Life Histories from the Namibian Liberation Struggle

This paper unfolds in three parts. The first section argues that there has been an innovation in the rights of private property, especially in the area of residential property. Starting in the 1960s, though only really coming into its own in the 1980s, the rights of private property have been grafted onto a regime of communal ownership. Thus, during the very period of capitalist ascendancy, historically non-capitalist forms of sociability were being elaborated from within the holy ark of capitalism itself, the relation of private property. The second part shows that the condominium or sectional-title estate is transforming urban landscapes across the globe, generating novel urban constellations that are frequently imagined and lived as non-suburbs. Effectively, the growth of townhouses is associated with the decline of the traditional suburb as an urban phenomenon. The third part of this essay focuses on a South African case study, where condominiums (or townhouses under sectional title) have become important sites of uncanny, post-apartheid community. Using the example of Roodepoort, this paper argues that body corporates are elaborating domains of post-apartheid sociality that are largely unrecognisable and even uncomfortable from the dominant, normative tropes of post-apartheid life: non-racialism, cosmopolitanism, constitutionalism.     

Comparisons Within a Single Social Formation: A Critical Appreciation of Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State

Perry Anderson's Lineages of the Absolutist State uses a comparative and narrative historical method to reconceive the social dynamic of late feudalism. Anderson explains differences in economic development among European countries by comparing class dynamics within a single social formation: the absolutist state. This article makes explicit the factorial analysis implicit in Anderson's case studies, and highlights the ways in which Lineages overcomes the logical flaws in much previous work. Anderson's inability to explain why some absolutist states ended in bourgeois revolutions exposes the ultimate limitations of Marxian categories for explaining the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Anderson fails to take full advantage of the analytical possibilities opened by his reconceptualization of absolutism. His schema allows for complexity within absolutism. This article concludes by showing that such complexity can be understood better in terms of a double dynamic of elite and class conflict rather than with just the class categories employed by Anderson.     

Keynes's grandchildren and Marx's gig workers: Why human labour still matters

The current anxiety around the globe regarding automation and “the future of work”, the irrelevance of human labour and the superfluity of humans is based on recurring ideas about technology, work and economic value. Not quite novel, the debate on these ideas dates back to prominent thinkers, such as Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. To grasp the present moment, therefore, the authors revisit this debate within the broader history of capitalism. With a focus on labour and technology, they bring attention to the hidden forms of value creation in the current economy and to the blind spots of the historical debate, and envision various possible scenarios for the future.     

Public relations role in a global competition “to sell” alternative political and socio-economic models of market economy

This article extends the transitional public relations approach to international public relations research. The arguments are presented that public relations strategies and instruments were and are further on used in that competition to promote, and sometimes impose certain political and socio-economic models of market economy. The main global players, first of the United States, but most recently also China are trying to “sell” their own model not only in the former socialist/communist but also in developing countries. On the other hand, the campaign to promote European social model has just been initiated by the European Parliament.     

Popular Culture and Workplace Gendering among Varieties of Capitalism: Working Women and their Representation in Japanese Manga

Female empowerment is a prerequisite for a just and sustainable developed society. Being the most developed non‐western country, Japan offers an instructive window onto concerns about gender worldwide. Although overall gender equality is advancing in Japan, difficulties remain, especially in achieving equality in the workplace. We draw on theories of ontological commitment and the psychology of fiction to critically analyse the role of popular culture — in this case manga — in the reproduction of gender inequality in the Japanese workplace. We present examples of four of the most popular mainstream manga aimed at working men and women in Japan and show how women are depicted. We argue that the hyper‐mediated fictional realism of representative tropes generates an ontological commitment to characters and narratives among consumers that reinforces the reproduction of a culturally exceptionalist national political economic space, one of whose essential defining characteristics is a gendered workplace. Our research suggests important implications for researching the relationship between culture, in all its forms, and spatial variation in persistent institutional biases among varieties of capitalism.     

Who's making global civil society: philanthropy and US empire in world society

Theories of US hegemony commonly ignore the role of American philanthropy in the contemporary transformations of world society and the globalization of capitalism. In this essay, I suggest that the philanthropic foundation, and with it the institution of philanthropy, is being invigorated by the expansion of its domestic role to foreign activities and to globally framed activities within the USA. I propose that US philanthropy exports American understandings of democracy and simultaneously organizes global reflexivity through citizenship education for the US populace. I offer a preliminary theoretical interpretation of the empirical patterns of international grant-making activities by US foundations, considering John W. Meyer's concept of 'instrumental culture' and some arguments made by Foucauldian 'governmentality' scholars. I emphasize the need to conceptualize the cultural-symbolic and organizational dimensions of hegemony and suggest further sociological analysis of philanthropic activities as integral to current politically and economically led transformations of societies around the globe.     

