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This paper provides a critical intervention into recent geographical debates on racial capitalism, interrogating the role that Housing Associations (HAs), the main form of UK social housing, play in its (re)production. Housing Associations are institutional, third‐sector spaces within which novel forms of financialisation and bordering take place. Race is central to these processes, but insufficient critical attention has been afforded to the intersections of class, race, and migratory status in extant research on UK HAs. Moreover, existing research into housing and racial capitalism is provincial in its North American focus, typically examining home ownership and private renting. We argue this is a significant lacuna given that new and multiple forms of racialised exclusion, inequality, and extraction cohere in social housing. There is accordingly a pressing need for a robust interrogation of racial capitalisms through UK HAs, and of the role of HAs via the conceptual lens of racial capitalism. In concluding, the paper argues for a new focus on 'actually existing' racial capitalisms, and the need for detailed analyses of the logics and practices of racial capitalisms across a variety of sites and scales, helping debates move beyond their conceptual heartland in North America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One feature of 'flexibilisation' concerns the growth of more individualised employment arrangements and career trajectories less connected to employing organisations. Informed by the Varieties of Capitalism approach, which emphasises the embeddedness of employment practices within discrete types of capitalist market economy, and based on rich qualitative data from interviews with 32 self‐employed and directly employed ICT professionals in the United Kingdom and Germany, we investigate comparative variation in their experience of flexibilisation. The research findings not only indicate some commonality, particularly in respect of perceptions of independence, but also highlight notable differences with regard to work pressures and insecurity. The paper advances theory by characterising two discrete varieties of flexibilisation, a 'liberalised' form evident in the United Kingdom and a more 'regulated' type apparent in Germany, contributing to a better understanding of comparative differences in flexibilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade has seen the development of an important literature on the contradictions between neoliberal norms of corporal citizenship and the forms of consumption that market-based food systems promote. This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by exploring the relationship between these contradictions and the increased prevalence of particular eating disorders (binge eating disorder ( BED) and bulimia nervosa). Within contemporary neoliberal food systems bingeing is increasingly normalised and consumption temporally disorganised. At the same time, neoliberal public health policy, and the wider 'health' entertainment media it legitimates, focuses on the promotion of 'correct' forms of consumer agency. Individuals who fail to manage consumption 'appropriately' are stigmatised. The growth of bulimia and BED can be related to the contradictory pressures that the food system and regime of corporal governance place on individuals. The paper also seeks to explore how the increased medicalisation and biomedicalisation of eating since the 1980s fits within a broader neoliberal governance strategy. By medicalising key social problems the neoliberal state depoliticises these issues. Medicalisation and biomedicalisation obscure the role of capitalism in generating these problems and encourage a focus on individual dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education institutions (HEIs) in the UK and elsewhere are having a hard time, pushed into the marketplace with the turn to ‘academic capitalism’ and now suffering the effects of the economic downturn. Increasingly, the discourse of ‘excellence’ is being invoked as HEIs are held to account and public funding for research is predicated on the basis of ‘impact’. What effect is this having on the long‐established ideals appealed to in the idea of a university (if such an idea can be said to exist)? This paper adopts an autoethnographic approach in order to examine the ways in which dominant discourses are operationalised in the university through everyday communications and how, in turn, this impacts on the development of academic identities. The aim of this paper then is to examine the often uncomfortable point of insertion between the personal and the institutional in and through which subjectivities and identities are constituted as a means to understand the state we’re in. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the theory and evidence of the effect of finance, ownership, and corporate governance on labour and employment, with special reference to the socalled 'market-outsider' or liberal market economies. The main finance, ownership, and governance characteristics of these economies are described and briefly compared with those in so-called co-ordinated market economies. A set of predictions of the impact on labour management and employment are outlined. Evidence is presented from comparative studies and from within-country studies, especially of the United Kingdom. It is found that predictions are not clearly borne out, and the paper identifies a set of factors to explain this. These include dispersed ownership, the nature of corporate law, and the public visibility of listed companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language education has called for the "return" of class in the critical examination of the role of language in society and education under the organizing logic of capitalist globalization. Nevertheless, while the restoration of class as a core aspect of sociolinguistic analysis is much welcome, it has also come with its own ideological erasures: the disappearance of colonialism and coloniality. Thus, this paper aims to, first, tackle the general erasure of class in intellectual movements in the humanities and