CULTURAL ECONOMY VS. SOLIDARITY ECONOMY: SIMILARITIES AND ANTAGONISMS

GÉRÔME GUIBERT Draft Paper given at the 10th crossroads in cultural studies conference; Tampere, finland, 1 July 2014

CULTURAL ECONOMY VS. SOLIDARITY ECONOMY: SIMILARITIES AND ANTAGONISMS

The economic models that have dominated the twentieth century, whether the discourse of neoliberal market economy or the discourse of centralized Socialist States inspired by scientific Marxism, have shown their limits.

In a situation in which terms such as “moroseness” and “crisis” are often used, new thoughts appear that attempt to propose an alternative, seeking to bypass dominant models and to deconstruct their ideological dimensions.

Of course, we can interpret the history of cultural studies since the CCCS[Birmingham Center] through this perspective. However, we could also add solidarity economy, a research tradition that you might not know as well, in this field.

As a preamble, I would like to clarify that in this presentation, by “cultural economy”, [following several scholars] I mean a CS perspective on economic life, and not simply a “cultural industries” analysis1.

Both SE and CS tackle the questions of reflexivity and of the position of the researcher and [use] defend methodologically a conjuncturalist approach. Thus, I would like to insist upon the fact that I am speaking from a French perspective (indeed, you couldn’t simply guess it from my accent). And France is one of the decisive locations where SE emerged on the one 1

« An interesting cultural studies perspective on economic life known as « cultural economy » (Amin and Thrift, 2004 ; du Gay and Pryke, 2002) is sometimes understood as an analysis of the cultural industries but, in fact, most of the researchers who employ this term have broader ambitions than this. Their aim is to apply poststructuralist cultural studies insights to production and to economic life in general. Cultural economy in this sense, sees the realm of economic practice – in all its various forms, such as markets and economic and organizational relations – as formatted and framed by economic discourses (du Gay and Pryke, 2002:2) and make this the starting point for analysis rather than placing it as a supplement to existing economic or political – economic analysis (…) The cultural economy approach encourages us to question the easy dichotomies that some political economists and sociologists of culture draw between the realm of culture and the increasing encroachment of economics of that realm”, David Hesmondhalgh, Cultural Industries, Sage, 2002, p. 42-43

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hand, and on the other hand, CS have only recently started penetrating our academic field, thanks to a few pioneer researchers.

As a French student, I followed in the 1990s a curriculum in economy which was structured by classical paradigms of economic liberalism. I then continued with sociology, a field whose foundations were rather critical, especially considering the influence of the works of the “Bourdieusian school”. As you all know, these sociological works are often opposed to economic liberalism and underline the importance of social structures in agents’ choices and decisions, even though a “veil of ignorance” prevents them from objectivizing them.

In the early two-thousands, during my PhD, I was not satisfied with the tools I had at my disposal to analyze my fieldwork material, which dealt with associations engaged in various popular music movements (mainly punk and metal): venues and festival organizations, phonographic productions and no profit indie records labels, bands etc., in Western France. That’s why I turned to theoretical frames developed by a trend in economic sociology called “solidarity economy”, and based upon Karl Polanyi’s concept of a “plural economy”, which he theorized in the mid-twentieth century.

We can say that the solidarity economy school, which is particularly important in France, Brazil and Quebec (and rather ignored in the English-speaking world) articulates its theoretical model around two main dimensions. Firstly, around the question of the economy’s embeddedness, dialectically going beyond market economy, the economy of redistribution and the non-monetary economy for a plural and reciprocal economy. Secondly, and in an interdependent way, solidarity economy is linked to politics, around the dimension of a participatory democracy rather than a deliberative one, rooted in the territory and bearing a social utility. Based on ideals of community, of common goods, it considers that individuals collectively defend a re-enchanted worldview within a given territory, sometimes opposing the dominating public sphere.

