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This document contains abstracts of papers presented at an academic conference. The papers cover a wide range of topics related to economics, history, and social development. Each paper presents empirical evidence and analysis to shed light on specific phenomena or historical events. The research is conducted using different methodologies and data sources, providing valuable insights into these complex subjects. The summaries provide a brief overview of each paper's main findings and contribute to the understanding of various social and economic phenomena. [Extracted from the article]

Miguel Antonio Caro is known as one of the most lucid conservative thinkers of nineteenth-century Latin America. His antiliberal thinking came to define what it meant to be a Catholic man of letters in Colombia and beyond. Today, he is mostly remembered for his work on linguistics, Latin translations, and the 1886 Colombian Constitution. However, Caro was also the most recalcitrant defender of paper money of his time. In press articles, he developed what can be described as a Hispanic Catholic theory of monetary signs. While he is often portrayed as an anti-modern ideologist, the financial dimensions of his writings reveal a very different picture. Vindicating a Spanish tradition of currency debasement that went back to Alfonso the Wise, the Colombian ultramontane conciliated his traditionalism with capitalism's global accumulation drive by equating paper money with God's infinite gift: the divine grace. He hence proposed a Catholic view of capitalist modernity that rejected the "evils" of utilitarianism but embraced Colombia's agro-exporter economic model as part of God's providential design. In his political-religious project, money is thus imagined as a key tool of the Christian oikonomia , that is, God's government of earthly affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cambodia is one of the first two countries that adopted a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in October 2020. The design of the CBDC, called the Bakong, is a bit unique. We find a few design flaws that could potentially damage the central bank and then the Cambodian economy as a whole. We show some key statistics from our own survey in 2022 to support our arguments. The Bakong is offered in two currencies, the Khmer Riel (KHR) and the US dollar (USD), as Cambodia has been highly dollarized. We discuss theoretical predictions for the CBDC based on three kinds of substitutes: paper money, bank deposits, and foreign currencies. The third one is specific to the Bakong. Unlike a typical local currency CBDC, the USD Bakong may substitute for the KHR more. Moreover, it has been announced that the retail Bakong is legally not a liability of the central bank, but from the viewpoint of the underlying technology and economics, it is a central bank liability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Review of Radical Political Economics is calling for papers for a special issue on climate change and capitalism. The journal is seeking manuscripts that provide a range of critical political economic perspectives on the topic, as well as a variety of methods, approaches, and geographic focuses. They particularly encourage submissions from climate activists, scholars in the Global South, early career researchers, and scholars from historically excluded groups. The journal provides a list of possible subjects for the special issue, including theoretical and empirical interventions, historical or contemporary analyses, critiques of economic analysis, and models of climate justice and anti-capitalist struggles. Submissions must adhere to the journal's guidelines and will undergo peer review. [Extracted from the article]

The growth model (GM) programme in comparative and international political economy attempts to do three things. First, it encourages a dialogue between international and comparative political economy research through creating a shared theoretical framework that moves beyond the methodological and ontological nationalism of traditional comparative research. Second, it draws upon post-Keynesian macroeconomics to emphasise the importance of domestic demand, credit debt, and macro-financial regimes in shaping the politics of advanced capitalism. Third, it draws attention to the dynamics of political conflict, coalition building and social agency in shaping country-specific GMs. Each paper in this special issue either directly or indirectly touches on these different aspects of the nascent GM research programme. But they do so with a particular focus on the comparative political economy of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the recent resurgence of interest in capitalism in social sciences and humanities fields. Scholars are reexamining capitalism and its relationship to uneven development and social difference. The article brings together papers from various disciplines, including geography, sociology, anthropology, and global political economy, to explore how these concepts intersect. The papers highlight the importance of understanding capitalism as an overdetermined whole and emphasize the role of spatial and social difference in its development. The authors also emphasize the importance of struggle and concrete social interventions in shaping the geographies and temporalities of uneven development. [Extracted from the article]

Copyright of Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung Discussion Papers is the property of Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies 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 critical platform studies literature has built a compelling picture of how techniques like worker (mis)classification, algorithmic management and workforce atomisation lie at the heart of how 'work on-demand via apps' actively restructure labour. Much of this emerging scholarship identifies that platform workforces are predominantly comprised of migrant and racially minoritised workers. However, few studies theorise migration and race as structuring logics of the platform model and the precarity it engenders. This paper addresses this gap by exploring how the platform economy – specifically work on-demand via apps – both shapes and is shaped by historically contingent contexts of racialisation, and their constitutive processes such as embodiment and immigration policy/rhetoric. Beyond identifying the over-representation of racial minorities in the platform economy, it argues that processes of racialisation have been crucial at every stage of the platform economy's rise to dominance, and therefore constitutes a key organising principle of platform capitalism – hence the term 'racial platform capitalism'. In doing so, this paper draws on the racial capitalism literature, to situate key platform techniques such as worker (mis)classification and algorithmic management as forms of racial practice, deployed to (re-)organise surplus urban labour-power following the 2008 financial crisis. This framework will be explored through an ethnographic study of Uber's rise in London. Through this, the paper demonstrates a co-constitutive relationship, where the conditions of minoritised workers in a global city like London post-2008, and the political economy of platform companies can be said to have co-produced one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arts for Linguistic & Literary Studies is the property of Thamar University 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.)

