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A favourite pastime for development scholars and practitioners is to critique the apparent failures of development assistance. This paper explores how critique might be better harnessed for productive efforts in development scholarship, using academic practice in the classroom and beyond to foster new possibilities. In this commentary, I consider whether rethinking how 'we' development geographers position ourselves as voices of authority in the world could be one place to begin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how far local authority anti-poverty strategies consider the impact of poverty on children. After outlining some findings on child poverty and linking these with current debates on children's rights, it examines a selection of anti-poverty strategies. Although examples of good practice are highlighted, the paper concludes that in general issues affecting children living in poverty are insufficiently addressed and that anti-poverty strategies should be refocused to take account of the needs and rights of children. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at the critical review of the studies concerning family farming in Greece by looking both at more general treatments of family farming issues connected with its integration into the wider economy and at specific empirical research on family farm operation. First, the paper discusses the definition and theoretical underpinnings of the family farm as developed in western literature. Then it provides the contextual information for the discussion following on Greek family farming. The next parts are devoted to a review of the debate over the development of capitalism in Greek agriculture and a critical evaluation of the work produced on family farming in the post-1980 period in the country. This review deals mainly with methodological and theoretical arguments rather than actual empirical research on Greek family farming. Finally, a discussion is developed in search of a more holistic treatment of family farming in Greece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the pessimistic predictions of the classical theories of capitalist development, simple commodity production (SCP) has continued to persist under capitalism. While some, following the classic Marxist-Leninist interpretation, insist that SCP is only a transitional phenomenon and will disappear eventually, others argue that necessary conditions for the reproduction of simple commodity producing families may exist within capitalist formations and as long as these conditions exist, persistence of SCP will not be an anomaly. There are also significant differences between those who argue that SCP can survive under capitalism, in explaining the reasons for its persistence in agriculture. For this reason significant variations occur throughout the world, depending on the way it relates to the dominant capitalist mode of production. This paper will examine the post-World War II transformation in the tobacco sector that led to the consolidation of small ownership and simple commodity production in the Aegean region of Turkey. Within the given historical and commodity context, this paper will examine the natural imperatives of tobacco production, characteristics of family production, the tobacco market and state policies and their roles in the emergence and persistence of SCP in tobacco production in Aegean, Turkey.

This paper is a theoretical critique and empitical examination of the Mann-Dickinson thesis concerning obstacles to capitalist development in agriculture Mann and Dickinson contend that the noncoincidence of labor time and production time in the production process of certain agricultural commodities poses, along with perishability, an impediment to capitalist penetration Neither of these characteristics is found to actually impede the development of capitalism in U.S. agriculture. The labor/production time hypothesis is given greater consideration as it has apparent theoretical primacy in the Mann and Dickinson argument. The thesis is criticized on several theoretical points The empitical refutation consists of analysis of data concerning the variance of total monthly labor and the use of hired labor Eight commodities and/or commodity groups are analyzed for the period 1944-1974. The paper concludes that the labor/production time thesis is not supported by the evidence and that research on the capitalist penetration of agriculture must not be restricted to the view that capitalism penetrates simple commodity production only in the form of the hired labor relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concern of this paper is with the sexual division of care in Hong Kong, China, and mainland China. As will be seen in the later sections, women in China and Hong Kong are expected to take up far more caring responsibilities than men. The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which the sexual division of domestic labour is influenced by traditional Chinese values and contemporary political and economic factors. Certainly an examination of the cultural factor sheds considerable light on the gender division of care. However, it is still not sufficient to help us understand the whole picture. Attention should also be paid to the political and economic factors. The state policy occupies a central role in reinforcing the social construction of caring relationships. To understand the social construction of women as carers in traditional Chinese society, it is necessary to study the nature of the family because most of the care-giving processes take place in the domestic sphere. Hong Kong is located on the south coast of China. Of the 6 million population, over 90% are Chinese. It is often seen by the world as a typical capitalist society.

