The individualization of class: a case of working life coaching

This article employs empirical analysis on working life coaching in order to offer a complimentary perspective on debates concerning individualization and class. Instead of viewing individualization as a process which erodes or radically shapes structures of class, this article interrogates individualization as a process which individualizes the relation between capital and labour in such a way that it appears in an individualized form. Examining practices of working life coaching sheds light on the ways in which the antagonism of capital and labour is experienced, articulated in an individual form and offered solutions for, and also on the ways in which such practices actually silence and cement the antagonism they are supposed to solve.     

Linking institutions and firm-level outcomes: the roles of diverse innovative capability profiles in Germany's economy

Traditionally, scholars of comparative capitalisms expect a solid link between institutions and outcomes, such as exporting and innovation. For Germany seminal approaches rely on an ideal-typical firm-level profile with strong innovative capabilities and high traditional institutional embeddedness. Current literature on firm-level diversity in Germany exposes that the empirical links between institutions, de facto firm-level profiles, and their outcomes are not well understood. An analysis of 988 German firms reveals no direct link between institutional variables and outcomes. A latent class analysis identifies five innovative capability profiles, which display diverse institutional embeddedness patterns and outcome levels. The prevailing profile conforms to several traditional expectations about the ideal-typical German firm-level profile. However, a second profile achieves similarly high export and innovation rates without traditional institutional embeddedness. The analysis shows the importance of diverse innovative capability profiles for the de facto links between institutions and firm-level outcomes within Germany's economy.     

On the multiple frontiers of extraction: excavating contemporary capitalism

Understanding the intensification and expansion of extractive industries in contemporary capitalism requires an approach attentive not only to the literal forms of extraction prevalent in mining and agribusiness but also to new fronts of extraction emerging in activities such as data mining and biocapitalism. This article introduces the concept of operations of capital to trace connections between the expansive logic of extraction and capitalist activity in the domains of logistics and finance. Arguing that extractive operations are at large across these domains, we explore their relevance for capital’s relation with its multiple outsides. The resulting analysis provides a basis for mapping struggles against the changing forms of dispossession and exploitation enabled by extraction.     

“A bulletin board of dreams”: corporate empowerment promotion and feminist implications

This article examines the premises of corporate solutions to gender inequality in the Global South. In feminist debates, businesses’ increasing emphasis on women’s empowerment has been discussed both in terms of increasing feminist impact and the co-optation of feminist demands. To explore the ideological effects of corporate gender practices, focus is placed on the Coca-Cola Company’s global “5by20” campaign, which has the stated aim to empower five million women as small-scale entrepreneurs around the world and, in a “win–win” fashion, to double sales by 2020. Based on interviews and participatory observations in Mexico, this article traces a particular narrative of empowerment, envisioned as a transition from dependency to self-sufficiency and threatened by psychological and cultural restraints rather than material conditions. It shows that self-help and positive thinking are essential affective drives, thus reinforcing market-based, individualized development strategies. In response to feminist debates, the article concludes that corporate gender practices can be seen as part of a neoliberal transposition of equality concerns from a political to an economic domain. In effect, when initiatives such as 5by20 promote the accumulation of “human capital” to enhance gender equality, they simultaneously work to legitimize the inequalities that are necessarily entailed in competitive capitalism.     

The making of European society: contesting methodological nationalism

The paper is concerned with the problem of “society” and in particular with the notion of “European society”. Rather than reject the possibility of society, it draws on theories of the social as networks. The thesis proposed is that the concept of society should rather be understood as a relational field of interconnections. It is argued that this is highly relevant to the analysis of Europe conceived of in terms of a society. This approach can be seen as an alternative to methodological nationalism. The paper applies a network conception of society to Europe with the emphasis on the nineteenth century. In this account, European society is not something that was produced by European integration. Rather than see European society as a recent development, it is argued that the field of tensions between capitalism and democracy constituted the major elements that shaped a European model of society.     