social sciences for the past few decades, then second, demonstrate how such erasure in fact involves the decoupling of class and colonialism through the example of the politics of Englishes in the Philippines, before introducing the concept of colonially induced Unequal Englishes (Tupas, 2015; Tupas & Salonga, 2016) as a way to address directly such politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2018, a coalition of UK trade unions and civil society organisations called a strike across the UK's fast food sector in support of a living wage, union recognition and the end to zero‐hour contracts in the sector. This paper takes the day of action—labelled the McStrike—as a starting point for an account of the place of the EU and Brexit in the campaign for fast food rights, as well as the contrasting political standpoints adopted by the different trade unions involved in the action. Brexit is used as a prism through which to analyse aspects of Britain's contemporary food politics, especially those pertaining to freedom of movement, workplace organisation, and the role of EU legislation in protecting workers' rights. In exploring the international dimensions of union organisation among the UK's fast food workers, other, more conceptual considerations regarding the changing nature of public and private food consumption and the incorporation of food‐to‐go into the gig economy are also broached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main indicators of the second demographic transition (SDT) is the decline of fertility to below the replacement level (2.1 births per woman). The onset of the SDT in Europe spread across Western Europe in the 1960s and subsequently diffused to other parts of the continent. In Eastern Europe, a fall in total fertility rates below the replacement level was recorded at the beginning of the 1990s and was associated by some researchers with the collapse of the communist system and the introduction of a market economy. At present, countries of Eastern Europe record the lowest total fertility rate values (at 1.3-1.4), whereas a fertility recovery has been observed in Northern and Western Europe. Regional, subnational differences in fertility within particular countries associated with uneven dispersal of changes linked with the SDT, especially between urban, suburban, and rural areas, are known to exist but are less well articulated. This paper offers a comparative study of changes in spatial patterns of selected fertility indicators between Poland, and England and Wales, part of the UK, at the beginning of the 21st century. Despite apparent differences at the national level, the paper identifies similarities in the spread of SDT from core to peripheral areas and presents a reduction in the demographic divide between Western and Eastern Europe. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that processes of social reproduction are central to our understanding of body formation under capitalism. Articulated through a feminist historical materialist framework founded on a social ontology that recognises the material foundation of social life as constituted of both productive and reproductive activities, this paper develops the concept of uneven body as a more holistic approach integrating into corporeal geography a social reproduction lens. I explore the social and historical analytical capacity of the concept through a study of food distribution in Britain c.1850-1914 in order to reveal how certain bodies absorbed, mediated and embodied contradictions between production and social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their apparently pervasive reach and relevance, the geographies of branded commodities and their branding have been unevenly recognised and under-researched. This paper presents a way of conceptualising and analysing brand and branding geographies. Focusing upon goods and services, the notion of geographical entanglements is developed to understand the spatial associations and connotations that unavoidably ensnare brands and branding. Second, it examines how such attachments shape and are shaped by brand and branding agents, including producers, circulators, consumers and regulators. Last, the placing of the geographical entanglements of brands and branding is developed as a means of lifting their 'mystical veils' and prompting reflections upon their politics and relationships to uneven development. Situating branding genealogies in geographical context, the empirical analysis comprises a socio-spatial biography of Newcastle Brown Ale (NBA). It explains how NBA's geographical entanglements have been (re)constructed in its contrasting survival in the UK and growth in the US. As a way of thinking about brand and branding geographies, the paper seeks to broaden the reach of economic geographies at their intersections with cultural economy approaches and to stimulate debate about their politics and alternatives to uneven development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair trade (FT) is of growing interest to those carrying out research into ethical decision making. In this paper, we report findings from a recent survey of FT purchasing among 688 retail shoppers in the United Kingdom. We examined the relationship between individual differences, in terms of gender and age, and three outcome measures: purchasing, word of mouth (WOM) recommendation and social advocacy. Though age appeared to have no significant effects, we found evidence of gender difference in each outcome measure. Females in our sample were more likely to purchase FT goods, to recommend them by WOM, and to advocate FT purchasing to friends and family. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the literature on ethical decision making and gender difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to broaden and deepen debates on the everyday practices of autonomous activists. To do this we present three main research findings from a recent research project that looked in detail at what we called ‘autonomous geographies’. First, in terms of political identity, we highlight how participants in political projects problematise and go beyond the simple idea of the militant subject, set apart from the everyday who opposes the present condition. Second, we highlight how everyday practices are used to build hoped-for futures in the present, but that this process is experimental, messy and contingent, and necessarily so. Finally, we illuminate the contested spatialities embedded within political activism that are neither locally bounded nor easily transferable to the transnational. This exploration of everyday activism has illuminated that the participants we engaged with express identities, practices and spatial forms that are simultaneously anti-, despite- and post- capitalist. We argue that it is through its everyday rhythms that meaning is given to post-capitalism and it is this reconceptualisation that makes post-capitalist practice mundane, but at the same time also accessible, exciting, feasible and powerful. This paper draws upon material collected during a 30-month empirical research project into the everyday lives of grassroots, non-party political activists in the UK between 2005 and 2008. Three case studies were explored in detail – autonomous social centres, Low Impact Developments, and tenants’ networks resisting gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We reflect on the evolution of corporate governance and the role of institutional investors in enhancing governance in Japan and the UK. Japan places emphasis on stakeholder capitalism, whereas the UK places emphasis on shareholder capitalism. Nonetheless, in both countries, institutional investors have exerted significant influence on the evolution of corporate governance. Institutional investors in the UK have more power over company management than their Japanese counterparts, although it is alleged that these powers are not exercised to their best potential in either country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unfurling of global capitalism – and its attendant effects – has long been fertile intellectual terrain for geographers. But whilst studies of the processes and mechanisms of globalisation undoubtedly assume a talismanic importance in the discipline, geographers, with few exceptions, have left examinations of early economic liberalism to historians. One such critically important episode in the evolution of the liberal economic project was the repeal of the so-called ‘Corn Laws’ in 1846. Whilst the precise impact of the Manchester-based Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL) continues to be a matter of conjecture, Eric Sheppard has asserted that their particular take on political economy managed to assume a ‘truth-like status’ and worldwide universality. But the ACLL’s campaign represents only one, albeit decisive, stage in the long intellectual and practical struggle between ‘protectionists’ and the disciples of free trade. Studies of the non-’Manchester’ components have tended to focus squarely upon national politics. This paper examines a pivotal attempt in 1838 by Lord Melbourne’s Government to experiment with the effective elimination of import duties on fresh fruit. Unlike most agricultural commodities, table fruit was produced in a tightly defined area, thus allowing the Government’s experiment to play out, in theory, without national political fallout. Whilst the Government’s clandestine actions left little time for a concerted opposition to develop, Kentish fruit growers soon organised. A formidable lobby was forged that drew wide local support yet also evolved beyond the original ‘epistemic community’. Whilst the coalition failed in their efforts to reintroduce protective duties, their actions allow us to see how protectionist ideologies and policies were vivified through practices at many different spatial scales and to better understand the complex spatiality of protectionist takes on political economy. Their campaign also changed – at least in the short term – the course of British mercantile policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent geographical discussions of postcolonialism have highlighted its emphasis on texts and discourses, its neglect of more material aspects of (post)imperial/colonial domination and the need for detailed empirical research articulating postcolonialism and global capitalism. This paper addresses these issues by reporting on research based in a recent debate in the UK trade press over the 'failure' of Caribbean food to 'cross over' into the UK 'mainstream'. It outlines the contrasting manufacturing and marketing practices of two Jamaican food companies whose accounts of (not) attempting this 'cross-over' illustrate postcolonialism's hybrid, resistant, ambivalent, scale-jumping, boundary-crossing, material cultural politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon evidence from the UK unit trust industry, this paper evaluates the extent and nature of financial globalization. It finds that despite this rapidly growing and prominent form of fund-manager capitalism operating with increasingly mobile capital in a more inter-connected deregulated world, this does not signal the advent of homeless capital and the end of geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the lecture given by the author in the memory of the macroeconomist Michal Kalecki regarding the political economy of full employment in modern Great Britain. The lecture is about unemployment. Kalecki believed that unemployment in advanced capitalist economies can often be reduced by creating demand through deficit-financed government expenditure. Kalecki considers how capitalism might be reformed so that it can function without unemployment. The authoritarian solution is fascism, which replaces the discipline of unemployment by the direct repression of the working class by force. The democratic solution, which he favors, is a new settlement between capital and labor, in which powerful trade unions co-operate with the employers in return for income redistribution and other egalitarian measures. Kalecki also recognized that structural factors might limit the scope for demand-stimulating measures. In his 1944 paper, "Three Ways to Full Employment," he argues that inflation will result if demand increases so much that a general scarcity of productive capacity emerges.

