Aesthetic Capitalism debates the social aesthetics of contemporary economic processes. The book connects modern cultural dynamics with the workings of contemporary capitalism. It explores art and the new spirit of capitalism; visual culture and the experience economy; aesthetics and organisations; the art of fiscal management; capitalism without myth; and architecture in the age of aesthetic capitalism.
Contributors include: Peter Murphy, Eduardo de la Fuente, Antonio Strati, Ken Friedman, Dominique Bouchet, Anders Michelsen, David Roberts, Carlo Tognato
Eduardo de la Fuente is Lecturer in the School of Social and Policy Studies, Flinders University and President of the Research Committee for the Sociology of the Arts of the International Sociological Association. He is the author of Twentieth Century Music and the Question of Modernity (Routledge, 2011) and has a forthcoming book on the Aesthetic Shaping of Society (Palgrave-Macmillan).
Peter Murphy is Professor of Creative Arts and Social Aesthetics at James Cook University. He is the author of The Collective Imagination (Ashgate, 2012) and Civic Justice (Humanity Books, 2001), and co-author of Dialectic of Romanticism (Continuum, 2004), Imagination (Peter Lang 2010), Global Creation (Peter Lang 2010), and Creativity and the Global Knowledge Economy (Peter Lang 2009).
Introduction
de la Fuente and Murphy Chapter One: From the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism to the Creative Economy: Reflections on the New Spirit of Art and Capitalism
David Roberts Chapter Two: The Artefacts of Capitalism and the Objecthood of their Aesthetics
Vrasidas Karalis Chapter Three: The Aesthetic Spirit of Modern Capitalism
Peter Murphy Chapter Four: The Visual Experience Economy: What Kind of Economics?On the Topologies of Aesthetic Capitalism
Anders Michelsen Chapter Five: Aesthetic Capital: Hermeneutic Speculation, Economic Themes, and the Dismal Science
Ken Friedman Chapter Six: The Social Negotiation of Aesthetics and Organisational Democracy
Antonio Strati Chapter Seven: Neo-Modernism: Architecture in the Age of Aesthetic Capitalism
Eduardo de la Fuente Chapter Eight: The Aesthetics of Fiscal Consolidation
Carlo Tognato Chapter Nine: The Innovative Role of Art in the Time of the Absence of Myth
Dominique Bouchet
This book is aimed at readers interested in debates about the aestheticization of economic life under contemporary capitalism and the use of aesthetic thinking in understanding commerce, organization, work and marketing.