ABSTRACT
The new economy is a discourse or, to be more precise, a set of discourses to which various actors in the United States have been contributing since December 1996 and which spread a little later to Europe. The justification for gathering these discourses together and subjecting them to examination is extremely simple: all of them make explicit reference to the terms ‘new economy’ or ‘new growth’, all of them seek to define and illustrate these terms and all of them seem to agree on their characteristics. Who is contributing to these discourses, and who is diffusing them? What are the major themes? Are these ideas coherent? The answer to this third question will be developed gradually in the chapters that follow, but the main thrust of our response will be indicated in this chapter. Yes, indeed, there is some degree of logical coherence between these various discourses on the new economy. However, this coherence is limited and has to be partially reconstructed, rather in the manner of anthropologists analysing the structure of myths. And no, there is no scholarly theory of this new mythical age: the only academic studies that might help to underpin these idealised representations of the new order are, by virtue of their scholarly objectivity, potentially critical of these normative discourses. They reveal their Janus-faced aspect, the issues at stake and risks involved as well as the contradictions inherent in them, and therefore encourage us not to adhere to them slavishly. This is particularly the case with the academic theory of greatest relevance to our purpose, namely that of the ‘information society’, the most accomplished version of which is that advanced by Manuel Castells.