Humanitarian logics enable the unfree labour of racialized capitalism by making visible the beneficence of those who profit. Understanding the structure of feelings undergirding these imaginaries will help us to recognize why capitalism feels so right. This paper theorizes from the case of the Made in Prison company selling luxury clothing under the brand, Carcel, to explain how linking consumption with 'helping' remakes exploitation into gendered solidarity. Combining ethnography in Peru, political economy and narrative analysis, the paper explores how prison-produced fashion is made 'ethical' through intimization of the relationship between feminine labourers and their 'sister' consumers. The paper does two things: (1) it charts how the imaginary of commodifying compassion works through three movements around the company, products and workers of Carcel and (2) it argues that love and sisterly solidarity connect the company, workers and products in ways that are then commodified for profit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is at a critical moment of transforming high-speed development to high-quality development, and it is significant to improve the efficiency of green technological innovation. In this paper, under the perspective of two-stage innovation value chain, we construct the evaluation index system of green technology innovation efficiency, adopt the super efficiency SBM model to measure the green technology innovation efficiency of China's high-tech industries, and based on the results obtained, we assume the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method (fs-QCA) based on the group theory to explore the complex causal mechanism and grouping paths of the interaction between enterprises, government and market that affects the green technology innovation efficiency Mechanism and group path. The study results show that (1) enterprise, government, and market are not necessary conditions to influence the efficiency of green technological innovation, and even if a particular party plays a central role, it needs the assistance of other parties. (2) The improvement of green technological innovation efficiency requires the interaction of enterprises, government, and market, and even if any party does not have the core conditions, it can still produce high green technological innovation efficiency. (3) The path of the "innovative compensation" effect is identified, which indicates that enterprises will generate a high level of green innovation efficiency under sufficient investment brought about by the enterprise scale effect and matched with a good level of economic development. (4) The market economy-led pathway suggests that when the market economy is highly developed, firms do not need environmental regulation and government support to generate efficient levels of green technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ibn Khaldûn (1332–1406) was a philosopher, historian and sociologist. This paper asks: What elements of the Political Economy of Communication are there in Ibn Khaldûn's work and how do they matter in digital capitalism? It presents relevant passages from Khaldûn's main work Muqaddimah and points out parallels between the Muqaddimah and works in Political Economy, especially Karl Marx's approach of the Critique of Political Economy. The comparison of Khaldûn to Marx is not an arbitrary choice. Several scholars have pointed out parallels between the two's works with respect to general Political Economy. It, therefore, makes sense to, also, compare Khaldûn and Marx in the context of the Political Economy of Communication. The paper analyses the relevance of Khaldûn's ideas in digital capitalism. Khaldûn's works are situated in the context of media and communication theory, digital automation, Facebook, Google, labour in informational and digital capitalism, Amazon, the tabloid press, fake news and post-truth culture. The analysis shows that Khaldûn's Muqaddimah is an early work in Political Economy that can and should inform our contemporary critical analysis of communication in society, communication in capitalism and class society, ideology and digital capitalism. What connects Marx and Khaldûn is that they were critical scholars who although living at different times in different parts of the world saw the importance of the analysis of class and communication. Their works can and should inform the Political