Gazing at “Fetishes” 2.0: Using the Spectacle Concept to Understand Consumer Cultures in the Age of Digital Capitalism

This paper argues that Debord’s La Société du Spectacle was a syncretism of contemporary US criticism of the consumer society and the power of the image and of the Marxist tradition. First it elucidates the notion of commodity fetishism for Marx and Debord’s détournement of it. It then establishes the connection between the history of consumer cultures, in terms of their visual dimension, with that of production systems. Then Debord’s development of the notion of spectacle is analyzed as a typical critique of Fordism. Finally, the paper addresses the relevance of the concept of spectacle in the post-Fordist digital era

The Relation Between Production, Labor Regimes and Leisure Forms: From slavery to digital capitalism

article uses the notions of stages of capitalism, labor regimes and production regimes to explore the relationship between the way people work and their leisure. It starts with a clarification of what is meant by the capitalist modes of production, proceeds to define labor and work regimes, and analyzes the specific demands made by various labor regimes and production regimes on the leisure time of workers, which it illustrates by examples taken from the history of leisure in the US. The advent of digital capitalism, rooted in the US, has profoundly transformed the work and leisure environments of a growing number of people all over the world, and in many ways blurred the frontier between these two human activities, so that a reappraisal of the relationship between work and leisure is in order, especially from the angle of prosumer capitalism, which is the subject of the last part.Cet article utilise les concepts de stades du mode de production capitaliste, de régime de travail et de régime de production pour explorer la relation entre la façon dont nous travaillons et nos loisirs. Dans un premier temps, la notion de mode de production capitaliste est explicitée, celles de régime de travail et de régime de production définies, et les conséquences de chaque régime de travail et de production sur les loisirs des travailleurs analysées, ce qui est illustré par des exemples tirés de l’histoire des loisirs aux États-Unis. L’avènement du capitalisme numérique, une invention américaine, ayant largement bouleversé à la fois les procès de travail et les loisirs, la relation entre les régimes de production et de travail du numérique et les loisirs est l’objet de la dernière partie, qui porte une attention particulière au travail du consommateur

Rethinking the concept of labour

Is labour a useful concept for anthropology today? This essay attempts to respond theoretically to the challenge that the contributions to this special issue empirically pose. The essay rethinks the concept of labour by addressing three questions that deal with the relation of human work effort and capital accumulation: the first refers to alienation; the second to the difference between abstract and concrete labour; and the third to ambiguity. Over the years, these issues have addressed particular aspects of social reproduction, helping define labour as a concept, albeit a heterogeneous one, that is relationally linked to capital. Dislocation, together with the parallel concepts of dispossession, disorganization, disconnection, and differentiation, emerges prominently in the analyses of contemporary labour transformations and specificities. Finally, the essay engages with seemingly disappearing labour futures and what this means for the concept of labour. What is the value of work for capital and, conversely, the value of labouring for people today

Work and Labour as Metonymy and Metaphor

This paper proposes to use the tools of literary analysis (the reference to subtexts) and of linguistics (metaphor and metonymy) to shed light on the work/labour controversy and, beyond that, to map the galaxy of representations of work/labour through a study of the meanings associated with work/labour in several languages. It aims to provide a set of theoretical tools that can be used to find a common language in order to discuss digital work/labour issues as a subcategory of work/labour issues in general

De l’Uruguay Round à l’Accord multilatéral sur l’investissement : l’emprise du modèle américain

The results of the Uruguay Round of negotiations include a globalization of the American rules concerning trade and investment. This article focuses on two aspects of this expansion of the US model: intellectual property rights and the protection of investors’ rights. Both the recent developments in the field of intellectual property rights and an analysis of the negotiation of the draft Multilateral Agreement on Investment and its contents point to a dramatic change in the role of government, and, beyond, the relationship between multinationals and sovereign States

Les États-Unis et le Japon à l'heure de la globalisation: faut-il réviser le "modèle anglo-saxon" ?

One aspect of globalization is that companies must have ready access to the Triad’s markets. U.S. firms are no exception. The result is corporate alliances but also conflicts between nation States, which accounts for the growing aggressiveness and sophistication of U.S. trade negotiators, especially since the beginning of the Uruguay Round. A study of U.S. Japanese relationships in the light of "revisionist" literature points to the structure and behavior of Japanese multinationals as a due to the special attention which Japan has received from U.S. officials, who have insisted on import targets and structural changes. This "micromanagement" calls into question the "anglo-saxon" model, which is based on a "hands off" attitude of the government in business matters

L'œuvre de Gérard Debreu (1921-2004)

Frayssé Jean. L'œuvre de Gérard Debreu (1921-2004). In: Revue française d'économie, volume 20, n°2, 2005. pp. 3-10

La « grande récession américaine » de 2007, les retraites et le « rêve américain »

Starting with the 2001 recession in the United States, an increasing number of workers reaching the age of retirement have continued to work, and this trend has been confirmed and accentuated during the 2007 recession, inaugurating the “US Great recession”, so that the oxymoron “working retirement” has become commonplace, while the trend towards lower anticipations concerning retirement, which was first observed in 1980, has accelerated. By examining the connection between the issue of retirement and the realities underlying the notion of American dream, one understands the extent to which the current crisis, a consequence of the end of the Fordist compromise, also involves a crisis in the national culture