The article discusses the interpretation of economist E.G. West regarding the educational history in Great Britain in the 19th century. In an important paper published in 1970 West applied the theory of economic externalities to the understanding of nineteenth-century British education. After pointing out that the existence of external benefits to one group from the consumption of a second group does not prove the need for collective intervention. West presented evidence to support arguments that private purchase was providing optimal quantities of education given the resource limitations of the time. Unfortunately, West's presentation contains factual errors which may have led him into a serious misrepresentation of English educational history. If so, this is important because West's ideas have enjoyed wide circulation in places where they have considerable influence upon present day policy making, as the above quotations demonstrate. One of the good features of a well-working market economy is that consumers maximize satisfaction because they buy the products they themselves most prefer.

This paper discusses certain aspects of the thesis that during the twentieth century Britain has moved slowly towards a corporatist system. It will be suggested that corporatist developments can be traced to the First World War, and that the timing of subsequent initiatives makes it likely that corporatist structures have been introduced to facilitate the reduction of wages relative to Britain's competitors, and to speed the adoption of new work methods in British industry. The bulk of the paper will be concerned with an analysis of three periods (1919–22, 1930–3, and 1976–81) when the corporate form appears to have been rejected by the mass electorate, the ordinary businessman and financier, and the rank and file trade unionist. It will be argued that, during the twentieth century, international unemployment crises have provoked widespread support in Britain for the anti-corporatist doctrines of economic liberalism (known variously as ‘sound money’, financial ‘orthodoxy’, and ‘monetarism’). During each of these three periods, the corporatist form has been rejected by three key groups in British society — the financial community, businessmen, and certain sections of the mass electorate. The anti-corporatist policies of retrenchment, deflation, and government abdication of some of its economic responsibilities become highly attractive during times of high unemployment. In the light of this analysis, corporatism in twentieth-century Britain appears to be little more than a technique of economic management operating within capitalism and developed during periods of national economic difficulty. When international slumps have overtaken the British economy, corporatist structures have been easily and painlessly dropped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an explanation of how and why the British working class, from being marginal to white identity in the nineteenth century, came to adopt and adapt this identity in the twentieth century. The changing position of whiteness within the symbolic constitution of capitalism is discussed. More specifically, the transition from whiteness as bourgeois identity within Victorian, relatively laissez-faire, capitalism to whiteness as a popular, or mass, identity, within the more state interventionist capitalism of the twentieth century is used to exemplify the mutable nature, and political complexities, of the relationship between working class and white identities. The paper concludes with some observations on the implications of this argument for the theory and practice of anti-racism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although many now suspect that capitalist industry and society is undergoing major qualitative change, there is little certainty as to its character. Faced with the bewildering variety of changes which are taking place, it is tempting to seize upon simple polemical contrasts, often in the form of binary histories, in order to grasp the whole: industrial versus postindustrial, modernist versus postmodernist, fordist versus postfordist or flexible specialization, or organized versus disorganized capitalism. In the paper the author shall contend that the literature on postfordism is confused in its arguments, long on speculation and hype and based on selected examples whose limited sectoral, spatial and temporal range is rarely acknowledged. Strangely, the postfordist literature has paid little attention to the country, which most threatens western capitalist industry, Japan. Fordism in the strict sense of item is of minor significance in terms of employment. One recent Great Britain estimate puts workers on such lines at only 700 000 of the total Great Britain workforce of 20.4 million.

This article undertakes a critical theoretic assessment of the Windscale inquiry in order to throw some light on the nature of the decision-making processes involved in the development of nuclear energy. It argues that the Windscale inquiry merely served to legitimize state intervention, through the planning process, in the interests of capital. More specifically, it argues that systematic distortion of communication took place throughout the decision-making procedure, and the final, decision was reached under conditions of domination. Given that a number of recent articles have suggested that a critical theoretic perspective may well enrich one's understanding of the nature of state intervention in advanced capitalism, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, to outline those aspects of the work ofJürgen Habermas, which might be most usefully employed in the study of planning. Specifically, Habermas's communicative theory of planning may be seen to provide both a normative model for planning practice, and a theoretical model of social critique which can be utilized in the analysis of planning procedure and intervention. Second, to demonstrate, in the form of a case study of a recent decision to reprocess spent nuclear fuel in Great Britain, the ways in which Habermas's work may be applied in empirical analysis.

