For a critical cultural political economy

This paper argues that, if cultural political economy is to be worthwhile, it needs to be critical of its object. In order to develop its critical und erstanding of contemporary society, it needs to do at least three things. F irstly, while the cultural turn has corrected and sometimes inverted econom ic reductionism's dismissive treatment of culture and the lifeworld, it nee ds to avoid reducing economic systems to the lifeworld in which they are em bedded, so that the extent to which systems are responsible for economic an d cultural effects-good or bad-is not obscured. Secondly, it needs to take a more critical look at the social and cultural embedding of economic activ ities, and at the way system mechanisms of capital accumulation and uneven development have powerful disembedding and disruptive effects. Thirdly, it needs to reconsider, rather than ignore, classical political economy, which was always cultural and is still of relevance today, even though it failed to anticipate new issues of cultural and political significance, such as t he politics of identity.