Soft Capitalism Research Articles

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Digital Philanthropy: The Practice of Giving Among Middle to Upper-Class Muslim in Indonesia and Soft Capitalism

<p>Academic discussions on transforming the culture of giving have shifted from direct assistance to long-term empowerment programs due to technology, communication, and informatics development. Therefore, this research aims to describe the practice of digital philanthropy in e-commerce and social enterprises. Data were collected from online-based e-commerce and social enterprise companies in Indonesia that have provided digital giving practice spaces through virtual ethnographic methods, interviews, and online documentation in Indonesia. These platforms include Bukalapak.com, Tokopedia.com, Sedekahonline.com, and kitabisa.com. The results provide an overview to the Muslim community on the practice of digital philanthropy. In addition, this research also provides an overview of the importance of building partners and program campaigns for the digital financial services industry and Islamic philanthropic institutions.</p>

Soft-Capitalism: Business Revitalization Based on Spirituality

Soft capitalism has begun to spread in Indonesia, marked by the number of Islamic businesses that are developing. This raises questions about the Islamic economic system and capitalism which seem to merge without any obstacles. In Yogyakarta, this phenomenon can be found in the Geprek Chicken and Milk (Preksu) and Waroeng Steak which is a popular economic movement in the culinary field. Specifically, from the business object, the author conducts indepth study at how the two paradigms that tend to be contradictory, capitalism and Islam, are able to go hand in hand in their manifestation based on the spiritual company. This study using the sociological approach and literature study and primary data based on field observation. The result shows that the fusion between Islamic values and capitalism produces a new phenomenon influenced by a strong moral economy from producers (entrepreneurs) and high consumer enthusiasm sustained by the role of new media. Therefore, the author argues that the growing moral value of human economies finally shatters egocentricity capitalist and Islamic is necessary as a measure of decorum (ethical) in the economy.

The toxic effects of subjective wellbeing and potential tonics

The paper offers a provocation to the geographies of health in relation to one of our governing concepts, that of wellbeing. The paper brings together government survey data from the United Kingdom with other published research into a critical argument that the dominant ways of conceptualising and practising subjective wellbeing have become toxic and harmful to wellbeing outcomes. The paper argues that a ‘hyper-individualised and thwarted self’ and ‘supermarket model’ of social resources for individual wellbeing underpins the contemporary dominant understanding of subjective wellbeing. This approach neglects wider spatial and temporal considerations such as inequality, inter-generationality and sustainability, and the rise of wellbeing as a technology of soft capitalism. The paper discusses the potential for relational approaches from the social sciences to provide a more ‘wholesome tonic’ to current understandings of subjective wellbeing that might rehabilitate its capability to do helpful rather than harmful work and argues for an ethical obligation to sustain critical engagement.

Bad Enough Ergonomics

The article analyzes ergonomics as a social and cultural phenomenon, as something that is formulated and described by speakers in a specific social context; in a company that is specialized in producing ergonomic office furniture. Through a case study of an office chair, the article examines how ergonomics and its association with the vision of the potential users and their working spaces are constructed by the relevant actors in project meetings and individual interviews during the manufacturing process. The article is concerned with how, in the process of producing an office chair, the chair gains an identity of an aesthetic design object and how this comes to mean the reformulation of the idea of ergonomics. The empirical analysis also provides insight into how the somewhat grand discourses of soft capitalism or aesthetic economy are not abstract, but very much grounded in everyday practices of an organization. The article establishes how the vision shared by all the relevant actors invites active, flexible, and cooperative end-users and how the vision also has potential material effects. The research is an ethnographically inspired case study that draws ideas from discursive psychology.

Surveyors of customs: American literature as cultural analysis

Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: The Critical Work and Critical Pleasure of American Literature 1. Inner-Self Industries: Soft Capitalism's Reproductive Logic 2. How America Works: Getting Personal to Get Personnel 3. Dress-Down Conquest: Americanizing Top-Down as Bottom-Up Afterword: Payoffs Notes Works Consulted Index

Commercialising comparison: Pearson puts the TLC in soft capitalism

This paper provides a critical policy analysis of The Learning Curve (TLC) (2012), an initiative developed by the multinational edu-business, Pearson, in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit. TLC exemplifies the commercialising of comparison and the efforts of edu-businesses to strategically position themselves in education policy processes globally. In analysing TLC, our account seeks to proffer a critical analysis of this emerging policy genre, and the way it functions as part of the new ‘soft capitalism’. We analyse TLC in relation to Pearson’s new business strategy, which emphasises corporate social responsibility and accountability to consumers for the efficacy of its products and services. We argue that Pearson is now generating and appropriating various data to legitimise its products and services according to a ‘neo-social’ mode of accountability. Network ethnography is employed to document the global networks of both people and data associated with TLC and we reflect on the emergence of Pearson as a potential education policy actor.