This paper examines the practices and perceptions of management consultants and their clients. The existing literature, which emphasizes managerial anxiety in accounting for the persistent use of consultants and, relatedly, the transience of management ideas is critically developed. It is argued that such accounts tend to be abstracted from the power relations of organizations and capitalism and to portray management as passive victims of confident consultants. An alternative interactive model is proposed, which is based on reciprocal and self-defeating concerns of clients and consultants to secure a sense of identity and control. This is explored empirically, highlighting the hitherto neglected active role of managers in resisting consultancy and the pressures and anxieties experienced by consultants. The account selectively draws on secondary sources as well as interview, documentary and survey research of IT strategy consultants and clients in the UK financial services sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Master and Servant Act was a law that allowed the use of penal sanction against workers for breach of contract in nineteenth century Britain. For scholars who believe that wage laborers under capitalism are free from “extra-economic” coercion, this law was an anomaly. One explanation suggests technological backwardness during the early stages of capitalism as the cause. In this paper I will challenge this account and offer an alternative explanation. As the British Empire expanded, the same law was enacted in many British colonies. If it was the process of capitalist production that rendered the Master and Servant Act necessary, this explanation should also apply to the British colonies. By focusing on Hong Kong, I show that this was not the case. Instead, I show that the use of judiciary coercion could be explained by Bourdieu's notions of doxa, habitus and field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an ongoing debate within radical geography concerned with the trade union response to the hegemony of business interests apparent under neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, I contribute to this debate by exploring recent attempts to renew trade union organisation in the UK following decades of decline. I argue that, despite recent successes in stemming falling membership numbers and signing new recognition agreements, closer inspection reveals flaws in the renewal process that reflect the underlying nature of scale politics within the union movement itself. In particular, centralised strategies at the national level are failing to re-energise local-level union organisation leading to a rather hollow and pyrrhic renewal process. Drawing upon both macro-level analysis and evidence from a particular industry case study, I suggest that unions rethink their organisational geographies and scalar relations if they wish to re-connect with the grassroots and at a broader level remain a progressive force in the changing economic landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been growing interest in the prospects for a new trade union internationalism in recent years, following the end of the Cold War and the coming together of the main national union organisations into one confederation, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions(ICFTU). For the first time in decades, geopolitical straitjackets and defensive nationalistic postures are giving way to more open, internationalist perspectives as unions attempt to get to grips with global capitalism. However, despite some well-publicised grassroots globalisation campaigns, effective international labour organising and networking remains thin on the ground. One of the reasons for this is that, despite the rhetoric of globalisation and the reality of multi-layered governance, the“national” space remains the critical scale at which unions operate. Variations in both union organisation and the politico-institutional context within which unions operate nationally continue to shape international solidarity activities. This theme is pursued in this paper through the contrasting cases of the UK and Norwegian trade union movements. Although both union movements have been subject to similar problems in recent years, in terms of membership decline and the pressures of increasing global economic integration, the different national political and economic contexts within which unions are embedded have been important in facilitating or constraining international strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pensions provision in the UK has been undergoing upheaval for several decades, as an already liberal regime has gradually been further liberalised, resulting in the rollout of defined contribution provision via the pseudo‐compulsory automatic enrolment system. Yet, the system is dysfunctional, insofar as it replaces the institutional guarantors essential to pensions provision with hazy notions of individual responsibility. The ability of capitalism to reproduce itself is jeopardised as a result. Increasingly, the state, despite scaling back the state pension system, is intervening to subsidise and substitute for a marketised system. Despite the significant risk of poor outcomes for millions of savers in the automatic enrolment system, and the integral role of the state in private provision, pensions policy receives little attention in political debates, or by political scientists. This is driven in part by a lack of salience among the public, which is itself a result of the peculiar temporality of pensions. Yet it is a product also of the disciplinary norms of political science, and the positionality of political scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the urbanization of Great Britain. This paper discusses three features of 18th century Great Britain-the maturity of civil society, the domination of rentier capital, and the metropolitan-core features of the British economy were pinpointed as giving the key to the urban revolution. The first, the maturity of the society was one element in the diffusion of urban development and therefore the relative ease of the transition from rural to urban proletariat, the early stabilization of the labor force and its political incorporation. The second, the capitalist interests of the landowners, is seen in the collapse of rural society and the domination of urban interests. And, in their control over food supplies, and the production of housing, the domination of landed capital may have some bearing on the low living standards of the urban working population, as indexed by high rates of infant death and migration. The third, the externalization of the economy, is read in the scale of peripheral development and also the regional specialization in production that ensued from world market domination. Those profitable monoindustry towns with their intergenerational repetition of demands on labor, provided social and political stability, and, it can be surmized, an incentive to emigrate.