What has happened to incomes, inequality and satisfaction with living standards in the first stage of transition from a communist command economy to a market economy in East Germany? This paper tests six hypotheses about the transition to capitalism. Contrary to expectations, real incomes went up not down, net income inequality scarcely increased, and those who were previously advantaged did not become better off at the expense of the previously disadvantaged. A major reason for the last two results was that the Federal Republic's taxes and benefits, which were more progressive than the Communist regime's, had the effect of counteracting the increasing inequality of household gross incomes. It is also reported that, although real net incomes increased, satisfaction with living standards declined, probably because East Germans increasingly compared themselves with western counterparts. Optimism about the future declined in 1991-92 after reaching very high levels in 1990 immediately after the revolution. This paper is based on the first three waves of the East German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) conducted in June 1990 (N=4453 individuals in 2179 households), March-April 1991 and March-April 1992. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives primary attention to the basic differences and similarities between inflation in highly developed largely capitalistic market economies, generally those of the western nations, and in centrally planned economies (CPE's) such as those of the eastern European socialist countries. In the case of the market economies, inflation is more open, in the sense that prices generally rise until they almost exceed a new equilibrium level, eventually restrained by excess supplies in some products and labor markets, a combination that is well known as stagflation. On the other hand, in the socialist countries it is generally believed that inflation is virtually always partly repressed[2]. In these centrally planned economies there is also not a fully efficient mechanism balancing * Associate Professor of Economics, Central School of Planning and Statistics, Warsaw, and Adviser to the President of the National Bank of Poland. ** Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois. The work for this paper was carried out while Prof. KOLODKO was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1. For a survey of the literature and of the theory concerning this subject of worldwide inflation see CHOI [1985]. See also KRAUSE and SALANI [1977], LINDBERG and MAIFR [1984] and BRUNO and SACHS [1985]. 2. For evidence consistent with this belief involving the USSR economy, including the relatively large effect on saving, see HOWARD [1976b], including his reply to comments [1979]. For a list of those holding it, see HOWARD [1976a, pp. 57-59] and NUN [1986]. A dissenting wew is presented by PORUS and WINTER [1978, 1980]. the quantities demanded with the quantities supplied. As a consequence the usual administrative central control of prices of many commodities frequently amounts to periodic price jumps for some commodities, but a continued repression of the... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the traditional approach to the relative economic benefits of capitalism and self-management in theory. It goes on to analyse the relative adaptiveness of the two regimes and concludes that self-management is likely to find risk-spreading less available and risk-pooling less attractive than its capitalist equivalent. Finally the paper identifies a number of definite attitudes regarding self-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to construct an abstract model of a society in which each member can cooperate with others by forming a coalition, but at the same time can be influenced by the members outside the coalition. A new concept of equilibrium, called here a social coalitional equilibrium, is proposed, and a sufficient condition for its existence provided. The social coalitional equilibrium may be considered a synthesis of the Nash equilibrium (a noncooperative solution concept) and the core (a cooperative solution concept). The paper provides a broadly applicable mathematical tool for proving existence of equilibrium for models of labor-managed market economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of these two notes is to supplement the discussions of the Marxology of the so-called "transformation problem" found in two papers are highlighted in the present context from among the legion of recent contributions dealing with this aspect of Marx's thought because they are most concerned to treat the "problem" in its original setting, that is, as an intellectual issue that Marx himself was faced with resolving. As such they contribute significantly to our understanding of Marx as an outstanding figure of intellectual history. The present notes are to be interpreted in this same way.
Our ideas do not conflict with the conclusions of Baumol and Morishima and Catephores. Rather do we extend the scope of textual evidence which may be used to support some particular points made by these authors. It is our belief that more precision in dealing with the concerns set out below and in the two papers to which we have referred above is essential if we are adequately to understand the rationale and significance of the "transformation problem" as Marx himself saw it.
