Page 12 - Critical Political Economy of the Media

Foreword xi

things. Mosco takes us on a roller-coaster ride through theories of spatialisation
and commodification. Along the way we are invited to consider whether ‘the
universalization of commodification … replaces its traditional connection to
the transformation of use to exchange value and the production of codes and the
hegemony of sign value’. Indeed, is there ‘a radical mitosis in which objects and
the labor process that gives rise to them break off and dissolve before the free-
floating power of the sign’? (Mosco 1996: 155) – a question that Mosco ultimately
sidesteps. This ascent into the billowing clouds of high theory is then followed by
a crash landing, and a slow cruise through a banal listing of big companies and
commercial sectors, reviewed in a mostly descriptive way (Mosco 1996: 181–92).
What unifies the diverse topics and concerns that Mosco defines as the terrain
of political economy of communications? A useful way of understanding the
field, he says, is to ‘think about political economy as the study of the social relations,
particularly the power relations, that mutually constitute the production, distribution, and
consumption of resources’ (original emphasis) (Mosco 1996: 25). Think about this
formulation for a moment, and it becomes instantly apparent that a blank, pro-
missory cheque is being issued. It is difficult to think of any work of substance
engaging with the totality of society – written from different viewpoints, in
diverse disciplines, in relation to a multiplicity of topics – that does not consider
social relations in relation to resources.
This elastic definition enables Mosco to define the political economy of commu-
nications as, more or less, anything that interests him. It is the key to understanding
the book’s inchoate nature, surprising lacunae, and superficial treatment of some
topics. However, this is not to detract from the quality of some of Mosco’s insights,
and the intellectual courage with which he seeks to map a heterogeneous field –
virtues that have resulted in a second edition of his book, generating plaudits
from such luminaries as Lawrence Grossberg (Mosco 2009: back cover). Nor
are the reservations expressed here intended to detract from the quality of his
other work. 3
However, Mosco’s introduction leaves unresolved what media political economy
is mainly about, and whether it is worth making the effort to find out.

What is it?

The true nature of media political economy is a mystery that deepens. For Karl
Marx, ‘political economy’ was a synonym for bourgeois economic theory, which he
attacked as tendentiously representing the economy to be benignly self-regulating
and immutably bound by laws similar to those of nature. Indeed, the subtitle of his
most famous book, Capital,is ‘A Critique of Political Economy’ (Marx 1983 [1867]).
But if ‘political economy’ was deployed by Marx to designate centre-right
economic theory, the label is sometimes associated with left-wing theory. For
example, David Hesmondhalgh (2007: 34) writes: ‘This emphasis in political
economy work on capitalism and its negative effects should make it clear that,
although you don’t have to be a Marxist to work here, it helps’.This identification