First, it sheds light on the ways in which academic economists' dismissals of the economic knowledges proffered by the "person in the street" presume and perform a particular narrative of the disciplinary self: the conclusions and policy proposals associated with academic economics are understood to be the products solely of formal, logical procedures, untainted by the mundane values and norms, subjective biases, political orientations, passions, or interests of its practitioners. It is therefore possible for academic economists to admit (as Deirdre McCloskey and others have convincingly demonstrated) that the modes of communication within their discipline share the metaphors and strategies of persuasion present in the everyday world. However, whereas they consider ersatz economics to be thoroughly imbued with such tropes and linguistic devices, they still treat the methods and utterances of academic economic science-the procedures and positive statements associated with actually doing, instead of talking about or presenting the results of, academic economic research-as if they were immune from the contaminating effects of rhetoric.
A second reason is that, by changing the terms of discussion and setting aside the idea that everyday economics is merely a less-organized, inchoate version of the knowledge produced by academic economists, we can entertain the possibility of analyzing the discursive structures in and through which everyday economic knowledges are produced. Thus, for example, everyday economics is more declarative, concerned more with conclusions than a general "method," and focused on specific interests (rather than no interests or a "general interest") than academic economics. The idea that everyday economics can be distinguished by its focus on conclusions and interests begins to overcome what is perhaps the major obstacle in attempting to make sense of forms of economic knowledge other than academic economics: that of recognition. It is possible, I think, to recognize the utterances that comprise everyday economics as the products of specific economic discourses, produced according to their own rules of discursivity, displaying forms of discursive regularity that are no less (or, for that matter, more) coherent than those of academic economics. It is precisely these everyday economic discourses that give content and meaning to the way people think and talk about the economic decisions that they make (from financing a college education to purchasing a car) and the economic relationships and institutions with which their lives are intertwined (including the causes of a Teamsters strike, the effects of NAFTA, and the strategies to lower federal budget deficits).
Such an approach leads, in turn, to a third approach: an analysis of the content of everyday economics. There are many examples I'm sure we could cite in which everyday economists arrive at conclusions that are different from, and in many cases diametrically opposed to, the ideas put forward by the majority of academic economists. The fact is, however, there are also many instances in which the two discourses tend to coincide-a lesson which many liberal and left (e.g., Keynesian, feminist, radical, Marxist and other heterodox) economists have learned the hard way in the classroom and in attempting to get their views aired and favorably discussed in the media. In such cases, popular opinion often appears to be closer to that of mainstream economists than to their academic colleagues on the Left. In this sense, neither wing of the profession (nor even those of the ever-shifting middle) can sit comfortably in the presumption that their ideas are "naturally" in tune with or the correct palliative for the concerns expressed by "common folk."
In my view, the fact that there is no simple, one-to-one mapping of ideas between academic and everyday economics makes the case for investigating the utterances of everyday economists even more compelling. It allows us to see those outside the academy as both producers and consumers of economic knowledge, nonacademic economists who produce languages of economy and who are in turn produced by such languages. I am particularly interested in discovering what new economic subjectivities are produced within such languages and discourses.
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FAIRYTALES STORIES POETRY CARTOONS ART MOVIES DOCUMENTARIES FABLES CHILDREN'S BOOKS |
NOVELS WEB SITES TELEVISION RADIO PRINT THEATER NONFICTION COMPUTER GAMES PHOTOGRAPHY |
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SOUL/MOTOWN MUSICALS FOLK/ROCK LATIN INDIE ROCK HIP-HOP COUNTRY -WESTERN |
RAP BLUES PUNK POP FOLK ROCK MISCELLANEOUS |
I can think of lots of different directions in which this project on economic representations can go in the future. Here are some specific ideas that I'd like us to consider and discuss (some, I understand, more ambitious or far-fetched than others):
Appadurai, A. 1986. "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value." In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai, 3-63. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bataille, G. 1985. "The Notion of Expenditure." In Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, ed. A. Stockl, 116-29. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
---. 1988. The Accursed Share. Vol. 1. New York: Zone.
Baudrillard, J. 1975. The Mirror of Production. St. Louis: Telos.
---. 1981. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. St. Louis: Telos.
Deleuze, G. and F. Guattari.1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bird-David, N. 1992. "Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation." Current Anthropology 33 (1): 25-34.
Derrida, J. 1992. "The Madness of Economic Reason: A Gift without Present." In Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money, trans. P. Kamuf, 34-70. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hardt, M. and A. Negri. 2000. Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hertz, E. 1998. The Trading Crowd: An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ice Cube. 1991. "A Bird in the Hand." On Death Certificate. Priority.
Ithaca Hours. 2002. http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ithacahours/success.html (accessed: 25 February 2002).
Martyn, D. 1999. "Sade's Ethical Economies." In The New Economic Criticism: Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics, ed. M. Woodmansee and M. Osteen, 258-276. New York: Routledge.
Mauss, M. 1990. The Gift. Trans. W. Halls. New York: Norton.