The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism

This article outlines a historical and theoretical framework that traces the historical and discursive emergence of the concept of wellbeing as a consequence of the decline of traditional capitalism and modernity and the subsequent shift to a late modern capitalist economy. On the structural level, this shift precipitates a new type of consumption that not only characterises the productive and physical capacity of the economy and products, but cascades into the social construction of multiple discursive, symbolic and cultural products, images, and forms of information and meanings, from wellbeing emerges. This process has consequences for individuals in late modernity as they navigate through a world where life-worlds, security and relationships are disrupted and require new forms of revising and responding to change. Consequently, wellbeing further establishes a means of responding and adapting to, for instance, changing lives, circumstances, security, and happiness. The emergence of wellbeing as a significant component of social policy discourses has also precipitated debate around the types of research and policy responses relevant to the study of wellbeing. As a result, the article also prescribes an epistemology founded upon a ‘cultural’ and ‘relational’ approach that can effectively underpin research and social policies relevant to wellbeing in late modern capitalism.

The Double Refinement of Distinction: (Re-)Production of Class Relations in Late Modern Capitalism with Marx and Bourdieu

The ‘yawning abyss’ between surface and substance: Organizational life as ‘pseudo-reality’

This article explores how contemporary Swedish visual artists manage and make sense of career insecurity through emotion work. The specific emotions discussed in the material are trust, hope and luck. Emotion work is related to coping in an increasingly insecure world of work in late modern capitalism, which has been theorized as relying on the creativity, passion and subjectivity of workers. Through analysing what the artists anticipate of their future careers, the study found the main desire of the artists to be the continuation of their creative endeavour—an endeavour not necessarily related to professional success but rather to identity formation. This understanding of success forms part of two overarching discourses found in the material: art as non-work discourse and the art world as arbitrary discourse, which both relate to certain emotional work when failing/succeeding to uphold the artistic creation. The prestigious arts education of the respondents is analysed as part of sustaining hope of continuation when future career prospects seem grim. Trust and luck are analysed as emotion work in relation to having experiences of success, even though the art world is discursively framed as arbitrary. The concluding argument of the article is that understanding emotion work in relation to the insecure or even failed career can shed light on resources related to social position rather than properties of the individual psyche.

This chapter relates quantum storytelling consulting (QSC) to ensemble leadership theory (ELT) by Rosile, Boje, & Claw (2016). What kinds of leadership does it take to attend to the forecaring in advance of the future and how does this relate to quantum storytelling? In a music ensemble, no one musician is the star: they are equal, all are the stars of the show, emerging as stars and then taking a supporting role in cyclic rotation. ELT is important to the world ecology because it is a together-we-are-all-leaders approach. Rather than restricting leadership to one or a few people, the ensemble of many networks of leadership is important. I will contrast ELT with more familiar models of leadership: dispersed, distributed, and relational that restrict leadership to a few. One primary difference is that ELT includes both community and ecology and it is rooted in Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWOK) that extend from the ancient Southwest US and Mexico. My contribution here is to recognize that ELT is rooted in the rhizomatic fractal, whereas the other models of leadership discussed here (dispersed, distributed, and relational) have been linear-, cyclic-, or spiral-fractal waves. A fractal is defined as recurring self-sameness patterns across scalabilities. I will look to Deleuzian rhizomatic-fractals, which ELT purports to be and make an observation: ELT revived and reinvented in late modern capitalism, must be a correlate with the dominant hierarchic kinds of leadership of here and now, which is this world situation we are now in. Does not each revolution (steam, diesel/gas combustion, cyber-information, and liquid modernity) actually create anew the enslavement of human beings in hierarchic forms of leadership? At the end of this chapter, ensemble leadership will be related to whole-world ecological health.

