decommodification
Limiting Markets: Socialisation, Decommodification, and the Sense of Justice
Research seminar with Martin O'Neill, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of York. My talk addresses the questions of the size of the public sector in a just society, and the range of goods
Martin O'Neill: Limiting Markets: Socialisation, Decommodification, and the Sense of Justice
Venue: Institutet för framtidsstudier, Holländargatan 13, 4th floor, Stockholm, or online.Research seminar with Martin O'Neill, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of York.Register here AbstraMy talk addresses the questions of the size of the public sector in a just society, and the range of goods and services which should be decommodified, and provided to citizens outside of market relationships, in such a society. I examine some of the different answers given to these questions by (a) liberal egalitarians (particularly Rawls) and (b) social democrats and democratic socialists (particularly Esping-Andersen). Then, making use of the work of theorists including Waheed Hussain and Ralph Miliband, I examine the plausibility of a 'left Rawlsian' position, which would marry socialist insights about the functions of public provision with a liberal egalitarian account of the principles of justice, in order to defend an institutional model of a just society which would embody a form of liberal democratic socialism."
Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020
This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes.
Anna Näslund
I am professor of Art History at Stockholm University and researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies. My research focuses on visual culture, picture theory and digitization. The project Selling Pic traces the genealogy of contemporary AI-generated image hype over 200 years of promoting technologies for the production, reproduction, and circulation of pictures on a mass scale. It aims to understand the historical role of pictures not merely as commodities but as agents of commerce. The project focuses on emerging picture techniques in the 1820s, 1920s, and 2020s, examining iconographic and discursive patterns in pictures of mass reproduction (metapictures) and comparing vernacular picture theories—expressed in advertising copy and trade journalism—with canonical picture theories. Rooted in historical material practices, the project seeks to clarify and expand our understanding of how and why pictures play a central role in the work of selling in modern and contemporary societies.