The article presents the concerns regarding the special educational needs of children in Great Britain. They include the market economy which is already working against children, the devolution of responsibilities to governors and parents which does not best serve the interests of children, the diminution of responsibilities at the local educational agencies, the introduction of Funding Agency for School, and the lack of proper system for collecting information about the education service. Details about the Special Educational Consortium are cited, as well as policies that the consortium are pursuing.

The article studies a non-tournament model of process innovation with spillovers in the research and development (R&D) process in Great Britain. While the market gives private firms incentives to engage in R&D, competition for potential rents may result in firms doing less R& D than is socially optimal. Such competition is a feature of the non-tournament model of R&D, which has been used widely in the literature to analyze R&D competition. Economist P. Dasgupta and J. Stigtitz have used the model to show that while the market economy may be characterized by excessive expenditure in aggregate on R&D, each firm may spend too little with the result that the degree of cost reduction is less than is socially desirable. This situation may be further complicated by the presence of spillovers. The effect of this depends on how significant the spillover is and on what type of research is pursued. Finally, R&D output has many of the features of a public good and, in the market system, firms may not transfer their R&D output to other firms that could usefully use it.

This article draws upon the disconnected capitalism thesis (DCT) to analyse UK takeovers and their implications for workers. The DCT refers to the disconnect between the source of value creation (the labour process) and the wider political economy. Specifically, we highlight a particular aspect of this disconnect whereby those who create value and have a long‐term stake in firms (employees and managers at the firm level) are disconnected from decisions regarding takeovers, as a consequence of wider economic and political trends (processes of financialisation/marketisation and associated state support for a neoliberal takeover regime). We outline these trends and argue the case for a re‐connect, which will require empowering employees and managers to have more influence in takeover decisions and, in turn, disempowering shareholders and financial intermediaries. The article thus highlights the regulatory space for takeovers and considers feasible policy options, a set of interlinked regulatory changes, which will in particular require a more assertive state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The battle to soften the labour market impact of the pandemic has thrown up some unlikely bedfellows, with trade union leaders competing with business chiefs over who can most fulsomely praise the government's economic response. But does this entente really presage a new era of 'Covid‐corporatism'? Crises like Covid‐19 can provide opportunities for temporary social pacts, even in countries lacking the labour market institutions needed to sustain these in normal times, and the 'social partners' have shown an unusual willingness to be bold and constructive. But cracks are already appearing over how and when the state should begin its withdrawal from the economy. Unions face structural weaknesses and recruitment problems that will hamper their ability to take full advantage of what will likely prove to be only a temporary lull in hostilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines uncertainties about nature of Great Britain's capitalism after Brexit. Topics discussed include British model of economic development that had finance and financial agglomeration; range of political and economic shocks to the structure of the economy; and challenges to growth of finance and a flexible labour market.

Abstract: Moving towards an economy of freedom [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in order to develop an understanding of patriarchy as a dynamic historical force, we need to think about it as a social formation which, like capitalism, both shapes and is shaped by other aspects of society. Patriarchy embodies numerous contradictions. Those contradictions provide space for female agency, as well as possibilities of change. The ability of patriarchy to change and adapt, by moving through various contradictions, helps us understand the process by which patriarchal equilibrium is maintained. The contradictions are illustrated by an examination of the ways men and women failed at patriarchy in early modern England: as unruly wives and cuckolded husbands. Both men and women consistently fail in the performance of patriarchy, but these particular anxieties shed light on the specific ways patriarchy was connected to other social and political concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the advanced capitalist states, the post-crisis conjuncture has been characterised by both marked continuity and profound change. While regressive distributional trends in place before the 2008 crisis have intensified, a number of highly unorthodox policy interventions have also emerged. In particular, a new regime of "loose" monetary policy has crystallised, exemplified by record low interest rates and sustained programmes of quantitative easing. Existing approaches within economic geography are, we contend, ill-equipped to deal with these transformations. Engaging with the "variegated neoliberalisation approach"- associated with Jamie Peck and his collaborators - the article argues that existing conceptualisations of neoliberalisation understate the key significance that central state institutions play in securing advanced capitalist development. They therefore miss the key role that monetary indiscipline has played in sustaining capitalist development since 2008. This argument is substantiated empirically through a case study of state intervention in the UK housing market in the post-crisis conjuncture. Focusing on the Help to Buy Scheme and the buy-to-let market, the article argues that the UK's loose monetary policy regime has produced novel patterns of spatial divergence across the UK regions while simultaneously consolidating the UK's dysfunctional financialised model of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who cares? Helen Hester explores the integrated crisis of work, home, and community, exploring the feminisation of care in reproductive labour, paid and unpaid, as we enter the era of the care economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment and labour market regulation initially appeared as one of the solid red lines in the UK's renegotiation of the country's place in the EU. The basic argument is that the UK's more deregulated labour market would sit uneasily in the more organised models, based on statutory instruments or collective bargaining, found on