Economy of Communication and the analysis of digital capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, U.S. finance has grown disproportionately in power and influence as American investment funds have become the largest shareholders of U.S. corporations, managing tens of trillions of dollars in investments. This paper provides a novel empirical analysis of the ascent of asset manager capitalism in the United States and explores the extent of its global spread by examining the SEC Form 13F filings of U.S. institutional investors along with an extensive global corporate ownership dataset provided by Orbis. This paper finds that U.S. finance owns approximately 60% of U.S. listed companies (an increase from 3% in 1945) and 28% of the equity of all globally listed firms. As the largest global shareholders and the exemplars of U.S. asset managers, the Big Three hold investments in 81% of U.S. listed companies and own 17% of the U.S. equity market, while also appearing as a shareholder in 20% of non-U.S. listed companies and owning 4% of the non-U.S. equity market. This paper illustrates that the ascent of the age of passive investment and universal ownership, exemplified by the activities of the Big Three, has produced a sectorally and geographically uneven landscape of capital flows, exacerbating the existing divides between the heartlands and hinterlands of global financial markets. With the ownership of listed companies being increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of increasingly powerful funds, this paper ultimately argues that it is in the ownership of the majority of global capital that the power of modern finance lies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the aurality of voice-activated AIs (VA AIs) through uncanny encounters with the devices. Glitches such as Alexa spontaneously bursting into laughter or accidental activations putting users' privacy at risk, have incited suspicions among users as to the motives of tech companies and the technical capabilities of their devices. Building on previous contributions that show that the feminised voices of VA AIs are strategically designed to display reassuring attributes and obscure surveillance practices, I discuss the aural moments in which VA AIs fail to reassure, shifting from a convenience to a threat through the experience of the uncanny. I argue that anxieties tied to VA AIs are both produced and mediated by their aurality: both their voices and listening practices. I theorise uncanny encounters with the voice and listening capacities of VA AIs such as glitches, features which seek to imitate humans, disembodied voices and disembodied listening, and invasions of privacy as enacting perversions of care and inducing fear of impersonation and intrusion. This paper contributes to the literature on the specificity of sound in conceptions of the uncanny valley, and also seeks to enrich conception of vocality and listening as vector of anxieties within the neoliberal condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a history of the 'Kaldor-Hicks' concept of economic efficiency from its European birth in the 1930s to its American resurgence in the 1970s to its widespread implementation in the Global South by the early twenty-first century. While philosophers, economists and legal theorists have written widely about Kaldor-Hicks – global-minded intellectual historians have not. As a result, scholars have yet to place its creation, dissemination and ascendency into a broader historical context or examine the reasons behind its global spread. As this paper will demonstrate through the rise of cost–benefit analyses based on 'willingness to pay' metrics, while Kaldor-Hicks efficiency was invented by neoclassical economists in the late 1930s, its ascent to policy dominance is part-and-parcel of the neoliberal revolution of the past half century. Linking the history of economic thought with the rise of global neoliberalism, this paper demonstrates how Kaldor-Hicks efficiency emerged as a central pillar of a new, interventionist, wealth-maximizing and market-based form of depoliticized technocratic governance that not only marginalizes distributive concerns but actively exacerbates the problem of global inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Rivista Italiana di Conflittolgia is the property of Edizioni Labrys 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.)