I found various elements I could combine with the SE’s hypotheses, within the first CS school, for example with Stuart Hall’s use of “articulation” (or Hoggart’s “oblique attention”), 2 G. Guibert, Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle University

as well as in Michel de Certeau’s works (especially the concept of “poaching”). More precisely, beyond “resistance through rituals”, SE enabled me to analyze two elements that were quite rare in CS, the collective dynamic and the question of production. But recently, a better knowledge of works in CS on the one hand, and reading the numerous contributions in cultural economy which enable us to invest several fields that had not been tackled by the first CS on the other hand, brought me to consider the question of the balance, the compatibility between both schools or trends, which considerably tend to ignore each other although they deal with similar issues. While SE is more interested in collective action, emancipation and meaning, CS undertake gender questions as well as the growing role of culture within social innovation.

So to present the possible relationships between both schools of thought, the main part of this presentation is structured in two sequences: I will first try to see what brings them closer, and then what makes them a priori incompatible… although, it seems to me, this will change in a near future, for reasons I will present in conclusion.

I. CONVERGENCES 1.1. Cultural studies precepts In a recent analysis of the state of CS, Lawrence Grossberg considered it was a response to three types of changes:  1. The explosion and the brutal dissemination of new forms of cultures, especially in the media and popular cultures;  2. The deep restructuring of the politico-economic field, the birth of oppositions both to Marxism and capitalism, and the emergence of new forces and new locations for political struggles;  3. The fast growth of academicism and the feeling there is a “crisis” within social sciences and the humanities. So researchers associated to CS reflect upon means to associate political commitment and the recognition of new cultural spheres. They defend a horizontality between agents and researchers, and bear a demand for interdisciplinarity, opposing the recent trend that draws impermeable lines between academic fields.

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1.2. Similar precepts within solidarity economy These three elements are also important in the growth of SE, from the nineteen-seventies on. There was then a multiplication of bottom up, grassroots initiatives, especially with growing forms of volunteer commitment, linked to local issues, which were all theorized by SE. At the same time, old structures, at national or international scales (religious institutions, tradeunions, political parties) were in decline. SE structured itself upon a rejection of dominant economic forms. Also, just as CS, SE as a field tried to free itself from institutionalized disciplines, which had constituted themselves in the second half of the nineteenth century, to create new spaces for dialogues, both interdisciplinary and linked to popular concerns. This led it for example to integrate elements taken from ethnomethodology, the co-construction of reflections between actors and researchers, or action research, systematically in a non linear perspective.

1.3. Other common elements CS and SE share a preoccupation with the contextualization of their research. Both are wary of great evolutionist theories have universalist ambitions. Both believe that other explanatory models are possible, although they consider that their specificity enable them to reveal symptoms or peculiarities of societal changes.

2. DIVERGENCES Yet, many parameters make their exchanges or their collaboration difficult.

2.1. CS criticisms of SE Of course, from a CS point of view, SE is questioned as an objectivist and partial disciplinary knowledge, marked by epistemologies of modernity, similar in this way to institutionalized social or economic sciences. CS thus denounce the absence of any deconstruction of the concept of economy (see Alexander or Butler), which remains reified and essentialized by Polanyi, even if he opposes a “substantive” economy to the “formal” economy. Anyway, for tenants of CS, this distance towards a theoretical background is considered necessary when it comes to developing a criticism of what economy is.

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Timothy Mitchell “the idea of the economy belongs to the postimperial area of nationstates, in which human sociality is understood as a series of equivalent social units”2, Alexander quote “the next step is to demonstrate that the market itself depends on cultural meanings

In a similar perspective, CS criticizes the fact that SE is marked by a Western, male and heteronormative modernity. For example, the way SE broaches the question of minorities is considered as too feeble from a CS perspective. They thus criticize the way they tackle gender questions, via a materialist feminist economy that remains marked by disciplinary frontiers, as well as how they analyze the economy of globalization, especially of peripheries and “developing” countries, considered as too strongly influenced by scientific Marxism or the political economy of communication.

For all that, such criticisms coming from the CS world are still rather scarce. We can consider Nancy Fraser’s work, and her criticisms of Polanyi’s analyses, during a 2012 symposium in Paris, which Jean-Louis Laville, a disciple of SE, had organized. Reclaiming the diagnosis presented in The Great Transformation, Fraser insisted upon the fact that for Polanyi, the disintegration of social welfare bears injustice for the weakest, and that the rise of marketoriented principles and of economic liberalism, which tend to a disembedded the economy, should be fought.

