Communication and Economic Life. Liz Moor

view of economic communication outlined above – that is, if we are willing to include novels, films, social media accounts or online forum discussions as instances of economic communication – then we will likely find that economic life is marked by a much wider range of ideas, values and beliefs than if we focused solely on the way that ‘the economy’, understood in conventional terms as the macro economy and particular industrial sectors, is represented on television and in the press. We may live in societies dominated by capitalist logics and forms of accumulation, or that depend on consumer spending for growth, but to believe in value plurality is to believe that our material circumstances do not necessarily exhaust our ways of thinking about the world. In much of what follows, therefore, I keep ‘value plurality’ as an open question: to what extent do particular modes of economic communication (e.g., promoting, informing, narrating), media (e.g., books, films) or genres (e.g., news, advice, self-help) imply or invoke particular sets of values, or particular ways of framing and constructing economic life?

In foregrounding this question, I am drawing on a tradition of thought, spread across various social science disciplines, that sees economic life as governed by multiple logics, rather than a single capitalist logic. Within this tradition, we might start by considering Nick Couldry’s (2006) work on the ‘myth of the mediated centre’, mentioned above. In challenging the idea that media are our privileged points of access to social reality or shared social values, Couldry notes that while there may be a bureaucratic or organizational centre to social life, there may not necessarily be any ‘centre’ of social values at all. Rhetorical claims about ‘the nation’, or ‘society’, are often rhetorical only, and the coherence or otherwise of social values is something to investigate empirically, rather than to assume. Indeed, if we look closely, he suggests, we might see ‘disorder or a lesser degree of order: disputes over value, contests over legitimacy, [and] alternative explanations of social change’ (2006: 16). In making this argument, Couldry is drawing in part on earlier challenges to the idea of a ‘dominant ideology’ (e.g., Abercrombie et al. 1981). In this critique, the claim that an ideological ‘glue’ or superstructure is necessary to hold capitalist societies together in the face of their internal contradictions is wrong, simply because it overlooks the sheer range of other things that might make societies cohere. People may not accept the versions of social reality offered by a dominant class, or found in mainstream media output, but are often too busy with work and making ends meet to ‘resist’ in any way that critics would recognize. In any case, ideological control, or even consent, may not be necessary for the status quo to survive; it may indeed be the diversity of views and plurality of belief systems that keeps the organizational centre relatively stable.

      The idea that economic life may be governed by multiple logics can also be traced in Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) notion of competing orders of worth. In their work they find ‘critical tensions … at the heart of what constitutes the economy’ (2006: 9), based on conflicting ‘orders of generality’ – that is, different systems for evaluating what matters, and different principles of order. Thus, forms of economic action based on personal ties and attachments are not simply archaic in the context of modern organizations, but rather indicate a distinct way of evaluating and bringing order to a situation, tied to a substantive philosophy (in this case one of loyalty). Thus, one cannot say that a particular way of organizing economic action is ‘inappropriate’, because the six ‘orders of worth’ that Boltanski and Thévenot initially outlined all represent possible moral principles for guiding action. A given actor in a given situation may draw upon these in justifying his or her behaviour to others, or in reaching some kind of compromise about how to proceed.

To claim that economic life involves multiple competing value systems is also to invoke a tradition, linked to Polanyi, which suggests that even under highly developed market systems, attempts to fully disembed economic actions from their social contexts are likely to fail, and indeed to lead to various kinds of ‘counter-actions’ (Polanyi 2001 [1944]). Thus, a variety of substantive values, including those antithetical to capitalism or markets, may co-exist alongside a dominant market or capitalist logic that many claim has wiped them out (see also Parry and Bloch 1989; Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006). From this perspective, looking at communication in contemporary economic life cannot simply mean analysing those symbolic forms that most clearly embody or propagate the market logics that dominate, but also those that criticize them or present alternatives.

      This value plurality can be seen in what follows in various ways. On the one hand, the book uses mainly British and American examples. As such, it is describing market societies where most goods and services are exchanged via the market, but also capitalist societies where production is for profit, and wealth and productive assets are privately held. This affects the content and argument of the book in important ways. For example, chapters 3 and 4 detail many instances where capitalist profit motives decisively shape the communication environment and where debate is not about whether but about how much capitalism distorts communication or interferes with the availability of information. On the other hand, market societies do not only consist of market-based forms of exchange, and capitalist economies typically include – and even depend upon – non-capitalist institutions and alternative forms of transaction and provisioning (Gibson-Graham 1996, 2006; Slater and Tonkiss 2001). Thus, there are other economic logics and practices at work even in the heart of advanced capitalist systems. Some of these alternative logics and practices can be seen in the examples of online exchange and communication, and new forms of digital currency, discussed in chapter 4, while the fictional narratives discussed in chapter 5 give some sense of the alternative philosophies of economic life that circulate even within societies apparently dominated by the profit motive.

Taken together, the book suggests that the symbolic resources made available to us by media and communicative practices of various kinds do not only affirm some ascendant ‘economistic’ logic, capitalist or neoliberal; very often, they also provide the tools to resist or to challenge such frameworks. Just as the term ‘economy’ itself emerges differently in different sites and communicative practices, so the rules and norms governing acceptable and appropriate behaviour around money vary according to social context. While many societies, including the UK and US, have for some time been governed according to a logic that prioritizes markets and ideals of competitiveness, individual responsibility, entrepreneurialism and so forth, these societies also very often contain within them alternative traditions of thought, based on different values and moral systems. And these alternative ways of thinking about the economy tend to make themselves felt above all in the communicative and symbolic repertoires of those cultures. If we are to be optimistic about the possibility of economic change, it will be necessary to attend to these alternative ways of thinking.

Structure of the book

      The book is divided into two parts. Part I considers the role of communication in economic life by exploring how economic actions, behaviours and practices can themselves be seen as communicative. In chapter 1, I explore how this idea has been developed in economic theory. Although economics seems to have little to say about communication, it actually has two quite distinctive perspectives. The first is the belief – seen in Adam Smith and much subsequent work – that economic actions are (non-verbal) forms of communication that can be observed as part of the market process. The second is the idea that ‘communication’ consists primarily in the acquisition or transfer of information. This idea has its roots in Hayek’s work on price, and is then further developed in information economics and parts of game theory. The chapter traces the evolution of these views, before considering whether the discipline’s approach to communication might be shifting in line with the rise of a more empirical trend in microeconomics.

      Chapter 2 explores the same