Political Aesthetics In the end, the probability of actually exploiting resistant potential rests on the consumer's position on a continuum between what I call "analogue" and "digital aesthetics". At the analogue end of the continuum, I have presented forms of outspoken, explicitly alternative action in both positive ideology and actual transformations of human-technology relationships in alternative collectives. These forms are based largely on the aesthetics of authenticity that is attributed in my case to forms of technology from an era that is portrayed as more humane and characterised by artistic (and political) integrity. The original vinyl record release from the 1960s can thus become an expression of solidarity with these values. In the same manner, the CD epitomises the abstraction of the individual into a faceless consumer with externally generated wants and needs who is powerless to refuse integration by classification. Noteworthy examples for explicitly rule-altering practices from my data are Red's, Orange's and Green's (127-129) Punk/Hardcore DIY attitudes and practices near the 'analogue end' of the continuum, as well as Brown's label networking in his own field of taste (17). By digital aesthetics, I refer to what I call 'pragmatic infiltration' of systems as they are, the creation of individual niches from which of human-technology relations are not programmatically transformed on a communal basis but exploited for individual goals. Individuals who profit from negative ideology on the individual level tend to put more emphasis on aesthetics of use and function, and display relative willingness and competitiveness to integrate themselves into the (economic) system, carving out their niches that allow for self-classification. In this sense, I see Purple, White and Silver (296, 306) as exploiting the system from self-manufactured niches. Quite often, this attitude and practice was preceded by the move from idealism to realism (cf. 274 above). Silver, for example, profits from the democratised digital means of production in both his business and his creative work of Hiphop production. Purple shaped a mainstream niche on the basis of his accumulated subcultural capital. At his workplace, White uses his cultural and subcultural capital to mediate between commercial and artistic interests. In the end, what I describe here are only tendencies based on my observation and interpretation of the interview data. As I have noted at the beginning, the data may be cross-read to attain slightly different results. More importantly, though, my interpretation of the data allows for preliminary conclusions on the epistemological level. On the level of the text, it has been shown that style and taste are more individual nowadays, less tied to specific groups and relying more on loose affiliations based on temporary overlaps of aesthetics. Aesthetics, from the perspective of consumption, has been redefined as a political imaginative task for a global disjunct world in motion. The consumption of records is based on the aesthetics of taste and lifestyle and must therefore be active, thus, the record collector is a social agent - but not necessarily critical. The use of vinyl is a form of 'meta-consumption' since it produces layers of meaning on top of each other that determine the extent to which it is political. This political aesthetics relates to the politics of identity, creates social practices of distinction and self-positioning that, in turn, is a result of the embodiment of relations between culture and power. Aesthetics in this sense means less a sense of what is beauty and art and what is not, but what is in tune with one's own social and political convictions. Music consumption in general, and specifically the choice of sound format, have been characterised as aesthetic and (therefore) political practice. Theory on the politics of the everyday, here discussed as subpolitics, have proven their use in overcoming dualisms of pleasure and work and raised questions on how individual or autonomous identity can possibly be. As I have alluded to in this chapter, the conditions and constraints for individual exploitation of critical potential are diverse and interlinked, and require systematic description for social fields and narrative evocation for individuals. Appadurai's work on the late modern meaning and importance of the imagination (2000; cf. Anderson 1983, Frith 1996) would need to be extended by approaches that help to explain internalised mechanisms through disciplining of the self by a combination of internal and external forces. Foucault's work on biopower (1978, 1999) delivers worthwhile conceptional tools and could be supplemented by more recent discussions of the feasibility of these concepts for late modernism (cf. Hardt & Negri 2001; Butler et al. 2000). But the findings of this text have repercussions on the level of (social) science as well: Rereading my own text, I cannot help but understand the imaginative task (of the anthropologist) as inherently political. I have projected the arguments of my informants in a way that reflects my own personal aims and those related to this academic endeavour. In respect to the aims formulated in the chapter on ethnography, I feel I have not clarified my own position to the extent that I become a 'transparent observer'. But more importantly, since the limited scope of this text forbids such extensive discussion, I have noticed by my own example that our interpretation of society is always guided by a taken-for-granted and therefore largely unnoticed epistemological basis. In response, I situate my work as essentially 'anti-common sense' (cf. Herzfeld 2001). Discussions with fellow students about the topics dealt with in this text have pointed out important aspects that I could not deal with within the space provided. Notable, though, is the affinity between anthropology and vinyl consumption with respect to issues of critique and resistance. Maybe our academic field is suited to these fields of inquiries just because it has to deal with the same kind of contradictions between self-empowerment and being marginalised. The focus on 'practical sense' in the actions of informants may be extended to science in general, where Flyvbjerg introduces 'phronesis' as 'a sense for what really matters' (cf. footnote Ch.2): "the purpose of social science is not to develop theory, but to contribute to society's practical rationality in elucidating where we are, where we want to go, and what is desirable according to diverse sets of values and interests" (2001:167). Similarly, Marcus (1996) sees the duty of academia in making information accessible to people in general. The third and final cycle (Part 3) reordered the posed questions along lines from which a picture emerges that fuses these spheres of culture back into the overall cultural flow, showing that seemingly banal everyday activities reflect a political meaning ascribed to them through consumption driven by aesthetic judgements and based on a position between analogue and digital aesthetics. Drawing together different texts in different formats, produced within and/or about the taste culture, illuminated the intricate web of recursively productive links that shape and (auto)pilot the organic cultures of our everyday lives and their paths of reproduction and recycling. What is required of academia to make a worthwhile contribution outside its restricted field is a general acceptance of the recursiveness and resulting fuzziness of social systems (Dimitrov & Hodge 2002), the realisation that everything is connected in many ways. Network theory might be of help to define conditions and constraints of the distribution of ideologies (cf. Barabasi 2002) and the 'biopolitics' that reproduce them and, in turn, are shaped by these practices. For the reasons mentioned here I would actually go so far as to label late modernity in Western industrialised countries a 'post-digital age': the slowly growing awareness that all things social are organic, multi-layered and -sited, and ever-changing (and that makes academic description more unreliable and perspectival) amounts, as I hope, to a progressive shift to the acknowledgement of our own dispositions as academics and our task as unavoidably political. In a similar sense, my account should make clear that consumers' self-empowerment is a case of an "epistemological tightrope walk", that is, becoming aware of this interconnected and organic nature of human organisation, and overcoming the 'trialism' of society - polity - economy that is culture. Admitting that the world is in constant flow, and that constructed boundaries (be they physical or mental) are in fact permeable and fuzzy, is the key to an awareness that will aid both real life as a consumer and the academic task of making sense of it.