Disaster capitalism creates political and economic space for neoliberal projects to benefit the wealthy disproportionately while marginalizing Indigenous groups. This paper examines how and the extent to which local disaster capitalism has affected Indigenous communities in Nepal's Kathmandu Valley, as they recover from the 2015 earthquakes, and how local disaster capitalism ought to be countered. Based on an in-depth analysis of local disaster capitalism in Rudrayani Guthi, Nepal, the findings of this study demonstrate that Indigenous peoples have been negatively affected by state-sponsored disaster recovery schemes, whereas wealthy people and businesses have benefitted from them. Such schemes focus on "physical reconstruction" and "economic development", dispossessing Indigenous lands to pave the way for housing, motorways, greenfield urban development, and hydropower. Many Indigenous groups are forced to be part of such schemes, while local disaster capitalism continues in the name of "disaster recovery". The paper highlights the unfortunate reality of the local disaster capitalism taking shape and destroying Indigenous lives and livelihoods. The paper concludes by offering some principles used by Indigenous peoples while countering local disaster capitalism through confrontations with powerful actors and while protecting their land during the process of disaster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflectively applies measurement tools to gage whether a renowned financier and champion of shareholder capitalism, in 20th century business history, might be categorized as a corporate psychopath. The article examines aspects of the career of the outstanding financial investment manager, Bernie Madoff. Psychopaths and corporate psychopaths are defined as background to the article. Gauges of corporate psychopathy and psychopathy are outlined which could be modified by market research companies to identify corporate psychopathy in organisations as a way of aiding investment decisions into such organisations. The current article concludes that insolvencies such as those at Madoff's investment company, have been distinguished by CEOs being present who were simultaneously the lauded agents of financial market capitalism and who embodied the traits of the corporate psychopath. The examination of potential corporate psychopaths using this historical methodology helps inform ideas about what the effects of psychopathic leadership may be within economies and gives new insights into the reasons for the greed, risk taking, and unethical practices found in financial markets. Findings support the accepted view that corporate psychopaths can be discovered in senior roles in the financial services sector. This current paper provides new avenues for research offerings from market research companies. For example, business to business researchers could undertake research to identify firms more likely to be longitudinally viable, sustainable and less likely to collapse (i.e., non-psychopathic firms). Investment companies like pension funds could use such research to identify firms that are less risky, more ethical, better led, and therefore safer to invest in. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All produced spaces are curious since they could, by definition, be different. Atriums—double height or greater vertical voids typically to be found in skyscrapers' lobbies—are an interesting illustration of this general contention. An internal feature of super-tall architecture the world over, the atrium flourishes in parts of cities where land value is high and given that atria could be occupied with directly rentable space this is an ostensibly puzzling affinity. Drawing primarily on the ideas of Henri Lefebvre and Walter Benjamin, this paper suggests that the presence of atria in major commercial—and increasingly public—buildings grows from oblique attempts to generate surplus value. Paradoxically, it is the voided space of the atrium that explains this strategy. My argument is that voids of open space can actually increase the value of objects, bodies, and practices that are assembled in and around them; paradoxically 'emptiness' itself can be monetised in a context of rentier capitalism. Defamiliarising the atrium, which is a distinctive and singular architectural feature of this moment, suggests a wider research agenda for those interested in critical analysis of the contradictory spaces that are produced when capital builds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the article. The breakdown of the so-called Eastern Bloc, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the demise of communism fueled transition processes in Central and Eastern Europe, Western Asia, and Central Asia. The great majority of transformation difficulties across different areas demonstrate that when pursuing the process of a structural change, it is important to take into account diverse sets of formal and informal institutions preserved in each country. Each country has a unique set of formal and informal institutions. These differences are easily observed between Poland and Azerbaijan. The aim of this paper is to compare and contrast the outcomes of Poland and Azerbaijan's transitions from communism to capitalism and to identify the primary factors driving these two different transformations. Methodology. The paper presents two complementary methods to compare the transitions from communism to capitalism in Poland and Azerbaijan. The first method involves secondary analysis, where existing data from reputable sources such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) database, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index (BTI), and country reports are compiled to provide insights into economic, political, and social indicators. Additionally, a comparative case study approach is employed, using Geert Hofstede's six cultural dimensions framework to explore the cultural influences on transition outcomes. By integrating these methods, the study aims to offer a comprehensive analysis of the transformation processes in Poland and Azerbaijan. Results of the research. The results of the analysis presented in the paper support the hypothesis that the