Alexia Madeleine Cameron
Having moved to Melbourne, Australia, from New Zealand to undertake a PhD awarded in 2017, Alexia is an independent sociologist passionate about realising an economy of desire. Since the publication of her first book in 2018, she continues to develop her practice which situates affect and feeling within immaterial labour, work, and production. She explores affective architectures that shape atmospheres and feed cultural capitalism yet exist irrespectively of it.
Subjects: Philosophy, Research Methods, Sociology & Social Policy
Biography
Having moved to Melbourne, Australia, from New Zealand to undertake a PhD awarded in 2017, Alexia is an independent sociologist passionate about realising an economy of desire. Since the publication of her first book in 2018, 'Affected labour in a café culture', she continues to refine and develop her practice which situates affect and feeling within the landscape of immaterial labour, work, and production. Her work is especially interested in economies of desire that feed cultural capitalism yet exist irrespectively of it, shaping selfhood, the metropolis, atmospheres, and the feel of the city. She is particularly interested in the works of Benedict de Spinoza (Baruch Spinoza) and Gilles Deleuze.Email: a.m.cameron AT hotmail.com
Education
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PhD (Sociology), La Trobe University, Melbourne, 2017
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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The sociology of emotion, feeling and affect (affect theory), alter-economics, postmodern cultures, ethnography and auto-ethnography, critical cultural theory, the sociology of work, and engaged sociology.
Personal Interests
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Alexia enjoys long walks especially on the beach, swimming in the ocean, engaging with a range of art, being in the streets, and observing and defamiliarising her everyday life.
Books
Articles
Point of difference: The lost premise of creativity in ‘creative work’
Published: Oct 18, 2021 by ephemera
Authors: Alexia Cameron
Subjects:
Sociology
Through the optics of affect, this note lays out the impossibility of creative work when those who are required to produce this creativity are not first free to themselves be affected.
Affect and the labor theory of value: A contemporary amendment
Published: Dec 02, 2020 by Compaso: Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology
Authors: Alexia Cameron
Subjects:
Sociology
Drawing on Melbourne, Australia, as an example of a ‘liveable’ metropolitan centre that is built of immaterial labor, this conceptual paper examines the separation, or disconnect, between culture and production in formal economics, compared with the integration of subjectivities, affect, audiences, and cultures that actually make and re- make (immaterial) values, to reimagine a new theory of value grounded in affect.
Reconfiguring Affected Labor as a Site of Resistance
Published: Feb 19, 2019 by Capacious
Authors: Alexia Cameron
Through engaging with the concept of ‘noncollaboration’ this paper suggests that labors of being affected—where value is generated through seducing workers, consumers, employers, brands, and audiences in concert with the atmosphere of the product—provide insightful and illustrative instances for noncollaboration on the ground. ‘
Affective Labour in ‘Hip’ Melbourne Cafés and Bars: In defence of Hardt and Negri’s thesis
Published: Nov 28, 2016 by Proceedings of The Australian Sociological Association Conference
Authors: Alexia Cameron
Subjects:
Consumer Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy, Social Psychology, Work & Organizational Psychology
This paper uses ethnographic methodology to expose the function of affect in both the accumulation of immaterial value within Melbourne’s café and bar culture, and the corresponding change to workers’ approaches to ‘service’, along with their clientele. The paper concludes that affective surpluses function in excess of the material products they enlarge, and hence move according to their own ethics, rather than the ethics of capitalism.