Cultural political economy and critical policy studies

Abstract

This article introduces cultural political economy as a distinctive approach in the social sciences, including policy studies. The version presented here combines critical semiotic analysis and critical political economy. It grounds its approach to both in the practical necessities of complexity reduction and the role of meaning-making and structuration in turning unstructured into structured complexity as a basis for ‘going on’ in the world. It explores both semiosis and structuration in terms of the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention and, in this context, also highlights the role of specific forms of agency and specific technologies. These general propositions are illustrated from ‘economic imaginaries’ (other types of imaginary could have been examined) and their relevance to economic policy. Brief comments on crisis-interpretation and crisis-management give this example some substance. The conclusion notes some implications for research in critical policy studies.

Keywords:

• complexity
• crisis
• crisis-management
• cultural political economy
• cultural turn
• crisis-management
• finance-led accumulation
• Green New Deal
• neo-liberalism

Acknowledgments

This article draws on discussions over several years with Norman Fairclough, Andrew Sayer, Ngai-Ling Sum, and Ruth Wodak. Its specific form and content benefited from sound advice from Ngai-Ling Sum, timely recommendations from Frank Fischer, pertinent comments from Andrew Sayer, and remarks by two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1. An example of this ‘culturalist approach’ is the use of group-grid cultural theory as a tool for taking account of cultural differences in policy analysis (cf. Hoppe 2007).

2. While semiosis initially refers to the intersubjective production of meaning, it is also an important element/moment of ‘the social’ more generally. Semiosis involves more than (verbal) language, including, for example, different forms of ‘visual language’.

3. These meaning systems are shaped by neural, cognitive, and semiotic frames (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) as well as, of course, social interaction, meaning-making technologies, and strategically-selective opportunities for reflection and learning.

4. On other policy decision techniques, see the contributions on cost-benefit analysis, environmental impact assessments, technology assessments, and policy mediation in Part IX of Fischer et al. (2007, pp. 465–534). Many other examples exist. On public policy instruments, see also Hood (1983), Peters and van Nispen (1998) and Salaman (2002).

5. For a narrative account of the meaning of buildings, see Yanow (1995).

6. Horizontal denotes sites on a similar scale (e.g. personal, organizational, institutional, functional systems); vertical denotes different scales (e.g. micro–macro, local–regional–national–supranational–global).

7. On spatio-temporal fixes, see Jessop (2002).

8. Adorno (1973, p. 190) notes that ‘the critique of ideology, as the confrontation of ideology with its own truth, is only possible insofar as the ideology contains a rational element with which the critique can deal’.

9. Polanyi (1982) distinguished substantive economic activities involved in material ‘provisioning’ from formal (profit-oriented, market-mediated) economic activities. The leading economic imaginaries in capitalist societies ignore the full range of substantive economic activities in favor of a focus on formal economic activities.

10. Although all practices are semiotic and material, the relative causal efficacy of these elements will vary.

11. I am not suggesting that mass media can be disentangled from wider networks of social relations but seeking to highlight the decline of an autonomous public sphere.

12. A web of interlocution comprises meta-narratives that reveal linkages between a wide range of interactions, organizations, and institutions and/or help to make sense of whole epochs (Somers 1994, p. 614).

13. On discursive selectivity, see Hay (1996) and Somers (1994); on structural selectivity, see Jessop (2001, 2007).

14. Besides policy decision techniques, technologies refer here to diverse presentational devices that render some discourses more persuasive in some contexts than others: economic models, powerpoint presentations, video clips, vox pop interviews, etc. Other technologies, including policy instruments (e.g. quantitative easing), may also be involved in retention, i.e. the translation of selected accounts into the policy field.

15. A three-year professorial fellowship begins in 2010, funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council on the ‘Cultural Political Economy of Crisis-Management’ (Grant number: RES-051-27-0303).

16. Iceland is an extreme case due to excessive financialization.