There are more international borders in the world today than ever there were before. This is a signifi cant fact when one considers the impact of these many borders on the ways in which the billions of people encompassed by them live, work and travel. As important a development as this multiplication in international borders is, however, it alone is not the guiding imperative behind the origin and evolution of comparative border studies in scholarship worldwide. The proliferation of borders, and the many forces that have created and fostered their development, together have drawn scholars from all the humanities and social sciences to a mutual interest in what happens at, across and because of the borders to nations and states, and in extension to other geopolitical borders and boundaries, such as those of cities, regions and supranational polities. Their interest has been as much in what happens at specifi c borders, frontiers and borderlands as it has been in what borders help us to understand of major forces of change that seem to be sweeping the globe, forces often included as aspects of globalization, but which may also be seen as neoliberalism, neo - imperialism, late modern capitalism, and supranationalism. Within these interests and perspectives, border studies scholars enter into dialogue with all those who wish to understand new liberties, new movements, new mobilities, new identities, new citizenships and new forms of capital, labor and consumption. Border studies have become signifi cant themselves because scholars and policy - makers alike have recognized that most things that are important to the changing conditions of national and international political economy take place in borderlands – as they do in like measure almost everywhere else in each of our national states – but some of these things, for instance those related to migration, commerce, smuggling and security, may be found in borderlands in sharper relief. And some things of national importance can be most often and best found in borderlands. This book, a collection of essays that represent views both of where border studies have come from and where they are going, refl ects the current state of border

This chapter discusses identity work and organizational culture in two Pentecostal-Charismatic churches in Indonesia. Studies on Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Asia point to the close relationship between its prosperity gospel, late modern capitalism, and the rise of middle classes. Much less is known about the moral implications of the newfound religion at a personal and societal level. Based on ethnographic research in the churches and discussions with its members and pastors, the chapter unravels such moral implications through a closer examination of some Pentecostal rituals: leadership and the calling, cell group meetings, social mission activities, and praying and worship services. These rituals support two forms of moral re-embedding: a re-embedding in the family of co-believers and a re-embedding in wider society.

Clinical discourses of frailty are central both to the construction of the social category of the fourth age and to the role and identity of hospital geriatric medicine. However, the influence of such clinical discourses is not just from science to the social sphere and nor do these discourses have their source in a putative truth of the old body but emerge from an interplay between physiological facts, discourses of governmentality, productive processes associated with late modern capitalism and the professional ambitions of geriatric medicine. The article explores this interplay in the two key discourses of frailty that have emerged in the clinical literature during the past 15 years, that of the phenotype and the accumulation of deficits, respectively. Outlining the development of the discourse of senescence from its origins to the more recent emergence of a nosological category of frailty the article explores how these key discourses capture the older body according to particular sets of norms. These norms link physiological understanding with broader discourses of governmentality, including the professional project of geriatric medicine. In particular, metaphorical representations in the discourses of frailty convey key cultural and clinical assumptions concerning both older bodies and old age more generally.

According to conventional republican accounts of political vices and virtues, solidarity is a virtue that strengthens the polity and corruption is a vice that undermines political and social bonds. Season 2 of “The Wire� offers the figure of Frank Sabotka as a counter-exemple to this traditional narrative. Sabotka engages in corruption as a means to maintain his labour union in an ultimately futile act of resistance against the encroaching forces of post-industrial capitalism. In my paper I read the figure of Sobotka against more traditional accounts of the relationship between solidarity and corruption as found in such diverse political theorists as Richard Rorty, Niccolo Machiavelli, Quentin Skinner, Hannah Arendt, and Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. I argue that Sobotka complicates the conventional understanding of the dynamics between corruption and solidarity. Traditional institutions for practicing solidarity such as labour unions, religious organizations, and political parties are all compromised in fundamental ways by late modern capitalism, thereby making political solidarity difficult to maintain. However, corruption, seen by classical republicans as a threat to the social fabric of the state, may under these conditions be re-appropriated as a means for resisting the onslaught of global capital by those whose very way of life is threatened by its expansion. As such, the figure of Sobotka raises the possibility of an inverted republicanism that can resist the inverted totalitarianism Sheldon Wolin identifies as the condition of post-World War II American Democracy and that is depicted in “The Wire.�

