Empire (52 page)

actually comes after and in reaction to the market decision. In

the most extreme cases the commodity is not produced until the

consumer has already chosen and purchased it. In general, however,

it would be more accurate to conceive the model as striving toward a

continual interactivity or rapid communication between production

and consumption. This industrial context provides a first sense in

which communication and information have come to play a newly

central role in production. One might say that instrumental action

and communicative action have become intimately interwoven in

the informationalized industrial process, but one should quickly add

that this is an impoverished notion ofcommunication as the mere

transmission ofmarket data.16

The service sectors ofthe economy present a richer model of

productive communication. Most services indeed are based on the

continual exchange ofinformation and knowledges. Since the pro-

duction ofservices results in no material and durable good, we

define the labor involved in this production as
immaterial labor
—that is, labor that produces an immaterial good, such as a service, a

cultural product, knowledge, or communication.17 One face of

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291

immaterial labor can be recognized in analogy to the functioning

ofa computer. The increasingly extensive use ofcomputers has

tended progressively to redefine laboring practices and relations,

along with, indeed, all social practices and relations. Familiarity

and facility with computer technology is becoming an increasingly

general primary qualification for work in the dominant countries.

Even when direct contact with computers is not involved, the

manipulation ofsymbols and information along the model ofcom-

puter operation is extremely widespread. In an earlier era workers

learned how to act like machines both inside and outside the factory.

We even learned (with the help ofMuybridge’s photos, for example)

to recognize human activity in general as mechanical. Today we

increasingly think like computers, while communication technolo-

gies and their model ofinteraction are becoming more and more

central to laboring activities. One novel aspect ofthe computer is

that it can continually modify its own operation through its use.

Even the most rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence allow the

computer to expand and perfect its operation based on its interaction

with its user and its environment. The same kind ofcontinual

interactivity characterizes a wide range ofcontemporary productive

activities, whether computer hardware is directly involved or not.

The computer and communication revolution ofproduction has

transformed laboring practices in such a way that they all tend

toward the model ofinformation and communication technolo-

gies.18 Interactive and cybernetic machines become a new prosthesis

integrated into our bodies and minds and a lens through which to

redefine our bodies and minds themselves. The anthropology of

cyberspace is really a recognition ofthe new human condition.

Robert Reich calls the kind ofimmaterial labor involved in

computer and communication work ‘‘symbolic-analytical ser-

vices’’—tasks that involve ‘‘problem-solving, problem-identifying,

and strategic brokering activities.’’19 This type oflabor claims the

highest value, and thus Reich identifies it as the key to competition

in the new global economy. He recognizes, however, that the

growth ofthese knowledge-based jobs ofcreative symbolic manipu-

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lation implies a corresponding growth oflow-value and low-skill

jobs ofroutine symbol manipulation, such as data entry and word

processing. Here begins to emerge a fundamental division of labor

within the realm ofimmaterial production.

We should note that one consequence ofthe informatization

ofproduction and the emergence ofimmaterial labor has been a

real homogenization oflaboring processes. From Marx’s perspective

in the nineteenth century, the concrete practices ofvarious laboring

activities were radically heterogeneous: tailoring and weaving in-

volved incommensurable concrete actions. Only when abstracted

from their concrete practices could different laboring activities be

brought together and seen in a homogeneous way, no longer as

tailoring and weaving but as the expenditure ofhuman labor power

in general, as
abstract labor.
20 With the computerization ofproduction today, however, the heterogeneity ofconcrete labor has tended to

be reduced, and the worker is increasingly further removed from

the object ofhis or her labor. The labor ofcomputerized tailoring

and the labor ofcomputerized weaving may involve exactly the

same concrete practices—that is, manipulation ofsymbols and infor-

mation. Tools, ofcourse, have always abstracted labor power from

the object oflabor to a certain degree. In previous periods, however,

the tools generally were related in a relatively inflexible way to

certain tasks or certain groups of tasks; different tools corresponded

to different activities—the tailor’s tools, the weaver’s tools, or later

a sewing machine and a power loom. The computer proposes itself,

in contrast, as the universal tool, or rather as the central tool, through

which all activities might pass. Through the computerization of

production, then, labor tends toward the position ofabstract labor.

The model ofthe computer, however, can account for only

one face of the communicational and immaterial labor involved in

the production ofservices. The other face ofimmaterial labor is

the
affective labor
ofhuman contact and interaction. Health services, for example, rely centrally on caring and affective labor, and the

entertainment industry is likewise focused on the creation and ma-

nipulation of affect. This labor is immaterial, even if it is corporeal

P O S T M O D E R N I Z A T I O N

293

and affective, in the sense that its products are intangible, a feeling

ofease, well-being, satisfaction, excitement, or passion. Categories

such as ‘‘in-person services’’ or services ofproximity are often used

to identify this kind of labor, but what is really essential to it are

the creation and manipulation of affect. Such affective production,

exchange, and communication are generally associated with human

contact, but that contact can be either actual or virtual, as it is in

the entertainment industry.

