Understanding the paradox of control and freedom of consumption under digital capitalism with Stafford Beer's cybernetic theory

Hannah Bensussan

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Studies on the digitalization of markets and economic relations provide contrasting statements on its impact on consumers: it seems to have enhanced both control and freedom of these actors. This paper proposes to understand this paradox through the lens of Stafford Beer's cybernetic theory. We read the literature on digitalization and consumption at the light of Beer's concepts of regulated variety, regulatory variety and recursion, three concepts at the source of Beer's understanding of control and freedom. These concepts, we argue, allow to show the conditioned rise of consumers' freedom to the purpose of control in capitalist orders, i.e., commodity circulation and capital accumulation.

Keywords: Control; freedom; consumption; digital capitalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-03-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-pay
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-04050331v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-04050331v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Understanding the paradox of control and freedom of consumption under digital capitalism with Stafford Beer's cybernetic theory (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04050331

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().