No measure for culture? Value in the new economy

This paper explores articulations of the value of investment in culture and the arts through a critical discourse analysis of policy documents, reports and academic commentary since 1997. It argues that in this period, discourses around the value of culture have moved from a focus on the direct economic contributions of the culture industries to their indirect economic benefits. These indirect benefits are discussed here under three main headings: creativity and innovation, employability, and social inclusion. These are in turn analysed in terms of three forms of capital: human, social and cultural. The paper concludes with an analysis of this discursive shift through the lens of autonomist Marxist concerns with the labour of social reproduction. It is our argument that, in contemporary policy discourses on culture and the arts, the government in the UK is increasingly concerned with the use of culture to form the social in the image of capital. As such, we must turn our attention beyond the walls of the factory in order to understand the contemporary capitalist production of value and resistance to it. </jats:p

Marx’s "Capital"in the Information Age

This article argues that a media and communication studies perspective on reading Marx’s Capital has thus far been missing, but is needed in the age of information capitalism and digital capitalism. Two of the most popular contemporary companions to Marx’s Capital, the ones by David Harvey and Michael Heinrich, present themselves as general guidebooks on how to read Marx, but are actually biased towards particular schools of Marxist thought. A contemporary reading of Marx needs to be mediated with contemporary capitalism’s structures and the political issues of the day. Media, communications and the Internet are important issues for such a reading today. It is time to see Marx not just as a critic of capitalism but also as a critic of capitalist communications

The New ‘Hidden Abode’: Reflections on Value and Labour in the New Economy

In a pivotal section of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976: 279) notes that, in order to understand the capitalist production of value, we must descend into the ‘hidden abode of production’: the site of the labour process conducted within an employment relationship. In this paper we argue that by remaining wedded to an analysis of labour that is confined to the employment relationship, Labour Process Theory (LPT) has missed a fundamental shift in the location of value production in contemporary capitalism. We examine this shift through the work of Autonomist Marxists like Hardt and Negri, Lazaratto and Arvidsson, who offer theoretical leverage to prize open a new ‘hidden abode’ outside employment, for example in the ‘production of organization’ and in consumption. Although they can open up this new ‘hidden abode’, without LPT's fine-grained analysis of control/resistance, indeterminacy and structured antagonism, these theorists risk succumbing to empirically naive claims about the ‘new economy’. Through developing an expanded conception of a ‘new hidden abode’ of production, the paper demarcates an analytical space in which both LPT and Autonomist Marxism can expand and develop their understanding of labour and value production in today's economy. </jats:p

The quantified self: what counts in the neoliberal workplace

Implementation of quantified self technologies in workplaces relies on the ontological premise of Cartesian dualism with mind dominant over body. Contributing to debates in new materialism, we demonstrate that workers are now being asked to measure our own productivity and health and wellbeing in art-houses and warehouses alike in both the global north and south. Workers experience intensified precarity, austerity, intense competition for jobs, and anxieties about the replacement of labour-power with robots and other machines as well as, ourselves replaceable, other humans. Workers have internalized the imperative to perform, a subjectification process as we become observing, entrepreneurial subjects and observed, objectified labouring bodies. Thinking through the implications of the use of wearable technologies in workplaces, this article shows that these technologies introduce a heightened Taylorist influence on precarious working bodies within neoliberal workplaces

Women undergoing endovascular thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair differ significantly from their male counterparts preoperatively and postoperatively

