States of mutation Reconfigurations of modern state , business , and media *

This article sets out an analysis of the transformations and new configurations between the state, business and media in Puerto Rico. The traditional demarcations between these three spheres are in flux as are their corresponding socio-political networks revealing new public and private scenarios. The state has managed downsizing via “partnership” initiatives with private enterprise and non-governmental organizations. Simultaneously, business has assumed a discourse of “social responsibility” participating in joint projects with the local state agencies and NGOs. The media’s increasing involvement in social issues, in at times near independence of state generated directives, and at others, in direct concert with the state, is an important aspect of mediatic society. It shall be argued that the ever-increasing metamorphosis of mass media in tandem with other businesses, now constitute entities assuming roles previously filled exclusively by the state, and a concomitant transformation of the state resulting in the appearance a more mediatic-governmental entity. The new realignment of these spheres underline structural networks that reconfigure the world of the social and the public. In this sense we can identify contemporary social change, requiring re-conceptualization and analysis, as resulting from an emerging social configuration with fluid sociopolitical and cultural forms.


Introduction
When the modern state ceases to function as the guarantor of the public good and shifts its traditionally recognized, and legitimizing, responsibilities to private and semi-private/public entities, what implications for social analysis and policy can be identified?In this essay, I advance a critical analysis, on the basis of on certain contemporary transformations of three spheres of power -modern state, business, and media -in so far as these influence our experiences and understandings of the public and private.State-business-NGO partnerships (development triangle, third way-type politics), corporate social responsibility, and media economy,1 are key transformations for the new conditions of the public and the private.In this context, the traditional demarcations between these three spheres are in flux as are their corresponding socio-political networks disclosing new "public" and social scenarios.In what follows I seek to establish the new connections between them and to demystify much of the discursive arguments on these transformations such as inclusion, participation, community, social responsibility, and other promises.

State transformations: "partnerships" and the "relational" state
The politics of downsizing and "partnerships" constitute two governmental responses to the crisis of the modern state (Keynesian-welfare). 2 Following the experience of Puerto Rico, the policies of downsizing suppose a reduction of costs in the provision of services and programs provided by the state, whereby many services and projects are dispersed to NGOs or businesses through the assigning (contracts, subcontracts) of government funds.3Within this scenario a strategic relation can be identified between a neoliberal state4 in the process of reconfiguring itself into what has been theorized as a "relational state", mediated through "partnerships" (alliances and projects between government, business, and NGOs.5 Likewise, it is recognized that the state no longer occupies the commanding height of society given the existence of a mediatized world.The emerging complex citizenship as a scaffolding for the relational state, admits a state and social citizenship to which collective social rights are produced on the basis of a symbolic code as a means for the articulation of organizational networks between the public and private.6However, in so far as many of the "partnerships", in the case of Puerto Rico and the United States, rest upon the policies of downsizing, the discourse of "relational state" operates as a deployment of new values in the state-society relationship.A displacement can be observed from a Keynesian-welfare state to a "reduced ballast state".This state functions to maintain the buoyancy and growth of the economy while delegating social policy towards multiple entities.Nevertheless, it was found that this type of partnership discursively rests upon suppositions of a relational state, networks, cooperation, and mutual aid. Empowered women, entrepreneurial communities and cooperation of private and public organizations are part of this new discourse.The strength of the discourse on the community, volunteering and citizen participation as the solution to diverse social problems is always already present in the discursive field of partnerships. 7The technologies of the self and common values' combine in order to produce the discursive effect of network productivity and concomitant social progress.This notwithstanding, the economic nature of these "partnerships" are established on the basis of state funds funneled towards business and NGO.8When examining this type of "partnership", its comportment and discourse consists of competition and the securing of funding.Likewise, the tertiary sector, from which the volunteer is drawn, incurs the costs of services derivative of partnerships, at bargain basement prices.Through these partnerships, it is the state that makes an investment in the services provided, however, these services are degraded, as are the conditions of work in the tertiary sector.9I also found that some of the non-profit organizations that offer services, for example in the area of social services, are entities created by the island's dominant political parties with its implications of clientelism.10Far from strengthening responsible, autonomous social subjects, this outsourcing of previously state run service and support provision actually results in an alienation from these non-governmental providers as their operational logic turns upon the logic of securing funding.The idea of co-responsibility operates as a discursive field that occludes the perception of a debilitated state, however, with increasing mechanisms for social control (technocratized biopolitics) and mediatically projected as a legitimate state.11

