PJ Patella-Rey | University of Pittsburgh (original) (raw)
Papers by PJ Patella-Rey
Ethics and Social Welfare
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 2021
This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways... more This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways we are yet to fully understand. Drawing on interviews and auto-ethnography, it attempts to offer three distinct theoretical lenses through which these changes can be observed. First, I examine what is bought and sold in cam rooms, concluding that the work of cam modeling (both on camera and behind the scenes) has many dimensions that are not captured by reductionist tropes about selling one’s body. Second, I argue that camming fits a broader pattern in online content, where clear divisions between producer and consumer begin to break down. I conclude that camming (and especially custom content/shows) can best understood as prosumer pornography (i.e., as a co-creation of model and viewer). Finally, I explore the ways in which sex cam models actively develop intimacy with clients in spite of the fact that the interactions are defined by social and spatial distance; technological mediation; asymmetry; gendered expectations; and commercial transaction.
While it is no longer debatable that in order to comprehend contemporary politics one must first ... more While it is no longer debatable that in order to comprehend contemporary politics one must first understand digital media, the work of theorizing the political dynamics of the digital age is still very much in its infancy-in fact, one might even say such theoretical work is still in an embryonic stage, given that so many of the commonly cited works on the topic predate popular adoption of the World Wide Web (let alone the emergence of smartphones). However, two recent books, McKenzie Wark's Telesthesia and David Savat's Uncoding the Digital, set about the pressing task of historically situating the recent explosion of digital technologies and the new political conditions of the digitally mediated lives we now lead.
We begin with a quick overview of the sociological understanding of subjectivity and two of its k... more We begin with a quick overview of the sociological understanding of subjectivity and two of its key elements: embodiment and the social conditions of subjectification. We argue that contemporary subjects are embodied simultaneously by organic flesh and by digital prostheses, while, at the same time, contemporary society maintains a conceptual boundary between "the online" and "the offline" that artificially separates and devalues digitally mediated experiences. Because we collectively cling to the online/offline binary, the online aspects both of ourselves and of our being in the world are consequently diminished and discounted. The culturally dominant tendency to see "online" and "offline" as categories that are separate, opposed, and even zero-sum is what Nathan Jurgenson (2011, 2012a) terms dualism, and it leads us to erroneously identify digital technologies themselves as the primary causal agents behind what are, in complex social problems. In our final section, we use so-called "cyberbullying" as an example of how digital dualist frames fail to capture the ways that subjects experience being in our present socio-technological milieu.
Theorizing about consumption has been a part of the field of sociology since its earliest days, d... more Theorizing about consumption has been a part of the field of sociology since its earliest days, dating back, at least implicitly, to the work of Karl Marx in the midto late nineteenth century. However, Thorstein Veblen's (1899) The Theory of the Leisure Class is generally seen as the first major theoretical work to take consumption as its primary focus (although in the body of his, work Veblen, like most other classic thinkers, focused on production - industry and business - not consumption). Despite these early roots, research on consumption began in earnest in the second half of the twentieth century in Europe, especially Great Britain. Interest in the topic among US sociologists was much slower to develop and i~ is still not a focal concern of many American sociologists. In fact, efforts have been underway for many years to form a Section in the American Sociological Association devoted to the study of consumption, but as yet th.ose efforts have not succeeded. The irony of this is that the US is seen as the quintessential consumer society and has been a major exporter of its products, brands, and consumption sites (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart) to the rest of the world. It may be that consumption is sucb a central part of American life that it seems unproblematic, not only to most Americans, but also to the majority of American sociologists. It also may be that the recipients of American consumption exports in other parts of the world are more troubled by them so that sociologists there are drawn more to the topic. American sociologists (and others) also continue to be locked into the productivist bias that dominated the discipline in its early years and, therefore, have been slow to recognize the importance of consumption.
This article is a critical examination of how capitalism has adapted to the explosion of websites... more This article is a critical examination of how capitalism has adapted to the explosion of websites devoted to user-generated content (commonly referred to as social media or Web 2.0). The author proceeds by reviewing how Marx applies the concepts of alienation and exploitation to his paradigmatic example (i.e., the factory); the author then attempts to extend the logic of both concepts to determine what they might reveal about the structural conditions of social media. A difference of prime importance between the two case studies is that factory work is wage labor coerced by economic necessity, whereas use of social networking sites is apparently voluntary and done freely. The author concludes by arguing that social media users are subject to levels of exploitation relatively consistent with industrial capitalism, whereas the structural conditions of the digital economy link profitability to a reduction in the intensity of alienation. Finally, he infers that social media is not economically beneficial to most users.