The Hipster Economy: Taste and authenticity in late modern capitalism

Ronald Dworkin is very much a good example of the liberal, legal theorist who finds himself situated in late modern capitalism. Yet, he is a thinker who exists in a different world: prior to the mass proliferation of the media and the advent of the internet. He reduces the question of pornography to the eminently sensible political question of how far should people have a right to do the wrong thing. Now, we know whenever anyone poses such a question, we shall find ourselves forced to agree sooner or later to some sort of liberty or harm principle whereby the only justification for the sanction of the liberty of the individual is if that individual’s actions will result in harm to others (not to himself or herself). Dworkin, of course, will position his rights theory at the border of the private-public distinction: the only way pornography can be prohibited is if it violates the rights of agents. And, of course, the prohibition of pornography violates the rights of producers and consumers of pornography, thus we are offered this strategy: ‘… if pornography makes the community worse off, even in the very long run, it is nevertheless wrong to censor or restrict it because this violates the individual moral or political rights of citizens who resent the censorship’ (Dworkin, 1981: 178).

John Dewey envisioned the “American experiment” of democracy as a moral and ethical ideal, lived out in personal habits and “in our daily walk and conversation.”1 More than mere external political forms or institutional arrangements, Deweyan democracy is a “personal way of life.”2 Democratic political organizing is typically captured in campaigns focused on single issues, but broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is more closely aligned to Deweyan radical democracy as an ethical way of life. This kind of organizing is “relational organizing” that, as Mark Warren says, brings people “together first to discuss the needs of their community and to find a common ground for action.”3 BBCO is first and foremost about organizing relationships around values to create relational power. The value-laden relationships are enacted through a political culture consisting of radically democratic social practices.This essay will turn to how various publics habituate individuals in radically democratic social practices and what political conditions are required for individuals and groups to engage in an ethical way of life free of domination and arbitrary influence. I have a particular interest in showing how the political culture of Deweyan ethical democracy is lived out in BBCO and that it not be prejudiced against sacred values commonly held dear by religious political participants. Sacred values are an important part of the political cultures of groups embattled in some of the most urgent political fights of our day. To make this case I turn first to Dewey's thought on democracy. But there are particular problematics that exist in Dewey's thinking of the political, namely with regard to stark challenges in our time regarding the role of power in democracy and the dangers white supremacy poses for radical democracy. Sheldon Wolin's democratic theory might be one potential source to address these problematics, but his notions of democratic fugitivity and his politics of tending ultimately fall short, too. My reading of Cornel West's work helps to address these shortcomings in Dewey and Wolin and in so doing come to terms with the way everyday patient work of BBCO recasts Dewey's and Wolin's theories of radical democracy. Bringing BBCO together with Dewey, Wolin, and West generates a unique theory of radical democracy that is capacious enough for political struggles involving sacred values and honest enough about white supremacy and power in democratic life.To be radical, democracy must start at the root of our associational life, asking questions about the kind of persons and power formed within groups. This ethical conception of democracy places a premium on democratic individuality and each individual's potential to political participation.4 Democracy as merely about institutional arrangements or states of affairs is too “external” for Dewey. Democratic societies arise from personal “ways of life” and “habits.”5 To say that democracy is “social” and “ethical” means that democracy exists as a form of government and in its institutions only insofar as it exists in the “dispositions and habits” of its individual members.6Democratic individuality requires individuals take responsibility for freely taken choices that are possible only in association with others.7 Dewey is concerned about cultivating a democratic society grounded in self-reliant individuality.8 The heart of the ethics of democracy is democratic individuality: a form of association that consists in “having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activity of the group to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain.”9 My sense of democratic individuality is built off of work done by Dewey, Wolin, and West, and my own contribution to this conversation will develop slowly throughout this paper as I correct and affirm aspects of radical democracy in Dewey, Wolin, and West. A recent volume on democratic individuality and William James by Stephen Bush is another noteworthy version of what I mean to call attention to: habitual character formation and formation of selfhood that is only possible in certain kinds of associational life.10 Individuality here is contrasted with individualism and forms of group life that are individualist and purport that the self is an isolatable atom from its surrounding material reality and the relationships that support its life.Democratic individuality not only emphasizes responsibility for freely taken choices in society, but also raises the challenge of self-reliance over against a culture of conformity. This social view of the self raises the possibility that one's values and interests cannot be realized or accurately recognized until one cultivates and establishes relations that are free in the sense of lacking domination and arbitrary influence over one's life.11 One way of putting this kind of responsibility in a democratic community is BBCO's term of “self-interest.”Democratic politics is fundamentally about the collective pursuit of the common good. One's self-interest is a crucial part of democratic politics because, self-interest, as Jeffrey