Capitalism as a social movement: the corporate and neoliberal reconstructions of the American political economy in the twentieth century

This paper examines the ways in which social movements based among leading capitalists have remade the US political economy. In the first part we examine the period from the late 1880s through the 1920s, sketching the emergence of a hegemonic movement that accomplished the re-embedding of capitalist social relations during the corporate reconstruction of American capitalism. In the second, we examine the disembedding of capitalist relations during the contemporary neoliberal era. The paper makes three major arguments. First, capitalists not just subaltern groups resort to collective action outside of institutional channels of authority and power. Second, during organic crises the movements of capitalists will join with movements of subaltern groups to create hegemonic projects, whose disparate supporters are articulated by discourses. Third, the concept of ‘social movement’ itself should be understood as a constituent part of a larger social formation and not sealed off from features of capitalism and the state. Indeed, hegemonic social movements have reconstructed the larger landscape that social movement theory normally takes for granted as a background. In applying this approach to the contested topic of neoliberalism, we argue that it was not primarily a class-based coup, a policy, ideology, or culture shift but a discourse that united elements of the left and the right as well as a ‘historic bloc’ with homes in both major parties. During both periods subaltern groups played an important role in the hegemonic movements that created corporate capitalism and later neoliberalism.     

计划经济与市场经济的理论论争

高度统一的计划经济是经过社会主义改造而建立起来的经济管理模式,也是社会主义社会的重要标志。但这种经济模式缺乏活力,到20世纪80年代,已经成为经济发展的严重阻碍力量。随着改革开放的深入,市场经济为资本主义所特有、为社会主义所不容的僵化理论逐渐松动。但社会主义的中国可以发展市场经济,计划和市场是可以统一的,资本主义也有计划,社会主义也要有市场,这些问题在理论上的突破经历了十几年的争论,才确立了市场经济的地位。     

中国古代图书馆开放问题商榷简

关于中国古代图书馆，学界一直存在一些争议。一些学者从近现代公共图书馆的开放性特征考量，不承认中国古代存在图书馆。图书馆的公共性、开放性，形成于近代的欧洲，它有两个必要条件：一是造纸术、印刷术的发明应用，图书的大量印刷；二是世界进入资本主义时代。中国古代图书馆是有限开放的，并非只藏不用，应客观看待中国古代图书馆的开放性问题。     

当代美国资本主义的失衡：表象、根源及影响——对斯蒂格利茨《自由市场的坠落》中社会失衡问题的分析

斯蒂格利茨在《自由市场的坠落》一书中认为，美国金融与经济危机爆发的原因在于当代美国式资本主义失衡加剧，具体表现在市场作用和国家干预、个人主义和集体主义、人与自然、手段和目的之间的失衡达到了新的程度；危机表明至少美国这个特殊“版本”的资本主义系统存在根本缺陷。尽管认识到了这些失衡来源于系统的根本缺陷，但他没有说清楚根本缺陷是什么，并且认为经过变革可以修正资本主义系统。笔者认为，这些失衡仍是马克思阐述的资本主义基本矛盾，即生产的社会化和生产资料资本主义私人占有制这个根本失衡引发的；无论系统内部如何变革，都不能解决资本主义的失衡状态，结果只能是社会主义因素的逐步增长，并为未来社会主义的替代准备条件。     

马克思恩格斯论资本主义空间生产的三重变革

马克思恩格斯对空间有着深刻的洞见,在他们的空间分析视域中,每一种生产方式都有其特定的空间生产样态,资本主义亦不例外。与前资本主义时代相比,资本主义生产方式带来人类空间生产的巨大变革,这种变革不仅体现于地理-物理空间的扩大,更关涉社会-经济空间的拓展和文化-心理空间的变迁,三者辩证统一于资本主义的空间生产过程中,这些探讨对于我们认识和把握当代人类的空间实践具有重要的现实意义。