historically-shaped differences in mental models and strong ties to international protectors determined the paths of transformations in Poland and Azerbaijan. The primary similarities and contrasts in the mindset are justified by the colonial or imperial history of the nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.K. food system exhibits strong unsustainability indicators across multiple dimensions, both in terms of food and nutritional insecurity and in terms of adverse climate change, biodiversity, and physical resource impacts. These indices of an unsustainable and inequitable social metabolism are the result of capitalist agriculture and society in general and, more specifically, of neoliberal and austerity policies adopted with vigour since the global financial crisis. The causal, capitalistic, and, latterly, more neoliberal bases of the U.K. food system are delineated in the first section of the paper. These bases are then detailed in terms of their impacts in exacerbating climate change, biodiversity (and resource) decline and loss, and food and nutritional insecurity. The political narratives and policy frameworks available to dissemble, mitigate, or, more rarely, to address (resolve) these impacts are then delineated. It is argued that the only policy framework available that strongly integrates food security (social equity) with ecological sustainability is political agroecology and an accompanying degrowth strategy. The final section of the paper details what political agroecology and degrowth might entail for the U.K. food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gharee for Economics & Administration Sciences is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) 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 rise of asset managers as key nodes of financial intermediation has been one of the most fundamental changes in the global economy over recent years. An emerging literature on asset manager capitalism (AMC) discusses these changes and its implications, though largely in the context of corporate governance in advanced capitalist economies. This paper expands the remit of the AMC literature to spaces outside the global capitalist core, and assesses its implications, based on quantitative data on asset manager allocations and flows, and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews. We find that despite the growth of asset managers' investments into emerging markets, their presence remains limited and that the threat of exit remains present but increasingly tied with global conditions and the composition of benchmark indices. We also find that asset managers' investments are increasingly focussing on bonds, and are heavily concentrated in a few companies and sectors, revealing a marginal rather than broad-based presence. Finally, we find very limited evidence that asset managers use their voice to influence corporate governance and macroeconomic policy. Overall, asset managers do not seem to fundamentally reshape the characteristics of financial subordination of emerging markets, and the characteristics of AMCs remain, for now, specific to advanced economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of protecting the rights and freedoms of entrepreneurs in a market economy – they are necessary "tools" and a driving force in the market relations that expand a country's gross domestic product, and as such should be directly involved in the socio-economic policy of the state. Due to a historical absence of the specialised legal means and procedural tools required to ensure the effective security and protection of the rights of entrepreneurs, Kazakh legislators have carefully studied examples from other countries to develop their own legislation relating to profit-making entrepreneurial activities during the early stages of the post-independent development of Kazakhstan. In this way, licensing processes, protections for entrepreneurs from unreasonable inspections and abuse of power by the authorities, the creation of special organisations to protect entrepreneur's rights, and a reduction in the number of administrative barriers in practice were all consolidated and codified into the regulatory structure. All the above allowed the authors to highlight the main purpose of this study – a comprehensive systemic study of the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of entrepreneurs in socio-economic, political, and legal relations (as exemplified by the Republic of Kazakhstan). The main and practically significant results were obtained by employing both theoretical and methodological analysis of scientific publications covering the issues of legal security and the protection of entrpreneurial rights and freedoms at the national and international levels, as well as tools of comparative legal, comparative political, systemic and structural analysis, value-statutory and institutional methods, and content analysis of statistical data and official documents. This paper constitutes a study of a scientific and recommendatory legal and socio-political nature, which has unconditional practical significance, originality in clarifying certain issues, and is aimed at a broad study of the essential aspects of the legal protection of entrepreneurial activity in modern Kazakhstan. We recognize that the subject considered in this paper is promising for further scientific elaboration and detailing of certain points, which have been superficially touched upon in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Planning Education & Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

