Page 14 - Culture Society and Economy

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ONE Bringing the Economy Back In

The most striking feature of modern social and cultural theory is its
relative lack of interest in and disconnection from the economic system
of society, in the sense of the system of production. Contemporary cultural
or sociological theories – cultural studies, postmodernism, risk society
theory – have spent much time and effort inveighing against ‘economism’
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and in declaring their independence from economics. Where a connection
with economics is established – as in network society or multiple moder-
nity theory – this is an economics reduced to the status of a mechanism,
usually a technological mechanism. In the case of risk society theory, the
basic configuration of national and global economies is re-affirmed but
this is a notion of the economy purely as exchange relationships. Concern
is with managing the margins – the social and other ‘risks’ which arise
from the operations of the market. The consequence of this is the more
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or less explicit affirmation of the existing economic relations which arise
from the system of production.
One consequence of this sundering of the relationship between cultural
and social theory and the ‘hidden abode’ of the economy, or, of the affir-
mation of the existing set of economic relationships, has been that these
theories have been unable to develop convincing critiques of modern
global capitalist society. The failures of this society can be and are often
acknowledged and lamented but no convincing alternatives are developed.
The result is that those who experience the economic problems of the
existing social systems as going way beyond a matter of managing risks
find themselves alienated from this contemporary reformulation of social
democracy – indeed, the political process as a whole. It seems to them
determined not to address their fundamental concerns. On the other hand,
those who are drawn to radical solutions continue to neglect economics and
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to formulate their positions in largely cultural-political terms. The upshot
of these failures is either a continuous string of mass mobilizations which