the continent. While there is a legitimate problem here, EU employment regulations appear manageable from the point of view of business, while unions see them as important tools for socially responsible economic restructuring. Most of UK employment case law is now deeply entangled with EU law; labour market regulations have, on the whole, become part of the way of doing business in the Single Market; and a simple cost-benefit analysis appears impossible because some costs are not quantifiable and the costs of others are reduced when taken as a bundle. Labour unions agree that transposition of European law needs to be done taking into account local sensitivities, while internationally oriented companies do not see EU regulations on the whole as detrimental to business. Importantly, though, the costs and benefits of EU employment regulations are not symmetrically distributed across different companies: large companies are better able to reap the rewards and accommodate the costs of operating in the Single Market than smaller companies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British 'welfare state' has been transformed. 'Welfare' has been replaced by a new 'workfare' regime (the ' Work Programme') defined by tougher state regulatory practices for those receiving out-of-work benefits. US-style mandatory community work programmes are being revived and expanded. This article, therefore, considers shifting public attitudes to work and welfare in Britain and changing attitudes to working-age welfare and out-of-work benefits in particular. It also considers the extent to which recent transformations of the state may be explained by declines in traditional labourist politics and class-based solidarity. Thus, we attempt to develop a richer understanding of changing public attitudes towards welfare and the punitive regulatory 'workfare' practices engaged by the modern state in the liberal market economy; reflecting on the nature of the relations between ideology, party policies, popular attitudes and their political impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dramatic expansion of public and private financial markets in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution has received extensive attention. Despite this, little is known about how ordinary individual investors managed risk within this framework. Using a newly constructed dataset of share ownership for those joint-stock companies listed in the financial press of the day, we reconstruct individual portfolio holdings for investors in these companies. We examine individual portfolio holdings first for the decade after the Glorious Revolution and then for the years around the South Sea Bubble. Despite a fivefold increase in the number of unique individuals in the market between the 1690s and the 1720s, we find that in each period roughly 80 per cent of those active in the equity market held shares in only one company, even though many shareholders had the capacity or wealth to diversify share portfolios. These outcomes suggest diversification against idiosyncratic liquidity risk. Overall, however, there is limited evidence that individuals were using their financial portfolios to protect against diversifiable shocks. For many, we argue, company-specific voting and firm governance rules drove market activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between law, society, and economy in the context of the contemporary British welfare state. Drawing on themes in Polanyi's The Great Transformation, it identifies the constitutive role of contemporary social policy and law in the creation and maintenance of markets and opportunities for the private sector in the field of welfare, focusing on the institutional mechanisms being put in place to encourage this. What emerges is a reformulation of the function of the welfare state and related law, as these are no longer predominantly driven by a logic of social protection via redistribution to those in need, but increasingly reflect the state's desire to create openings for the private sector within welfare. The institutions that once contributed to ensuring the embeddedness of the market economy in society now play an important role in processes of disembedding - with potentially detrimental consequences for those seeking assistance from the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explain the broader evolution of British merger control. To this end it outlines a novel critical political economy perspective on regulation and regulatory change which differs from established political economy approaches, such as the regulatory capitalism/state perspectives, in three main ways: it places regulatory ideas at the heart of the analysis, it differentiates between different degrees of regulatory change, and it links regulatory change in delineated issue areas with changing power balances between fractions of capital and labor. The application of this perspective to the analysis of the evolution of British merger control provides some important new insights, most notably that the content, form, and scope of merger control in Britain have been deeply transformed in accordance with neoliberal ideas since the 1980s and that this process, which was part of a broader regulatory and ideational shift, was premised on the ascendancy of transnational capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legitimacy of HRM is threatened by challenges to the impact of its core research programme and the centrality of its practices and function. If HRM is in crisis, what are the sources and perceived solutions? This article addresses the question of what a critical approach to HRM can contribute to the discussion of its troubles. That territory has often been occupied by adherents of critical management studies. However, such perspectives have shared with normative models the mistaken assertion that HRM is primarily a cultural construct that focuses on the creation of employee commitment. This article makes a case for a political economy approach that situates HR troubles within the constraints of the accumulation regimes of financialised capitalism. Among the outcomes is a strengthening of market discipline rather than commitment as a driver of high performance. While challenging the assumption that HRM is a distinctive mode of managing the employment relationship, it seeks to identify some common grounds for dialogue between mainstream and critical approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the policies of Great Britain's Labour Party in regards to ownership rights. The author begins by explaining Labour's attachment to a form of stakeholder capitalism, which largely argues for financial sector reform in order to lower the cost of industrial finance. He then goes on to describe Labour's policies on asset-based welfare, which would provide a tax on inheritance that would ultimately benefit the poor. Economic developments related to Britain's income inequality and housing market during Labour's rule are explained as well.