Work and play have not always been distinct phenomena. However, as Western civilization transitio... more Work and play have not always been distinct phenomena. However, as Western civilization transitioned to capitalism, work became synonymous with alienation. Unlike play, alienated labor is not intrinsically rewarding, and it is certainly not fun. For this reason, Marx once observed that “as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.” Yet, capitalism is not static; it has proven remarkably flexible in adapting itself to new circumstances. Alienation is simply a means of achieving capitalism’s true purpose: i.e., the accumulation of wealth via exploitation. Alienated labor, however, has its limits. Individuals are psychologically capable of handling only so much alienation. Moreover, the material abundance associated with consumer society makes it increasingly difficult to convince individuals that so much alienated labor is justified when our basic needs are so easily met. So, while alienated labor was still an intrinsic feature of consumer capitalism, (Post-Fordist) capitalism has developed in a different direction: It seeks to exploit the kinds of activities that people already do voluntarily (e.g., socializing and play). Gamification is one such process native to Post-Fordist capitalism that implodes the distinction between work and play (itself originally exaggerated by capitalism) to create the new phenomenon that some have termed “playbor.” By introducing exploitation into play and then masking that exploitation, gamification creates a historically unique situation where workers enjoy highly exploitative activities. In other words, gamification is theft with a smile.
In this essay, we examine the economic dimensions of the increasingly fluid post-Modern world tha... more In this essay, we examine the economic dimensions of the increasingly fluid post-Modern world that Zygmunt Bauman has so famously chronicled over the past decade. We argue that fluidity is not completely unique to post-Modern society, and that, in fact, our social reality has always been far more fluid than is conveyed by the concepts used to describe them. What distinguishes post-Modernity is that many aspects of the social world are now characterized by such intense and rapid flows that conventional static binaries no longer appear tenable to even a casual observer. This is particularly true in the economic sphere which has experienced profound globalization in the post-War era. The emergence of the Internet intensified economic exchange to such an extraordinary degree that attempts to distinguish producer from consumer and production from consumption, prove utterly futile. While Bauman’s acknowledged legacy is a language and logic that compellingly describes the post-Modern condition, we demonstrate that Bauman’s vocabulary of liquidity and ambiguity is also useful in critiquing the concepts that we have traditionally relied upon to makes sense of the social world. We conclude that fluid and hybridic concepts like prosumption (which makes the explicit assumption that production and consumption always co-exist) admit a significant degree of ambiguity, making them far better suited toward interpreting a post-Modern world than their binary predecessors.
Ethics and Social Welfare
ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, 2021
This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways... more This dissertation begins with the assumption that the porn industry has radically changed in ways we are yet to fully understand. Drawing on interviews and auto-ethnography, it attempts to offer three distinct theoretical lenses through which these changes can be observed. First, I examine what is bought and sold in cam rooms, concluding that the work of cam modeling (both on camera and behind the scenes) has many dimensions that are not captured by reductionist tropes about selling one’s body. Second, I argue that camming fits a broader pattern in online content, where clear divisions between producer and consumer begin to break down. I conclude that camming (and especially custom content/shows) can best understood as prosumer pornography (i.e., as a co-creation of model and viewer). Finally, I explore the ways in which sex cam models actively develop intimacy with clients in spite of the fact that the interactions are defined by social and spatial distance; technological mediation; asymmetry; gendered expectations; and commercial transaction.
While it is no longer debatable that in order to comprehend contemporary politics one must first ... more While it is no longer debatable that in order to comprehend contemporary politics one must first understand digital media, the work of theorizing the political dynamics of the digital age is still very much in its infancy-in fact, one might even say such theoretical work is still in an embryonic stage, given that so many of the commonly cited works on the topic predate popular adoption of the World Wide Web (let alone the emergence of smartphones). However, two recent books, McKenzie Wark's Telesthesia and David Savat's Uncoding the Digital, set about the pressing task of historically situating the recent explosion of digital technologies and the new political conditions of the digitally mediated lives we now lead.
We begin with a quick overview of the sociological understanding of subjectivity and two of its k... more We begin with a quick overview of the sociological understanding of subjectivity and two of its key elements: embodiment and the social conditions of subjectification. We argue that contemporary subjects are embodied simultaneously by organic flesh and by digital prostheses, while, at the same time, contemporary society maintains a conceptual boundary between "the online" and "the offline" that artificially separates and devalues digitally mediated experiences. Because we collectively cling to the online/offline binary, the online aspects both of ourselves and of our being in the world are consequently diminished and discounted. The culturally dominant tendency to see "online" and "offline" as categories that are separate, opposed, and even zero-sum is what Nathan Jurgenson (2011, 2012a) terms dualism, and it leads us to erroneously identify digital technologies themselves as the primary causal agents behind what are, in complex social problems. In our final section, we use so-called "cyberbullying" as an example of how digital dualist frames fail to capture the ways that subjects experience being in our present socio-technological milieu.
