There is (almost) no alternative: the slow ‘heat death’ of music subcultures and the instrumentalization of contemporary leisure

In this paper, the metaphor of the ‘heat death’ is used in understanding the transformation of the alternative music scene(s) since the 1980s. Popular music is a key leisure space of modernity, and has been used as a space for negotiations of identity, conformity and transgression. Since the 1960s, alternative popular music has shaped the evolution of an authentic, communicative counter-cultural leisure space. The paper will use new research on on-line fan communities of black metal and extreme metal, and goth and post-punk, to demonstrate that the ideal of the alternative music scene as a communicative leisure space is not matched by the reality of the instrumentalization of contemporary leisure. Rather, there has been a slow metaphorically entropic shift in alternative music, from a shared subcultural and counter cultural leisure space into one part of a globalized entertainment industry that has colonized the Habermasian lifeworld of leisure

Durkheim in the Neoliberal Organization: Taking Resistance and Solidarity Seriously

Durkheim’s contributions to organization studies have so far been decidedly marginal, and largely concentrated on culture. In this paper, we draw upon his theory of anomie and solidarity to show how a Durkheimian view of contemporary organizations and work has special relevance today for debates about how workers, particularly middle managers, can reshuffle a capacity to resist neoliberal efforts to profoundly disrupt their working conditions, in particular their autonomy to define what is a job well done. We show how Durkheim’s insights can account for the unexpected rekindling of forms of social solidarity in highly competitive and individualistic organizational settings, through dissident efforts that convey a renewal of a certain work ethos severed by neoliberal managerial policies and practices. Recent studies on resistance confirm Durkheim’s view that forms of collective activity, resembling supposedly ‘old’ mechanisms of former days, continue to exist and develop in contemporary societies and organizations, in response to pressure to put people in situations of inter-individual competition that disrupts social relationships

Consumer Culture and Its Futures: Dreams and Consequences

Extensive lead chapter (25,000 words) in edited collection by Evgenia Krasteva-Blagoeva on consumer culture. This chapter addresses a range of questions about the dreams and consequences of consumption. The roots of consumer culture can be traced back to long-standing dreams of abundance and unrestricted consumption. With consumer culture now the dominant force central to the maintenance of the contemporary neoliberal global economy, the chapter asks the question how far are these dreams still viable? Today’s cultural heroes prominent in the media are still the rich, superrich, and celebrities, who enjoy excessive luxury lifestyles. Yet what are the consequences of 200 years of increasing consumption? Some would argue that the ecological consequences of a consumer society are evident in climate change and impending planetary disaster through the accumulation of excessive waste and unknown risks. If the unintended consequences now threaten planetary existence, what is the potential for thinking beyond consumer culture? Does consumer culture merely provide an extension of work, with increasing surveillance through digital devices effectively locking people into more compulsive patterns of behaviour with the loss of genuine free time and sociability? Can consumer culture still deliver the good life and happiness? The chapter explores alternative ways of being together that could reverse the excessive individualism, egoism of consumer cultures