This second face of immaterial labor, its affective face, extends

well beyond the model ofintelligence and communication defined

by the computer. Affective labor is better understood by beginning

from what feminist analyses of ‘‘women’s work’’ have called ‘‘labor

in the bodily mode.’’21 Caring labor is certainly entirely immersed in

the corporeal, the somatic, but the affects it produces are nonetheless

immaterial. What affective labor produces are social networks, forms

ofcommunity, biopower. Here one might recognize once again

that the instrumental action ofeconomic production has been united

with the communicative action ofhuman relations; in this case,

however, communication has not been impoverished, but produc-

tion has been enriched to the level ofcomplexity ofhuman inter-

action.

In short, we can distinguish three types ofimmaterial labor

that drive the service sector at the top ofthe informational economy.

The first is involved in an industrial production that has been

informationalized and has incorporated communication technolo-

gies in a way that transforms the production process itself. Manufac-

turing is regarded as a service, and the material labor ofthe produc-

tion ofdurable goods mixes with and tends toward immaterial

labor. Second is the immaterial labor ofanalytical and symbolic

tasks, which itselfbreaks down into creative and intelligent manipu-

lation on the one hand and routine symbolic tasks on the other.

Finally, a third type ofimmaterial labor involves the production

and manipulation of affect and requires (virtual or actual) human

contact, labor in the bodily mode. These are the three types of

labor that drive the postmodernization ofthe global economy.

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We should point out before moving on that in each of these

forms of immaterial labor, cooperation is completely inherent in

the labor itself. Immaterial labor immediately involves social interac-

tion and cooperation. In other words, the cooperative aspect of

immaterial labor is not imposed or organized from the outside, as

it was in previous forms of labor, but rather,
cooperation is completely
immanent to the laboring activity itself.
22 This fact calls into question the old notion (common to classical and Marxian political economics) by which labor power is conceived as ‘‘variable capital,’’ that

is, a force that is activated and made coherent only by capital, because

the cooperative powers oflabor power (particularly immaterial labor

power) afford labor the possibility of valorizing itself. Brains and

bodies still need others to produce value, but the others they need

are not necessarily provided by capital and its capacities to orchestrate

production. Today productivity, wealth, and the creation ofsocial

surpluses take the form of cooperative interactivity through linguis-

tic, communicational, and affective networks. In the expression of

its own creative energies, immaterial labor thus seems to provide

the potential for a kind of spontaneous and elementary communism.

Network Production

The first geographical consequence ofthe passage from an industrial

to an informational economy is a dramatic decentralization of pro-

duction. The processes ofmodernization and the passage to the

industrial paradigm provoked the intense aggregation ofproductive

forces and mass migrations of labor power toward centers that

became factory cities, such as Manchester, Osaka, and Detroit. Ef-

ficiency ofmass industrial production depended on the concentra-

tion and proximity ofelements in order to create the factory site and

facilitate transportation and communication. The informatization of

industry and the rising dominance ofservice production, however,

have made such concentration ofproduction no longer necessary.

Size and efficiency are no longer linearly related; in fact, large scale

has in many cases become a hindrance. Advances in telecommunica-

tions and information technologies have made possible a deterritori-

alization of production that has effectively dispersed the mass facto-

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295

ries and evacuated the factory cities. Communication and control

can be exercised efficiently at a distance, and in some cases immate-

rial products can be transported across the world with minimal delay

and expense. Several different production facilities can be coordi-

nated in the simultaneous production ofa single commodity in such

a way that factories can be dispersed to various locations. In some

sectors even the factory site itself can be done away with as its workers

communicate exclusively through new information technologies.23

In the passage to the informational economy, the assembly

line has been replaced by
the network
as the organizational model

of production, transforming the forms of cooperation and commu-

nication within each productive site and among productive sites.

The mass industrial factory defined the circuits of laboring coopera-

tion primarily through the physical deployments ofworkers on the

shop floor. Individual workers communicated with their neighbor-

ing workers, and communication was generally limited to physical

proximity. Cooperation among productive sites also required physi-

cal proximity both to coordinate the productive cycles and to

minimize the transportation costs and time ofthe commodities

being produced. For example, the distance between the coal mine

and the steel mill, and the efficiency ofthe lines oftransportation

and communication between them, are significant factors in the

overall efficiency of steel production. Similarly, for automobile

production the efficiency of communication and transportation

among the series ofsubcontractors involved is crucial in the overall

efficiency of the system. The passage toward informational produc-

tion and the network structure oforganization, in contrast, make

productive cooperation and efficiency no longer dependent to such

a degree on proximity and centralization. Information technologies

tend to make distances less relevant. Workers involved in a single

process can effectively communicate and cooperate from remote

locations without consideration to proximity. In effect, the network

oflaboring cooperation requires no territorial or physical center.

The tendency toward the deterritorialization ofproduction is

even more pronounced in the processes ofimmaterial labor that