The article evaluates the economic policy developed by Great Britain's Labour Party between 1997 and 2010. Labour's attempts to reform the form of neoliberal capitalism developed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a Conservative Party politician, are assessed. The influence of stakeholderism on such reform efforts is detailed. Efforts to alter the incentives received by British firms, regulate the country's labour market, and change market pricing are also examined. Government funding for employee training programs, reviews of company law, and Labour's alleged failure in reigning in financial services are explained as well.

In recent years, the global market for higher education has expanded rapidly, while internationalisation strategies have been developed at university, national and European levels to increase the competitiveness of higher education institutions. This article asks how institutional settings prevailing in national models of capitalism motivate distinct national approaches with regard to the internationalisation, globalisation, and Europeanisation of higher education systems. While the university is defined as an organisational actor embedded in the higher education system, the higher education system itself represents an institutional subsystem within the national model of capitalism. An analytical framework is then developed on the basis of the Varieties of Capitalism approach to compare the internationalisation of German and British universities. Findings indicate that the relations between the various actors involved in the internationalisation of universities are based largely on market coordination in the British case. In contrast, this process in Germany relies more on strategic interactions between the various organisational actors in higher education. The development paths in the internationalisation of universities are found to be influenced by and reflect the specific mode of coordination in the respective higher education system and the national model of capitalism more generally. This comparative case study shows that recent conceptions of path dependence as well as conceptual tools developed in the Varieties of Capitalism literature, such as institutional complementarity and comparative institutional advantage, may be fruitfully applied to research on institutional change in higher education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the development of the London East India agency houses during the first half of the nineteenth century, and their evolving commercial and political relationships with merchants and manufacturers in the British provinces. It outlines the emergence of pressure groups in Britain concerned with influencing British economic policy in India and the Far East, and their role in shaping policy as the East India Company receded in importance following the Charter Acts of 1813 and 1833. What emerges is a complex picture of collaboration between interest groups in London and the provinces. This challenges and refines aspects of the gentlemanly capitalism thesis of Cain and Hopkins, which emphasizes both the supremacy of London-based financial and mercantile interests in the formation of British policy towards the empire, and the separateness of City-based ‘gentlemanly capitalists’ from provincial mercantile and industrial interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the works of Anglo-American writer Henri Lefebvre in Great Britain. Translation of the works of Lefebvre into English; Concept of postmodern geographies; Analysis of contemporary capitalism.

This article explores the history of welfare pluralism or the mixed economy of welfare. The intellectual antecedents of welfare pluralism have a long history. In the context of social policy they make strike as new concepts. First, social welfare was popularly equated with statutory welfare. Secondly, the belief that Great Britain became a unitary welfare state after 1945 was based largely on a misconception fostered partly by collectivists. There are other aspects of the notion of welfare pluralism that have more to do with cultural traditions than with party politics.

The article comments on entrepreneurship in Great Britain during the late Victorian period. In using the total factor productivity index to analyse late-Victorian entrepreneurship, two propositions are confronted. The first is that the late-Victorian economy was characterized by perfectly competitive product and factor markets and by an efficient allocation of resources. The second is that the measured residual derives from the effects of the activities of entrepreneurs. The purpose of what has gone before has been to show that at the theoretical level, whether approached from theories of entrepreneurship or from the body of neoclassical theory, these two propositions are contradictory. The competitive equilibrium assumption necessary to justify using factor shares as the relevant partial elasticities creates a world in which entrepreneurs of whatever variety have no function and indeed cannot exist. It follows that whatever is measured by the residual, and it has already been pointed to its rag-bag nature, entrepreneurship is excluded by the assumptions which are made in order to generate it.