Stout writes, “is the interest that everyone who wishes to avoid domination has in the common good.”12 Self-interest is a crucial part of democratic individuality as it requires recognizing one's responsibility for, accountability to, and participation in the broader democratic community. Democratic individuality is crucial to overcoming certain political deformations in our collective life; but such overcoming is only possible by reflecting on the values and relationships that make such a politics possible in the first place. Romand Coles looks to the Latin to highlight the relational root of self-interest (inter esse—meaning “between-being”): “at the same time that a focus on self-interest propels the cultivation of self-recognition, respect, and determination, this focus on self-interest also propels us into receptive political relationships with others.”13 Self-interest properly understood (not either selfishness nor altruistic do-gooderism) has a “real-depth” and is most accurately identified when the individual's good is identified with the community's good.14Democratic individuality requires individuals take responsibility for freely taken choices that are possible only in association with others.15 Ethical and social democracy is primarily concerned with the kinds of individuality habituated in associational life. Radical democracy needs to be grounded in what Dewey's forerunner, the protopragmatist and philosopher of democracy, Ralph Waldo Emerson, called self-reliance.16 Dewey's attention is attuned to the democratic ways of life that are habituated in groups, but also with the quality of communication present in associational life between publics. Ethical and social democracy “is not an alternative to other principles of associated life. It is the idea of community life itself.”17 To think of the ethics of democracy is to first turn to the conditions of self-actualization and reasoning present in our society, and second to the quality of the social practices and the values attended to in each group. Some of these values present in BBCO are sacred values and they play an especially important role in the radically democratic social practices of BBCO.We accord sacred value to those goods we take to be inviolable, objective, and intrinsically valuable. To accord something sacred value is different than claiming it to be “the sacred.” Such values are evaluative attitudes grounded in the broader social practice of practical reasoning. Social practices are social because they are based in shared assumptions, norms, practices, and goods internal and external to the practice itself. A social practical account of evaluative attitudes claims that reasoners are held inferentially accountable to fellow reasoners and responsible for their concept use. Such a norm driven account need not baptize the status quo or tend toward conventionalism, nor is it inherently conservative. Critical revision of such norms and ideals that guide our concept-use can be radically revised only within certain limits. To be a participant in a larger tradition one needs to become familiar enough in the social practice of practical reasoning so that others can recognize your concept-use as following along in the same way as the relevant precedents. A social practical account of evaluative attitudes like sacred value grounds the practice of valuation in time and space; it allows for fallibilism and constructivism of our norms and ideals, thereby also allowing for the possibility of radical revision of norms and ideals.Robert Dworkin, Robert M. Adams, and Jeffrey Stout—of those who have explicitly addressed sacred value—have arguably written most powerfully about the topic.18 Although this is not the place to delve into the philosophical background of sacred value, it might help to offer some very brief (and in broad strokes) remarks about my social practical account of sacred value. What is unique about my contribution to this conversation on sacred value is the explicit connection between BBCO, sacred value, and radical democracy that extends and refines Dewey's and Wolin's theory of radical democracy through conversation with Cornel West. For my part, that someone identifies as Christian gives them a reason to value certain things as sacred. Christian sacred values are held to certain rational standards normatively established in the tradition. Individual Christians, as Christian, stand in certain relations of judgement as to appropriate action, attitude, and concern between other Christians and to others outside their religious and ethical community. As the tradition has developed throughout time normative standards of Christian sacred value have developed, and individual Christians have taken these norms as authoritative, incorporating and embodying these standards of value in their everyday lives.A social practical account of sacred values requires certain political conditions to avoid domination and arbitrary influence. Domination occurs when a master may arbitrarily influence our practice of reasoning at any point. In my account we owe one another justifiable reasons for our actions and concept-use, and others hold us accountable and responsible for those reasons. This conceptual frame emphasizes republican freedom, non-domination, and accountability within the discursive community.One way that Deweyan ethical democracy trains our attention to the quality of the social practices and values is by asking us to think about political culture. Democratic political cultures consist in and foster relationships grounded in habits and social practices that were first born in the life of local groups and associations.19 It is crucial to see that the political culture (the habits and social practices of a public) of radical democracy is value-based.Democratic habits are instilled in the members of a democratic community, but they are not merely rote activity. Individuals are habituated into the customs, mores, and norms of groups. Habits establish the “objective conditions which provide the resources and tools of action, together with its limitations, obstructions and traps.”20 Habits of thought and action, like social norms, discipline and shape individuals, but they are equally sites of critical revision and targets by movements for social change: “Emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes on the part of the mass of men create the conditions of which the exploiters of sentiment and opinion only take advantage.”21 Democracy as a