Trade: Commodities, Communication and Consciousness. - book review

Urs Stahel, Thomas Seelig, Martin Jaeggi, eds. Zurich, Switzerland: Scalo, 2001

Words like "capitalism" and "globalization" are circulating widely in the arenas of cultural criticism today. Both are in turn grounded and subsumed in "the economy," a term normally used with a definite article that appears falsely assertive due to the incorporation of the former, dispersing elements. An added layer to the budding confusion creeps in when economists acknowledge that laws and figures do not rule markets, but that they are highly volatile cultural and political constructs, displaying a logic that defies math and science if the purpose is prediction. How may we then approach an understanding of the economic mechanism and movements of capital that are paramount to how the contemporary world operates? One excellent place to start is Trade: Commodities, Communication and Consciousness.

The book was published on the occasion of an exhibition with the same name that originated at Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2001 and closes at the Nederlands Foto Institut in March this year. It features a short introductory essay by the three editors and numerous reproductions of exhibited work, mostly photographs, from artists, advertising agencies, magazines and annual reports. Interspersed between the images are quotes and longer extracts from seminal texts dealing with the ebb and flow of capital, fittingly starting with Adam Smith's 1776 conception of the market and ending with Max Horkheimers 1934 description of capitalism's premise of uneven development and distribution as "the fundament of misery" upon which the entire structure is founded. Horkheimer's final words are found in the company of Matthias Ziegler's images of kids permanently residing on Manila's enormous open landfills.

Shortly after the controversial collapse of the industry giant Enron, we are already forgetting why this particular bankruptcy was so significant and why concerns over capitalism's ways, the subject of this book, matter more than ever. Trade underscores that all aspects of our lives are now mandated by financial considerations and that other value judgments, regardless of category or denomination, are secondary to those securing instant profit margins. When shareholders are deceived for their own benefit (ultimately detriment) and a community of employees is swindled in the process, the cultural questioning of capitalism's means and ends must extend further than accounting practices and CEO incarcerations. A quote, included in the book, by Walter Benjamin amplifies this tilted relationship of values to an exponential degree; "The love for a prostitute is the apotheosis of empathy for the commodity."

Due to its fragmented character, Trade does not provide a coherent blueprint to explicate our economical exchanges and relations, but it productively grapples with its subject through its mode of presentation. The purposeful juxtaposition of texts and images may be seen to follow a critical tradition that looks at geography as a social space shaped by class interests and desires. Edward Soja, Michel Foucault and Henri Lefebvre, among others, turned to fields such as urban and architectural planning to examine how complex ideological structures manifest in everyday life. So, if the textual abstraction of capitalism is confounding, Trade also offers ample and thoughtful attempts at describing what it looks like.

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