The first note concerns Marx's bibliography and the second deals with a methodological point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The appearance of the first two syntheses of the literature on the economic failure of 'statist' policies in post-colonial Ghana, to 1983, and the subsequent economic liberalization, is an opportune moment at which to consider the state of the debate about the political economy of the country since independence. This has focused on the nature of the socially optimum combination of administrative and market methods of resource allocation in this 'test-case' economy, and about the political conditions which largely determine the extent to which it is achieved. Explicitly or implicitly, both Frimpong-Ansah's (1991) and Rimmer's (1992) books combine the twin traditions of rational choice thought that have been dominant in recent years in the literature on African economic development, market economics and 'new' institutionalist political economy. The paper considers, in turn, the economics and politics of Ghana's economic decline and partial revival. It suggests that, while there is a consensus that 'state failure' was the main cause of Ghana's decline in relation to similarly endowed countries, 1950-83, the question of how far and in what respects the state should retreat from administrative control of resource allocation remains relatively open. For example, while the inconvertibility of the currency seems to have been irredeemably disastrous, the much criticized marketing board system may yet prove worthy of reform rather than abolition. There is also a consensus that the prolongation of what, for the economy as a whole, were disastrously counterproductive policies was to a great extent the result of the subordination of the public interest in economic growth to the sectional and personal interests of governments and their members. However, the paper argues that it is necessary to revise such explanations to take account of two surprisingly neglected points: (a) that economic growth in itself is a major political asset to governments in Africa as elsewhere and (b) that economic decline (as in Ghana 1975-83) requires more explanation than economic stagnation (as in Ghana 1950-75). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reconsiders the post-1943 versions of Kalecki's theory of the cycle and the trend of a capitalist economy which is free of any government involvement and in which labour supply is expanding. Kalecki's proposition on the central role of innovations in preventing the trend rate of unemployment from increasing is shown to apply only to the case when investors react slowly to changes in profitability (capitalists are cautious) and when, in addition, innovation-induced investments are low, either because innovations are rare (capitalism is sluggish) or because firms that do not innovate can still survive (captialism is poorly competitive). The reason for Kalecki's too general a proposition is shown to be his incorrect analysis of the stability of the trend growth rate of output. This paper offers new stability analysis as well as some extensions of Kalecki's theory. The reported results make his models richer and place them closer to the mainstream of macroeconomic theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper derives from a dissatisfaction with the wholly inadequate analysis of retailing and retail change that has characterized the literature. Traditional accounts of retailing and retail change appear to lack a systematic theoretical account of retail capital. Similarly, within the new economic geography, it appears that retailing has not received the attention it deserves. This neglect both underplays the substantive importance of retail capital and undervalues the importance of retail capital in the valorization process. of vital importance to enlarged capital reproduction. To understand capitalism, one needs to theorize retailing. Some theoretically informed considerations of the broader service sector are, however, at last being attempted. These have been allied with some work on the retail sector itself. Many useful insights have been gained in this research:, but these studies seem to illustrate the need for a rigorous theorization both of the service sector and retail capital in order to place them in their position as components of contemporary capitalism. This paper is a first attempt at filling this theoretical gap from a Marxist perspective. In so doing we are trying to bring the study of retail capital onto the research agenda.

This paper examines two "contextual" aspects of capitalist state development: the causes of change in state programs, and how struggles over policies and procedures shape political relations and practices. The paper argues that state formation is in part a process of class formation, and that capacities for struggle are forged through contests over the manner of state intervention in production and reproduction. Section 1 proposes a Marxist theory of capitalist state formation. In Section II, this theory is used to help to explain recent changes in Canadian co-operative housing programs, and forms of struggle over policies and procedures. Efforts to redesign and attack provision of this decommodified housing alternative make these struggles an interesting example of contemporary processes of class formation in and against the state. The state is defined as the dominant administrative and legal apparatus for collective regulation of class conflict and competition. This apparatus does not necessarily ensure reproduction of a particular class society, but it is necessary in all class societies because of the inherent antagonism between reproduction of ruling and subordinate classes.

The article presents the author's comments on the paper titled "The Dialectics of Reason," by John Friedmann. In the paper the author has taken all the doubts that have arisen about the foundation of ideas, values and promises on which the west has rested for the past two centuries and has placed them in a wider framework, making it possible for people to understand a number of specific situations that they confront. The framework which the author proposes is both creative and fertile and helps to understand more fully the urgent challenges one faces in Latin America including the need to strengthen democracy, the reformulation of relations between the state and private enterprise, the role, of the political parties and the reassessment of socialist proposals. Friedmann suggests a series of necessary developments, although understandably he has not sought to analyse his own proposals in greater detail because of the need for brevity in his paper. As Friedmann clearly points out, modernity is not basically a powerful idea that has triumphed on the strength of its own intrinsic truth. Rather, it is the ideology which has accompanied the expansion of capitalism and that is why it has been recovered and experienced in such an original way in Latin America.

