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In this article, I seek to explore the political and epistemological implications of European Union developmental funds in settings of policymaking in Greece. Building on fieldwork with specialized technocrats in Athens and with political personnel in Evros, I initially posit that the discourse on European funds has functioned as a recurrent argument for the justification of a coherent liberal idealist paradigm starting in the 1980s. Notwithstanding the ideological usage of European funds, I suggest that its increasing relevance in the practices and worldview of these social agents also pertains to a broader relocation of political and analytical focus onto the ethical conduct and qualitative features of dominated classes. Most evidently, the recent manifestation of the capitalist crisis in Greece reactualized the precept of moral and cultural introspection as well as its interrelation with the discourse of past benefaction. In this sense, the recent crisis also made evident the pertinence of Michel Foucault's "hermeneutics of the self" to understand the delineation of class hegemony in capitalism. I argue that the discourse of European funds has been conducive to the consolidation of the "hermeneutics of the self" as an overarching political imperative in Greek society over the last decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyze the strategies, surprises, and sidesteps in the World Bank's 2020 World Development Report, Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. Strategically, the Report promotes an expansion of neoliberal globalization couched in the language of global value chains. Curiously detached from the broader academic literature on global value chains in international trade, it promotes a sequentialist vision of global value chain upgrading that evokes the stagism of classic modernization theory. The authors sidestep important issues, such as China's pivotal role in the landscape of global trade, and are largely silent on others, including climate change. Significantly and somewhat surprisingly, given the general endorsement of global value chain integration, the Report acknowledges negative distributional trends associated with the rise of global value chains, including the excessive benefits reaped by "superstar firms" and the now well-documented decline in labor's income share. These observations are not reflected in the document's policy section, however, where the World Development Report largely recapitulates familiar prescriptions, with the threat of nationalist populism and rising protectionism providing a new bottle for this old wine. Drawing on a range of literature including United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's 2018 Trade and Development Report, we highlight not only the limits of the Bank's adherence to an increasingly embattled orthodoxy, but also the necessary starting points for a more useful discussion of the merits, limits, and future of global value chains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is as dubious for Marx's critics to claim that Marxism and socialism are dead as it is for Marxists to claim that Marxism and socialism are historically inevitable. Three developments in world capitalism, however, considerably enhance Marxism's standing as a theory of contemporary affairs: capitalism's world ascendancy, as personified in the world market; the waning ideological dominance of neoliberalism; and the retrenchment of one of capitalism's oldest and most effective answers to socialism, the welfare state. When world capitalism and neoliberalism advance and when the shield of the welfare state recedes, capitalism and its contradictions become more transparent. In the past, greater transparency was necessary for greater resistance, which is one reason why Marxism and socialism have an annoying tendency (for Marx's critics) to defy efforts to keep them down. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This seminal article analyses the current structural crisis and instability in an ever more polarised world in relation to earlier systemic crises that were resolved through fascism or through Fordist-Keynesian ‘class compromise’ (the 1930s) and the emergence of capitalist globalisation (the 1970s). The authors identify three basic responses to the crisis: popular insurgency from below; reformist stabilisation from above; and, a twenty-first century neo-fascism. Looking specifically at the US, they analyse political and economic developments that demonstrate fascistic characteristics. While no simple replication of the past, the emergence of a Christian Right since the mid-1980s, the growth of certain currents within the Tea Party movement, the sharp increase in violent hate groups, the spread of a vicious anti-immigrant movement, the psychopathology of white decline, sharp militarisation and pervasive policing give some indications of the rise of fascist tendencies. But what is crucial today is the sophistication of such a project, made possible by the ideological domination of media together with new surveillance and social control technologies that allow it to rely more on selective than generalised repression. In calling for a co-ordinated fightback, both in the US and beyond, the authors see the only viable solution to the crisis of global capitalism as a massive redistribution of wealth and power downward towards the poor majority of humanity, along the lines of a twenty-first century democratic socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article establishes the importance of recognizing what Satnam Virdee describes as the wider racial history of 'socialist nationalism'. Attentiveness to this formation attests to a broader attempt to resist the tendency of much contemporary analysis to attribute to today's reconsolidated nationalism an elite, unitary and generically rightist character. It remains important to observe how racial nationalisms' heightened contemporary appeal hinges crucially on the convergence of multiple and often contradictory 'political rationalities' – only some of which speak to elite machinations and/or attempts to manage