Empire (51 page)

so forth. Agriculture was modernized as industry. More generally,

society itselfslowly became industrialized even to the point of

transforming human relations and human nature. Society became

a factory. In the early twentieth century, Robert Musil reflected

beautifully on the transformation of humanity in the passage from

the pastoral agricultural world to the social factory: ‘‘There was a

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285

time when people grew naturally into the conditions they found

waiting for them and that was a very sound way of becoming

oneself. But nowadays, with all this shaking up of things, when

everything is becoming detached from the soil it grew in, even

where the production ofsoul is concerned one really ought, as it

were, to replace the traditional handicrafts by the sort of intelligence

that goes with the machine and the factory.’’8 The processes of

becoming human and the nature ofthe human itselfwere fundamen-

tally transformed in the passage defined by modernization.

In our times, however,
modernization has come to an end.
In

other words, industrial production is no longer expanding its domi-

nance over other economic forms and social phenomena. A symp-

tom of this shift is manifest in the quantitative changes in employ-

ment. Whereas the process ofmodernization was indicated by a

migration oflabor from agriculture and mining (the primary sector)

to industry (the secondary), the process ofpostmodernization or

informatization has been demonstrated through the migration from

industry to service jobs (the tertiary), a shift that has taken place in

the dominant capitalist countries, and particularly in the United

States, since the early 1970s. Services cover a wide range ofactivities

from health care, education, and finance to transportation, entertain-

ment, and advertising. The jobs for the most part are highly mobile

and involve flexible skills. More important, they are characterized

in general by the central role played by knowledge, information,

affect, and communication. In this sense many call the postindustrial

economy an informational economy.

The claim that modernization is over and that the global

economy is today undergoing a process ofpostmodernization to-

ward an informational economy does not mean that industrial pro-

duction will be done away with or even that it will cease to play

an important role, even in the most dominant regions ofthe globe.

Just as the processes ofindustrialization transformed agriculture and

made it more productive, so too the informational revolution will

transform industry by redefining and rejuvenating manufacturing

processes. The new managerial imperative operative here is, ‘‘Treat

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manufacturing as a service.’’9 In effect, as industries are transformed,

the division between manufacturing and services is becoming

blurred.10 Just as through the process ofmodernization all production

tended to become industrialized, so too through the process of

postmodernization all production tends toward the production of

services, toward becoming informationalized.

Not all countries, ofcourse, even among the dominant capital-

ist countries, have embarked on the project ofpostmodernization

along the same path. On the basis ofthe change ofemployment

statistics in the G-7 countries since 1970, Manuel Castells and Yuko

Aoyama have discerned two basic models or paths ofinformatiza-

tion.11 Both models involve the increase ofemployment in postin-

dustrial services, but they emphasize different kinds of services and

different relations between services and manufacturing. The first

path tends toward a
service economy model
and is led by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. This model involves a

rapid decline in industrial jobs and a corresponding rise in service-

sector jobs. In particular, the financial services that manage capital

come to dominate the other service sectors. In the second model,

the
info-industrial model,
typified by Japan and Germany, industrial employment declines more slowly than it does in the first model,

and, more important, the process ofinformatization is closely inte-

grated into and serves to reinforce the strength of existing industrial

production. Services related directly to industrial production thus

remain more important in this model relative to other services. The

two models represent two strategies to manage and gain an advantage

in the economic transition, but it should be clear that they both

move resolutely in the direction ofthe informatization ofthe econ-

omy and the heightened importance ofproductive flows and net-

works.

Although the subordinated countries and regions ofthe world

are not capable ofimplementing such strategies, the processes of

postmodernization nonetheless impose irreversible changes on

them. The fact that informatization and the shift toward services

have taken place thus far primarily in the dominant capitalist coun-

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

287

tries and not elsewhere should not lead us back to an understanding

ofthe contemporary global economic situation in terms oflinear

stages ofdevelopment. It is true that as industrial production has

declined in the dominant countries, it has been effectively exported

to subordinated countries, from the United States and Japan, for

example, to Mexico and Malaysia. Such geographical shifts and

displacements might lead some to believe that there is a new global

organization ofeconomic stages whereby the dominant countries

are informational service economies, their first subordinates are

industrial economies, and those further subordinated are agricul-

tural. From the perspective ofstages ofdevelopment, for example,

one might think that through the contemporary export ofindustrial

production, an auto factory built by Ford in Brazil in the 1990s

might be comparable to a Ford factory in Detroit in the 1930s

because both instances ofproduction belong to the same indus-

trial stage.