Legitimising Strategies in the Field of Independent Cultural Production: the Case of Reissue Record Labels in the USA

Abstract This article examines the cultural practice of effecting an independent marketplace for reissued music in the United States, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Austin, Texas with independent record labels and consumers. As the music industry is not a homogenous entity (Williamson and Cloonan, 2007), I argue that the practice of legitimising an independent marketplace requires the formulation of a ‘mainstream’ market to which the independent is opposed, and the erecting of marketplace myths (Arsel and Thompson, 2010) to substantiate the independent marketplace’s claims to differ from the mainstream. Legitimising strategies (Strachan, 2007) protect the investments made by producers and consumers of goods in their marketplace. To overcome the anxiety that commodified culture is inauthentic culture, the independent marketplace for reissued music is idealised as a realm of soft capitalism that enables the commodification of cultural goods without the stigmatisation of profiteering, exploitation and ‘inorganic’ music associated with the mainstream (Negus, 1992).

Mediatization of Power: Corporate CEOs in Flexible Capitalism

Abstract The present article analyses the mediatization of corporate power with a special focus on the work of the CEO. A review of the literature on the role of the media in corporate management, especially in the work of corporate leaders, shows how the techniques of power in corporate management have become mediatized. Different media have become increasingly important for the work of corporate leaders. More importantly, media have become tools of power. In flexible and soft capitalism, corporate power is exercised using performative and affective techniques aimed at identity and community formation. Consequently, different media are utilized as tools of corporate management and control. With regard to the mediatization of power, the case of corporate management suggests that one should look into the societal and institutional structures of power rather than into the power of the media.

Branded revolutionaries: Circulated gurus as management tools in soft capitalism

The call for revolution has become a standard technique in corporate capitalism. Management fashions and gurus turn revolutionary ideas into saleable packages of corporate consulting. Here, the focus is on the case of Gary Hamel. I show how an individual guru becomes the central symbolic pole of the circulation of revolutionary ideas. Publishing companies, consultancies, universities and different media package and disseminate the revolutionary guru. I suggest that the revolutionary guru helps manage the flexible post-Fordist organisation. The circulation of revolution also entails paradoxes. In Hamel’s case, the call for revolution often, when put into practice, serves the interests of the managers.

Materializing the Metaphors of Global Cities: Singapore and Silicon Valley

In this article I focus methodologically on the productive power of catachresis, the forcing of language into unexpected comparisons and similes, neologisms and imagery, through which material geographies of meaning are produced as forms of power. I argue that in the 2003 ‘Report of the Remaking Singapore Committee’ and similar documents discourses of planning and development are a practical form of science fiction. Singapore is imagined there as a ‘cyber-sexy-city’ through an articulation of metaphors centring on ‘Silicon Valley’. These discourses adjust social policies, representational practices, and spatial environments to encourage and defend the ‘right kind’ of varied and in particular non-heteronormative sexualities that the ‘creativity’ involved in ‘soft capitalism’ is thought to require. This is surprising, given the Singaporean state's long-term political investment in ‘traditional family values’. En este artículo me enfoco metodológicamente en el poder productivo de la catacresis, la coerción del lenguaje dentro de comparaciones y símiles inesperados, neologismos e imágenes, por las que las geografías materiales del significado se producen como formas de poder. Mantengo que en el 2003, ‘El reporte del comité para la recreación de Singapur’ y los documentos de planteamientos similares sobre la planeación y el desarrollo, son una forma práctica de la ciencia ficción. Singapur se imagina allí como una ‘ciudad ciber-sexy’ a través de una articulación de metáforas que se centran en ‘Silicon Valley’. Estos planteamientos se ajustan a las políticas sociales, las prácticas representacionales y los medio ambientes espaciales, para motivar y defender la ‘buena índole’ de sexualidades variadas y particularmente no heteronormativas, que hace pensar en la ‘creatividad’ implicada en un ‘capitalismo suave,’ como algo necesario. Esto es sorprendente, dada la inversión política a largo plazo en ‘los valores tradicionales de familia’ del estado de Singapur.

Reflexive marketing: the cultural circuit of loyalty programs

The amount of personal data now collected through contemporary marketing practices is indicative of the shifting landscape of contemporary capitalism. Loyalty programs can be seen as one exemplar of this, using the `add-ons' of `points' and `miles' to entice consumers into divulging a range of personal information. These consumers are subject to surveillance practices that have digitally identified them as significant in the eyes of a corporation, yet they are also part of a feedback loop subject to ongoing analysis. This paper focuses on this analysis as the `cultural circuit' of loyalty programs--the ongoing process of meaning-making in this form of contemporary marketing--as exemplary of what Nigel Thrift calls soft capitalism(1997, 2005). Loyalty programs engage consumers in an ongoing `relationship' with a corporation, yet it is one predicated on the collection and analysis of personal data in order to identify, maintain and increase profits from these consumer `relationships.' This paper looks at ways of knowing, application and revision in the cultural circuit of loyalty program marketing as a form of reflexive marketing and raises concerns about consumer subjectivity in the context consumer culture that mediates much of contemporary experience. These technologies and practices continually adapt and adjust to strategically act toward consumers as a form of consumer surveillance based on an increasingly intensive and nuanced knowledge of their behaviours.