For many decades, southern Africa has been at the forefront of global conservation paradigms and practices, ranging from protected area models and community-based conservation to transfrontier parks and, more recently, the wildlife economy. A key goal of many of these was to meet conservation and development goals, something that often proved elusive. In fact, what has been consistent across these conservation strategies is a continuation of many environmental and, especially, socio-economic and racial injustices. Currently, a further increase of both conventional and novel capitalist conservation initiatives—including wildlife estates, different tourism activities and wildlife breeding—seems to further intensify rather than ameliorate existing uneven and unjust conditions. This introduction preludes some of the most important recent and contemporary dynamics in southern African conservation addressed in this special issue. Titled Fallen from grace? The legacy and state of southern African conservation, the papers in this special issue reflect on these dynamics and ask whether the global significance of southern African conservation has crumbled under the weight of its own contradictions, or whether it can still turn the tide. Pushing theoretical discussions on the links between environmental injustice, race, labour, power, inequality and conservation, we argue that the contributions do not merely critique conservation in southern Africa for failing to live up to its promises; together they question the very sustainability of the entire enterprise and the ideologies on which it is based. This is important because some conservationists continue to laud the region as a shining example for biodiversity conservation globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to address global concerns has led to an increase in the significance of sustainable capitalism, which is located at the intersection of economics, business, and environmental studies. This study aims to delve into the theoretic evolution and academic structure of the relationship between sustainability and capitalism, by employing a bibliometric analysis. Relying on 687 documents, sourced from the Scopus database, this paper provides a thorough overview of the evolution of sustainable capitalism, highlighting significant turning points, essential themes, and new research directions. VOSViewer and R-Studio were used for implementing the techniques of citation, co-citation, and keyword analysis. The findings from the study have implications for multiple stakeholders. While the analysis could help researchers have a better understanding of the field and explore future research agendas, it can push the corporate houses to take necessary remedial actions for their past capitalist behavior. The study will also be beneficial for developing countries to understand the pressing issue of environmental damage and come up with cheaper yet effective ways to implement circular models of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-2000s, democratization has slowed, stopped, and even reversed across the world. At the same time, societies have become more oriented toward free markets as measured by indexes of economic freedom. Relying on a panel sample of 141 developed and developing countries between 2006 and 2017, this paper is the first to investigate whether the two phenomena are related by employing economic freedom data. It finds that there is no net-negative relationship between aggregate economic freedom and democracy in this time-period. Instead, mixed findings of both an overall positive and overall neutral (but not negative) association are uncovered in between-country and within-country analyses, respectively. In between-country analyses, using the disaggregated index shows that the legal system/property rights component drives most of the positive relationship between aggregate economic freedom and democracy in the developed world. The same between-country analyses in the developing world show that freedom of international trade is positively associated with democracy, while modest regulation has a negative relationship. However, additionally controlling for omitted variable bias using country-fixed effects, the paper does not find evidence for either a positive or negative relationship between subsequent changes in levels of economic freedom and democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes where Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethics research fails and breaks down the dangers of well-intentioned but ultimately performative ethics research. A large majority of AI ethics research is criticized for not providing a comprehensive analysis of how AI is interconnected with sociological systems of oppression and power. Our work contributes to the handful of research that presents intersectional, Western systems of oppression and power as a framework for examining AI ethics work and the complexities of building less harmful technology; directly connecting technology to named systems such as capitalism and classism, colonialism, racism and white supremacy, patriarchy, and ableism. We then explore current AI ethics rhetoric’s effect on the AI ethics domain. We conclude by providing an applied example to contextualize intersectional systems of oppression and AI interventions in the US justice system and present actionable steps for AI practitioners to participate in a less performative, critical analysis of AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the intricate tapestry of environmental discourse, the field of political ecology emerges as a powerful lens through which we scrutinise the interplay of power, nature and society. This paper stages a dialogue with Paul Robbins to examine environmental justice, the decolonisation of political ecology, colonialism, sovereignty, climate change and capitalism. The dialogue challenges the conventional narratives of sovereignty and underscores the imperative of genuine decolonisation—beyond metaphorical interpretations—calling for the restitution of land and authority to Indigenous Peoples and other historically marginalised communities. The dialogue highlights the importance of moving away from capitalist systems that exacerbate environmental degradation. The dialogue calls for decolonising political ecology by including diverse perspectives, methodologies and ontologies and underlines the importance of control over productive resources. It emphasises that addressing the impacts of colonialism requires recognising and honouring the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples and suggests that political ecology can contribute to decolonisation by focusing on sovereignty and supporting legal and institutional frameworks that empower marginalised communities. The paper discusses the way forward and the future trajectory of political ecology