Communication and Economic Life. Liz Moor

4 In Media, Culture and Society, for example, of the articles published between 2009 and 2019 more than 500 mentioned ‘finance’; only 11 mentioned ‘housework’.

      5  5 Contrary to much work in consumer culture studies, Miller argues that the consumption of capitalist commodities is ‘hardly ever about individuals and subjectivities’ and is more usually motivated by ‘the construction of key relationships’ (Miller 1998: 194).

Part I Economic action is communicative

      This first part of the book, comprising two chapters, explores the communicative constitution of economic life by focusing on the ways economic actions and practices can themselves be seen as communicative. Chapter 1 considers how this idea has been advanced – mostly implicitly – in economic theory, while chapter 2 uses sociological and anthropological perspectives to draw attention to the symbolic communication associated with money, payment and price.

The two chapters provide contrasting accounts of communication in economic life, highlighting how different this term can look, depending on one’s disciplinary perspective. Chapter 1 considers the way that market behaviours (typically, buying or not buying goods at particular price points) are construed as communicating information about consumers’ preferences. It also looks at the way communication itself has been understood as quantities of information that can be acquired or transferred. Chapter 2 shows that the symbolism of monetary media (such as coins and tokens, but also prices) has historically allowed them to communicate various affiliations and solidarities, and how these are being remade in the light of changes to the infrastructure of payments. But these two chapters also differ quite markedly from what one might term ‘mainstream’ accounts of economic communication offered by media and communication studies. Instead of focusing on media coverage of established economic topics, they offer a way of thinking about economic communication as something much more ubiquitous, embedded both in the organization of economic infrastructures and activities, and in the day-to-day practices of ordinary citizens.