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å Monday, October 19th, 2015

Y Hybrid Assignment 06–more thoughts
October 19, 2015

Hi everyone,

One of your classmates was struggling with the reading and our hybrid assignment for this week. I’m posting my response to her question in case there are others searching for a little more guidance.

We can begin to understand Terranova’s argument by breaking down the concepts she uses. With this question I want students to begin to think about the relationship of capitalism to culture and sub-cultural movements in particular (see Terranova, pages 52-53).

A good place to begin is by making sure you understand what a subcultural movement is. Some would argue that the 1970s punk rock movement was a subcultural movement, but there are many other examples. Try to come up with a good working definition of this concept. What is the function of a subcultural movement? Next, return to Terranova’s text to try to see the point she is making. Why might we be tempted to think such movements are outside the reach of capitalism? Terranova makes a compelling argument for why this is not the case. With this assignment I want you to try to understand and explain what you think her argument about subculture is. This will help us begin to understand her argument about free labor and the digital economy.

See you Thursday!

Elizabeth

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% Simone Glover completed
October 19, 2015

 

I believe that Terranova characterizes the relationship of subcultural movements to capitalism as one big global conglomerate which as she described “local cultures are picked up and distributed globally, thus contributing to cultural hybridization or cultural imperialism” In other words, subcultural movements, though may have their own interests that operate in the existing social order, it is for the most part an incorporated operation that through labor, is all about financial gain through capitalist business systems. As a result, while social movements are conceived as coming together to form action, there is still conflict when capitalist are allowed to come from the outside to break through the system’s compatibility boundaries.

 

In my opinion, it is unfortunate that subcultural movements would “sell-out” and lose all focus to the purpose of the movement to begin with, in order to sell products or services.  Big businesses are having their pockets stuffed and persuaded to showcase the subcultural member’s products and goods, while changing the cultural labor.  Free labor is being produced in subcultural movements as the case in a digital society.

 

In the article by Terranova, Free “Free labor: Producing culture for the digital economy.”Social text 18.2 (2000): 33-58.she explains that: “These events point to a necessary backlash against the glamorization of digital labor, which highlights its continuities with the modern sweatshop and points to the increasing degradation of knowledge work. Yet the question of labor in a “digital economy” is not so easily dismissed as an innovative development of the familiar logic of capitalist exploitation. The NetSlaves are not simply a typical form of labor on the Internet; they also embody a complex relation to labor that is widespread in late capitalist societies”.

 

Therefore, what Terranova means is; its not fitting for subcultural movements to incorporate with capitalist ventures due to the fact that such movements are being taken advantage of by way of “selling their souls to the devil” while trying to move their system up, yet paying the cost through capitalist return.