Thrift, N. J.. (2008) Pass it on: towards a political economy of propensity. Emotion, Space and Society, Vol.1 (No.2). pp. 83-96. ISSN 1755-4586

Preview

PDF WRAP_Thrift_0170426-150709-pass_it_on_towards_a_political_economy_of_propensity_nigel_thrify_asof15_7_09.pdf - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader Download (229Kb)

Abstract

The paper argues that the work of Gabriel Tarde on imitation provides a fertile means of understanding how capitalism is forging a new affective technology which conforms to a logic of propensity rather than to means-end reasoning. This it does by drawing together a biological understanding of semiconscious cognition with various practical geometric arts so as to re-stage the world as a series of susceptible situations which can be ridden rather than rigidly controlled. The paper examines the advent of technologies which attend to the variable geometry of so-called animal spirits in the realm of business and then, using Tarde's work as a springboard, considers some alternative means of understanding imitative rays which have less instrumental undertones. The paper is an illustration of the way in which biology and culture have increasingly become intertwined.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General) H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory
Divisions:	Administration > Vice Chancellor's Office
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Tarde, Gabriel de, 1843-1904, Imitation, Consumption (Economics), Capitalism, Keynesian economics, Geometry, Science and civilization
Journal or Publication Title:	Emotion, Space and Society
Publisher:	Elsevier BV
ISSN:	1755-4586
Date:	December 2008
Volume:	Vol.1
Number:	No.2
Page Range:	pp. 83-96
Identification Number:	10.1016/j.emospa.2009.02.004
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
References:	Agamben, 2007 G. Agamben, Il Potere e la Gloria, Neri Pozza, Vicenza (2007). Akerlof and Shiller, 2009 G.A. Akerlof and R.J. Shiller, Animal Spirits. How Human Psychology Drives the Economy and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, Princeton University Press, Princeton (2009). Ayres, 2008 I. Ayres, Number Crunchers. How Anything can be Predicted, John Murray, London (2008). Bayart, 2007 J.F. Bayart, Political Subjects. A Critique of Globalization, Polity Press, Cambridge (2007). Bearman, 2008 In: P. Bearman, Editor, Special Issue on Exploring Genetics and Social Structure, American Journal of Sociology vol. 114 (2008) Supplement. Brecht, 1976 B. Brecht, ‘New Age’ in Poems: 1913–1956, Methuen, New York (1976). Britt, 2009 R. Britt, At Rest, Your Brain Runs in Screensaver Mode, LiveScience.com (2009). Bronk, 2009 R. Bronk, The Romantic Economist. Imagination in Economics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2009). Brook, 2008 T. Brook, Vermeer's Hat. The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Modern World, Profile Books, London (2008). Callon, 2007 M. Callon, What does it mean to say that economics is performative?. In: D. Mackenzie, F. Muniesa and L. Siu, Editors, Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton University Press, Princeton (2007), pp. 311–357. Coates and Herbert, 2008 J.M. Coates and J. Herbert, Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (2008), pp. 6167–6172. Crawford, 2005 I. Crawford, Home Is Where the Heart Is, Quadrille, London (2005). Dale, 2004 R.S. Dale, The First Crash. Lessons from the South Sea Bubble, Princeton University Press, Princeton (2004). Davenport and Harris, 2008 T. Davenport and J.C. Harris, Competing on Analytics. The New Science of Winning, Harvard Business School Press, Boston (2008). Davies, 2002 B. Davies, Aquinas, Continuum, London (2002). Davis, 2008 M. Davis, Context, content, and community. Inventing the future of mobile media. In: M. Ladly and P. Beesley, Editors, Mobile Nation, Riverside Architectural Press, Toronto (2008), pp. 125–131. Deleuze, 1994 G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, Athlone Press, London (1994). Deleuze, 2005 G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Continuum, London (2005). Economist, 2008 Economist, The way the brain buys, The Economist (2008), pp. 109–111. Esposito 2008 Esposito, R., 2008. Bios: Biopolitics and Philosophy, trans. T. Campbell. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Evernden, 1993 N. Evernden, The Natural Alien, Humankind and Environment (second ed.), University of Toronto Press, Toronto (1993). Freese, 2008 J. Freese, Genetics and the social science explanation of individual outcomes, American Journal of Sociology 114 (2008), pp. S1–S35. Frisby and Featherstone 1997 Frisby, D., Featherstone, M. (Eds.), (1997) Simmel on Culture. Sage, London; Thousand Oaks, CA. Fuss, 2004 D. Fuss, The Sense of an Interior. Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them, Routledge, New York (2004). Gallagher and Zahavi, 2008 S. Gallagher and D. Zahavi, The Phenomenological Mind. An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, Routledge, London (2008). Gamble, 2007 C. Gamble, Origins and Revolutions. Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2007). Grosz, 2008 E. Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art. Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth, Columbia University Press, New York (2008). Guala, 2007 F. Guala, How to do things with experimental economics. In: D. Mackenzie, F. Muniesa and L. Siu, Editors, Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton University Press, Princeton (2007), pp. 128–162. Hobson, 2002 J.A. Hobson, Dreaming. An Introduction to the Science of Sleep, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002). Hobson 2007 Hobson, J.A., 2007. Wake up or Dream On? Six Questions for Turnbull and Solms. Cortex 43(8), 1116–1121. Hodgson, 2006 G. Hodgson, Economics in the Shadows of Darwin and Marx. Essays on Institutional and Evolutionary Themes, Edward Elgar, London (2006). Horne, 2006 J. Horne, Sleepfaring. A Journey through the Science of Sleep, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2006). Hughes, 1961 E. Hughes, Tarde's Psychologie Economique: an unknown classic by a forgotten sociologist, American Journal of Sociology 66 (1961), pp. 553–559. Iacoboni, 2008 M. Iacoboni, Mirroring People, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York (2008). Jablonka and Lamb, 2005 E. Jablonka and M.J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions. Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioural and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2005). Jahoda, 2002 G. Jahoda, The ghosts in the meme machine, History of the Human Sciences 15 (2002), pp. 55–68. Jullien, 2009 F. Jullien, Efficacy, Sage, London (2009). Kaern, 1994 M. Kaern, Georg Simmel's the bridge and the door, Qualitative Sociology 17 (1994), pp. 397–413. Kellaway, 2009 L. Kellaway, At last I have fallen into the recession's web of fear, Financial Times (2009), p. 12. Kemple, 2007 T. Kemple, Bridges and the doors to Simmel's social theory of the limit, Theory, Culture and Society 24 (2007), pp. 1–19. Korf, 2008 B. Korf, A neural turn? On the ontology of the geographical subject, Environment and Planning A 40 (2008), pp. 715–732. Ladly and Beesley, 2008 In: M. Ladly and P. Beesley, Editors, Mobile Nation, Riverside Architectural Press, Toronto (2008). Lakoff, 2008 G. Lakoff, The Political Mind. Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics with an 18th-Century Brain, Viking, New York (2008). Lash 2009 Lash, S., 2009. Afterword: In Praise of the A Posteriori. European Journal of Social Theory 12(1), 175–187. Lee, 2008 N. Lee, Awake, asleep, adult, child: an a-humanist account of persons, Body and Society 14 (2008), pp. 57–74. Linden, 2007 D.J. Linden, The Accidental Mind. How Brain Evolution has given us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2007). Lindstrom, 2008 M. Lindstrom, Buy-ology. How Everything We Believe About Why We Buy is Wrong, Random House, London (2008). Loewenstein, 2007 G. Loewenstein, Exotic Preferences. Behavioral Economics and Human Motivation, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2007). Luhmann, 1998 N. Luhmann, Observations on Modernity, Stanford University Press, Stanford (1998). Mackenzie, 2008 Mackenzie, D., 2008. Material Markets. Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Malmendier and Nagel 2009 Malmendier, U., Nagel, S., 2009. Depression babies: do macroeconomic experiences affect risk-taking?, National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper 14813 [Online] Available at: <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1369049/>. Last accessed 30 April 2009. Maturana and Varela, 1973/1980 H. Maturana and F. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, D. Reidel, Dordrecht (1973/1980). Marazzi, 2008 C. Marazzi, Capital and Language. From the New Economy to the War Economy, Semiotext(e), New York (2008). McCracken 2006 McCracken, G.D., 2006. Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Chance in a Dynamic Marketplace. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Metzinger 2003 Metzinger, T., 2003. Being No One. The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Monro and Smith, 2008 M. Monro and S.J. Smith, Calculated affection? Charting the complex economy of home purchase, Housing Studies 23 (2008), pp. 1–19. Onians, 2007 J. Onians, Neuroarthistory. From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall and Zeki, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT (2007). Pentland, 2008 A. Pentland, Honest Signals. How they Shape Our World, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (2008). Petitot et al., 1999 In: J. Petitot, F. Varela, B. Pachoud and J.M. Roy, Editors, Naturalizing Phenomenology, Stanford University Press, Stanford (1999). Phelan, 2008 B. Phelan, How we evolve, Seed (2008), pp. 66–73. Politser, 2008 P. Politser, Neuroeconomics. A Guide to the New Science of Making Choices, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008). Ravaisson, 1838/2008 F. Ravaisson, Of Habit, Continuum, London (1838/2008). Renfrew, 2008 C. Renfrew, Prehistory. The Making of the Human Mind, Phoenix, London (2008). Ritter 1994 Ritter, M., trans. (1994) Georg Simmel ‘Bridge and Door’, Theory, Culture & Society 11, 5–10. Rizzolati and Sininaglia, 2008 G. Rizzolati and C. Sininaglia, Mirrors in the Brain. How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2008). Roach, 2007 J. Roach, It, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor (2007). Rotman, 2008 B. Rotman, Becoming Beside Ourselves. The Alphabet, Ghosts, and Distributed Human Being, Duke University Press, Durham. NC (2008). Savage and Burrows 2007 Savage, M., Burrows, R., 2007. The coming crisis of empirical sociology. Sociology 41(5), 885–899. Schaefer et al., 2008 In: I. Schaefer, C. Saint-George and K. Lewerentz, Editors, Painting Light. The Hidden Techniques of the Impressionists, Skira, Milan (2008). Shermer, 2008 M. Shermer, The Mind of the Market. How Biology and Psychology Shape Our Lives, Holt, New York (2008). Smail, 2008 D.L. Smail, On Deep History and the Brain, University of California Press, Berkeley (2008). Smith et al., 2006 S.J. Smith, M. Monro and H. Christie, Performing housing markets, Urban Studies 43 (2006), pp. 81–98. Stafford, 2008 B.M. Stafford, Echo Objects. The Cognitive Work of Images, University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2008). Steptoe and Diaz Roux, 2009 A. Steptoe and A.V. Diaz Roux, Happiness, health, and social networks. Psychosocial determinants of health may transfer through social connections, British Medical Journal 338 (2009), pp. 1–2. Sylvester, 1987 D. Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact. Interviews with Francis Bacon, Thames and Hudson, London (1987). Tallis, 2008 R. Tallis, The Kingdom of Infinite Space. A Fantastical Journey Around Your Head, Atlantic, London (2008). Tarde, 1902/2007 G. Tarde, Economic psychology, Economy and Society 36 (1902/2007), pp. 614–643. Thrift, 2007 N.J. Thrift, Non-Representational Theory. Space/Politics/Affect, Routledge, London (2007). Thrift, in press Thrift, N.J., 2009. Different atmospheres. Of Sloterdijk, China, and site. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27, 119–138. Thrift and Barry 2007 Thrift, N., Barry, A., 2007. Gabriel Tarde: imitation, invention, and economy. Economy and Society 36, 509–525. Tresch, 2007 J. Tresch, Technological world pictures. Cosmic things and cosmograms, Isis 98 (2007), pp. 84–99. Turner, 2006 H. Turner, The English Renaissance Stage. Geometry, Poetics, and the Practical Spatial Arts, 1580–1630, Oxford University Press, Oxford (2006). Turner, 2006 H. Turner, Shakespeare's Double Helix, Continuum, London (2006). Turner, 2007 S. Turner, Social theory as a cognitive neuroscience, European Journal of Social Theory 10 (2007), pp. 357–374. Valsiner and van der Veer, 2000 J. Valsiner and R. van der Veer, The Social Mind. Construction of an Idea, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000). Watts, 2006 P. Watts, Blindsight, Tor, New York (2006). Wolf, 2009 M. Wolf, Fixing Global Finance. How to Curb Global Financial Crises in the 21st Century, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT (2009). Zaltman, 2008 G. Zaltman, How Customers Think. Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, Harvard Business School Press, Boston (2008). Zeki, 1999 S. Zeki, Inner Vision. An Exploration of Art and the Brain, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1999).
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/1085

Request changes to a record

Actions (login required)

View Item