habitual way of life has to do with what democracy looks like—the “emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes”—that each public instills in its members.The political culture of BBCO affiliates consists of democratic individuals, each a part of a larger relational fabric, enacting this ethical way of life in habits of thought and action. To speak of political culture is to say certain actions and values are permissible while others are not. This is why, as Richard Wood writes, value-language is the “first-language” of organizers and this language is carried in “specific symbols, stories, songs and institutions of the divine.”22 Those values and their “carriers” are not disconnected from democratic habits that make up the basic work of organizing accountability sessions and listening campaigns, collecting voter data, mobilizing neighbors around a specific platform during a neighborhood walk, or engaging in issue-related research.23 The habitual life of a constituency reveals the deep connection between collective values and self-interest, political culture and democratic individuality.The political culture holds the broader narrative of who we are, what we care most for, and what we are willing to sacrifice for those sacred values or do in public to protect them. Paying attention to political culture helps us see how value-work pervades democratic habits and practices. Too often we fail to notice the role values play in BBCO, and instead only focus on political issues. This leads to a vision of democracy as merely a state of affairs or institutional arrangement and not as an ethical way of life.Take the example of how the Gamaliel affiliate, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) organized a collective response to the police shooting of a young unarmed Black man in the summer of 2018. On July 26, a police officer fatally shot Daniel Hambrick in the back as he was fleeing for his life after the police illegitimately stopped him to supposedly investigate a stolen vehicle charge. By the time of Daniel Hambrick's murder, NOAH was already engaged in a number of research actions on police activity and practices in Nashville, but they had not taken public, confrontational action. Mike, the white middle-aged lead organizer for NOAH, recounts how NOAH's tactics shifted after a video was released detailing Hambrick's brutal murder. “We had to do something,” he explained: “This was here, this was our city.”24 Alexandrea, a Black organizer for NOAH, agreed: “With this particular situation it was a case where, ‘enough is enough’ and it was time to make a response.”25 Soon after the video was released NOAH held a press conference issuing a public statement with three primary demands: 1) The immediate termination of the Chief of Police; 2) Mayoral endorsement of the Community Oversight Board, a citizen-led effort to establish a police oversight board; 3) Expedite deployment of body and dash cameras throughout the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD).In order for NOAH to issue the public statement a quorum of its sixty-one member institutions had to adopt the statement. A board meeting was called to discuss the demands. For Mike, this sort of discussion was truly unique after a horrendous shooting: “Where else in the city was that discussion going on—particularly with white and Black groups in the same meeting? Where was this kind of representation?”26 That meeting, for Mike, was NOAH living out a democratic political culture, expressing its values in dialogue, discussion, negotiation, and contestation. Alexandrea recalled a particularly important moment: “In the past NOAH has always done a good job of responding strategically. But I remember one point brought up during that meeting was that we can't keep making strategic plans while people lay dead in the street.”27NOAH's statement was not successful in removing the chief of police, but perhaps it is best to see this action's purpose as that of ratcheting up the political pressure on police chief, while leveraging their values and self-interest in the public arena. NOAH as a group decided that the shooting of Daniel Hambrick violated a value they held sacred, that of Black life, and as Alexandrea said, “Enough is enough.” The violation of their sacred value clarified their self-interest. The political culture of NOAH—enacted in this example through habits and practices like debate, discussion, disagreement, and negotiation—allowed the group to act in a publicly powerful way. They acted because a sacred value within their political culture had been violated.Examples like NOAH illustrate that the ethical life of radical democracy inside publics is just as important as the quality of democracy in the broader political context. In The Public and its Problems Dewey argues that ethical and social democracy is grounded in a theory of publics making judgments about and taking action on interests that concern them. Publics are groups formed around “the perception of consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them.”28 Two crucial points follow from Dewey's concept of “public” that are relevant for our conversation on radical democracy and BBCO. The paragraphs that follow offer a different—although related—account of radical democracy in BBCO than the consociationalism that Luke Bretherton has recently offered.29First, radical democracy as I envision it claims that there is something fundamental to democracy's spirit in face-to-face encounter. Dewey, for his part, was certainly clear that publics consist not only of “face-to-face relationships” and “immediate contiguity.” There are ethical lessons for democracy that cannot be captured except in the kinds of community found most prototypically in groups like BBCO affiliates. “There is no substitute for the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment,” Dewey teaches us.30 The local community is the “home” of ethical and social democracy.31This is clearly borne out in the fact that BBCO starts with local institutions and a practice called relational meetings—a one-on-one meeting that establishes a public relationship, provides clarity on mutual self-interest and the values that might ground and sustain participation in the BBCO affiliate. The first step in organizing is to engage in relational meetings. After enough relational meetings a connection can be formed between individuals and their institutions based on values and issues (indirectly or directly experienced), thus