The kick off*

ABSTRACT

Samir Amin's call for the establishing of a fifth international is timely, urgent and necessary. This essay explores some key questions that should be debated by those seeking to create the new international: including the appropriate organizational form; membership; and decision making procedures.     

Universal alienation

Abstract

The evidence of alienation with respect to work, daily life, politics and inclusion is widespread and has much to do with the increasing influence of right wing populism. Marx changed the basis for his thinking about alienation from a subjective humanist to an objective historical materialist basis. But the relations between the two forms of alienation cannot easily be severed. The contemporary conditions producing subjective states of alienation need to be investigated, chief among these is the rise of personal indebtedness that forecloses upon future possibilities and restricts freedoms. Debt peonage and alienation are in our times a primary material basis for increasing subjective states of alienation.     

Emotion Work,Shame, and Post-Soviet Women Entrepreneurs: Negotiating Ideals of Gender and Labor in a Global Economy

Drawing on ethnographic research among Russian women traders or “shuttle traders” (chelnoki), I examine discourses on shame as a type of emotion work and consider links to ideal gender roles among Russian women entrepreneurs. In a post-Soviet era increasingly shaped by transnational mobility, as well as by a persistent legacy of Soviet sensibilities, a focus on emotion among women traders provides an ideal lens for considering what travels between eras marked by distinct ideologies, between nation-states, and between public and domestic spaces. A discourse of shame links Soviet sensibilities of proper labor and contemporary gender sensibilities that continue to elevate men as breadwinners; thus, a focus on shame enables us to see the contradictory ways in which women are positioned in local and global economies in the 2000s. This case shows how Russian women's insertion into the global economy beginning in the early 1990s has required emotion work that is similar to that required in other locations where global capitalism has brought about reconfigurations of work lives and required people to renegotiate gender roles, expressions of power, and the meaning of labor in their lives.     

Culture, state and varieties of capitalism: a comparative study of life insurance markets in Hong Kong and Taiwan

This article examines the interplay between local culture, the state, and economic actors' agency in producing variation across markets. I adopt a political-cultural approach to examining why life insurance has been far more popular in Taiwan than Hong Kong, despite the presence of a cultural taboo on the topic of premature death in both societies. Based on interview data and documentary references, the findings reveal that as an independent state, the Taiwanese government heavily protected domestic insurance firms during their emergence. These domestic firms adopted a market-share approach by re-defining the concept of life insurance to accommodate the local cultural taboo. The colonial Hong Kong government, on the other hand, adopted laissez-faire policies that essentially favoured foreign insurance firms. When faced with the tension between local adaptation and the profitability of the business, these foreign firms chose the latter. Their reluctance to accommodate local cultures, however, resulted in a smaller market. I argue that state actions mediate who the dominant economic players are and that the nature of the dominant players affects the extent of localization. Specifically, the presence of competitive domestic players alongside transnational corporations is more likely to produce varieties of capitalism.     

Capitalism, money and banking: a critique of recent historical sociology

A conception of money as a 'neutral veil' masking a 'real' economy was adopted by orthodox economic theory after the Methodenstreit, and is also to be found, in a different form, in Marxian political economy. Both derive from an erroneous functionalist and anachronistic 'commodity' theory of money which, as Post-Keynesian economists argue, cannot explain the distinctive form of capitalist credit-money. Orthodox economic theory and classic Marxism have tacitly informed and flawed historical sociology's understanding of money's role in capitalist development. Mann and Runciman, for example, consider the 'economy' exclusively in terms of the social relations of production and imply that money is epiphenomenal and is to be explained as a response to the needs of the 'real' economy. They do not recognize the structural specificity of capitalist money and banking nor its importance. An alternative account of the autonomous historical conditions of existence of the specifically capitalist form of bank and state credit-money and its role in capitalist development is outlined.     

