Scott Lash

Modernity and Identity

Modernity and Identity is a groundbreaking collective work whichannounces a radical new departure within contemporary debates onmodernism and postmodernism. While dominant conceptions of both modernism and postmodernism arecentered around motions of statis and fixity, for most of theotherwise quite diverse writers in this book, modernity is a matterof movement, of flux, of change and of unpredictability. Modernity and postmodernity are shown to mean, not the ′end of thesubject′ but the transformation and creation of new forms ofsubjectivity. Anthropological concepts are brought squarely intothe heart of the modernity controversies, which are then recast inthe context of tradition, globalization and of the crisis ofidentity in a newly de–centred world system. The possibility of a third way is opened up, rejecting theopposition between the impersonal rationality of high modernism andthe rationalist anti–ethics of postmodernism. The vision in thisbook is that of another modernity, which counter–poses Baudelaireto Rousseau, and loyalist ethics to abstract blueprints for socialand political reorganization. This book will be essential reading for students of sociology,cultural studies, literary theory, anthropology, urban studies and philosophy.

Reflexivity as Non-Linearity

This article attempts to re-think the notion of reflexivity in terms of non-linearity. It tries to understand the second modernity as a non-linear modernity. This second modernity is understood as much in terms of communications as social norms. It is a modernity that is thoroughly monist. It features non-linear socio-technical systems.

Lebenssoziologie: Georg Simmel in the Information Age

This article presents a case for the revaluation of vitalism in sociological theory. It argues for the relevance of such a Lebenssoziologie in the global information age. The body of the article ad...This article presents a case for the revaluation of vitalism in sociological theory. It argues for the relevance of such a Lebenssoziologie in the global information age. The body of the article addresses what a vitalist sociology might be through a consideration of Georg Simmel. The analysis works from the juxtapositon of vitalist monadology with postivist atomism. It shows how Simmel drew on the Kantian cognition to develop an idea of the social. Here Kant’s Newtonian atomism was transformed into Simmel’s Darwinian atomism. ‘Form’, for Kant, is the a priori of the cognitive categories. For Simmel form is the functions that constitute the social a priori. The other of form is substance. Simmelian ‘substance’, we see, is understood as ‘life’. We view this in the context of Leibniz’s monadology. In this the monad is simple substance as difference. The monad is self-organizing, conceived on the lines of not the extensivity of res extensa, but the intensivity of res cogitans; the monad is possessed with memory as trace; it is comprised of relations of perception; it is reflexive. In each case monadology is systematically contrasted with atomism. We consider the Bergsonian and Nietzschean impetus in Simmel’s shift from Darwinian atomistic evolution to monadological creative evolution. We compare Marx’s labour theory of value with Simmel’s ‘life theory of value’. For Marx it is labour that makes up value-substance: for Simmel life is value-substance. We examine Simmel’s core notion of life as social substance: as a primordial inter-subjectivity of flux. We conclude with a contrast of such ‘flux’ and flow: of such a flux of ‘becoming’ and invention in contrast to the flows of domination of today’s global capitalism.

Capitalism and Metaphysics

Contemporary capitalism is becoming increasingly metaphysical. The article contrasts a ‘physical’ capitalism – of the national and manufacturing age – with a ‘metaphysical capitalism’ of the global information society. It describes physical capitalism in terms of (1) extensity, (2) equivalence, (3) equilibrium and (4) the phenomenal, which stands in contrast to metaphysical capitalism’s (1) intensity, (2) inequivalence (or difference), (3) disequilibrium and (4) the noumenal. Most centrally: if use-value or the gift in pre-capitalist society is grounded in concrete inequivalence, and exchange-value in physical capitalism presumes abstract equivalence, then value in contemporary society presumes abstract inequivalence. The article argues that the predominantly physical causation of the earlier epoch is being superseded by a more metaphysical causation. This is discussed in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. Thus there is a shift in efficient cause from abstract homogenous labour to abstract heterogeneous life. Material cause changes from the commodity’s units of equivalence to consist of informational units of inequivalence. Formal cause takes place through the preservation of form as a disequilibriate system through operations of closure. These operations are at the same time information interchanges with a form’s environment. Final (and first) cause becomes the deep-structural generation of information from a compressed virtual substrate. This may have implications for method in the social and human sciences. The article illustrates this shift with a brief discussion of global finance.