Yet while following this trend, she reminds that the mechanisms of protection that are generated by politically embedded economic systems (whether via non monetary economy or State redistribution) are not systematically emancipatory. She thus opposes a SE that privileges embedding in relation to the market logic, and insists upon the occasionally emancipatory nature of the market for gender or racial minorities. She incidentally agrees with the Foucault of lesson on biopolitics at the Collège de France, for whom “the neoliberal society does not aim at normalizing individuals, at controlling them. It is a society of plurality. It is marked by something like a ‘tolerance’ to ‘transgressive’ individuals and minority practices.” (Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, La dernière leçon de Michel Foucault, 2013)

2

Timothy Mitchel, « Economy », Keywords for American Cultural Studies, p. 92-95

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2.2. SE criticisms of CS The main criticism that SE could make of CS would be against its individualist logic, its defense of a somewhat selfish ideal of self-fulfillment that, by emphasizing the emancipation of individuals or minorities, more generally abandons the question of reciprocity and solidarity within society. The fact that CS were founded upon the question of reception (consumption, hijacking, resistance and reappropriation…) could feed such criticisms. Indeed, SE defends action (production, speaking) via collective projects and a democratic existence within public space, even when that means opposing the laws to underline limits.

Another criticism is that CS analyzes economic phenomena uniquely as sets of representations. In other words, in a “culturalist” way, as we pejoratively say in France. By the way, we should mention the fact that the concept of “culture” often remains a taboo in French social sciences, whether in sociology or economy (and of course in cultural studies!). Cultural sociology is not a category employed in sociology courses or research, and the same goes for cultural economy in the field of economy, as these concepts recall the subversion of CS.

But such a criticism is hard to defend in the long run, especially since the return of materialism encouraged by Callon and Latour’s sociology of translation, for whom a situation depends both upon the apparatuses analyzed, the persons and the objects (“humans” and “non humans”).

2.3 Diagnoses that tend to come closer?

We could also add the importance of bodies in Judith Butler’s use of the concept of performativity. In a recent paper published in the Journal for Cultural Economy (2010), it is indeed interesting to note that Judith Butler opposes Callon with regards to the critical dimension. While the latter considers it should be abandoned, Butler wants to keep it. She 6 G. Guibert, Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle University

explains that if the performativity of the neoliberal economy exists, it is contested by another performativity which resists dogma, struggling against narratives (“for our company to survive, we must fire people”, for example), through protest movements such as strikes or demonstrations.

From this perspective, CS and SE converge. Collective action (in Hirschman’s sense) and social movements are political. They are borne by agents’ belief in their legitimacy. This analysis leads to Edward P. Thompson’s concept of “moral economy”. Its defense of working class and committed struggles against economic liberalism is referred to both by Jean-Louis Laville (who considers moral economy as a source for SE) and by many CS scholars, such as Butler or Hesmondhalgh. It is the quest for meaning that is important here. One of SE’s precepts is that “the economy should be considered as a means, not an end”. From the moment the agent considers that the economic system is unjust, and that the “economicist sophism” (Polanyi) is at work, there is a problem. Performativity of homo oeconomicus also exists if we don’t fight against him (neo liberal economics is perlocutionary, not illocutionary performative)

During the last Crossroads symposium, John Clarke considered, in a CS perspective, that “For various reasons, EP Thompson’s concept of ‘the moral economy’ has re-entered my field of view recently. Like the concept of the ‘real economy’, the moral economy also offers a standpoint from which critical analysis of the current economic, political and social disintegrations might be constructed. Thompson’s articulation of a moment at which collective understandings as economies (as fields of social and moral relationships and obligations) dramatizes the contemporary desocialization of economies, even if it may be harder to imagine twentieth and twenty first century capitalisms as moral economies that the current crisis has disrupted. Nevertheless, I am interested in treating ‘moral economies’ has another form of imagined economy, in part to make visible the shifting and contested character of what counts as ‘economic’.”

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