Teaching and Learning Guide: Rethinking Economic Geographies of Knowledge

Teaching and Learning Guide: Rethinking Economic Geographies of Knowledge

Capitalism and justification

Weber's thesis that the spirit of capitalism was preexistent to the rise of capitalism itself inspired many sociologist to search for the cultural background of contemporary forms of capitalism. In this paper, the author focuses on and makes comparisons of three approaches of such kind. The one approach draws from Luc Boltanski and ?ve Chiapello who examine the development of 'new spirit of capitalism' by focusing on the interrelation of two macroactors - capitalism and critique; the other one is of Nigel Thrift who relates the rise of 'soft capitalism' to the strengthening of 'cultural circuit of capital'; and finally, Richard Sennett's approach analyzes the culture of 'new capitalism' and work ethic of the 'mp3 organizations'.

Managerialism, the therapeutic habitus and the self in contemporary organizing

Over the last two decades, managerialism (Enteman, 1993) has become consolidated on multiple fronts. As a formula of governance, it has elaborated various vocabularies: the `audit society' (Power, 1997, 2007) has become entrenched in all types of organizations; surveillance methods (Lyon, 2001) have become increasingly dispersed and insidious; and — alongside —`new' concepts of subjectivity and the`self' are used to frame more intense regimes of self-discipline or what Tipton (1984) called `self-work'. These moves have been captured by Heelas (2002), Thrift (1997) and others in the term `soft capitalism'. In this article, we reflect upon this phenomenon by analysing some examples: `culture', `performativity', `knowledge' and `wellness'. Although they belong to a group often described as `fads' and `fashions' and dismissed as managerial `mumbo-jumbo', we suggest that their proliferation indicates a more stable cultural tendency of management discourses to capture subjectivity in its general agenda. We attempt to offer an historical-cultural interpretation from which this range of managerial concepts might be viewed. Our argument suggests that they have a certain cultural coherence that can be perhaps better glimpsed within a wider historical context. As a particular way in which managerialism frames its logic, analysing `soft capitalism' historically offers a reasonable basis for understanding the strength of its hard disciplinary edge as a regime of governance.

Soft capitalism and a hard industry: virtualism, the ‘transition industry’ and the restructuring of the Ukrainian coal industry

This paper examines the geographical transfer of economic knowledge and practices from centres of neoliberalism in North America and Western Europe to post‐soviet Ukraine. The paper argues that a ‘transition industry’ emerged in the wake of the disintegration of the soviet system whose purpose was to realize economic transition in central and eastern Europe. The paper discusses the emergence of a community of academic and professional economists affiliated to international financial institutions and academic and professional economic research organizations in Kyiv engaged in promoting the Washington consensus. This community identified the coal industry, located in the Ukrainian Donbas, as a barrier to structural economic reform and the political re‐alignment of the country. The paper then examines the way the World Bank unsuccessfully attempted to force the coal industry to conform to its own policy prescriptions. The example points to the articulation not only of extra‐local and internal processes of neoliberalization, but also with indigenous informal marketization. In this instance the World Bank's vision failed to materialize because state power could not be allied to its neoliberal project.

Unemployment in the New Europe. Edited by Nancy Bermeo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. 368p.$70.00 cloth, $28.00 paper.

The publication under review is the outcome of a Princeton University conference entitled “Unemployment's Effects” held in 1997. The themes of the chapters extend widely. Some authors focus on broad discussions of the possibilities for the “European model” to survive in a global economic setting, while others look at specific relations, for example, between unemployment and trade union strength, in just one European country. Some chapters have clear theoretical objectives, while others have a focus on empirical detail and statistical analysis. On the other hand, the majority of the chapters are related by a general positive view on the sustainability of the European model, even in the seemingly hostile environment of the global economy. Although the European welfare states and labor markets are often accused of being inflexible and hampered by “institutional sclerosis,” they may also foster the development of a soft and kind capitalism—or organized managed economy—as Nancy Bermeo puts it in her introduction to the book.

The rise of soft capitalism

The worlds of academe and capitalism are moving ever closer together as the cultural value attributed to theory by managers increases. This paper documents this process and, at the same time, provides a critique of it. Accordingly, the paper is in three parts. The first part shows how the discursive make‐up of academe and capitalism have become remarkably similar. The second part of the paper then documents the rise of a ‘soft capitalism’ based upon new discourses of management, which, at the same time, provides powerful technology of justification. The final part of the paper shows that the new discourses of management have a hard edge which impoverishes its practices but may also allow the space for other social models to grow.