the capitalist crisis. Particularly telling here is how nationalist politics ably call upon certain leftist registers: as premised on an iconography of working class plight alongside an institutional programme of welfare state entitlement as tied to exclusive visions of working class community. The second half of the article issues, in turn, an antidote to this class-coded nationalist consolidation. A renewed case for the importance of everyday multiculture, as a decidedly working class formation, is advanced. Whilst rebuking the forms of exotic romanticism and excessively upbeat vigour that characterises some multiculture research – alongside the tendency to only locate such multiculture in more fabled 'global cities' – the article argues here that such multiculture is a political repertoire that ably subverts the nationalist attempt to monopolize class for its own political ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Financialization Hypothesis is a popular argument in contemporary heterodox and also mainstream economics. It maintains that capitalism has undergone a radical transformation over at least the past three decades. The financial system, through a series of innovative mechanisms, has conquered the commanding heights of capitalism and has changed the whole system according to its own prerogatives. Concomitantly, the global capitalist crisis of 2008 is considered to have been a financialization crisis. This article disputes the Financialization Hypothesis and argues that instead of casting light on the actual workings of modern capitalism, it misconstrues them and leads into an explanatory blind alley. The spectacular ballooning of the financial system during the recent decades of weak profitability and accumulation does not constitute a new epoch, let alone a new capitalism. Instead, it represents a familiar capitalist response to periods of weak profitability. This does not preclude the proliferation of new financial instruments, which lend specific new forms to a well-known capitalist process. The Marxist theory of crisis and fictitious capital offers an analytically and empirically superior understanding of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the tensions between political sovereignty and global capitalist accumulation that arise from neoliberal globalization: in the context of neoliberal globalization, the role of the state was substantially altered, and competitiveness became important to sustain economic growth, employment and wealth. However, for this purpose, the internal stabilization of the economy also has to be ensured. Competition state-ness aims to reconcile domestic and global market dynamics. This paper addresses this challenge from a Cultural Political Economy perspective, arguing that the specific way this is done results from ideas, institutional selectivities and materiality. As the supranational level gained importance during globalization, this paper uses the European competition state project as an empirical example. It uses a Critical Discourse Analysis to analyze the economic imaginaries on competition of the European socio-economic strategy, Europe 2020. The central findings are two imaginaries on competition that address different market dynamics in the neoliberal political economy: the 'sovereign entity' that promotes a well-functioning domestic market, and the 'competitive entity' that aims to increase European competitiveness to thrive on the world market. Although tensions arise between the imaginaries, it is argued in the end that three strategies based on them constitute the European competition state project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant narrative around the unfolding capitalist crisis is firmly focused on the dominant economies, and in particular the US. This is understandable given that the proximate causes of the crisis lie in the imperial heartlands and crisis resolution measures taken there will have a global impact. But a 'view from the South' is needed to redress the balance and prevent the decimation of global majority likelihoods being presented as mere collateral damage. The first section below tackles the crisis from a global (globalization) perspective emphasizing its impact in the South and what that it might mean in terms of political prospects. I then go on to develop a hybrid Karl Polanyi/Antonio Gramsci theoretical lens on counter-movements based on their writings responding to the last systemic capitalist crisis in the 1930s. Finally, I turn to the ways in which the international labour movement and the subaltern or post-colonial worlds are contesting the terrain vacated by unregulated market capitalism. As Gramsci would say the old is dying but the new has not yet been born. La narrativa dominante alrededor de la crisis capitalista revelada, esta firmemente enfocada a las economias dominantes, y particularmente E.E.U.U. Esto es comprensible, dado que las proximas causas de la crisis yacen en la region central imperial y las medidas de resolucion de la crisis que se tomaron alli tendran un impacto global. Pero se necesita un 'punto de vista desde el sur' para compensar el equilibrio y prevenir la devastacion de las posibilidades de las mayorias globales presentadas como simple dano colateral. La primera seccion abajo trata la crisis desde una perspectiva global (globalizacion), enfatizando su impacto en el sur y lo que eso puede significar en terminos de prospectos politicos. Luego procedo con el desarrollo de una lente teorica hibrida de Karl Polanyi/Antonio Gramsci sobre movimientos opuestos en base a sus escritos que responden a la ultima crisis capitalista sistemica en la decada de 1930. Finalmente, vuelvo a las maneras en las cuales el movimiento laboral internacional y los mundos subalternos o postcoloniales estan disputando el terreno vacio por el mercado capitalista sin regulacion. Como Gramsci diria, lo viejo se esta muriendo, pero lo nuevo no esta aun por nacer. [image omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large evidence of the recent globalization phenomenon at national level, very little is known about the involvement of regional economies in Global Value Chains (GVCs). Instead, the regional dimension of GVCs is of primary importance since regions require an absolute advantage to be part of an international production chain. It can in fact be easily the case that within the same country both the participation and the gains from GVCs strongly differ among regions. In going to the territorial roots of GVCs, the paper aims to conceptualize a taxonomy of different modes in which regions can be involved in GVCs, based on different intensity of participation and rewarding conditions. Based on regional trade in value added matrices, the taxonomy is applied to the manufacturing sector at NUTS2 regions in Europe, combining two indicators of regional participation and 'terms of trade' imposed in the chain. Although national patterns are visible, and a clear divide between Eastern and Western Europe emerges, the modes of involvement are highly diversified within countries. Moreover, through a multinomial logit model, the local characteristics associated with the different roles that regions can have within GVCs are looked for. Their identification has far-reaching normative consequences that intervene in the capacity of regions to gain from participation in GVCs, and to mitigate the interregional income distribution effects that this involvement may cause. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the key crisis that has overtaken today's global economy is the classical capitalist crisis of over-accumulation. Reaganism and structural adjustment were efforts to overcome this crisis in the 1980s, with little success, followed by globalisation in the 1990s. The Clinton administration embraced globalisation as the ‘Grand Strategy’ of the USA, its two key prongs being the accelerated integration of markets and production by transnational corporations and the creation of a multilateral system of global governance, the pillars of which were the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The goal of creating a functionally integrated global economy, however, stalled, and the multilateral system began to unravel, thanks among other things to the multiple crises created by the globalisation of finance, which was the main trend of the period. In response partly to these crises, partly to increasing competition with traditionally subservient centre economies, and partly to political resistance in the South, Washington under the Bush administration has retreated from the globalist project, adopting a nationalist strategy consisting of disciplining the South through unilateralist military adventures, reverting to methods of primitive accumulation in exploiting the developing world, and making other centre economies bear the brunt of global adjustments necessitated by the crisis of over-accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, International Political Economy (IPE) scholars have increasingly turned their attention to cities. However, their primary focus has been on the role of a select few global 'cities' that regulate global flows of capital, goods, and services. Nonetheless, a significant gap in the IPE literature pertains to the limited exploration of how processes of neoliberal globalization are impacting and regulating the low-income 'informal' housing sector in cities located in the global South. To address this gap in the existing IPE literature, this paper critically analyzes the processes of formation and demolition of informal housing settlements against the backdrop of the neoliberal regime of accumulation. Informal housing settlements have been extensively examined by critical geographers and scholars in the field of urban studies. What distinguishes this paper is its unique contribution to the literature on IPE, that is, it utilizes the political economy of informal housing settlements as an entry point to critically analyze social ontology and the inherent contradictions of the postcolonial state. The paper argues that the relationship between informal housing settlements and the postcolonial state can be better understood through the lens of the 'institutional hybridity.' This concept refers to the fusion of contradictory socio-economic and institutional impulses within the postcolonial state, which aims to manage social reproduction and capitalist accumulation simultaneously. The inherent tension between social reproduction and accumulation manifests in the informal housing settlements in the form of a dialectic of 'benevolence-violence.' On one hand, the postcolonial state attempts to appear 'benevolent' towards marginalized groups by 'allowing' them to establish informal housing settlements through a multi-layered network of clientelism. On the other hand, the postcolonial state resorts to violent displacement of marginalized groups as soon as they pose obstacles to real estate-led capitalist accumulation. Thus, the paper contends that IPE scholars should carefully consider the political economy of informal housing settlements, as it provides captivating insights into the mechanisms through which the postcolonial state becomes subject to regulation and is pulled in different directions by the socio-economic forces of neoliberal globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Millennium (03058298) is the property of Sage Publications, Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Structural globalization has been both a cycle and an upward trend as periods of greater global integration have been followed by periods of deglobalization on a long-term stair-step toward the greater connectedness of humanity. Since 2008, the world-system may once again be entering another phase of structural deglobalization as the contradictions of capitalist neoliberalism, environmental degradation and uneven development have provoked different kinds of anti-globalization populism, rivalry among contending powers, trade wars and policies and social movements intended to mitigate the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This plateauing and possible downturn in economic connectedness is occurring in the context of U.S. hegemonic decline and the emergence of a more multipolar configuration of economic and political power among