The Culture of the New Capitalism

Turning culture and history into money is the jurisdiction of cultural planning. Outside the profession, few people have heard of it. Perhaps that is because people find it off-putting to think that something as creative and intimate as “culture” could, in any way, be planned. It feels like a rude oxymoron. And yet the City Authentic, ironically, o

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The Great Diminishment has several causes. (The internet, social media, apathy, etc., all play a role. I’ve written more about how “everyone is numbing out.”) But a big cause is what I’ll call the “venture capitalization” of culture, where as much cost is squeezed out of every nook and cranny as possible, while prices remain the same or higher. You... See more

“[...] The distinctive feature of the societies to which this historical process [i.e. capitalism and industrialist mass production] gave rise is that productive activity is mostly governed by a logic that tends to strip it of things like meaning, playfulness and sociability.”