This paper deals with the politics of redistribution in local government. Traditionally, it has been assumed that redistributive policies are crucial in electoral competition and party politics, both in national and local political systems. From this perspective, differences in local competition and party systems are essential to an explanation of local redistributive efforts. Peterson (1981), however, claims that redistributive policies are excluded from the local agenda because they impair local economic prosperity. These policies are therefore not conceived as instruments in the vote-maximizing strategies of local political parties. In this paper, hypotheses on the impact of party competition and party politics on local redistribution are formulated and tested on data for 342 Dutch municipalities. The results show that, contrary to what would be expected from Peterson's perspective, municipal redistributive efforts were related to electoral competitiveness and the party system. The proposed model, however, proved to be unsatisfactory in accurately predicting the direction of the effects of these explanatory variables. These results suggest that, rather than abandoning the study of local redistribution as a non-issue in subnational politics, an effort should be made to develop a better theoretical understanding of the ways in which competition and party politics shape these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a marked revival of Marxism in the intellectual life of western societies. This has resulted not only in some impressive synoptic studies dealing with the structure of contemporary capitalist societies, hut in a renewed concern with social change in these societies, and specifically with the role of the working class in the future transformation of capitalist society. This paper questions the importance attached to the proletariat as an actual or potential agent of revolutionary change. It asks: why did Marx and Engels see the proletariat in this role? What historical and theoretical considerations led them to this view? How plausible is it? The paper concludes that on the historical and sociological evidence Marx and Engels drew unwarranted inferences concerning the future role of the working class as an agency of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber's reputation is based almost exclusively on the methodological writings and substantive sociology published after the essay on `Objectivity' (1904) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). But Weber had in fact published theoretically significant work on capitalist development, agrarian social relations, and antiquity in the decade of the 1890s. This paper investigates these `early writings' as a basis for Weber's later sociology. Placing Weber in an intellectual and political context, the paper sets forth an interpretation of the distinctive characteristics of his structural analysis of society and his understanding of history. It also considers the innovations in Weber's conceptual language, particularly his use of the concept `Arbeitsverfassung', and in his early relationship to Marx and Nietzsche. The discussion defends the view that there is a distinctively Weberian `structuralism' and `developmental history', setting Weber apart in important ways from Marx and Nietzsche. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 paper is concerned with exploring the degree to which industry structure determines firm performance. Most of the business policy literature follows Porter in arguing that industry structure has an important influence on firm level profit rates. The arguments contained in this paper take a counter position. It is argued that a plausible alternative to the hypothesis that industry structure matters is the hypothesis that (holding demand constant) individual firm differences are the most important determinant of firm profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Warsaw Conference on the Marxian theory of Development centered on two related questions; (1) is there in Marxism a distinctively Marxian theory of development? (2) if there is, what guidance can it give today to countries at varying levels or stages of development? In his paper "The Marxian Theory of Development and Socialist Economic Policy," professor J.S. Berliner, held that the sociologist Karl Marx was primarily concerned with the process of capitalistic development. The Marxian doctrine, Berliner contended, applied primarily to fully developed capitalistic economies, their fundamental internal contradictions being supposed to lead inevitably to their bursting asunder and to their supersession by socialism. The title of the paper which professor W. Brus presented jointly with professor K. Laski was "Essentials of the Marxian Approach to Problems of Economic Development." For them the fundamental category of the Marxian theory of economic development was perhaps one which is both social and economic and is summed up in the expression mode of production. It would appear that Marxism does not furnish a set of formulae for development, from which practitioners can easily find out what to do in specific cases. Marxism does seem, however, to offer a box of tools, a set of canons, a method indicating how one might go about formulating what one wants to do by way of development.

The paper advances a threefold theoretical contribution using a system, society and dominance (SSD) effects framework to show how and why sustainable management-labour workplace partnerships are a chimera. First, managers (employers) find it increasingly difficult to keep workplace bargains with employees (unions) owing to increasingly neoliberal 'system' effects associated with capitalism as a globalized accumulation model. Second, workplace mutuality will be rare because of 'societal' level effects under voluntarism. Third, 'dominance' effects arising from the power of dominant economies and their multinational corporations can inhibit workplace mutuality. Drawing on empirical case study data from Ireland, the future prognosis of management-labour collaboration under neoliberal work regimes is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that, despite claims to the contrary, there has not been extensive, egalitarian reform in Bolivia since Evo Morales assumed the presidency in 2006. In order to explain agrarian processes in the country during the decade under Morales thus far (2006-2016), it examines the changing balance of agrarian class forces in Bolivian society and associated changes in the class composition of the ruling bloc between 2006 and 2010. It divides contestation over agrarian reform processes during this decade into two periods-one of insurgent contestation (2006-2009), and