states. The combination of greater communications connectivity and greater awareness of North/South inequalities, as well as destabilizing conflicts and climate change, have provoked waves of refugee migrations and political reactions against immigrants. The result has been a period of chaos that is similar in some ways (but different in others) from what occurred during the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. This study investigates the question of whether the world-system is indeed once again entering another period of economic deglobalization and compares the current period with what happened in the 19th and 20th centuries to specify the similarities and the differences. We conclude that, based on changes in the level of economic connectedness since 2008, it is still too soon to tell for sure if the world-system is entering another period of deglobalization, but the important similarities between the recent period and earlier periods of deglobalization make it likely that the system is now in another deglobalization or plateau phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of feminist research has revealed the dismal labor conditions for women in global supply chains. Given this reality, why does Walmart use women in its supply chain as icons of female empowerment? Combining the Marxist notion of a "spatial fix" with a feminist analysis of symbolic resources, we develop the concept of a "gender fix" to understand a growing field of corporate programs that use women as symbolic resources to restore the image of firms as ethical actors. The gender fix encompasses a wide range of corporate empowerment strategies to capture a broad pattern of action. A second term is necessary to situate Walmart's particular empowerment strategy within its corporate positioning as leader of a vast supply chain network. We identify Walmart's particular empowerment strategy as "outsourcing feminism." Walmart's use of the outsourcing feminism strategy stems from its commanding position in supply chains, which allows it to extract a symbolic surplus from women business owners from whom it sources products. When Walmart argues that it uplifts these women, its strategy targets the consumer end of the supply chain, emphasizing sourcing practices that promote a racially diverse, selfless, and middle-class femininity. In so doing, Walmart deflects attention from the treatment of women in other segments of its supply chain (e.g., its stores and factories). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the current legal regulatory framework in Portugal, it is relevant to reflect on the importance of the scope inclusion of the fundamental principles, applicable to Labour Law, in the text of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. The current problem is to know to what extent, with all the recent changes in the labour world, which have been seen largely as a result of globalisation and new technologies, the existing balance between capital and labour does not compromise those principles, with emphasis on the principle of "worker protection". The challenge is, therefore, posed to the State, but also to the interpreter of Labour Law, to permanently ensure a possible balance. The importance of labour compliance, as a tool for mitigating conflicts in labour relations, with principles, ethics, integrity, as a reference, can make it, today, a positive reality in the globalised labour world and can help to minimize risks to which a particular company is exposed. It is therefore instructive to assess the constitutional impact that ends up being given to Labour Law in the laws of an infra-constitutional nature. The case of teleworking appears to be paradigmatic as an instrument for flexibilization of work, which allows companies to attract, motivate and retain professionals. Having followed this path -- which seems irreversible -- it will now be important to provide this institute with a legal framework that gives it legal certainty without, however, compromising the fundamental principles. The methodology used to carry out this article followed a qualitative analysis, through deductive approach methods and of an analytical and descriptive character, with a monographic procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its comprehensiveness, Lenin's classical analysis of the imperialistic nature of capitalism deserves to be considered under a new lens. This article is an attempt to highlight some important features of late imperialism. While Lenin's analysis is the focal point of critical inquiry, the article goes beyond his account to examine some important features of classical theory that remained unaddressed by Lenin. The attempt is to dialectically sublate Lenin's theory with the analysis of contemporary imperialism. It is suggested that the mechanism of financial accumulation, concentration and centralisation of finance capital is broader than classical conception of finance capital. Another important driver of contemporary imperialism is the globalisation of industrial capital driven by transnational corporations and arm's length production. The central feature of this new form of production is global monopoly capital resulting from combined interplay of concentration and internationalisation. The article also endeavours to understand the global proletarianisation of labour as a consequence of the accumulation at the world scale; a point only obliquely addressed by Lenin. The article concludes by comparing capitalism's crisis and decay in Lenin's analysis with the capitalism of present times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tries to demonstrate that the globalization process of recent decades has been weakened during the recent global recession. This process of deglobalization, the paper demonstrates, can be seen in the decline of international trade, the rise of protectionism, and the decline and certain changes in the pattern and destination of FDI. Prior to demonstrating the above, the paper discusses the various dimensions and relative severity of this recent crisis, which began during the last few weeks of 2007. By providing various historical example of capitalist