The Emancipatory Potential of Generic Globalization

The debate around globalization is entering a new and more mature phase reflected in the fact that it is now generally accepted that we live in an era of globalization. However, the concept is used in a bewildering variety of ways. Here I attempt to deconstruct it by distinguishing three modes of globalization in theory and practice, namely: generic, capitalist, and alternative globalizations. My argument is that globalization in a generic sense is too often confused with its dominant actually existing type, capitalist globalization. I define generic globalization in terms of (a) the electronic revolution; (b) postcolonialisms; (c) the subsequent creation of transnational social spaces; and (d) qualitatively new forms of cosmopolitanism. Capitalist globalization undermines the emancipatory potential of the four elements of generic globalization, resulting in what are termed here a new type of class polarization crisis and the crisis of ecological unsustainability. The article concludes with an attempt to sketch the main principles of a post-capitalist alternative form of democratic socialist globalization, based on networks of sustainable consumer-producer cooperatives operating at all appropriate social and geographical scales.

El debate sobre la globalización está entrando en una fase nueva y más madura, reflejada en el hecho de que ahora generalmente se acepta que vivimos en una era de globalización. Sin embargo, el concepto se usa en una variedad de formas confusas. Por este medio, trato de deconstruirlo, mediante la distinción de tres modos de globalización en teoría y en práctica, principalmente: globalizaciones genéricas, capitalistas y alternas. Mi argumento es que la globalización en un sentido genérico, se confunde frecuentemente con el tipo dominante de globalización que existe actualmente, la globalización capitalista. Yo defino la globalización genérica en términos de (a) revolución electrónica; (b) poscolonialismo; (c) la creación subsecuente de espacios sociales trasnacionales; y (d) nuevas formas cualitativas de cosmopolitismo. La globalización capitalista obstaculiza el potencial emancipador de los cuatro elementos de la globalización genérica, resultando en lo que hemos denominado aquí, un nuevo tipo de crisis de polarización de clases y la crisis de insostenibilidad ecológica. El artículo concluye con un intento de esbozar los principios fundamentales de una forma alterna poscapitalista de globalización democrática socialista, en base a redes de cooperativas de consumidor-productor sostenibles que operan a todos los niveles sociales y geográficos apropiados.

     

Capital has an Internationale and it is going fascist: time for an international of the global popular classes

ABSTRACT

Global capitalism is approaching a general crisis of capitalist rule. It is urgent to renovate a popular revolutionary project and refound the state if we are to combat the onslaught of the neo-fascist right. Amin’s call for a new Internationale is a timely move in that direction, notwithstanding the many challenges of organizing such an Internationale. Developing an umbrella program must engage political and theoretical debate on the nature of the new global capitalism, learn from the failures of Syriza in Greece and the Pink Tide in Latin America, and reconceive the three-way relationship between states, parties, and social movements. The downward mobility and destabilization of working classes in the former First World and the destruction of the old labor aristocracies provides the recruiting grounds for 21st century fascism but also new opportunities for transnational North-South solidarities. A new Internationale must identify and prioritize the class antagonisms within and across countries and regions over core-periphery or Global North-South contradictions.     

The Adaptation of Western Management Ideologies: The Revised Capitalism of Keizai Doyukai in Postwar Japan

Abstract:  Keizai Doyukai (The Japan Committee for Economic Development) proposed a unique management ideology known as "revised capitalism" immediately after World War II. Doyukai was a totally new business association established by young managers in 1946, and this was in sharp contrast with Keidanren, which evolved from its prewar predecessor. The concept of revised capitalism consisted in the equilibrium of management, labor, and capital on an equal power basis, and had a solid theoretical foundation. Although it was an important milestone in the history of management ideology, it has been misinterpreted to date. In particular, it is commonly believed that Banjo Otsuka, one of Doyukai's inaugurators, imitated the ideas of Western management thought in Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and Berle and Means's The Modern Corporation and Private Property in formulating revised capitalism. This comparative analysis reveals otherwise. I hold that Otsuka enhanced the role of labor and blended the prewar management thought of Japan with the ideologies of Burnham and of Berle and Means. The role of labor was critical because the initial occupation policy of SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) encouraged the labor movement. It also explains why revised capitalism disappeared so rapidly once SCAP changed its policy and started to suppress labor unions in 1948. In broader terms, this analysis has two theoretical implications: that political context can strongly influence the rise and decline of a management ideology; and that a management ideology can retain certain traditional elements even under radical political changes.     

Conservative twist and challenges for Peru and Latin America: civilizing crossroads in a context of epochal change (reflections in process)

ABSTRACT

The paper takes stock of the WSF experience and the running out of steam of the pink wave in Latin America. It is written from the perspective of radical feminism in the region to interrogate the interrelations between the multiple systems of power formed by patriarchy, capitalism and colonialism and their impact on people’s lives, arguing that feminist struggles for sexual and reproductive rights, for the right to decide, for a secular state that breaks the religious tutelage over women’s bodies, along with many kinds of other struggles, demand not only recognition but also the defence of diverse ways of life and visions of the world. In these struggles, the paper claims, it is fundamental to expand the epistemological and social space and to recover other cultural matrices and frameworks of meaning.     