When we look more closely, however, we can see that the

two factories are not comparable, and the differences are extremely

important. First of all, the two factories are radically different in

terms oftechnology and productive practices. When fixed capital

is exported, it is exported generally at its highest level ofproductiv-

ity. The Ford factory in 1990s Brazil, then, would not be built

with the technology ofthe Ford factory of1930s Detroit, but would

be based on the most advanced and most productive computer and

informational technologies available. The technological infrastruc-

ture ofthe factory itselfwould locate it squarely within the informa-

tional economy. Second, and perhaps more important, the two

factories stand in different relations of dominance with respect to

the global economy as a whole. The Detroit auto factory of the

1930s stood at the pinnacle ofthe global economy in the dominant

position and producing the highest value; the 1990s auto factory,

whether in Sa˜o Paulo, Kentucky, or Vladivostok, occupies a subor-

dinate position in the global economy—subordinated to the high-

value production ofservices. Today all economic activity tends to

come under the dominance ofthe informational economy and to

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be qualitatively transformed by it. The geographical differences in

the global economy are not signs ofthe co-presence ofdifferent

stages ofdevelopment but lines ofthe new global hierarchy ofpro-

duction.

It is becoming increasingly clear from the perspective of subor-

dinated regions that modernization is no longer the key to economic

advancement and competition. The most subordinated regions,

such as areas of sub-Saharan Africa, are effectively excluded from

capital flows and new technologies, and they thus find themselves

on the verge ofstarvation.12 Competition for the middle-level posi-

tions in the global hierarchy is conducted not through the industrial-

ization but through the informatization of production. Large coun-

tries with varied economies, such as India and Brazil, can support

simultaneously all levels ofproductive processes: information-based

production ofservices, modern industrial production ofgoods, and

traditional handicraft, agricultural, and mining production. There

does not need to be an orderly historical progression among these

forms, but rather they mix and coexist. All of the forms of production

exist within the networks ofthe world market and under the

domination ofthe informational production ofservices.

The transformations of the Italian economy since the 1950s

demonstrate clearly that relatively backward economies do not sim-

ply follow the same stages the dominant regions experience, but

evolve through alternative and mixed patterns. After World War

II, Italy was still a predominantly peasant-based society, but in the

1950s and 1960s it went through furious if incomplete moderniza-

tion and industrialization, a first economic miracle. Then, however,

in the 1970s and 1980s, when the processes ofindustrialization

were still not complete, the Italian economy embarked on another

transformation, a process of postmodernization, and achieved a

second economic miracle. These Italian miracles were not really

leaps forward that allowed it to catch up with the dominant econo-

mies; rather, they represented mixtures of different incomplete eco-

nomic forms. What is most significant here, and what might usefully

pose the Italian case as the general model for all other backward

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289

economies, is that
the Italian economy did not complete one stage (industrialization) before moving on to another (informatization).
According to two contemporary economists, the recent Italian transformation

reveals ‘‘an interesting transition from proto-industrialism to proto-

informationalism.’’13 Various regions will evolve to have peasant

elements mixed with partial industrialization and partial informatiza-

tion. The economic stages are thus all present at once, merged into

a hybrid, composite economy that varies not in kind but in degree

across the globe.

Just as modernization did in a previous era, postmodernization

or informatization today marks a new mode of becoming human.

Where the production ofsoul is concerned, as Musil would say,

one really ought to replace the traditional techniques ofindustrial

machines with the cybernetic intelligence ofinformation and com-

munication technologies. We must invent what Pierre Levy calls

an anthropology ofcyberspace.14 This shift of metaphors gives us

a first glimpse ofthe transformation, but we need to look more

closely to see clearly the changes in our notion ofthe human and

in humanity itselfthat emerge in the passage toward an informa-

tional economy.

TheSociology of Immaterial Labor

The passage toward an informational economy necessarily involves a

change in the quality and nature oflabor. This is the most immediate

sociological and anthropological implication ofthe passage ofeco-

nomic paradigms. Today information and communication have

come to play a foundational role in production processes.

A first aspect ofthis transformation is recognized by many in

terms ofthe change in factory labor—using the auto industry as a

central point of reference—from the Fordist model to the Toyotist

model.15 The primary structural change between these models in-

volves the system ofcommunication between the production and

the consumption ofcommodities, that is, the passage ofinformation

between the factory and the market. The Fordist model constructed

a relatively ‘‘mute’’ relationship between production and consump-

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tion. The mass production ofstandardized commodities in the

Fordist era could count on an adequate demand and thus had little

need to ‘‘listen’’ to the market. A feedback circuit from consumption

to production did allow changes in the market to spur changes in

productive engineering, but this communication circuit was re-

stricted (owing to the fixed and compartmentalized channels of

planning and design structures) and slow (owing to the rigidity of

the technologies and procedures ofmass production).

Toyotism is based on an inversion ofthe Fordist structure

ofcommunication between production and consumption. Ideally,

according to this model, production planning will communicate

with markets constantly and immediately. Factories will maintain

zero stock, and commodities will be produced just in time according

to the present demand ofthe existing markets. This model thus

involves not simply a more rapid feedback loop but an inversion of

the relationship because, at least in theory, the production decision