Armand Mattelart, Seth Siegelaub (eds.): Communication and Class Struggle, 2: Liberation, Socialism (1983)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, communication, communism, everyday, information, left, life, machine, marxism, mass media, media, political economy, politics, socialism, theory
“Communication and Class Struggle, a two-volume work, is the first general marxist anthology of writings on communication, information and culture. Its purpose is to analyse the relationship between the practice and theory of communication and their development with the context of class struggle. Armand Mattelart and Seth Siegelaub, the editors, have selected more 128 essential marxist and progressive texts originating in over 50 countries and written since the mid-nineteenth century to explain three interrelated phenomena: (1) how basic social, economic and cultural processes condition communication; (2) how bourgeois communication practice and theory have developed as part of the capitalistic mode of production; and (3) how in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, the popular and working classes have developed their own communication practice and theory, liberated mode of communication, culture and daily life.
The second volume provides an analysis of the development of popular and working-class communication and culture, its theory and practice under different political-social and historical conditions, and its contemporary expression. The book contains 64 texts. 38 are published for the first time in English, and some texts appear for the first time in any language. In addition, it includes a 650-entry bibliography.” (from the back cover)
Publisher International General, New York, and International Mass Media Research Center (IMMRC), Bagnolet, 1983
ISBN 0884770192, 9780884770190
438 pages
Review: Dallas W. Smythe (Journal of Communication 1985, p 218ff).
PDF (40 MB, updated to OCR’d version on 2017-10-30 via Memory of the World)
See also Volume 1.
Moles, Baudrillard, Boudon, van Lier, Wahl, Morin: Les objets (1969/71) [French, Spanish]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1968, aesthetics, design, object, philosophy, political economy, psychology, semiotics, sociology, theory
Communications is a biannual social sciences journal founded by Georges Friedmann, Roland Barthes, and Edgar Morin. Soon after its start in 1961 it became a reference publication for media studies and semiotics in France and internationally.
Its first 1969 issue was dedicated to the theory of objects, positioning it “at the confluence of sociology, political economy, social psychology, marketing, philosophy, design and aesthetics” (p 141). At the same time the journal argued for the relevance of the study of objects for governmental institutions such as “the Ministry of Industrial Production, the Ministry of Transport, the customs authorities, the courts, the counterfeits studies, or the National Industrial Property Institute” (p 141).
It can be read as a post-May 1968 attempt to use the concept of object as an agent linking social sciences in order to increase their impact on direct political change, and as well as an early echo of what more than a decade later came to be known as the actor-network theory.
Two years later the magazine appeared in its Spanish translation in book form.
Communications 13
Publisher Centre d’études des communications de masse, École pratique des hautes études, and Seuil, Paris, 1969
139 pages
Les objets (French, 1969), View online
Los objetos (Spanish, trans. Silvia Delpy, 1971/1974)
Marysia Lewandowska, Laurel Ptak (eds.): Undoing Property? (2013)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, commons, computing, curating, gentrification, immaterial labor, music, piracy, political economy, property, publishing, theory
“Undoing Property? examines complex relationships inside art, culture, political economy, immaterial production, and the public realm today. In its pages artists and theorists address aspects of computing, curating, economy, ecology, gentrification, music, publishing, piracy, and much more.
Property shapes all social relations. Its invisible lines force separations and create power relations felt through the unequal distribution of what is otherwise collectively produced value. Over the last few years the precise question of what should be privately owned and publicly shared in society has animated intense political struggles and social movements around the world. In this shadow the publication’s critical texts, interviews and artistic interventions offer models of practice and interrogate diverse sites, from the body, to the courtroom, to the server, to the museum. The book asks why propertization itself has changed so fundamentally over the last few decades and what might be done to challenge it. The “undoing” of Undoing Property? begins with the recognition that something else is possible.”
With contributions by Agency, David Berry, Nils Bohlin, Sean Dockray, Rasmus Fleischer, Antonia Hirsch, David Horvitz, Mattin, Open Music Archive, Matteo Pasquinelli, Claire Pentecost, Florian Schneider, Matthew Stadler, Marilyn Strathern, Kuba Szreder, Marina Vishmidt; preface by Binna Choi, Maria Lind, Emily Pethick
Publisher Sternberg Press, Berlin, and Tensta konsthall, Stockholm, 2013
ISBN 9783943365689
256 pages
via Matteo Pasquinelli
Publisher (Sternberg)
Publisher (Tensta konsthall)
PDF, PDF, PDF (12 MB, updated on 2018-6-22)
Git repository (containing templates and design, added on 2017-12-20)