Theme 6: Gender, Class and the Power over Immaterial Production

By Katherine Harrison on 30 Jun | 0 comments

This theme is based on my previous theme (Theme 3) about Distinctions and Authority in general in our changing societies and the effects of and for social divisions and hierarchies of all kinds. While Theme 3 discussed the general power aspects of societal change, the new theme will take up the specificities of the new central power bases, such as immaterial production and the rule of knowledge as well as the access to and distribution of information. The two themes will overlap in time, thus making possible the close discussion and exchange of ideas between these connecting fields of research.

Who has power in the knowledge society?
In a society that is increasingly based on and preoccupied with the production and consumption of immaterialities, such as services, ideas, cultural expressions, aesthetics,  and thoughts - the development and control of this production has become critical. Creativity as a means of production - how is it gendered, ethnicized, and class-coded, and how is it controlled? More particularly the control and governance of the universities and other knowledge-producing organizations has become a central bone of contention.

Another aspect of this struggle for control over the new, potentially lucrative means of production is the present discussion of immaterial rights and the regulation of the distribution of information and cultural products via for instance the internet – in short, who should control the internet?  Market forces and state and local politics are competing in the role as a distributive and controlling mechanism; simultaneously there is generally an innate logic in every social and professional field that contests the legitimacy of external influences. This is apparent in both cultural and intellectual fields.

There are several possible sub-themes here:

1) The power over cultural production and distribution

2) The power over universities and research institutes as knowledge producing organizations

3) The power over the internet as a distributor of cultural products and as a formative factor in itself

Some of the research questions to be asked are: Who has the power and how is it exerted? What are the general long-term effects for power relations between groups in society? Given the sharp but varying gender-coding of different activities, we may be assured that new inequality orders are in the making. How does this work and how can these inequalities be characterized? How do the groups in power cooperate? Are they forming a new stratum of power – a new power elite – and if so, who is included and excluded respectively? To what extent is it international or transnational, national and/or regional?