6.6.5. Communication History and Institutions
The mediation of communication is connected to diferent organisations of spaces and times of communication. Communication can take place at the same time or at diferent times (synchronous/asynchronous communication) and at the same place or at diferent places. Means of communication allow the temporal and spatial distanciation of communication and are at the same time constructing joint social spaces of communication that re-embed disembedded communication. Humans can traverse distances and stay connected to each other and communicate with each other in a mobile manner with the help of communication technologies.
The history of communication technology is however not simply a history of spaces and times of communication or of scientific-technological progress. There are actual social needs and institutions that bring about new spatial and temporal organisations of communication and new communications systems. Class rule, political rule and their combination in specific forms of politicaleconomic rule (empires, nation states, imperialism, global capitalism, etc.) require communicative orders that organise social relations of domination in time and space. The history of communication(s) is therefore bound up with history of class, domination and class struggles. Williams (1989, 172) therefore stresses that communications are not simply technologies, but at the same time social relations, which is why ‘communications systems have always to be seen as social institutions’.
6.6.6. Work and Communication: Communication at Work and the Work of Communication
There is an etymological diference between work and labour (Fuchs 2015, 24–25). Marx (1867) expresses this duality as the dialectic of concrete and abstract labour. Work is the social production of novelty that satisfies human needs. It is the concrete dimension of human production. Abstract labour in contrast refers to the class dimension of work organised in class-based societies. So whereas work is a general feature of society, labour is the organisation of work in class-based societies, which implies unequal ownership, surplus appropriation, and exploitation. What is the relationship between work and communication?
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