Creating Happier Children and More Fulfilled Social Workers: Neoliberalism,Privatization and the Reframing of Leftist Critiques in Britain

To differing degrees, governments in Europe, North America, and Australasia have, over recent years, given particular attention to the reform of services for children and families. However, the aim of this article is to focus on Britain and to examine plans to transform social-work services for children and young people who are “looked after,” that is to say, in public care. It is argued that these plans, focused on the introduction of what are termed social work practices, are best grounded and interpreted within an analytical framework that recognizes the centrality of neoliberalism. Furthermore, social workers and others working in related areas of human services provision should take account of how the plan to install social work practices is being discursively constructed and organized. Important here, it is maintained, is how this strategy seeks to deploy selectively leftist critiques of social work that have emerged over the past two decades.     

Think rich,feel hurt: the critique of capitalism and the production of affect in the making of financial subjects in South Korea

This article describes the process of financial subjectification by observing a private educational programme on financial self-management in South Korea. ‘Wealth-tech’ is a popular Korean term that refers to techniques of personal finance and money-management. Ethnographic research on a private educational programme on the subject of wealth-tech brings to light justifying mechanisms of financial investments and moral foundations for the pursuit of wealth whereby laypeople’s engagement with, and attachment to, financial markets are (re-)vitalized. In particular, this study highlights the role of critiques about capitalism as well as the production of affect in the making of financial subjects. By re-appropriating critiques of capitalism and employing therapeutic narratives, the wealth-tech pedagogy redefines financial investment as an act of resistance against the ills of capitalism and foreign capital. Moreover, this case study shows that wealth-tech is legitimized not solely by risk calculations per se, but also by feelings of hurt. Participants tend to transform themselves into active wealth-tech practitioners by cultivating the kind of affect that I call here ‘thinking rich, feeling hurt’. Therefore, the financial subjects configured in this wealth-tech pedagogy are those who feel hurt, and in this emotive state are led to think from the perspective of the rich. Moreover, they are configured not only as self-governing individuals but also as collective beings who resist foreign capital through their own engagement with financial markets. In this process of financial subjectification, the beliefs that finance can make them rich become consolidated. By illustrating these Korean experiences, this article calls attention to critical and affective practices in the process of financial subjectification, in particular those that take shape at the encounter between market rationality and ordinary experiences, memories, and feelings whereby laypeople translate discourses and techniques of financial capitalism into their own values and judgments.     

The Who of Power?

How is the causative role of ideas appreciated in understanding the political economy of neoliberalism? What are the origin stories of neoliberalism and how are these related to the periodisation of capitalism? Is there a role for an explicit normative perspective in critiquing neoliberalism as a set of class relations? These broad questions are raised in this feature review, which looks at the latest work on the durability of embedded neoliberalism. It does so by highlighting the importance of revealing and critiquing ideas-centred assumptions within political economy in order to offer an alternative stance on the class relations, institutions, and ideology of present-day capitalism. As a consequence, reflecting further on the who of power remains an enduring challenge for political economy.     

The use of bodies. Agamben’s idea of a non-capitalist form of life

Abstract

With the notion of the form-of-life as a counter-figure to the notion of bare life, Agamben seems to invite us to place at the center of a critical theory of capitalism a reflection on bios. To envisage a form of emancipation that unfolds against bare life suggests, at first glance, another relation to the living body. Such a gesture seems to be inspired by the desire to think a natural life that would also be a politically qualified life. The idea with which Agamben closes the Homo Sacer series, namely that of a use of bodies, also gestures in this direction. In this paper I show how the categories of bare life and of the use of bodies fail to live up to their promise, before demonstrating in what sense the idea of a subtraction of law as a political project which subsumes all others ends up weakening the critical potential of the idea of a form-of-life that is to be realised against the force of production of bare lives.     

Disability,politics and poverty in a majority world context

This paper argues that the spread of free market economics throughout the world has generated unprecedented inequalities within and between nation states. This has led to the systematic exclusion of people with perceived impairments from the mainstream of economic and community life in almost all societies, the generation of an international disabled people’s movement, and their demand for legal frameworks with which to address the multiple deprivations encountered by people viewed as ‘disabled’. It is argued that the poverty and exclusion encountered by disabled people and other oppressed groups in all societies will not be eliminated without fundamental structural change at the international level.