one of agro-capital-state alliance (2010-2016). The transformations in class alliances over these periods can be understood theoretically through Gramsci's concept of transformismo (transformism). In particular, this concept captures both the way in which leading layers of indigenous-peasant movements have been absorbed into the apparatuses of the state and thus decapitated, and the dialectic of transformation/restoration that characterizes Bolivia's ongoing 'process of change'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I recapitulate the origins, structure, and purpose of Neil Smith's rent gap theory, and assess the frequently discussed but rarely dissected empirical studies of rent gaps, in order to trace the key analytical and political shifts Smith effected (from consumer preference to mortgage capital circulation, from 'natural areas' to state structures, from house prices to capital depreciation, and from middle class demand to class struggle), as well as posit some possible extensions of the theory vis à vis territorial stigmatisation and displacement. This tracing and extending in place, I then consider the rent gap in the context of the emerging body of work on planetary urbanisation, and argue that the theory helps to expose and confront new geographies of structural violence-planetary rent gaps-where the constitutive power of speculative landed developer interests in processes of capitalist urbanisation can be analysed and challenged. If, as David Harvey has recently argued, rent 'has to be brought forward into the forefront of analysis ... [to] bring together an understanding of the ongoing production of space and geography and the circulation and accumulation of capital' (2010:183, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Profile), then it is important to consider what we can learn from the rent gap today, rather than relegate it, as so many seem to do, to something that has already been debated or exhausted in the large literature on gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neil Smith's writings about capitalism and what we call 'nature' were insightful and influential. This paper asks what Smith would make of the 'radical turn' today occurring in the world of international geoscience. If we 'think with' Smith, how should we view Naomi Klein's recent statement that geoscientists can act as fifth columnists calling the capitalist way of life into question? In the first half of the essay I address these questions. I summarise and apply the insights of Smith's writings to recent developments in international geoscience. Smith wrote about science in most of his published statements about capitalist ecology and I show that he would ultimately have regarded Klein as hopeful, even naïve. I then go on, in the second half of the essay, to 'think against' Smith. I suggest his views on science bespeak a wider, unhelpful separation between Left scholarship in the social sciences and humanities and the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and medicine). Recalling earlier attempts to radicalise science politically, and highlighting the radical potentials of geoscience today, I make the case for forms of interdisciplinarity that might render geoscience more political. Though this case opens space for perspectives beyond the Marxism Smith did so much to develop, he would-I hope-see it as a legitimate part of the Left's long war against capitalism's rule over society and environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social justice struggles across the Americas have, over the last half century, transformed the urban areas of this region into international staging grounds for protesting the global devastation wrought by capitalist exploitation, state terror and social hatred. This paper maintains that there is much to learn for struggles against this triangulation in other parts of the world. In particular, through a discussion of how contemporary activism in Mexico against feminicidio, drug wars and brutal repression draws from a long legacy of protest across the Americas, I seek to illustrate the relevance for other places as people fight a cruel modernity that evolves through terror, profit and hatred. Critical geography has long contributed to exposing these connections and can still deepen its commitments to mapping the landscapes of the growing populations of disappeared and marginalized peoples in Mexico and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As disasters increasingly affect a greater proportion of the population with growing strength and frequency it is becoming even more important to comprehend how recovery from these events is mediated and managed by society. Emerging from several decades of concerted work on the social determinants of disaster, vulnerability and risk, research is now being established that underlies the importance of the politics and power in shaping the processes and outcomes of disaster recovery. In particular, there is a need to situate the central role of neoliberal capitalism in shaping the values and practices of reconstruction and recovery, particularly through engagements with crisis politics. At the same time, disasters may open up space for contestation and resistance that allows for alternative and transformative forms of recovery politics. In this paper I draw on geographies of crisis and hope to frame a theoretical perspective that encapsulates both the capitalist dynamics of disaster recovery and the radical potential of post capitalist politics for facilitating transformative action at the community scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a 1982 paper I argued that perceptions of time scarcity in Kragur Village, Papua New Guinea, in the mid-1970s were best understood as a reaction to new forms of authority characteristic of the growth of capitalism and calls for greater time order were grounded largely in its perceived ritual significance. More than forty years later, villagers are much more familiar with Western time, but less likely to perceive time as scarce. As in the 1970s, aspiring leaders still press for greater time order. Millenarian illusions informed advocacy of time order in the 1970s. Although today these illusions are, if not extinct, then dormant, unquestioned assumptions mirroring Western capitalist views of time inspire many of today's advocates. Yet, lacking the authority to impose new forms of time order, they have little effect on the rhythms of village life, and economic incentives to abandon comparative indifference to time remain weak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of biotechnology is part of a global process of structural change in agriculture characterized by an increased integration of world