Showing papers on "Capitalism published in 2001"

Varieties of capitalism: the institutional foundations of comparative advantage

Abstract: What are the most important differences among national economies? Is globalization forcing nations to converge on an Anglo-American model? What explains national differences in social and economic policy? This pathbreaking work outlines a new approach to these questions. It highlights the role of business in national economies and shows that there is more than one path to economic success.

Varieties of Capitalism

Abstract: Scholarship on varieties of capitalism (VofC) explores the ways in which the institutions structuring the political economy affect patterns of economic performance or policy making and the distribution of well-being. Contesting the claim that there is one best route to superior economic performance, a number of schemas have been proposed to explain why countries have often been able to secure substantial rates of growth in different ways, often with relatively egalitarian distributions of income. Prominent among them is a VofC analysis focused on the developed democracies that distinguishes liberal and coordinated market economies according to the ways in which firms coordinate their endeavors. On the basis of institutional complementarities among subspheres of the political economy, it suggests that the institutional structure of the political economy confers comparative institutional advantages, notably for radical and incremental innovation, which explains why economies have not converged in the context of globalization. Although this framework is contested, it has inspired new research on many subjects, including the basis for innovation, the determinants of social policy, the grounds for international negotiation, and the character of institutional change. In this issue area, there is promising terrain for further research into the origins of varieties of capitalism, the factors that drive institutional change in the political economy, how institutional arrangements in the subspheres of the political economy interact with one another, the normative underlay for capitalism, and the effects of varieties of capitalism on multiple dimensions of well-being. Keywords: capitalism; political economy; globalization; politics; institutional change; economic growth; macroeconomics; innovation; complementarities; social policy

An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism

Abstract: Political economists have always been interested in the differences in economic and political institutions that occur across countries. Some regard these differences as deviations from 'best practice' that will dissolve as nations catch up to a technological or organizational leader. Others see them as the distillation of more durable historical choices for a specific kind of society, since economic institutions condition levels of social protection, the distribution of income, and the availability of collective goods — features of the social solidarity of a nation. In each case, comparative political economy revolves around the conceptual frameworks used to understand institutional variation across nations. On such frameworks depend the answers to a range of important questions. Some are policy-related. What kind of economic policies will improve the performance of the economy? What will governments do in the face of economic challenges? What defines a state's capacities to meet such challenges? Other questions are firm-related. Do companies located in different nations display systematic differences in their structure and strategies? If so, what inspires such differences? How can national differences in the pace or character of innovation be explained? Some are issues about economic performance. Do some sets of institutions provide lower rates of inflation and unemployment or higher rates of growth than others? What are the trade-offs in terms of economic performance to developing one type of political economy rather than another? Finally, second-order questions about institutional change and stability are of special significance today. Can we expect technological progress and the competitive pressures of globalization to inspire institutional conver-gence? What factors condition the adjustment paths a political economy takes in the face of such challenges? The object of this book is to elaborate a new framework for understanding the institutional similarities and differences among the developed economies, one that offers a new and intriguing set of answers to 1111 211 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 1 211 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 such questions. 1 We outline the basic approach in this Introduction. Subsequent chapters extend and apply it to a wide range of issues. In many respects, this approach is still a work-in-progress. We see it as a set of contentions that open up new research agendas rather than settled wisdom to be accepted …

Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography

Abstract: David Harvey is unquestionably the most influential, as well as the most cited, geographer of his generation. His reputation extends well beyond geography to sociology, planning, architecture, anthropology, literary studies and political science. This book brings together for the first time seminal articles published over three decades on the tensions between geographical knowledges and political power and on the capitalist production of space. Classic essays reprinted here include 'On the history and present condition of geography', 'The geography of capitalist accumulation' and 'The spatial fix: Hegel, von Thunen, and Marx'. Two new chapters represent the author's most recent thinking on cartographic identities and social movements. David Harvey's persistent challenge to the claims of ethical neutrality on behalf of science and geography runs like a thread throughout the book. He seeks to explain the geopolitics of capitalism and to ground spatial theory in social justice. In the process he engages with overlooked or misrepresented figures in the history of geography, placing them in the context of intellectual history. The presence here of Kant, Von Thunen, Humboldt, Lattimore, Leopold alongside Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, Darwin, Malthus, Foucault and many others shows the deep roots and significance of geographical thought. At the same time David Harvey's telling observations of current social, environmental, and political trends show just how vital that thought is to the understanding of the world as it is and as it might be.

Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction

Abstract: A vagabond, as is well known, moves from place to place without a fixed home. However, vagabondage insinuates a little dissolution—an unsettled, irresponsible, and disreputable life, which indeed can be said of the globalization of capitalist production. This paper reframes the discussion on globalization through a materialist focus on social reproduction. By looking at the material social practices through which people reproduce themselves on a daily and generational basis and through which the social relations and material bases of capitalism are renewed—and the havoc wreaked on them by a putatively placeless capitalism—we can better expose both the costs of globalization and the connections between vastly different sites of production. Focusing on social reproduction allows us to address questions of the making, maintenance, and exploitation of a fluidly differentiated labor force, the productions (and destructions) of nature, and the means to create alternative geographies of opposition to globalized capitalism. I will draw on examples from the “First” and “Third Worlds” to argue that any politics that effectively counters capitalism's global imperative must confront the shifts in social reproduction that have accompanied and enabled it. Looking at the political-economic, political-ecological, and cultural aspects of social reproduction, I argue that there has been a rescaling of childhood and suggest a practical response that focuses on specific geographies of social reproduction. Reconnecting these geographies with those of production, both translocally and across geographic scale, begins to redress the losses suffered in the realm of social reproduction as a result of globalized capitalist production. The paper develops the notion of “topography” as a means of examining the intersecting effects and material consequences of globalized capitalist production. “Topography” offers a political logic that both recognizes the materiality of cultural and social difference and can help mobilize transnational and internationalist solidarities to counter the imperatives of globalization.

Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism

Abstract: Millennial Capitalism: First Thoughts on a Second Coming / John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff Millennial Transitions / Irene Stengs, Hylton White, Caitrin Lynch, and Jeffrey A. Zimmermann Towards a Critique of Globalcentrism: Speculations on Capitalism's Nature / Fernando Coronil Lived Effects of the Contemporary Economy: Globalization, Inequality, and Consumer Society / Michael Storper The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder, Women, and Maquiladoreas / Melissa W. Wright Freeway to China (Version 2, for Liverpool) / Allan Sekula Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging / Peter Geschiere and Francis Myamnjoh Millennial Coal Face / Luiz Paulo Lima, Scott Bradwell, and Seamus Walsh Modernity's Media and the End of Mediumship? On the Aesthetic Economy of Transparency in Thailand / Rosalind C. Morris Living at the Edge: Religion, Capitalism, and the End of the Nation-State in Taiwan / Robert P. Weller Millenniums Past, Cuba's Future? / Paul Ryer Consuming Geist: Popontology and the Spirit of Capital in Indigenous Australia / Elizabeth A. Povinelli Cosmopolitanism and the Banality of Geographical Evils / David Harvey Contributors Index

On the grounds of globalization: a topography for feminist political engagement.

Abstract: lobalization is nothing new. Global trade has been going on for millennia-though what constitutes the "globe" has expanded dramatically in that time. And trade is nothing if not cultural exchange, the narrow distinctions between the economic and the cultural having long been rendered obsolete. Moreover, our forbears, like us, were great "miscegenators." If here I gloss the racialized and gendered violence often associated with miscegenation, I do so strategically to note that all recourse to purity, indigeneity, or aboriginalityhowever useful strategicallyshould be subject to at least as much scrutiny as the easy romance with hybridity (see Mitchell 1997). Globalization has been the signature dish of capitalism-a system of social relations of production and reproduction nourished by uneven development across a range of spatial scales, from the local or regional to the national or supranational, the ambitions of which have always been global since its birth in Europe more than five centuries ago. European-born mercantile capitalism early on was driven by a real expansion for markets and the goods to trade across them. This was nothing new, particularly, until the agents of capital began to assemble an empire and deployed the physical and symbolic violence intended to redirect toward European interests the globe Europeans were "discovering." With

New Regionalism Reconsidered: Globalization and the Remaking of Political Economic Space