Business and corporate social responsibility
Within the context of globalization, increasing cases of corporate corruption, environmental crisis and a mediatized world, business has been transformed into a model based upon the notion of corporate social responsibility, which assume diverse modalities. 12From this perspective, the processes, agenda and work cultures that have been articulated under a corporate image makes it more relevant given the context of a mediatic and globalized society. 13These corporate guidelines have been translated into programs, projects and services to communities with which these businesses interact, or may be influenced in some way.Under the contrivance of corporate social responsibility, specifically in the case of partnerships with government and NGOs, business is able to position itself in multi-polar fashion.On the one side, business assumes the discourse of co-responsibility and cooperation in its role and mediatic projection.Within the context of downsizing, business also competes, negotiates and absorbs state resources through contracts resulting from "partnerships".
Another variant of the partnership model is when a business decides to invest in a community project, at times making this investment through a NGO, which in turn is transformed into the company's ambassador.At the political level the image and survival of the NGO depends upon the company that subcontracted it.On the other hand, under the discourse of corporate social responsibility, the company places its employees as a labor pool of volunteers in communities or in mediatic campaigns.The volunteer labor of the company's employees is imposed as a condition of employment within a context of job insecurity and a mechanism for greater subjection of sociallabor to exploitation and oppression.In like manner, the word "community" is employed as a synonym for the economy. 14Another variant of the identity and amplification of the business agenda occurs when a company undertakes a social or cultural project of major mediatic or symbolic impact. 15he discourse of corporate social responsibility, business mediatization and "partnerships" with government and NGOs reconfigure the representation of the classical business enterprise into one which is in contact with, and attentive to, the social problems of the country, indeed, of the world.Following these new alliances and changed agendas, business is projected as a type of pseudostate.
13 To these transformations are added the liberation of financial services, simple consolidation (industrial and financial) and the intersected consolidation (industrial financial and insurance) of corporations.Also, between architecture and the projection of customer service and culture, banks been able to strengthen was has been termed customer-centricity (Sheth, 2000). 14For example, as of the Community Reinvestment Act (12 CFR 25, et seq., 1977), that obligates the banking sector in the United States and its territories to promote banking services and resources for the local under-served communities and satisfy the credit needs of these communities.The idea of "community" and banking services are subsumed under the logic of inclusion/exclusion of the economic engine. 15In the case of Puerto Rico, the Banco Popular (Popular Bank) has marketed itself as promoter of national culture through the production of musical productions related to the unity of the Christmas season.The Banco Popular achieves greater relevance by its promotion of Puerto Rican culture, not to mention its already existing global markets.

Media and mediatization
At present the capabilities of the media in the production of the real and the processes of massmediatization are key in the registering of the social and what constitutes "public" space.The innovations and technological convergence represented by the amplification of communicative agendas make the media a sphere of power capable of linking and assuming roles previously concentrated in the modern state.Simultaneously, the image, the simulation, and the screen, structure reality with overarching effects registered by spectators in new ways.Javier Esteinou Madrid describes this process of mediatic change as follows: "the technological revolution of the information media are transformed into the basic tools for the construction of the public and to act upon things public" (Estenou Madrid, 2002, p. 1).
In the context of mass culture, spectacularization and globalization, the communications media have been constituted as textual-discursive spaces that shape the attributes and understandings of the social world.The radicalness of mass culture and globalization consists of its implosion of the notion of culture (humanist, religious, and national) while it sustains what a culture is through its referents of practical and imaginary life.Globalization and its different meanings lead to a weakening of the frontiers between economy, culture and politics, in so far as different persons and sectors appropriate this communicative differential process in order to produce their interests at a local and planetary level, wherein global social relations are intensified.The signs and signification's that carry virtual texts rupture territorial geography and its corollary, the nation-state.From here stems the contingency and complexity in the formation of subjectivities and meanings of the social and the political.The actual and the virtual are simultaneously united and dislocated in order to go beyond the real as social bond.The massmediatization of all spheres of social life, in like manner, agglutinates all that is dispersed and separate in the world.From the talk show, reality show to the documentary and investigative journalism and other variants of infotainment are offered and function as organizers of mediatic spaces as the real.Therefore, the mediatic assumes primacy over the private and the real, which are simultaneously lodged within that space.This mediatic space unites all and goes on to constitute a center of political, social and cultural power. 16Public opinion is created by way of surveys, manufacturing the news and what comes to be known as the problem, and producing the private, as well as the use of such novel mechanisms as "hot lines" to attend to the problems of communities and citizens.In this sense, within the media a certain affinity with the state is created, and to a certain degree enters into competition with its traditional informational function.The media as a sign of "state" points no only towards an expansion of its communicative agenda to a social and public one, but also the arresting of citizens attention.The media as part of this new economy is produced as a new political-cultural force that unfolds in its diverse modalities "the real of the world" and organizes that which we call state, politics, society, culture and public space.
Given this state of affairs, it can be argued that a decomposition and re-articulation of the state, business, and media presupposes that the public space has been converted into a "relational", mediatic, and transparent space, where these three spheres intersect, carry out their new roles, and up to a certain point, are in a leveling position.The idea of "state" is transmuted, and in light of this, the need arises to reexamine the notions of responsibility, rights, demands, the public and the private.Two initial questions arise from these transformations: First, in what ways can we interrogate the discursive ideas of participation, cooperation, solidarity, and inclusiveness?Second, what kind of public space17 can be produced considering the realignment between the state, business, and media?