Jan Overwijk
Biographic Data
| ID | 295354 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan Overwijk |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan |
| FAMILY NAME | Overwijk |
| SIGNATURE | OVERWIJK J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Amsterdam |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7093-2992 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 148 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The Eccentric Commodity
Who or what produces surplus value across the economy-ecology nexus? The question is central to Marxism and to eco-Marxism more specifically. This article argues that only labor-power produces value and develops what it calls the work theory of value . It argues, first, that abstract labor, the source of all value, comes onto the historical scene as labor-power. Second, it shows that labor-power has both a use-value, its capacity to do thermodyna…
The Vitalist Alternative
Over the past decades, much social theory has registered a shift in modernity from social closure to social openness. Bureaucracies have been superseded by market forces, lifelong jobs by precarious gigs, and institutionalized discipline by pervasive control. Society’s bounded units have become porous networks, and social agency has shifted from the system to its environment. This impulse by what I call sociologies of openness has cast suspicion …
Epigraph
Spiraling into Control
Developed by Max Weber and the Frankfurt School, the theory of rationalization holds that instrumental reason increasingly drives out forms of political reason. Modernity is thus caught up in a technical logic of closure that eclipses its emancipatory promise, ending in Weber’s “iron cage” or Adorno and Horkheimer’s “totally administered society.” The problem with this narrative, however, is that it turns on a separation between technics and poli…
Critical Systems Theory
This chapter develops a critical systems theory: an unlikely synthesis of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and critical social theory. Historically, Luhmann and critical theory have been sharply at odds with each other. The chapter discusses two main points of contention between these approaches, namely the primacy of the capitalist economy in modern society, and the possibility of critical observation as a combination of theory and practice. The …
Epilogue
This epilogue asks why our “societies of control” often seem so terribly out of control. Over the last decades, there has been a resurgence of radical-right politics and a growing prominence of conspiracy theorizing, resulting in the storming of the German Reichstag and the US Capitol. Traditionally, the theory of rationalization has always highlighted irrationalization as its dialectical shadow. Since cybernetic rationalization puts the incommun…
Cybernetic Rationalization
This chapter examines the cybernetic mode of rationalization, a new strategy for governing society’s paradoxes that attempts to put the incommunicable to work. Breaking with the thermodynamic strategy of suppression at around the 1970s, cybernetic rationalization instead provokes and exploits systems’ openness to their ecologies. To see how this works, the chapter first investigates the post-Fordist work process and shows how it is organized to e…
Copyright Page
Cybernetic Capitalism
This book develops a critical systems theory in order to conceptualize the cybernetic rationalization of contemporary capitalism. The concept of rationalization was coined by Max Weber and developed in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It captured the proliferation of “instrumental reason”—a technical logic of control advancing at the expense of political rationalities. With this concept, these thinkers tracked tendencies of centraliza…
Marxism Without Irony
Paradoxes of Rationalisation
For the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, rationalisation is a central concept that refers to the socio-cultural closure of capitalist modernity due to the proliferation of technical, 'instrumental' rationality at the expense of some form of political reason. This picture of rationalisation, however, hinges on a separation of technology and politics that is both empirically and philosophically problematic. This article aims to re…
Cybernetic Capitalism
This book develops a critical systems theory in order to conceptualize the cybernetic rationalization of contemporary capitalism. The concept of rationalization was coined by Max Weber and developed in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It captured the proliferation of “instrumental reason”—a technical logic of control advancing at the expense of political rationalities. With this concept, these thinkers tracked tendencies of centraliza…
Paradoxes of Rationalisation
For the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, rationalisation is a central concept that refers to the socio-cultural closure of capitalist modernity due to the proliferation of technical, 'instrumental' rationality at the expense of some form of political reason. This picture of rationalisation, however, hinges on a separation of technology and politics that is both empirically and philosophically problematic. This article aims to re…
Paradoxes of Rationalisation
For the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, rationalisation is a central concept that refers to the socio-cultural closure of capitalist modernity due to the proliferation of technical, 'instrumental' rationality at the expense of some form of political reason. This picture of rationalisation, however, hinges on a separation of technology and politics that is both empirically and philosophically problematic. This article aims to re…
The Vitalist Alternative
Over the past decades, much social theory has registered a shift in modernity from social closure to social openness. Bureaucracies have been superseded by market forces, lifelong jobs by precarious gigs, and institutionalized discipline by pervasive control. Society’s bounded units have become porous networks, and social agency has shifted from the system to its environment. This impulse by what I call sociologies of openness has cast suspicion …
Epigraph
Spiraling into Control
Developed by Max Weber and the Frankfurt School, the theory of rationalization holds that instrumental reason increasingly drives out forms of political reason. Modernity is thus caught up in a technical logic of closure that eclipses its emancipatory promise, ending in Weber’s “iron cage” or Adorno and Horkheimer’s “totally administered society.” The problem with this narrative, however, is that it turns on a separation between technics and poli…
Critical Systems Theory
This chapter develops a critical systems theory: an unlikely synthesis of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory and critical social theory. Historically, Luhmann and critical theory have been sharply at odds with each other. The chapter discusses two main points of contention between these approaches, namely the primacy of the capitalist economy in modern society, and the possibility of critical observation as a combination of theory and practice. The …
Epilogue
This epilogue asks why our “societies of control” often seem so terribly out of control. Over the last decades, there has been a resurgence of radical-right politics and a growing prominence of conspiracy theorizing, resulting in the storming of the German Reichstag and the US Capitol. Traditionally, the theory of rationalization has always highlighted irrationalization as its dialectical shadow. Since cybernetic rationalization puts the incommun…
Cybernetic Rationalization
This chapter examines the cybernetic mode of rationalization, a new strategy for governing society’s paradoxes that attempts to put the incommunicable to work. Breaking with the thermodynamic strategy of suppression at around the 1970s, cybernetic rationalization instead provokes and exploits systems’ openness to their ecologies. To see how this works, the chapter first investigates the post-Fordist work process and shows how it is organized to e…
Copyright Page
Cybernetic Capitalism
This book develops a critical systems theory in order to conceptualize the cybernetic rationalization of contemporary capitalism. The concept of rationalization was coined by Max Weber and developed in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. It captured the proliferation of “instrumental reason”—a technical logic of control advancing at the expense of political rationalities. With this concept, these thinkers tracked tendencies of centraliza…
Marxism Without Irony
The Eccentric Commodity
Who or what produces surplus value across the economy-ecology nexus? The question is central to Marxism and to eco-Marxism more specifically. This article argues that only labor-power produces value and develops what it calls the work theory of value . It argues, first, that abstract labor, the source of all value, comes onto the historical scene as labor-power. Second, it shows that labor-power has both a use-value, its capacity to do thermodyna…
Critical Theory and Philosophy (5 works) · Rationalization (economics) (3 works) · Critical theory (2 works) · Modernity (2 works) · Openness to experience (2 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (2 works) · Politics (2 works) · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism (2 works) · Systems theory (2 works) · Agency (philosophy) (1 works)