What do you think?

Capitalistic Realism – Lecture #1

This is the first post. A warm up of sorts, with a couple of random thoughts concerning last weeks lecture.

Prof. Dr. Neckel tried to give an introduction into the whole topic of capitalistic realism and came across the work of Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello who apparently talked about 6 justifications/legitimisations of Capitalism that lie in the past and the one that is currently effective: Network Capitalism.

Network Capitalism is all about networking, social capital and communication. People of value are those, who know the right people and have connections to everyone everywhere.
It seems there is no space for intolerance and exclusion if being connected determines your value in society.

The logic conclusion would be that networks like facebook, twitter and likedIn would be inclusive, tolerant places where everyone tries to befriend everyone else in the name of interconnectivity. And while I don’t doubt that for a majority of people this is the exact experience of those new media networks, I do doubt that there is no xenophobia, no misogyny and no homophobia, etc. Also, networking describes a very Western concept that not everyone has access to in the first place.

Therefore, I preclude that even though Network Captialism is all about inclusion it is about the inclusion of the right people only. No one needs to be connected to a black woman in the heart of Africa because she will not be enough of an asset compared to the white American alpha male.  Networking gives minorities platforms to be heard but it doesn’t save them from exclusion and their minority status as such.

A possible answer might be found in cognitive science and in understanding how our brains work. If we don’t start understanding how we can very well identify what rationally is the best for us (networking with everyone, voting for a certain party, etc.) but still act in the opposite way (voting for the other party, excluding a certain group of people in networks, etc.), we probably won’t fully overcome the challenges that Capitalistic Realism poses.

So, how was that for a first post. Let me know what you think the difficulties of modern day networking are and how we can overcome them!