crisis in the United States or in England it argues that capitalism has frequently witnessed altering periods of prosperity and recession or depression, often marked by a crisis of finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Política & Sociedade: Revista de Sociologia Política is the property of Revista Politica & Sociedade and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the frame of the globalization and the capitalist crisis, the viability of the State Nation is questioned. The fact is that the historical trends in the XXI century leads to the strengthening of nations and their sovereignty, offering resistance to the dominance of foreign corporations and the imperialist powers. Miguel Hidalgo's and the insurgents' project comes to life again in the bicentenary of the independence. This has been denied and distorted by conservatives and liberals. When the national sovereignty is even denied by the neoliberal politics, it leads to the integration with the USA through the NAFTA, the SPP and Merida Initiative. Thus, the best way to celebrate these historical dates is to fight for the total and worthy independence of Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a critical analysis of conventional and Marxist theories of imperialism. The article then looks at the globalization of capital and imperialism in the twenty-first century and explores the relationship between these two phenomena and examines the forces behind modern imperialism, class struggle, and revolution for the transformation of capitalist imperialism in the twenty-first century with all its political implications. It argues that contemporary capitalist imperialism and its inherent contradictions are going to set the stage for the rise of a global working class movement that will lead to the transformation of capitalist imperialism through a worldwide proletarian revolution in the twenty-first century. Thus, the article concludes by articulating the superiority of Marxist theories of imperialism as against their liberal and critical counterparts in predicting the future course of development of capitalism and the challenges that it will face by an organized international working class movement that is destined to rise up against the capitalist-imperialist system and replace it with socialism in the not too distant future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies suggest that globalization is a process initiated by corporations and states in advanced countries that pressures or encourages developing countries to open themselves to the globalized economy. This paper illustrates, with the case of China, that developing countries have significant power to initiate and shape trade liberalization. Using sources from both the United States and China, it delineates how the Chinese state, driven by its aspiration to move China to an export-oriented economic model, mobilized and coordinated dominant US corporations to lobby for US–China trade liberalization in the critical period of 1993–1994. China's "lobbying by proxy" efforts led to the Clinton administration's rejection of its 1993 policy that constrained free trade with China based on human rights considerations in 1994. This research shows that the origins and evolution of trade globalization involved many contingent actions of actors in the core and periphery. We should not underestimate the agency of actors from the periphery, even though they are not always in the driver's seat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes three arguments. First, it provides an embryonic blueprint for 'reglobalization' by crystallizing the insights of the special issue. We can and should build a better globalization that addresses enduring inequality, based on a radical analysis cognizant of the partiality, fragility and incompleteness of the existing global governance architecture, and which seeks to expand, upgrade and democratize the multilateral order. Second, following a post-financial crisis interregnum replete with morbid symptoms, the Covid-19 shock potentially represents the dénouement of a long period of neoliberal decay, after which different approaches to globalization will be necessary. Finally, only a reformed G20 can provide the crucial coordinating function that any process of progressive reglobalization requires, with three necessary reforms: its proper institutionalization with a permanent Secretariat; a widening of its remit to cover all aspects of contemporary globalization; and a concomitant narrowing of its focus to discharge aggressively that specific coordinating function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast majority of analyses on precarious labor depart from a sense of exception, either in the 1970s and 1980s or from the financial crisis of 2007–8, where a stable (stable, regulated, unionized) pattern of work levels would cease to be the preponderant factor for the proliferation of a new precarious norm. This reduction of the precariousness of labor leads to a series of misconceptions that prevent the understanding of the new forms and particularities of the processes of domination and exploitation of capitalist sociability at the turn of the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to show the clearly differentiated national context in which concepts of community as used in heritage developed from the late nineteenth century to the present day. In the first part of this article, we look at the origins of the academic use of 'community' in Germany from the late nineteenth century to the present day arguing that its association with National Socialism has tainted the concept permanently. In the second part of this article, we move to France, where we also find a long-term scepticism when it comes to the concept of community. The strong republican tradition, which mistrusted everything that was capable of constructing identities that would divide and compartmentalise the republican ethos, rejected notions of community. Ideas associated with community were usually seen as particularist and therefore incompatible with the universalism of republicanism in France. In the final part of the article, we compare