laying the groundwork for a new public to emerge.32It is often said that BBCO has difficulty scaling up and cannot match modern state politics. The critique seems to be that BBCO is too local and cannot address political problems at the regional, national, or global level. There is some merit to this claim: some BBCO national networks seem allergic to sharing power; some BBCO networks have vested too much in the veritable claim that all politics is local. But BBCO has seen its organizing strategy win at the state level in harsh political conditions.33 Doubling down on the lesson that relational meetings drive organizing, other BBCO networks are building national strategies and taking the social practice of radical democracy as an ethical way of life to federal levels.34 More needs to be written on the theory of subsidiarity and BBCO organizing, but if such a subsidiary model is further incorporated the BBCO networks will remain democratic only insofar as they habituate members into the social practice of radical democracy within and between its various publics are more than local relationships and instead those who are concerned with the and consequences and of certain A democratic public consists of and accountable individuals who engage in democratic habits and practices grounded in values and interests by the of “public” Public to actions that only concern those directly those who are by and consequences of between persons in the into publics insofar as they to care for and protect their interests and values that are directly and by and More needs to be said on radically democratic especially in regard to what the and but I have the I to turn to Wolin's and West's to Deweyan ethical Wolin claims that Dewey's ethical democracy, for all of its moral and ethical democracy. Dewey's democracy is on its of modern Wolin Dewey's focus on and democracy to a of Wolin “is to democratic action while it of so that it with the form in the of In the Dewey's most crucial and ways of questions about To Wolin, Deweyan radical democracy of that the and of that cannot be down to of or Radical democracy needs to be of its that a correct of will a political culture and with democracy. of a account of radically democratic political culture, Wolin to of modern and power while his version of democracy as an of on the of the West not as as Wolin in claiming Dewey's a version of democracy. For Dewey, West there is a crucial between the and But Dewey's in the power of through a to an and of Dewey is one of the most democratic in the in the but his democratic community is and Dewey's of are and Dewey not how his on radically democratic political cultures are formed and by social norms and modern of power that and democratic individuality and community. to Dewey's and his in democratic West to religious and in his version of radical democracy is and democracy as it is on the of the political is different from democratic politics. The political is the of the where, Wolin is relevant and the a of powerful political is the activity of between organized and for to the public resources to political is and Wolin “In the political is In Wolin's larger it is the political as by the that he is democracy and what it means to be the As I will come to radical democracy as it is practice in BBCO particular challenges for Wolin's account of fugitivity and his politics of challenges to the very heart of Wolin's conception of radical the of established on the of the political and the of what Wolin a politics of has to and Wolin's conception of fugitivity by own between democratic and Black Black fugitivity is a within Black political us and belongs in the tradition. This is because of of the different and of the to the of and the and way that has for thereby the and the practices of democratic politics. The between democratic and Black fugitivity can be but of can be found in life and which him a than Wolin to democratic “the or Black who democratic practices as their status as is and as their political them to state I work to Wolin's sense of fugitivity and a politics of tending in order to come to terms with radical democracy as it is in BBCO. Wolin and Dewey provide crucial into radical democracy, but need to turn to West's work to the depth of white supremacy and power in our modern it helps to Wolin's view out in of to Wolin, a focus on politics the political has political from modern and forms of power. power as it is in the state is primarily The modern state political life, so that politics is merely opinion and through mass communication like and the are more like (not political at the of a reality built on an politics by What was the public is by interests and the free and so society is other aspects of life are to be the of and of modern modern power has been by a of power that state power power is and and thus might be in the Wolin in “is a new form of power that the domination of the state by its to the of society while at the same time the of society are Wolin come to call this of political life, and at the of is the of a truly democratic political culture. As Wolin writes, between democratic and an that has into another is a that is not a of and It is a in which culture, politics and tend toward a a In all other social and political relationships are and by relationships that are of their material and The is a form of political power that is that its power while through thought of community, or is politics the and by a political the of a politics of of democracy, our The and of to arbitrarily establish the of the of modern The power of democracy is the alternative political vision in the of the This out of time and out of with power. It is a of that is to past and present democracy to play a new political It is to than democracy and democratic that lead to “the of in its own As we will come to I Wolin's sense of fugitivity with the and patient work of radical democracy in of in a helps my vision of radical democracy. The of our political are by and for and In this political are more like not only their but their and Wolin's democracy the by democracy as grounded in a and a democratic political politics of tending is crucial to the democratic political culture at the heart of Wolin's democracy. Wolin to make explicit the of and in a politics of attention to and care for and Wolin writes, and so requires to between within the same Wolin tending to as to democracy because it discussion and dialogue, and do not remain because democracy is for the

