General Sentiment: How Value and Affect Converge in the Information Economy

Abstract

The Fordist economy was marked by what David Stark calls a Parsonian Compromise in which economic value and other values were clearly separated, in theory as well as in practice. Today this is changing. Trends such as Ethical Consumerism and Corporate Social Responsibility are on the rise. More fundamentally, the economic importance of intangible assets like brands has increased. Together these developments testify to a new role for a wider range of values in determining price formation. In this paper I will argue that this trend has two principal causes. First, the socialization of production has increased the importance of affective investments in things like brands, reputation, corporate culture and efficient teamwork as sources of value. Second, a common criterion for the measurement of affective investments is forming, based on the new abstract or General Sentiment that is emerging as a new ‘general equivalent’ as a consequence of the present remediation of communicative relations, primarily throughout the diffusion of social media. Together these two dimensions make up the foundations for a new value logic, an ‘ethical economy’ that is emerging within contemporary wealth creation. After briefly summarizing the first argument, this paper will concentrate on the second, describing the emergence and features of General Sentiment as a criterion of value. The conclusion will suggest possible consequences of this development in both practical and theoretical terms.