OBJECTIVE: A rational approach to the management of aortic aneurysm disease relies on weighing the risk of aneurysm rupture against the complications and durability of operative repair. In men, seminal studies of infrarenal aortic aneurysm disease and its endovascular management can provide a reasoned argument for the timing and modality of surgery, which is then extrapolated to the management of thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (TAAAs). In contrast, there is less appreciation for the natural history of TAAA disease in women and its response to therapy. METHODS: We used a retrospective cohort design of women, all men, and matched men, fit for complex endovascular thoracoabdominal aneurysm repair at two large aortic centers. We controlled for preoperative anatomic and comorbidity differences, and assessed technical success, postoperative renal dysfunction, spinal ischemia, and early mortality. Women and matched men were reassessed at follow-up for long-term durability and survival. RESULTS: Assessing women and all men undergoing complex endovascular aortic reconstruction, we demonstrate that these groups are dissimilar before the intervention with respect to comorbidities, aneurysm extent, and aneurysm size; women have a higher proportion of proximal Crawford extent 1, 2, and 3 aneurysms. Matching men and women for demographic and anatomic differences, we find persistent elevated perioperative mortality in women (16%) undergoing endovascular thoracoabdominal aneurysm repair compared with matched men (6%); however, at the 3-year follow-up, both groups have the same survival. Furthermore, women demonstrate more favorable anatomic responses to aneurysm exclusion, with good durability and greater aneurysm sac regression at follow-up, compared with matched men. CONCLUSIONS: Women and unmatched men with TAAA disease differ preoperatively with respect to aneurysm extent and comorbidities. Controlling for these differences, after complex endovascular aneurysm repair, there is increased early mortality in women compared with matched men. These observations argue for a careful risk stratification of women undergoing endovascular thoracoabdominal aneurysm treatment, balanced with women's good long-term survival and durability of endovascular aneurysm repair

Infrastructures of empire: towards a critical geopolitics of media and information studies

The Arab Uprisings of 2011 can be seen as a turning point for media and information studies scholars, many of whom newly discovered the region as a site for theories of digital media and social transformation. This work has argued that digital media technologies fuel or transform political change through new networked publics, new forms of connective action cultivating liberal democratic values. These works have, surprisingly, little to say about the United States and other Western colonial powers’ legacy of occupation, ongoing violence and strategic interests in the region. It is as if the Arab Spring was a vindication for the universal appeal of Western liberal democracy delivered through the gift of the Internet, social media as manifestation of the ‘technologies of freedom’ long promised by Cold War. We propose an alternate trajectory in terms of reorienting discussions of media and information infrastructures as embedded within the resurgence of idealized liberal democratic norms in the wake of the end of the Cold War. We look at the demise of the media and empire debates and ‘the rise of the BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) as modes of intra-imperial competition that complicate earlier Eurocentric narratives media and empire. We then outline the individual contributions for the special collection of essays

Disrupting the dissertation: linked data, enhanced publication and algorithmic culture

This article explores how the three aspects of Striphas’ notion of algorithmic culture (information, crowds and algorithms) might influence and potentially disrupt established educational practices.  We draw on our experience of introducing semantic web and linked data technologies into higher education settings, focussing on extended student writing activities such as dissertations and projects, and drawing in particular on our experiences related to undergraduate archaeology dissertations. The potential for linked data to be incorporated into electronic texts, including academic publications, has already been described, but these accounts have highlighted opportunities to enhance research integrity and interactivity, rather than considering their potential creatively to disrupt existing academic practices. We discuss how the changing relationships between subject content and practices, teachers, learners and wider publics both in this particular algorithmic culture, and more generally, offer new opportunities; but also how the unpredictability of crowds, the variable nature and quality of data, and the often hidden power of algorithms, introduce new pedagogical challenges and opportunities

Understanding Video Game Developers as an Occupational Community

The video game industry has rapidly expanded over the last four decades; yet there is limited research about the workers who make video games. In examining these workers, this article responds to calls for renewed attention to the role of the occupation in understanding project-based workers in boundaryless careers. Specifically, this article uses secondary analysis of online sources to demonstrate that video game developers can be understood as a unique social group called an occupational community (OC). Once this classification has been made, the concept of OC can be used in future research to understand video game workers in terms of identity formation, competency development, career advancement and support, collective action, as well as adherence to and deviance from organizational and industry norms

Precarious, Always-On and Flexible: A Case Study of Academics as Information Workers

The higher education landscape has changed in the last decades. The neoliberal restructuring of universities has led to transformations such as reducing public expenditure, allocating resources based on competition and quasi-market disciplines. These structural transformations have also an effect on the working conditions, practices and relations of subjects within universities. Questions that need to be addressed: How do different working contexts and conditions in the academia shape feelings of autonomy, flexibility and reputation on the one hand and precariousness, overwork and dissatisfaction on the other? What are the broader political realities and potentials in terms of solidarity, participation and democracy at universities? I address these questions based on a theoretical analysis and qualitative interviews with precariously employed academics