The ideal of a public sphere, a space in which all citizens can critically, substantively, and rationally debate public policy, has captured the imagination of many scholars interested in communication and democracy. Jurgen Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989) is perhaps the most important statement of this position.1 While most scholarship critically examines the historical accuracy, theoretical and normative applicability, and limitations of Habermas’s conception of the public sphere(s), I would like to focus on a different aspect of his argument. Rather than looking at what Habermas considers to be the pinnacle, the “bourgeois public sphere,” and how it did, could, or should function, I would, instead, like to examine the decline or what Habermas calls the “refeudalization of the public sphere” with an eye to how the current situation has changed since Habermas first wrote the book in 1962. Here, Habermas discussed the pincer-like movement in which late modern consumer capitalism attempts to turn us into unthinking mass consumers on one hand, while political actors, interest groups, and the state try to turn us into unthinking mass citizens on the other.

This article discusses the relations between mediatisation and datafication, and how the process of datafication has integrated several diverse value forms in complex interrelations. In a first section is outlined the rise of datafication in the wake of the technological development of digitalisation in combination with new business models of the media and communications industries, leading to a tighter integration between these and other sectors of society. Secondly, is accounted for how this development paves way for certain specific value forms that result from this integrative process, and how the interrelation between value forms introduces a shift in the valuation processes of late modern data capitalism, where the social takes a prominent position. In the final section is discussed the relation between datafication and mediatisation, arguing that although datafication introduces a new phase in the mediatisation process, datafication also extends beyond mediatisation.

This paper revisits Mary Douglas' Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966). A survey of this theory in architecture in the late-twentieth century reveals how it focused attention on relationships between dirt, cleanliness, and the design and organisation of space—an area previously neglected in architectural thought. Dirt remains an important focus within architectural and urban theory, with implications for practice. Yet, the intersections that scholars of the 1980s and 1990s made between Douglas' work and critical theory, feminist and psychoanalytic writings elicited problems with her structuralist approach that remain unresolved. These are apparent in considering relationships between dirt and cities—indeed, the aphorism Douglas invokes, “dirt is matter out of place”, originates in discussions of nineteenth-century urbanisation. To better understand dirt's relationships with modern and late-modern capitalist cities, Douglas' insights can be productively read alongside post-structuralist accounts, including the psychoanalytic notion of the abject and recent neo-Marxian scholarship on the production of urban nature.