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Politics in a Small World 53

economic flows, as “ effects of [the] highly informationalized socio -
economic core ” (1994: 13). However, as Kumar notes, at the same time,
they also see the postmodernized economy as inseparably intertwined
with culture, rather than as occupying a separate sphere from which it
could be said to be causing cultural effects (Kumar, 1995 : 118). They
argue that what it is important to grasp in order to understand contem-
porary capitalism is precisely “ the extent to which culture has penetrated
the economy itself, that is, the extent to which symbolic processes, includ-
ing an important aesthetic component, have permeated both consumption
and production ” (Lash and Urry, 1994 : 601). This second thesis is also
a good deal more consistent with the idea of reflexivity as productive of

the flows in which it is embedded; fl ows of goods, information, and people
are modifiable just to the extent that they are, as Lash and Urry argue,

meaningful for those engaged in them because they are imbued with

symbolic value. The reflexivity of the economy is both cause and effect
of the way in which it is, in Lash and Urry ’ s terms, informationalized
and aestheticized. In fact, Lash and Urry ’ s theory of capitalism is barely
recognizable in terms of Marxism ’ s privileging of the economic sphere as
determinant of social relations and cultural forms.
Lash and Urry give little consideration to politics in either the narrow
or the wider sense. They see the nation - state as increasingly international-
ized in that many attempts to govern globalized capitalism can only be
made at the level of the international political order. However, they do
not discuss politics at this level in any detail. Nor do they explicitly
address the issues of cultural politics with which we are concerned in this
book. Nevertheless, their analysis of refl exive capitalism points towards
the need for an understanding of cultural politics as it is concerned with
the formation and contestation of identities and social practices. Lash and
Urry ’ s analysis of disorganized capitalism might be seen as entirely pes-
simistic, as the demise of organized labor and diminishing of the power
of the nation - state reduces capacities to regulate capitalism in the interests
of citizens. However, it also points towards a different understanding of
politics, as the way in which the social is actively constituted through the
manipulation of meaning suggests the possibility of globalization which
would not necessarily be dominated by the imperatives of capitalist expan-
sion. According to Lash and Urry ’ s account, cultural politics is increas-
ingly important in disorganized capitalism. Not only, they argue, is the
individual forced to make choices to an unprecedented degree, especially
concerning his or her self - identity and consumption of goods and services,
but it is consumerism that is now leading capitalist economies. It follows,
then, that forms of politics centered on information and aesthetics are