Lash Scott, Urry John. Economies of Signs and Space

London: Sage Publications, 1994. — 372 p. — (Theory, Culture & Society). — ISBN10: 0803984723; ISBN13: 978-0803984721.Economies of Signs and Space presents a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of ‘society’ In this extraordinary and wide-ranging book, two eminent theorists develop a sociology that takes as its main unit of analysis social and cultural flows through time and across space Focusing on post-industrial economies, the study examines social inequality and changing experiences of time, space, culture, travel, the environment and globalization. Through a comparative analysis of the UK and USA, Germany and Japan Lash and Uriy show how restructuration, after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations The consequence, is not only the much- vaunted postmodern condition’ but a growth in reflexivity. In exploring this new reflexive world, Lash and Urry argue that today’s economies are increasingly economies of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social subjects - refugees, financiers, tourists, flâneurs - are mobile over ever greater distances They show how an understanding of such flows contributes to the analysis of changes in social relations, from the organization of work to the ‘culture industries’, from the formation of an underclass to new forms of citizenship. Taking its point of departure from the authors’ influential The End of Organized Capitalism, this is a book that no one in social and cultural theory, geography and urban studies, political economy, and organization studies can afford to ignore.Introduction: After Organized CapitalismEconomies of objects and subjectsMobile Objects
Reflexive SubjectsEconomies of signs and the otherReflexive Accumulation: Information Structures and Production Systems
Accumulating Signs: The Culture Industries
Ungovernable Spaces: The Underclass and Impacted Ghettoes
Mobile Subjects: Migration in Comparative PerspectiveEconomies of space and timePost-Industrial Spaces
Time and MemoryGlobalization and modernityMobility, Modernity and Place
Globalization and Localization