Dialectic of information? A response to Taylor

This paper is a response to Paul Taylors review article of the book Critique of Information. The books main thesis is that critique in the information age must be immanent critique. Taylor reproaches this for neglecting the necessity of a transcendental for critique. The response accepts this criticism. However, it rejects Taylors aporetic notion of critique. Instead, a dialectical notion of critique is proposed. Like all dialectics this informational dialectic is one of materiality and idea. The major difference in the information age, however, is that there is a tendency for the material and the ideal to fuse in information itself. Thus the critique of information, it is argued, is a sort of immanent dialectic. This notion of critique is illustrated with reference to media art and metadata. Throughout there is an engagement with Taylor of the political implications of such critique.

Performativity or Discourse? An Interview with John Searle

Scott Lash interviews John Searle, one of the foremost contemporary philosophers. Over the course of the conversation, Searle discusses his research into performativity, language and intentionality, the question of information and his account of social ontology. The conversation initially deals with the early influence of John Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein as well as Searles relationship to phenomenology and the rest of the philosophical tradition. This offers a conceptual reconstruction of Searle’s work from multiple perspectives. Crucial concepts are highlighted such as performativity, speech acts, intentionality and natural language. The discussion also touches on Searle’s recent debates around the questions of information and consciousness. The conversation ends with an overview of Searle’s social ontology, his theory of institutions and his relationship with post-structuralism.

An Interview with Philip Mirowski

In this interview, Philip Mirowski, a foremost economic historian and philosopher of economic thought, discusses his research into the history of economics along with its complex relationship to the natural sciences and the recent rise of neoliberalism. The conversation starts by focusing on his early work on the birth of neoclassical economics as an imitation of modern physics via energetic metaphors. We also discuss the subsequent impact of the computer metaphor and its influence on post-Second World War economic theory. Some of the most important aspects of the informational turn in economics are discussed, such as the understanding of the market processes as a form of computation and the shift from a concern with the nature of the individual agent to the institutional framework of markets. This inevitably leads us to Mirowski’s recent work, where he takes the informational turn in economics to its ultimate conclusions, arguing for an algorithmic understanding of markets. He calls this a theory of markomata, or a computational evolutionary economics. Finally, the discussion addresses the interdependencies between the general understanding of markets as superior information processors, the rise of neoliberalism and the recent financial crisis.

Remembering Ulrich Beck

This is a commemoration of Ulrich Beck, written originally just after his passing. It understands Beck in terms of Kant’s critiques. Here if, say, Latour incorporates the first critique of instrumentalism and Habermas the second critique of morality, then Ulrich points us to the third critique – hope.

Book review symposium: Response to reviewers of The End of Organized Capitalism

ways the disorganization image applies more than ever. In Germany, for example, attempts to brake certain disorganization processes by building more flexibility into social protection arrangements have contributed to disorganization by undermining the egalitarian character of welfare and industrial relations institutions. Disorganization provides a clear contrast to the images of mainstream comparative political economy, such as institutional embedding, path dependency and complementarity, that no longer fit important cases like Germany. The main problem with this book is its almost baffling complexity. The disorganization image leads to many lines of argument in the book and could have led to more. Causes of disorganization, for example, include the ‘powers’ of the ‘new service class’ (including Taylor-inspired industrial engineers and militant public-sector workers), industrial changes (the internationalization of firms, flexible specialization and the tertiarization of employment), financial changes (the internationalization of banks, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods arrangements and the expansion of international money markets) and political changes (the decline of class voting, the rise of small parties, constraints on government spending and so-called new social movements). Each point contains several sub-points, adding up to some leads for further reading but no coherent explanation of change. The disorganization image, however, remains powerfully suggestive. The book’s arguments, 25 years after its publication, inform the political economy literature on institutional change and actor responses to it, as well as neoliberalism and marketmaking changes to industrial relations institutions and welfare states. Theory has moved beyond the negative image of disorganization, to examine the establishment of a new regime through marketization and the institutionalization of market rules, with clear winners and losers. But Lash and Urry’s arguments continue to shape our thinking about the disruptiveness, discontinuity and unpredictability of capitalism.

China White Value, uncertainty and order in the Chinese culture industry

This article reflects on some themes in Harrison White’s work in the context of China, where the social and cultural construction of markets is quite literal. We explore how we get markets where previously there were no markets and draw on White’s central themes of ‘uncertainty’, ‘value’ and ‘order’. We maintain a distinction, with White and with Frank Knight, of risk, on the one hand, and uncertainty, on the other, where ‘risk’ has to do with entities that are in principle insurable or calculable and ‘uncertainty’ has to do with what is not calculable/insurable. An entrepreneur’s decision to enter a market, to invest in and enter a production market, entails what White calls a ‘commitment to facilities’. This, for White and Knight, is inherently incalculable, and hence uncertain.