Abstract: Amid the near frenzied exaltation of economic globalization and a purported decline of the nation state, a range of subnational regional economies and urban metropoles are increasingly being canonized as the paradigmatic exemplars of wealth creation. Indeed, across many of the advanced developed countries a whole host of academics, consultants, influential commentators, politicians and bourgeois interest groups are readily invoking the region to be the appropriate site for regulating global capitalism. In a recent article in IJURR, though, John Lovering disputes this emerging New Regionalism, viewing it to be seriously compromised by several practical and theoretical inadequacies. This article has two principal aims. First, and while sympathetic to the general tenor of Lovering’s critique, it offers a rejoinder through some sobering reflections on what might be recovered from the range of New Regionalist perspectives currently vying for attention within critical studies of regional development. Second, it presents a series of future theoretical directions for a geopolitically sensitive regional research agenda, drawing on recent thinking from the new regional geography, globalization and the politics of scale, institutional-relational state theory and the regulation approach. An argument is made that a synthesis of these perspectives might intensify our understanding of the social and political construction of regions, the uneven geography of growth, and the moments of re-scaled regionalized state power that now enframe the process of economic governance.

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy

Abstract: At no other moment in history have the values of business and the corporation been more nakedly and arrogantly in the ascendant Combining popular intellectual history with a survey of recent business culture, Thomas Frank traces an idea he calls 'market populism' - the notion that markets are, in some transcendent way, identifiable with democracy and the will of the people The idea that any criticism of things as they are is elitist can be seen in management literature, where downsizing and ceaseless, chaotic change are celebrated as victories for democracy; in advertising, where an endless array of brands seek to position themselves as symbols of authenticity and rebellion; on Wall street, where the stock market is identified as the domain of the small investor and common man; and, in the right-wing politics of the 1990s and the popular theories of Tom Peters, Charles Handy and Thomas Friedman "One Market Under God" is Frank's counterattack against the onslaught of market propaganda Mounted with the weapons of common sense, it is lucid and tinged with anger, betrayal and a certain hope for the future

Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe

Abstract: Conrad's Heart of Darkness comes to mind when one considers Western involvement in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union during the past decade. Like Kurtz, certain political, academic, and business leaders in the West once harbored lofty notions of weaning former communists from their savage ways and bringing them into the light of democracy and free markets. There was much rhetoric about how the West was going to help those countries transform their decrepit political and economic systems into burgeoning capitalist economies. Beneath all the eloquence, however, lay something much more mundane--greed and self-interest. Just as Kurtz discovered a heart of darkness behind all of his enlightened words, on examining the past ten years of financial aid to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, one finds mostly empty promises, squandered hopes, and bilateral corruption. Wedel's book, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, provides a fascinating and troubling window into this rapacity.With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, what Wedel calls "triumphalism" prevailed in the West. The forces of capitalism and democracy had won the cold war, yet no clear demarcation existed between victor and vanquished. Many in the East felt like victims, believing that defeat had either been imposed on them by the former elites or that the West shared responsibility. While many Westerners gloated, they displayed little urgency to help the former communist countries. Minus the physical destruction caused in a traditional war, Western analysts argued that advice, planning, and recommendations would serve as the mortar for the countries to rebuild. And there was no shortage of those willing to proffer (and profit from) this advice.The inconclusive cold war victory would not have permitted the West to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe, so many Western governments decided to channel aid through private firms. Smelling a fresh new market, Western consulting firms pounced and willingly accepted the role of political and economic consultants for these fledgling governments. However, the political and economic lessons those firms taught were not the most ennobling.Although the consulting firms claimed to represent Western interests, they were mostly concerned with generating profit for themselves. As Wedel points out, the overwhelming share of Western aid ended up in the coffers of the consulting companies. The often overpaid and underqualified consultants demonstrated their capitalist talents by constructing a nearly foolproof laundering mechanism. The secret to the scheme was the blurred lines between academic experts, private consultants, and government bureaucrats. For instance, Jeffrey Sachs, as economic/academic expert, could work with his former colleague, high-level bureaucrat Larry Summers, to ensure that Sachs's private consulting firm would get the contract for the privatization agenda for country X. The intended recipients were left out.The consulting firm's Eastern colleagues soon cracked the code as to how the aid game was played. Because the West was reluctant to work with those who once espoused Marxist principles, little coordination or collaboration existed between consulting firms and former government officials. Clever former communist bureaucrats (now free market champions) created their own private consulting firms. These private firms could then work with their Western counterparts and take their cut of any remaining aid.Because the bulk of aid money was not funding the rebuilding of factories, roads, or schools, but rather ephemeral advice, there were questions as to how to measure progress. If nothing else, the Western consulting firms were experts at creating glossy brochures and hosting high-level meetings where their future successes could be touted and discussed. …

