Does pointing to new social phenomena mean that one is automatically an irresponsible theorist? I am still amazed by the a priori hostility towards Hardt and Negri because they try to describe historical changes.
On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Asad Haider <noswine at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > This is touched on in some ways in Empire, which speaks interestingly of
> > "Toyotism" rather than post-Fordism. If you are banging on a widget that
> > will be bought by several different companies who have already advertised
> > them according to various cultural logics and will brand them
> accordingly,
> > you are participating in a new system, one which includes old industrial
> > forms just as much as newer communicative ones.
> >
> >
> Toyotism, as you describe it, has been going on in agriculture since the
> 19th C. Farmers bang on and out agroecological widgets that are bought by
> several different companies who have already advertised those things in
> different ways to different varieties of consumers according to their
> different cultural commitments - think coffee, maize, rice, wheat, flax,
> bananas, potatoes, etc... much less all the things made out of them.
> For that matter, competitive international sourcing and flexible
> specialization is as much a return to pre-monopoly capitalist practices
> (with intensified time-space compression) as it is a reflection of anything
> like a new mode of cultural production.
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