The (Im)materiality of Communication: Organizing and the Dialectics of Communicative Capitalism

• In Event: Theorizing the Research on Organizational Paradoxes, Contradictions, and Dialectics

Abstract

This presentation will explore the dialectical features of “communicative capitalism” and its implications for the study of organizing processes. The emergence of the “social factory” and the movement of the creation of value beyond the “point of production” require a radical rethinking of how organization scholars have traditionally viewed the dialectics of power and resistance in the process of organizing. The notions of “communicative capitalism” and “communicative labor” (Carlone, 2008; Dean, 2009; Dempsey, 2009) provide a conceptual point of entry for efforts to address the shifting nature of the relationship between organizing and capital accumulation processes. In particular, the shift to immaterial forms of labor within post-Fordism and the emergence of branding as a central capitalist institution (Arvidsson, 2006) means that the relations between capital and work/organizing are more fundamentally communicative than ever. This presentation will examine dialectical tensions in this relationship and suggest possibilities for rethinking extant conceptions of power and resistance.

References:
Arvidsson, A. (2006). Brands: Meaning and value in media culture. London: Routledge.

Carlone, D. (2008). The contradictions of communicative labor in service work. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 5(2), 158-179. doi: 10.1080/14791420801989710

Dean, J. (2009). Democracy and other neoliberal fantasies: Communicative capitalism and left politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Dempsey, S. E. (2009). NGOs, communicative labor, and the work of grassroots representation. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 6(4), 328-345. doi: 10.1080/14791420903348625

Author

• Dennis K. Mumby, U of North Carolina - Chapel Hill