the sceptical reception of 'community' in the German and French cases with a far more positive left-wing tradition of community studies in Britain. The comparison of the uses of the concept of community in those three countries shows how a transnational dialogue can lead to more theoretically aware use of the concept of 'community'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Turkish Court of Accounts / Sayistay Dergisi is the property of Turkish Court of Accounts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ecological crisis has intensified in many respects. Prominent proposals to deal with the crisis are discussed under the header 'sustainability transformations' or even 'Great Transformation'. We argue that most contributions suffer from a narrow analytical approach to transformation ignoring the largely unsustainable dynamics of global capitalism and the power relations involved in it. Thus, a 'new critical orthodoxy' of knowledge about transformation is emerging which runs the danger to contribute to a spatially and socially highly uneven green capitalism. This article claims that the current debate on social-ecological transformation can be enriched by a Polanyian understanding but also based on regulation theory. We distinguish between three types of transformation: incremental adaptation of the current institutional systems, institutional change in favour of a new 'green' phase of capitalism, and a post-capitalist great transformation that implies a profound structural change of the mode of production and living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands upon Leslie Sklair's concept of 'iconicity' to understand gentrification as a 'glocal' process wherein elites attempt to brand cities and exclude undesirable populations to attract capital investment. By focusing on the creation, commercialisation, and maintenance (via punitive policing) of iconic architectural and cultural spaces, I attempt to shed light on the economic, cultural, and political practices that have emerged in response to the ripening contradiction between increasing transnational investment in cities and worsening inequality/displacement in urban areas throughout the globe. Utilising this 'icon model of gentrification' to investigate ongoing gentrification within Mexico City, I illustrate the usefulness of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last few years have seen the emergence of a growing academic literature on the blockchain. On one side are the supporters, who see its potential to create a true, peer-to-peer (p2p) sharing economy. On the other side are the critics, who argue that the blockchain is more likely to reproduce capitalism than to disrupt it. Using the insights generated by the critical literature on the blockchain, this paper seeks to ask new questions and provide new insights about the development of this technology and how it is likely to transform the global political economy through its capacity to enforce global property rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of an intertwining between European integration history and the history of capitalism. Although debates on capitalism have been making a comeback since the 2008 crisis, to date the concept of capitalism remains almost completely avoided by historians of European integration. This introduction thus conceptualizes 'capitalism' as a useful analytical tool that should be used by historians of European integration and proposes three major approaches for them to do so: first, by bringing the question of social conflict, integral to the concept of capitalism, into European integration history; second, by better conceptualizing the link between European governance, Europeanization and the globalization of capitalism; and thirdly by investigating the economic, political and ideological models or doctrines that underlie European cooperation, integration, policies and institutions. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of an encounter between capitalism and European integration history, focusing on the case of the 1970s. This allows us to qualify the idea of a clear-cut rupture, and better highlight how the shift of these years resulted from a complex bargaining that took place in part at the European level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many, the "Trump phenomenon" represents an authoritarian phase of the neoliberal project. For others, it is a manifestation of a broader populist project that is the antithesis of, and arises in part as a reaction against, neoliberalism. Across Europe, political parties hitherto identified with the Far Right and thus beyond the margins of "respectable" politics have sought to reinvent themselves as legitimate voices within this populist framework. The UK "Brexit" vote and the policies of the May administration further suggest a coalition emerging around the Far Right and those on the nationalist wing of conservatism, putting them at odds with the neoliberals and neoconservatives who have dominated the political Right for some time, and who have been the principal drivers of capitalist globalization. This begs the question—does the new populism signal the end of the globalization project? And what, if anything, can the Left do in response? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses whether the U.S. will sustain its imperial role in the wake of the fourth great crisis of capitalism. Topics include as the 2007 crisis in U.S. mortgage securities led to the overall economic collapse of 2008, a new president of the U.S. was elected who was especially committed to the state maintaining an active role in sustaining globalisation as it strove to contain the crisis.

