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Power, Systems and Everyday Life
Culture & Capital – How Power Operates Through Culture
CULTURE & CAPITAL
HOW POWER OPERATES THROUGH CULTURE
Culture is often treated as secondary — as decoration, entertainment, or personal taste. We argue that culture is where power becomes ordinary – embedded in habits, institutions or expectations and how it operates through culture, class, labour and ideology. With articles examining capitalism, systems, history and the forces that shape everyday life, we can see culture is not there to escape systems, but to understand how they operate — and where they might be resisted.
HOW POWER OPERATES THROUGH CULTURE
Culture & Capital explores how economic structures, political ideologies and material conditions shape everyday life — from work and consumption to creativity and resistance. Culture does not exist apart from the systems that sustain it.
Many articles on this page examine historical moments of rupture: revolutions, civil unrest, mass movements and ideological shifts. These moments reveal how deeply culture is entangled with material conditions, and how change often emerges from collective pressure rather than individual reform.
Culture does not float above material reality. It is shaped by systems — economic, political, ideological — that determine whose voices are amplified, whose labour is valued, and whose lives are rendered precarious or invisible. Culture & Capital is where Pen vs Sword examines those systems directly, not as abstractions, but as forces embedded in history, culture and daily experience.
Here we also ask how power actually works: how it reproduces itself, how it disguises itself, and how it is occasionally disrupted. Rather than treating culture as lifestyle or ornament, this space insists on culture as a battleground where value, meaning and legitimacy are negotiated.
In an era marked by inequality, instability and ecological strain, understanding these forces is no longer optional. They shape not only markets, but identities, values and futures.
VALUE – IDEOLOGY – REPERESENTATION AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY
Pen vs Sword approaches culture as a place where power becomes ordinary — embedded in habits, aspirations and assumptions. Rather than treating capitalism as an abstract system, these articles also examine how it is lived: through work, migration, protest, history and memory. Capitalism does not only shape markets — it shapes imagination. It influences what kinds of lives feel possible, what kinds of labour feel legitimate, and what kinds of stories dominate public space.
By reading culture through capital, these pieces help make visible the systems that are often treated as natural or inevitable.
The Featured articles and cultural critiques below examine how power operates through culture, shaping labour, class, ideology, identity and everyday life. Spanning historical rupture and contemporary critique, these pieces explore how economic systems are normalised, challenged and sometimes overturned through collective action, cultural expression and political imagination. Together, they trace the material forces that underpin culture, and the ways people respond when those forces become visible, contested or unsustainable.
The Womens March on Versailles – A Turning Point in the French Revolution
FEATURED THE WOMEN’S MARCH ON VERSAILLES
Hunger, class conflict and collective pressure
A foundational moment in the French Revolution, this practical protest started with material need and became symbolic of broader demands for political and economic change, showing how social forces emerge from economic conditions.
Beyond Capitalism – Exploring Alternatives for a Sustainable Future
DESMOND TUTU: HOPE, JUSTICE AND RECONCILLIATION
Justice, moral economy and institutional change
Tutu’s anti-apartheid work and leadership at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission show how legal, social and economic systems intersect — and how collective frameworks for justice attempt to transform power relations.
AfriCOBRA : Defining a Black Aesthetic in American Art
AfriCOBRA, or the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists, which emerged in 1968 on Chicago’s South Side as a revolutionary collective committed to creating a visual language that celebrated Black identity and culture.
Global division, systemic change and economic integration
The collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked not just the end of a geopolitical boundary, but a seismic shift in economic paradigms and cultural imaginaries. It ushered in the expansion of liberal democracy and market liberalisation across Europe — reshaping class relations, institutional alignments and collective expectations about freedom, cooperation and economic possibility.
The recurring question in Culture & Capital is how power sustains itself by becoming normal. Economic systems endure not only through force or policy, but through stories — about success, responsibility, merit and inevitability.
Culture & Capital does not offer a single ideological answer. Instead, it traces tensions — between profit and purpose, freedom and exploitation, growth and sustainability. It asks how economic power reproduces itself culturally, and where cracks appear that allow alternative ways of organising life to emerge.
Another key tension is between visibility and invisibility. Labour that sustains society is frequently hidden; suffering is abstracted into statistics; responsibility is diffused. These articles pay close attention to who bears the cost of both ideological and economic systems — and who benefits from their opacity.
Thinkers and figures associated with social justice, people’s history and systemic critique appear throughout this section, not as icons, but as entry points into larger questions about agency and structure. The articles resist both fatalism and naïve optimism, instead mapping the limits and possibilities of change.
What emerges is a picture of culture as both constrained and contested treating economic power not as destiny, but as something continuously reproduced — and therefore potentially transformed.
Art and Power | Resistance and Authority Meet
RELATED READING
The broader Culture and Capital themes of capitalism, ideology, labour, class and power can be deeply enriched by longer-form reading.
You’ll find thoughtful selections on: Capitalism and cultural theory – Class, labour and precarity – Media critique and propaganda – Historical materialism and Cultural critique in our bookshop – These selections are intended not as recommendations for consumption, but as tools for understanding.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE ARUNDHATI ROY: FIERCE ADVOCATE FOR JUSTICE
Literary Luminary and Voice for the Voiceless
This article examines the cultural impact of economic and political power, how storytelling intersects with systemic critique, and how Roy’s work engages with capitalism, imperialism, structural inequality and social transformation
Reminding us that ordinary people, when united, can spark extraordinary change. For modern labour movements, feminist activism, and social justice campaigns, their story is both a guide and an inspiration – proof that resilience, courage, and solidarity can leave a lasting mark on society.
You might also be interested in these categories which offer different angles on Culture and Capital – offering: attention, historical context, and critical distance. In a media environment designed to overwhelm, that in itself is a form of resistance.
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