Globalization Unmasked: Imperialism in the 21st Century

Abstract: * Contents * Introduction * 1. Globalization or Imperialism? * 2. Globalization: A Critical Analysis * 3. Globalization as Ideology * 4. Capitalism at the End of the Millennium * 5. The Labyrinth of Privatization * 6. Democracy and Capitalism: An Uneasy Relationship * 7. Cooperation for Development * 8. NGOs in the Service of Imperialism * 9. US Empire and Narco - Capitalism * 10. The Politics of US Hegemony: Right-wing Strategy in Practice * 11. Socialism in an Age of Imperialism

The Social Construction of the Ocean

Abstract: Introduction: from Davy Jones' locker to the Foot Locker: the case of the floating Nikes 1. The social construction of ocean-space 2. Ocean-space in non-modern societies 3. Ocean-space and merchant capitalism 4. Ocean-space and industrial capitalism 5. Ocean-space and postmodern capitalism 6. Beyond postmodern capitalism, beyond ocean-space.

Models of Capitalism: Growth and Stagnation in the Modern Era

Abstract: Preface. 1. Capitalist Models and Economic Growth. Part I: Capitalist Models: The Arguments: . 2. Liberal Capitalism: Retreat and Revival?. 3. 'Trust-Based' Capitalism: Revival and Retreat. Part II: Capitalist Models: The Evidence: . 4. The Power of Organized Labour. 5. Education, Training and Culture. 6. The Organization of Capital in the Pursuit of Growth. 7. The State as an Element in the Growth Equation. Part III: Conclusion: . 8. Capitalist Models and the Politics of the Left. Appendix: Theories of Growth. References. Index.

Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc

Abstract: A most comprehensive empirical analysis of the economic transformation of the former Soviet bloc during the first decade after communism. It debunks many myths, seeing transition as a struggle between radical reformers and those thriving on rent seeking. People have gained from fast and comprehensive reforms, but several countries have gotten stuck in corruption. Economic decline and social hazards have been greatly exaggerated, since people have forgotten how awful communism was. Swift liberalization of prices and foreign trade, as well as rapid and profound fiscal adjustment, have been vital for growth, institutional reforms, legality and greater equity. Privatization has been beneficial, and its effects will grow over time. The main problem has been the continuation of unregulated and ubiquitous state apparatuses living on corruption, while no country has suffered from too radical reforms. Where malpractices of the elite can be checked, market reforms and democracy have proceeded together.

The legacies of liberalism: path dependence and political regimes in Central America

Abstract: Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of "path dependence," Mahoney shows how choices made at crucial turning points in Central American history established certain directions of change and foreclosed others to shape long-term development. By the middle of the twentieth century, three types of political regimes characterized the five nations considered in this study: military-authoritarian (Guatemala, El Salvador), liberal democratic (Costa Rica), and traditional dictatorial (Honduras, Nicaragua). As Mahoney shows, each type is the end point of choices regarding state and agrarian development made by these countries early in the nineteenth century. Applying his conclusions to present-day attempts at market creation in a neoliberal era, Mahoney warns that overzealous pursuit of market creation can have severely negative long-term political consequences. The Legacies of Liberalism presents new insight into the role of leadership in political development, the place of domestic politics in the analysis of foreign intervention, and the role of the state in the creation of early capitalism. The book offers a general theoretical framework that will be of broad interest to scholars of comparative politics and political development, and its overall argument will stir debate among historians of particular Central American countries.

New Public Management and Substantive Democracy

Abstract: The authors are concerned that a remaining refuge of substantive democracy in America, the public sector, is in danger of abandoning it in favor of the market model of management. They argue that contemporary American democracy is confined to a shrunken procedural remnant of its earlier substantive form. The classical republican model of citizen involvement faded with the rise of liberal capitalist society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Capitalism and democracy coexist in a society emphasizing procedural protection of individual liberties rather than substantive questions of individual development. Today’s market model of government in the form of New Public Management goes beyond earlier “reforms,” threatening to eliminate democracy as a guiding principle in public-sector management. The authors discuss the usefulness of a collaborative model of administrative practice in preserving the value of democracy in public administration.