Polanyi's analysis and contributions have been brought back into discussion due to the rapid emergence of market-based instruments designed to tackle environmental degradation. Polanyi is a crucial reference in current debates on globalization and international political economy. This article seeks to explore and discuss how his perspective, and the founding concepts of his work, can help us to interpret the current process of the neoliberalization and commodification of nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores movements for social transformation in precarious times of austerity, dispossessed commons and narrow nationalism; movements counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand, and a neoconservative xenophobic populism on the other. Applying ‘rainbow coalition’ as generic concept it points at contours of a globally extended countermovement for social transformation, traversing ‘race’, class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the commons and indicating how they could be repossessed and democratically ruled; that is ‘reimagineered’). A multisited enquiry explores how actors express their claims as activist citizens under varying conditions and constellations, and if/how discourses and practices from different locations and at different scales inform each other. It interrogates whether there may be an actual equivalence of outlook, objective and strategy of ostensibly homologous contending movements which develop under varying local, national and regional circumstances in contemporary communities riveted by schisms of class, ‘race’/ethnicity and gender, occupied by the ‘migration’ issue and challenged by popular demands for social sustainability. The paper contributes to social theory by linking questions posed by critics of ‘post-politics’ concerning contingences of pluralist democracy and revitalised politics of civil society, to precarity studies focused on globalisation and the changing conditions of citizenship, labour and livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic globalization has greatly affected the economy, society and other aspects of individual countries and the world as a whole. As is well known, agriculture is the important foundation of the global economy, and most developing countries have a large rural population where agriculture is a significant part of the economy. Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood and full employment is difficult to achieve. Therefore, the study of how economic globalization affects agriculture and employment, and how developing countries and socialist countries should respond rationally and effectively, is worthy of attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Funded at $100 billion each, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) and New Development Bank (NDB) represent ‘sub-imperial’ finance, insofar as, by all indications, they fit into – instead of providing alternatives to – the prevailing world systems of sovereign debt and project credits. Balance of payments constraints for BRICS members will not be relieved by the CRA, which requires an IMF intervention after just 30% of the quota is borrowed. In this context the NDB would appear close to the Bretton Woods Institution model, promoting frenetic extractivist calculations based on US dollar financing and hence more pressure to export. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay examines the slogan, 'Worker's Rights are Human Rights' which is the early twenty-first century echo of the nineteenth's, 'An injury to one is an injury to all.' I analyze the implications of the strategy implicit in the twenty-first century slogan for an anti-globalization movement and its impact on the precarious wageworkers' struggle in the U.S. and internationally. I conclude that the nineteenth century shibboleth is more politically reliable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the case of the Mondragon cooperatives around the world to examine the feasibility of worker-owned cooperatives as a business model as of January 2016. Also cited are the move by the United Steel Workers (USW) union to partner with Mondragon Corp. in 2009 to evaluate the feasibility of unionized co-operatives, and the various subsidiaries and partnerships by Mondragon, including the supermarket chain Eroski.

Drawing on world-systems analytic perspectives and development studies, this article argues for the emergence of an experimental world epic during our era of global capitalist transition. As represented by David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, among other fictions, this epic demonstrates a radical commitment to global justice through its multi-scalar efforts to reconstitute the histories and horizons of world development, both for the subjects it represents and the global readership it addresses. For Mitchell, an ambivalent aesthetics of global cannibalism serves as a way to encode, critique, and exceed the logic of unfettered global capitalist accumulation, especially as the text self-consciously problematizes its role as a "global cannibal" of world culture and status as a commodity fiction to be consumed in the global literary marketplace. While the aesthetics of cannibalism may be distinctive to Mitchell, this article proposes that the experimental world epic might generally be characterized by its radical commitment to interrogating pivotal moments in world development and global transformation. Such an epic mobilizes world cultural knowledge and global literacies to highlight the deprivations associated with uneven development, enact global cognitive justice, and involve readers as active participants in articulating more ethical horizons for global transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption that capitalist globalization has been a period of overall stagnation is the dominant consensus opinion within Marxist political economy. This paper criticizes this opinion and shows that it rests on a mis-measure of the transition of the centrally planned economics of the ex-USSR, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and China developed by the official statistical agencies during the Cold War. This mis-measure has the effect of underestimating both the collapse of physical output in the ex-USSR and CEE during the transition and underestimating the growth of genuine national income after the creation of market economies where previously there had been none. This paper develops some alternative, much higher, estimates of the real growth of national income during the transition period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]