Critical semiotic analysis and cultural political economy

Abstract

Abstract A case is made for cultural political economy (CPE) by exploring the constitutive role of semiosis in economic and political activities, economic and political institutions, and social order more generally. CPE is a post-disciplinary approach that adopts the "cultural turn" in economic and political inquiry without neglecting the articulation of semiosis with the interconnected materialities of economics and politics within wider social formations. This approach is illustrated from the emergence of the knowledge-based economy as a master discourse for accumulation strategies on different scales, for state projects and hegemonic visions, for diverse functional systems and professions, and for civil society. Keywords: semiosiscritical discourse analysishegemonypost-Fordismknowledge-based economycultural political economypost-disciplinarityevolution Notes This article derives in part from collaborative work: see Fairclough, Jessop, and Sayer (); Jessop and Sum (, ). It also benefitted from comments by Ryan Conlon, Steven Fuller, Phil Graham, and Jane Mulderrig. The usual disclaimers apply. While semiosis initially refers to the inter-subjective production of meaning, it is also an important element/moment of "the social" more generally. Semiosis involves more than (verbal) language, including, for example, different forms of visual language. Polanyi () distinguishes (a) substantive economic activities involved in material provisioning from (b) formal (profit-oriented, market-mediated) economic activities. The leading economic imaginaries in capitalist societies tend to ignore the full range of substantive economic activities in favour of certain formal economic activities. I am not suggesting here that mass media can be completely disentangled from the broader networks of social relations in which they operate, but I am seeking to highlight the diminished role of an autonomous public sphere in shaping semiosis. Indeed, there is no economic imaginary without materiality (Bayart, ). Although all practices are semiotic and material, the relative causal efficacy of these elements will vary. On the pre-linguistic and material bases of logic, see Archer (). Horizontal refers here to sites on a similar scale (for example, personal, organizational, institutional, functional systems) and vertical refers to different scales (for example, micro-macro, local-regional-national-supranational-global). The use of both terms must be relative and relational. Semiotic orders are equivalent to "orders of discourse" in Fairclough (). This paragraph draws directly and extensively on Fairclough (). A web of interlocution comprises meta-narratives that reveal linkages between a wide range of interactions, organizations, and institutions and/or help to make sense of whole epochs (Somers, ). On discursive selectivity, see Hay () and Somers (); on structural selectivity, see Jessop (). My strategic-relational approach is consistent with this claim but also emphasizes that constraints are relative to specific actors, identities, interests, strategies, spatial and temporal horizons, and so on (Jessop, ). Neo-statist Singapore "won" second place in 2003, after the US, before Finland. On this, see Fairclough and Graham ().