Expanding and Elaborating the Concept of Academic Capitalism

Abstract: In our recent book, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), we used the term ‘academic capitalism’ to define the way public research universities were responding to neoliberal tendencies to treat higher education policy as a subset of economic policy (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2000). In this policy environment faculty and professional staff increasingly must expend their human capital stocks in competitive environments. The implication is that some university employees are simultaneously employed by the public sector and are increasingly autonomous of it. They are academics who act as capitalists from within the public sector: they are state-subsidized entrepreneurs.1 Academic capitalism deals with market and market-like behaviors on the part of universities and faculty. Market-like behaviors refer to institutional and faculty competition for monies, whether these are from external grants and contracts, endowment funds, university–industry partnerships, institutional investment in professors’ spin-off companies, student tuition and fees, or some other revenue-generating activity. What makes these activities market-like is that they involve competition for funds from external resource providers. If institutions and faculty are not successful, there is no bureaucratic recourse; they do without. Market behaviors refer to for-profit activity on the part of institutions, activity such as patenting and subsequent royalty and licensing agreements, spin-off companies, arms-length corporations (corporations that are related to universities in terms of personnel and goals, but are chartered legally as separate entities), and university–industry partnerships when these have a profit component. Market activity also covers more mundane operations, such as the sale of products and services from educational endeavors, for example logos and sports paraphernalia, profit-sharing with food services and bookstores and the like. Volume 8(2): 154–161 Copyright © 2001 SAGE (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)

Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia

Abstract: Recent commentators on Russia's economic reforms have almost uniformly declared them a disappointing and avoidable failure. In this book, two American scholars take a new and more balanced look at the country's attempts to build capitalism on the ruins of Soviet central planning. They show how and why the Russian reforms achieved remarkable breakthroughs in some areas but came undone in others. Unlike Eastern European countries such as Poland or the Czech Republic, to which it is often compared, Russia is a federal, ethnically diverse, industrial giant with an economy heavily oriented toward raw materials extraction. The political obstacles it faced in designing reforms were incomparably greater. Shleifer and Treisman tell how Russia's leaders, navigating in uncharted economic terrain, managed to find a path around some of these obstacles. In successful episodes, central reformers devised a strategy to win over some key opponents, while dividing and marginalizing others. Such political tactics made possible the rapid privatization of 14,000 state enterprises in 1992-1994 and the defeat of inflation in 1995. But failure to outmaneuver the new oligarchs and regional governors after 1996 undermined reformers' attempts to collect taxes and clean up the bureaucracy that has stifled business growth. Renewing a strain of analysis that runs from Machiavelli to Hirschman, the authors reach conclusions about political strategies that have important implications for other reformers. They draw on their extensive knowledge of the country and recent experience as advisors to Russian policymakers. Written in an accessible style, the book should appeal to economists, political scientists, policymakers, businesspeople, and all those interested in Russian politics or economics.

A Prosperous Way Down: Principles And Policies

Abstract: Consider the future with less fossil fuel and no new natural or technological energy sources. How can it be peaceful and prosperous? More and more leaders concerned with the global future are warning of the impending crisis as the surge of unsustainable growth exceeds the capability of the earth's resources to support our civilisation. But while history records the collapse of countless civilisations, some societies and ecosystems have managed to descend in orderly stages, reducing demands and selecting and saving what is most important. Although some scientists predict disaster, this book shows how our world can still thrive and prosper in a future where we live with less and charts a way for our modern civilisation to descend to sustainable levels. The authors make recommendations for a more equitable and co-operative world society, with specific suggestions based upon their evaluations of trends in global population, wealth distribution, energy sources, conservation, urban development, capitalism and international trade, information technology, and education. This thoughtful and provocative book will force us to confront our assumptions and beliefs about our world's future, which is all too often taken for granted.<

Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education

Abstract: Series Foreword by Henry A. Giroux Introduction Global Capital and the Human Condition: An Absurd Way to Begin a New Millennium Unfolding the Essence of Capitalism--From the Simple Commodity to Global Social Domination: Capitalism Part I From Essence to Appearance: Capitalism Part II Ya Basta! (Enough): Challenging Capitalism in the New Millennium Critical Education for Revolutionary Social Transformation Freirean Critical Education in an Unlikely Context Towards the Abolition of Absurdity: Saying "No" to Capitalism Further Readings Index

The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism: Germany and Japan in Comparison

Abstract: The German and Japanese economies are more socially and politically regulated, and in this sense less liberal, than their Anglo-American counterparts. In The Origins of Nonliberal Capitalism, an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars explains why and how Germany and Japan developed nonliberal types of capitalism, looking at the institutional histories of the welfare state, the financial system, corporate governance and skill formation. Similarities and differences are traced in relation to attempts at conservative social reform during late 19th century industrialization and subsequent political pathways to democratization. The book's analysis of the historical dynamics of institutional change, particularly the political and organizational challenges of adapting and integrating new institutional repertoires, suggests new insights on how nationally distinct forms of capitalism will respond to current and future challenges of internationalization.

Introducing global civil society

Abstract: The words ‘global’ and ‘civil society’ have become commonplace during the last decade. Yet what they mean and how they come together are subject to widely differing interpretations. For some, global civil society refers to the protestors in Seattle and Prague or Greenpeace’s actions against transnational corporations: in other words, a counterweight to global capitalism. For others, the words have something to do with the infrastructure that is needed for the spread of democracy and development: the growth of professional associations,

Capitalism, cities, and the production of symbolic forms

Abstract: A striking characteristic of contemporary capitalism is the increasing importance (in terms of growth, employment, revenue, etc.) of sectors whose outputs are imbued with significant cultural or symbolic content. Sectors of these sorts are predominantly, though not exclusively, located in large cities. I describe how these cities function as creative fields generating streams of both cultural and technological innovations. Post-Fordist cities are shown to be especially fertile terrains of commodified cultural production. A number of these cities have become major centres of image-producing industries such as film, music recording, or fashion clothing, and this phenomenon is also often associated with profound transformations of their physical landscapes. I argue that the economic foundations of these trends reside, in part, in the structural characteristics of image-producing industries, marked as they frequently are by modularized, network structures of production and a strong proclivity to geographic agglomeration. At the same time, the main centres of the contemporary cultural economy are caught up in insistent processes of globalization. I suggest that after an initial phase of product standardization and concentrated development in only a few major centres, the cultural economy of capitalism now appears to be entering a new phase marked by increasingly high levels of product differentiation and polycentric production sites. I also submit that the contemporary cultural economy of capitalism constitutes a historical shift beyond consumer society as such.

Labor Geographies: Workers and the Landscapes of Capitalism

Abstract: Preface. Introduction: Labor and Landscapes. Toward a Labor Geography. Challenging the Global Locally: Labor in a Postindustrial Global City. Spatial Sabotage: Containerization, Union Work Rules, and the Geography of Waterfront Work. Scales of Struggle: Labor's Rescaling of Contract Bargaining in the U.S. East Coast Longshoring Industry, 1953-1989. Labor as an Agent of Globalization and as a Global Agent. Engineering Spaces of Anti-Communism: Connecting Cold War Global Strategy to Local Everyday Life. Thinking Locally, Acting Globally? The Practice of International Labor Solidarity and the Geography of the Global Economy. International Labor Union Activity and the Landscapes of Transition in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth

Abstract: Acknowledgments Introduction Part I: Another Take on How It All Began 1. The Capitalist Spirit and the British Economic Miracle 2. "The Great Seventeenth-Century Exception" Part II: The Spread of the New Economic Consciousness on the European Continent 3. The First Convert: France 4. The Power of Concerted Action: Putting the Spirit of Capitalism to Work in Germany Part III: The Asian Challenge: The Way of Japan 5. Japanese Nationalism 6. Racing and Fighting Part IV: The Economic Civilization: The Spirit of Capitalism in the New World 7. Searching for the American System 8. The Thrust Epilogue: Looking Backward from Year 2000 Notes Index

Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism

Abstract: Reviewed by Enda Brophy Carleton University, Graduate Program in Communication eobrophy@chat.carleton.ca What potential does newer information technology hold for oppositional movements at the beginning of the twenty-first century? Can marxian theory in general help us to more fully understand a dynamic of social struggle translated into a world of communication technology? If so, what particular vision within marxian theory has demonstrated itsdfable to comprehend not only the radical restructuring of capitalism, commonly referred to as a move towards postFordism, but the accompanying renewal of socially circulated struggle? The tide gives a good idea as to whether Dyer-Witheford believes marxian theory offers explanatory relevance and transformative potential in awodd both similar and yet dramatically different from that which Marx himself described in the nineteenth centur)~ The means bywhich this condusion is arrived at is, however, both unconventional and thought-provoking. Drawing from a particular reading of the role of technology in Marx's work, Dyer-Witheford traces the struggles emerging at every point along the newly emerging circuit of capital accumulation. Having analyzed the principal theoretical deaths Marxism has been the victim of, Dyer-Witheford goes on to counterpose the related theories on technology of those identified as the descendants of Babbage and Marx. While the former's utopian claims concerning the intrinsically emancipatory potential of information technology have most obviously not come to fruition, Dyer-Witheford suggests that the latter's mix of perspectives, now dominant in the left, have only been partially helpful. These views of the new information technologies deployed by capitalism in its reinvention oscillate between paralyzing pessimism and unwarranted optimism. Thus the newest information technologies are either examples of how increasingly flexible techniques of control act to immediately suffocate possibilities for social change or to open up a set of possibilities reminiscent of a benign form of capitalism along the lines of that championed by the information society theorists. Departing from this range of theoretical positions (some of them perhaps having been unduly caricatured in the process), Dyer-Witheford introduces the perspective of autonomous marxism as a more fruitful way of understanding the recurring crises and subsequent reconfigurations of capital. These arise not from the "internal barriers" of capitalist accumulation, but from the external one of the working class struggle against exploitation. The focus of this lesser-known strand of Marxist theory is Marx's description of the relationship between waged labour and capital. Yet where it departs from many conventional visions of struggle is where it chooses to lay its theoretical focuson dass composition. This stems from a reading of Marx which foregrounds the power of the working dass, a power which capital must continually try and incorporate in an unending project ofsubsumption. Such an analysis, while hopefully not losing sight of capital's awesome power, is "aimed at assessing the capacity of living labour to wrest control away from capital." (p. 66) Capitalist restructuring is thus viewed as a reaction against the tendency of the workers to periodically compose themselves as a collectivity. The most recent round of restructuring, in which information technologies play a central role, is seen less as an attempt by capital to overcome some kind of internal crisis than as a reaction against the widespread social unrest during the sixties and seventies. The deployment of technology by capital against the demands of the "mass worker" has succeeded in both reducing and dispersing workers which were once brought together on the shop floor. But even this process, argues the autonomous perspective, has unforeseen and potentially very troublesome results for capital. This reconfiguration only succeeds in creating a "factory without walls" so highly dispersed in its productive nature that the world itself has become a kind of"social factory." This is the premise for the emergence of the

Comparing Welfare Capitalism: Social Policy and Political Economy in Europe, Japan and the USA

Abstract: This book challenges the popular thesis of a downward trend in the viability of welfare states in competitive market economies. With approaches ranging from historical case studies to cross-national analyses, the contributors explore various aspects of the relationships between welfare states, industrial relations, financial government and production systems. Building upon and combining comparative studies of both the varieties of capitalism and the worlds of welfare state regimes, the book considers issues such as the role of employers and unions in social policy, the interdependencies between financial markets and pension systems, and the current welfare reform process. Comparing Welfare Capitalism sheds new light on the tenuous relationship between social policies and market economies.

Political economy discourses of globalization and feminist politics

Abstract: here seems to be general agreement that global capitalism is here to * stay. The rapid integration of the world into one economic space through Ithe internationalization of goods, capital, and money markets is more often than not represented as an inevitable and irreversible phase of capitalist development. The globalization of production and consumption by transnational corporations (with the assistance of intergovernmental organizations such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization [WTO]) is characterized as a force that shapes and transforms all of the economic, political, and cultural forms it encounters. Triumphalist accounts that celebrate the victory of the market over all other economic forms produce such descriptions of the so-called reality of globalization. But so, too, do globalization's critics, who tend to emphasize the dark side of the new world order.