agriculture with high corporate control. However, as the legal competence to allow the planting and trade of genetically modified (GM) crops commonly lies at the level of the nation state, this remains strategic in the politics of GM crops, both for actors promoting the technology and for social movements struggling against it. This paper illustrates this argument with an analysis of the struggles over GM crops in Brazil. It shows how the implementation of a food regime based on biotechnology, corporate control and neoliberal globalism depended on the state and was a contested process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely believed that there is no alternative to capitalism. Over the last two decades however, the critical geography literature on diverse economies has demonstrated the existence of alternatives to capitalism by revealing the persistence of non-capitalist forms of work and organisation. The aim in this paper is to question the validity and usefulness of continuing to frame these non-capitalist practices as 'alternatives'. Positioning non-capitalist economic practices as 'alternatives' fails to capture not only the ubiquity of such practices in everyday life, but also how those engaging in them do not see them as 'alternatives' in the sense of a second choice, or less desirable option, to capitalist practices. The intention in doing so is to reveal that it is not non-capitalist practices that are 'alternative' but rather, capitalist practices themselves, thus opening up the future to the possibility of a non-capitalist world more fully than has so far been the case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the problem with capitalism? Is it wrong, unjust, irrational, or bad? Is it evil or dumb-or is it just not working? While critiques of capitalism have become commonplace-particularly since the most recent global economic crisis-it is often unclear what exactly is being condemned. Likewise, the normative presuppositions and criteria of such criticisms have been left unspecified. In this paper, I distinguish between three approaches to the critique of capitalism, distinguishing a functional, a moral, and an ethical argumentative strategy and paying special attention to the distinctive types of argumentation they mobilize. First, I consider the 'functional' critique, typically directed against capitalism's straightforward dysfunctions or crises. We will find, however, that this sort of criticism presupposes a normative criterion that is frequently unarticulated, namely: the implied 'purpose' of a well-functioning economic system. Second, I examine a common 'moral' critique, that is, that capitalism is premised on exploitation. Yet, the concept of exploitation, too, introduces certain difficulties, since the kind of moral wrong associated with it-unequal exchange-is hardly obvious to everyday observation and must be derived systematically. Third, I introduce and address the 'ethical' critique, broadly, that capitalism constitutes a bad form-of-life. However, while I object to some of the forms this criticism has taken-in particular, I argue that much 'alienation' diagnosis is tainted by nostalgia and naiveté-I nonetheless recommend developing a critique of capitalism as a form-of-life that would include ethical and functional criteria. I conclude with some remarks in this direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Over the past few decades, social enterprises have grown remarkably. This paper investigates how social enterprises affect access to social services (e.g., education and health-care) and utilitarian welfare. To this end, two economic systems are compared: a market economy system, where all firms are profit maximizers, and a mixed economy system, where both for-profit businesses and social enterprises are present. Findings show that individuals are more likely to have access to social services within mixed economy. Moreover, conditions are derived under which utilitarian welfare is larger within mixed economy. Public policies in support of social enterprises (e.g., subsidies) are shown to result in the following trade-off: access to social services is further enhanced but utilitarian welfare is more likely to be lower than that within market economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implications of transferable shares in a cooperative firm as compared with shares in a capitalist firm. We argue that a cooperative firm issuing transferable shares is isomorphic to a capitalist firm as a business organization, while maintaining its essential characteristic of being owned not by capitalists but by members as input providers or output receivers. Based on this observation, we explore the possibility of developing a unified business law that regulates both capitalist and cooperative firms within a single legal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a three-currency model to study the determinants of the demand for assets and liabilites denominated in an international currency and to shed light on the prospects for the renminbi as a budding international currency. We show that interest rate differentials would be only one of the factors shaping the renminbi's position, while other factors, including the correlation between foreign countries' economic growth and their bilateral exchange rates against the renminbi, and the correlation between exchange rates of the renminbi with other international currencies, would also be important. A broad interpretation of these findings is that the renminbi will likely be attractive to investors from high-income economies and fund-raisers from emerging market economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper underscores the theoretical contribution of an early essay by Henry Bernstein, 'Notes on Capital and Peasantry', published in 1977. It uses the ideas in that essay to construct a general argument about the ways in which capitalism dominates household producers. The first section summarizes the arguments of Bernstein's essay and relates them to key passages of A.V. Chayanov's work. The second section builds a model of how commercial capitalism worked in the produce trades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third section proposes a wider taxonomy, where the differences between commercial and industrial capital and their respective forms of domination of the countryside are laid out. The key category here is vertical integration as a form/strategy of accumulation chiefly characteristic of the latter. The fourth section suggests that we need to take merchant capitalism more seriously as a historical category as well as one of theory, rejecting the idea that merchant's capital 'exclusively inhabits the circulation