Theorizing about consumption has been a part of the field of sociology since its earliest days, d... more Theorizing about consumption has been a part of the field of sociology since its earliest days, dating back, at least implicitly, to the work of Karl Marx in the midto late nineteenth century. However, Thorstein Veblen's (1899) The Theory of the Leisure Class is generally seen as the first major theoretical work to take consumption as its primary focus (although in the body of his, work Veblen, like most other classic thinkers, focused on production - industry and business - not consumption). Despite these early roots, research on consumption began in earnest in the second half of the twentieth century in Europe, especially Great Britain. Interest in the topic among US sociologists was much slower to develop and i~ is still not a focal concern of many American sociologists. In fact, efforts have been underway for many years to form a Section in the American Sociological Association devoted to the study of consumption, but as yet th.ose efforts have not succeeded. The irony of this is that the US is seen as the quintessential consumer society and has been a major exporter of its products, brands, and consumption sites (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart) to the rest of the world. It may be that consumption is sucb a central part of American life that it seems unproblematic, not only to most Americans, but also to the majority of American sociologists. It also may be that the recipients of American consumption exports in other parts of the world are more troubled by them so that sociologists there are drawn more to the topic. American sociologists (and others) also continue to be locked into the productivist bias that dominated the discipline in its early years and, therefore, have been slow to recognize the importance of consumption.
This article is a critical examination of how capitalism has adapted to the explosion of websites... more This article is a critical examination of how capitalism has adapted to the explosion of websites devoted to user-generated content (commonly referred to as social media or Web 2.0). The author proceeds by reviewing how Marx applies the concepts of alienation and exploitation to his paradigmatic example (i.e., the factory); the author then attempts to extend the logic of both concepts to determine what they might reveal about the structural conditions of social media. A difference of prime importance between the two case studies is that factory work is wage labor coerced by economic necessity, whereas use of social networking sites is apparently voluntary and done freely. The author concludes by arguing that social media users are subject to levels of exploitation relatively consistent with industrial capitalism, whereas the structural conditions of the digital economy link profitability to a reduction in the intensity of alienation. Finally, he infers that social media is not economically beneficial to most users.
Work and play have not always been distinct phenomena. However, as Western civilization transitio... more Work and play have not always been distinct phenomena. However, as Western civilization transitioned to capitalism, work became synonymous with alienation. Unlike play, alienated labor is not intrinsically rewarding, and it is certainly not fun. For this reason, Marx once observed that “as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.” Yet, capitalism is not static; it has proven remarkably flexible in adapting itself to new circumstances. Alienation is simply a means of achieving capitalism’s true purpose: i.e., the accumulation of wealth via exploitation. Alienated labor, however, has its limits. Individuals are psychologically capable of handling only so much alienation. Moreover, the material abundance associated with consumer society makes it increasingly difficult to convince individuals that so much alienated labor is justified when our basic needs are so easily met. So, while alienated labor was still an intrinsic feature of consumer capitalism, (Post-Fordist) capitalism has developed in a different direction: It seeks to exploit the kinds of activities that people already do voluntarily (e.g., socializing and play). Gamification is one such process native to Post-Fordist capitalism that implodes the distinction between work and play (itself originally exaggerated by capitalism) to create the new phenomenon that some have termed “playbor.” By introducing exploitation into play and then masking that exploitation, gamification creates a historically unique situation where workers enjoy highly exploitative activities. In other words, gamification is theft with a smile.
In this essay, we examine the economic dimensions of the increasingly fluid post-Modern world tha... more In this essay, we examine the economic dimensions of the increasingly fluid post-Modern world that Zygmunt Bauman has so famously chronicled over the past decade. We argue that fluidity is not completely unique to post-Modern society, and that, in fact, our social reality has always been far more fluid than is conveyed by the concepts used to describe them. What distinguishes post-Modernity is that many aspects of the social world are now characterized by such intense and rapid flows that conventional static binaries no longer appear tenable to even a casual observer. This is particularly true in the economic sphere which has experienced profound globalization in the post-War era. The emergence of the Internet intensified economic exchange to such an extraordinary degree that attempts to distinguish producer from consumer and production from consumption, prove utterly futile. While Bauman’s acknowledged legacy is a language and logic that compellingly describes the post-Modern condition, we demonstrate that Bauman’s vocabulary of liquidity and ambiguity is also useful in critiquing the concepts that we have traditionally relied upon to makes sense of the social world. We conclude that fluid and hybridic concepts like prosumption (which makes the explicit assumption that production and consumption always co-exist) admit a significant degree of ambiguity, making them far better suited toward interpreting a post-Modern world than their binary predecessors.