Page 66 - Contemporary Political Sociology Globalization Politics and Power

52 Politics in a Small World

that demonstrate the progressive features of disorganized capitalism and
which are therefore at its core (Lash and Urry, 1994 : 17, 60). This is an
important difference in emphasis because it leads them to place culture
and symbolic value at the center of their analysis. In their view, the
economy is now based primarily on the circulation of signs: the cognitive
signs that are informational goods and the aestheticized signs of what
they call postmodern goods such as media products, leisure services, and
designer products (1994: 4). Alongside the changing objects of capitalism,
disorganized capitalism also involves the emergence of a new, more highly
refl exive subjectivity . This is, in turn, both cognitive and aesthetic. In
cognitive terms, it involves the monitoring and formation of the self in

the reflection on information given by experts. In aesthetic terms, it
involves the interpretation and formation of the self through the consump-
tion of goods, ideas, and images. Lash and Urry see refl exivity of both

kinds as central to the reproduction and modification of the socio -
economic processes of postmodernity; it is both the result and the condi-
tion of a continual “ de - traditionalization ” which constantly revolutionizes
patterns of production and consumption.
For Lash and Urry, postmodernity is intrinsically global. Organized
capitalism was centered on the nation - state; like Harvey, they see the
previous capitalist system as one in which class interests were incorpo-
rated into a Keynesian national agenda set through negotiated compro-
mises and state regulation (Lash and Urry, 1987 ). Disorganized capitalism
cannot, however, be analyzed as a society, a set of structures bounded by
the nation - state (Lash and Urry, 1994 : 320 – 2). Flows of capital, technolo-
gies, information, images, and people do not recognize territorial bound-
aries and collapse the globe as they circulate across greater distances at

greater velocity. Expanded and speeded - up flows across borders are
increasingly outside the control of national governments, or, indeed, of
any individual organization or group. Nothing is given or fi xed in disor-
ganized capitalism, according to Lash and Urry, and the refl exivity result-
ing from ever - increasing knowledge and information serves only to
disorganize it still further (1994: 1011).
Lash and Urry begin and end Economies of Signs and Space by invok-
ing the name of Marx, to resurrect the “ dinosaur, ” as they put it. However,
it is arguable that the theory they present breaks signifi cantly with the
economism of orthodox Marxism in seeing the circulation of goods,
capital, and labor in symbolic terms and therefore as at least as much a
matter of culture as of economics. On one hand, they seem to argue for
a weak version of economic determinism, seeing postmodern culture,
reflexivity, and other features of postmodernity as caused by global