The city of cognitive–cultural capitalism

Abstract

Allen Scott's theorization of “cognitive-cultural capitalism” is a landmark contribution that situates today's urban-economic transformations in the long history of capitalist frontiers of uneven development. Yet Scott is a bit too cautious, too deferential to the monster he's mapped. In this essay, I develop a more critical analysis of cognitive-cultural capitalism as the co-evolutionary culmination of planetary urbanization and technological change, in a ‘noosphere of neoliberalization.’ A new social physics is under construction with the planetary commodification and colonization of the global attention span.

Keywords:

• social physics
• Marx
• social networking
• neoliberalization

Notes

The concept was brought into urban studies and geography by the ‘[p]aleontologist, philosopher, theologian, and poet’ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955) at a conference in Princeton University in 1955 held just weeks after Teilhard's death in New York City. Teilhard's (1956) chapter in the conference proceedings ‘advanced the notion of noösphère (sphere of thought) as enveloping the earth and guiding the progressive forces of human evolution’ (Buttimer 1971, 85). Notable conference organizers and participants included Carl Sauer, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Glacken, Chauncy Harris, Jon Tukey and Edward Ullman.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elvin Wyly

Elvin Wyly is Associate Professor in Urban Geography at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.