sphere'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past three decades, China has undergone tremendous economic and social change as a consequence of the transition from a centrally planned to a market economy. This paper examines a key feature of this transition - the privatization of the state-owned enterprises ( SOEs) - through both a theoretical model and empirical analysis. Using newly collected primary data from a variety of sources, we study how privatization of listed SOEs affects employment, wages, profits and other aspects of economic performance at the firm level. Our major finding is that privatization results in substantial downsizing of employment, increased labour productivity and rising profitability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the equilibrium dynamics of exploitation and class in accumulation economies with population growth, technical change and bargaining by adopting a novel computational approach. First, the determinants of the emergence and persistence of exploitation and class are investigated, and the role of labor-saving technical change and, even more importantly, power is highlighted. Second, it is shown that the concept of exploitation provides the foundations for a logically coherent and empirically relevant analysis of inequalities and class relations in advanced capitalist economies. An index that identifies the exploitation level, or intensity of each individual can be defined and its distribution studied using the standard tools developed in the theory of inequality measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a synthesis of the empirical scholarship on England and Germany, this paper demonstrates that in both regions, rural socio-economic developments from c.1200 to c.1800 are similar: this period witnesses the rise to numerical predominance and growing economic significance of the 'sub-peasant classes', which had a growing impact on the market as a result of their increasing market dependence, and from which - towards the end of the period - a rural proletariat emerged. Against the influential theory of Robert Brenner, it is argued that the period c.1200- c.1400 cannot really be categorized as 'feudal' according to Brenner's definition; and 'agrarian capitalism' does not adequately describe the socio-economic system that obtained by the end of the sixteenth century. A genuine transition to capitalism is only evident from after c.1750, and can be found in Germany as well as in England; it is predicated both on ideological shifts and on the evolution of the rural proletariat, which is only found in large numbers by or after c.1800. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an in-depth case study of a rural community, this paper documents the contemporary state of Chinese smallholder agriculture and the changes that it has been experiencing in the context of dramatic socio-economic transition through the lens of three main economic drivers: livelihood diversification, market conditions and government interventions. Results reveal that the change in Chinese smallholder agriculture has been complex and multidimensional. All three factors exert profound influence and shape the current state of Chinese agriculture. Massive rural-urban migration has resulted in labour shortages, which in turn have led to a reduction in agricultural diversity and land use intensity and a shift from traditional labour-intensive technologies to modern capital-intensive technologies. However, because of well-developed agricultural markets, input use levels are similar across farmer categories (such as income diversification), helping to maintain productivity. Furthermore, reduced profits from farming due to increasing input prices and decreasing output prices have exerted pressure on smallholders to increasingly turn to nonfarm activities and have also triggered a thriving informal land transfer market, which was previously non-existent. Policy implications include the need to strengthen local economies, improve market conditions, invest in rural infrastructures and facilitate smallholders' mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT My previous work developed a structural model for understanding English vernacular houses, stressing the way the house reflected wider household values. In this paper, I balance this account by starting with everyday life rather than formal structure. I examine material traces of dwelling within and around the house, rather than the presumed mental template that conditioned its building. I discuss material items that flowed through the house in sometimes unpredictable and alarming ways (for example through witchcraft). These artifacts reflect gendered tensions and anxieties that ran through the rhythms of everyday life, rather than a patriarchal structure that governed them. A focus on dwelling brings into focus how the material form of the house and the social form of the household mutually created each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines monetary and fiscal interactions in a framework where the government as Stackelberg leader worries about political costs of corruption and central bank opacity acts as a fiscal disciplinary device. Opacity could reduce (increase) inflation expectations, inflation (the output gap) and the responses of these variables to supply shocks, and would improve social welfare. Under the least favourable assumptions on the effect of corruption, i.e. 'sanding-the-wheels' or weak 'greasing-the-wheels' effect, opacity has a fiscal disciplining effect that could be reinforced by grand corruption. Intransparency increases corruption only if the 'greasing-the-wheels' effect is relatively large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper discusses one aspect of corporate social responsibility-employee community volunteering-as implemented at an Israeli banking corporation. The literature on corporate social responsibility as a feature of global capitalism has largely ignored the history of corporate philanthropy and its relation to the current model of social responsibility. Moreover, to date, no studies have addressed the relationship between models of corporate social responsibility, on the one hand, and management approaches, on the other. In this historical-ethnographic study, we examine a case in which, we argue, normative management models and advanced marketing approaches combined to shape new conceptions and practices of employee volunteering. We examine how the process evolved over the course of three marketing campaigns initiated by the bank's management between the early 1960s and the early 1980s. In the early 1960s, the models in question helped refashion the employees' identity as service providers 'empathic' toward clients. By the late 1970s, their identity was transformed once again, this time to incorporate a 'humane' orientation toward the 'community'. In the process-the results of which are still felt today-the employees became the carriers and disseminators of an organizational culture that emphasized values of philanthropy and social commitment. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay departs from the figure of exoticism to theorize chinoiserie for the twenty-first century, so we may better address the new realities and forces at work in the context surrounding the (re)creation and redefinition of the 'orient.' The paper takes as its focus the cult of posthumous Mao that became fervent in the 1990s and has since the turn of the millennium created a nexus in which global capitalism and 'effective authoritarianism' negotiate conflicting interests and, together, create a line of development in their search for a global modernity. I argue that Chinese state capitalism in the twenty-first century took advantage of cultural consumerism made possible by global capital while working upon and with the genealogy of orientalism, of chinoiserie, in the so-called West. I seek to show that the commodity industry of posthumous Mao today witnesses chinoiserie's transformation from a western fantasy into a policed imagination - a chinoiserie with Chinese characteristics. For the first time, perhaps, in the case of 'China,' the orient constructs itself, for its own purposes, as the 'Orient,' the product of a new chinoiserie that serves the state along the lines of its nationalist and universalizing ambitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a classification of the emerging agrarian class positions in China today. Using an instrument based on rural households' combination of market positions in four markets - land, labour, means of production and product - I identify five agrarian classes: the capitalist employer class, the petty-bourgeois class of commercial farmers, two labouring classes of dual-employment households and wage workers, and subsistence peasants. This classification is then used as a heuristic device to organize the empirical analysis that examines how dynamics of agrarian change drive class differentiation in rural China. For the capitalist employer class, the analysis focuses on their diverse paths of accumulation; for the petty-bourgeois commercial farmers, their contingent resilience and tendencies of differentiation; and for the two classes of labour, the commodification of their subsistence. The state plays important but varying roles in all these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of global trade has produced new challenges for the effective governance of product safety. We argue that many of these challenges arise at the bilateral level from the interaction of more or less adaptable national regulatory styles. When regulatory styles are unadaptable they produce gaps in risk management, slow and contested resolutions to crises, and limited regulatory cooperation. To examine these claims empirically, we study bilateral food safety regulation in four major exporter-importer dyads: China- Japan; Canada-United States ( US), China-European Union ( EU), and the US- Japan. The China- Japan dyad is the most adaptable, combining China's 'export segmentation' regulatory style with Japan's strongly 'risk-averse, interventionist' style. The Canada- US dyad operates effectively, bringing together Canada's 'global market-conforming' regulatory style with the US strategy of 'sovereign regulator.' The China- EU dyad is less adaptable because the EU's 'harmonization' regulatory style makes it difficult for the EU to adapt to the weaknesses of the Chinese food safety system. Finally, the US's sovereign regulator style clashes with Japan's interventionist style, making them the least adaptable of the four dyads. The paper concludes with a discussion of the broader relevance of our findings for the development of regulatory capitalism. [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]

This paper draws on primary qualitative data to explore the accumulation strategies of indigenous exporters in the Senegalese horticultural sectors who supply European markets. It argues that exporters straddle contract and estate farming as a strategy to break through and survive in European markets, where the power of large-scale retailers is increasing and the proliferation of food standards act as a non-tariff barrier. It also analyses the relative opportunities as well as the costs of contract and estate farming. Then it focuses on how the control of buyers over suppliers is far from complete, revealing downstream and upstream spaces and dynamics of non-compliance. In conclusion, some reflections on the development of capitalism in Africa are advanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that frontiers are dilemmas composed of multiple dualities, be they exclusive and inclusive powers, connected space and national periphery, or modernity and primitiveness. These dilemmas, in consequence, become the mechanism to create a leeway for the state to 'tailor' different meanings of frontier to meet the contingent market demands. I use tea production on China's southwest frontier as an example to demonstrate that dilemma is not an end result, but a mechanism to rearticulate the relationship among frontier, the state and the market economy. Specifically, I argue that dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have been forged by the Chinese state with its incompatible desires between 'modernisation' and 'primitiveness' of the tea landscapes in Yunnan, a province on China's southwest frontier. Meanwhile, the incompatible desires and the resulting dilemmas on China's southwest frontier have further mobilised the state to flexibly rework its power to reconstruct the frontier to meet contingent market demand. Based on the shifting meanings of tea landscapes, the state has flexibly 'shuttled through' the dilemmas between development of modernisation and preservation of primitiveness on the frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been argued that understanding of entrepreneurship and firm behavior can be advanced by generalizing the static theory of the neoclassical firm so that it can deal with conditions in a dynamic economy. The paper rejects generalization and explains why such a shift causes the nature of the allocation process to change from the neoclassical pattern. Under generalization, critical information becomes prohibitively costly to obtain and entrepreneurial judgment rather than the Pareto rules decides allocation. Thus, the non-optimizing firm becomes dominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]