by suggesting that future research in political ecology should focus on diverse economies, embrace emerging technologies and rework academic institutions to value knowledge co‐production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the root of the second wake of export pessimism is the argument that exportled growth (ELG) models suffer from a fallacy of composition. Under constrained global demand, all exporting nations cannot simultaneously pursue ELGs, and the ensuing battle for markets would eventually cause more competitive exporters to drive out or displace less competitive ones. Considering how the Indian economy has witnessed a deceleration in her export of services since the mid-2000s, this paper enquires whether similar export-displacements could have lent to this status quo. Using bilateral service trade data for the years 2005-2015, the paper tests the displacement or crowding out of India’s export of services to advanced OECD nations by exports from other developing and emerging market economies. Our results show the remarkable presence of complementarity between service exports from India and that from other exporting powerhouses like China, Singapore and Vietnam, though the country appears to have been losing markets for her prime services to certain emerging exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that studies of the 'commercial determinants of health' (CDoH) need to acknowledge fully the part the capitalist mode of commodity production and exchange plays in producing negative health outcomes. This proposition is supported by recourse to a recent development in political economy that has established a more-than-human, relational and monist (or 'flat') ontology of capitalism, in place of the more conventional neo-Marxist perspective. This ontology reveals a dynamic to capitalism that operates beyond human intentionality, driven by the supply of, and demand for the capacities of commodities. This dynamic determines the production and consumption of all commodities, some among which (such as tobacco, alcohol and processed foods) contribute to ill-health. A case study of food consumption reveals how these supply and demand affects drive 'unhealthy' food choices by consumers. Ways to undermine this more-than-human dynamic are offered as an innovative approach to addressing the effects of commerce and capitalism upon health., (Copyright © 2024 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

The characteristic features of 21st-century corporate capitalism - monopoly and financialization - are increasingly being recognized by public health scholars as undermining the foundations of human health. While the "vectors" through which this is occurring are well known - poverty, inequality, climate change among others - locating the root cause of this process in the nature and institutions of contemporary capitalism is relatively new. Researchers have been somewhat slow to study the relationship between contemporary capitalism and human health. In this paper, we focus on one of the leading causes of death in the United States; cancer, and empirically estimate the relationship between various measures of financialization and monopoly in the US healthcare system and cancer mortality. The measures we focus on are for the hospital industry, the health insurance industry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Using a fixed effects model with different specifications and control variables, our analysis is at the state level for the years 2012-2019. These variables include data on population demographic controls, social and economic factors, and health behavior and clinical care. We compare Medicaid expansion states with non-Medicaid expansion states to investigate variations in state-level funded health insurance coverage. The results show a statistically significant positive correlation between the HHI index in the individual healthcare market and cancer mortality and the opioid dispensing rate and cancer mortality., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

This paper aims to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Adorno's thought for business ethicists working in the critical tradition by showing how his critique of modern social life anticipated, and offers continuing illumination of, recent technological transformations of capitalism. It develops and extrapolates Adorno's thought regarding three central spheres of modern society, which have seen radical changes in light of recent technological developments: work, in which employee monitoring has become ever more sophisticated and intrusive; leisure consumption, in which the algorithmic developments of the culture industry have paved the way for entertainment products to dominate us; and political discourse, in which social media has exacerbated the anti-democratic tendencies Adorno warned of in the mid-twentieth century. We conclude by presenting, as a rejoinder to these developments, the contours of an Adornian ethics of resistance to the reification and dehumanisation of such developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promising lines of scholarship have emerged on how International Organisations (IO's) deploy anticipatory techniques aimed at colonising the future as a means of governing in the absence of sovereignty. It follows that securing hegemony over a vision of the future is important strategic work for IOs, and a source of legitimacy derived from authority beyond procedure and performance. This is called promissory legitimacy. Yet what happens when this promised future arrives and is problematic? How does an IO creatively strategise this shortfall? In this paper, we identify five strategies deployed by the OECD in its Future of Education and Skills 2030 programme aimed to re-negotiate a failed present and anticipate a new future. We also reflect on the ideational underpinnings of the OECD's new futures programme, and argue it is being mobilised to, on the one hand, get beyond the limitations of data governance, and on the other to help selectively shape a new cognitariat subjectivity engaged with immaterial labour in emerging post-industrial capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shirking, the act of avoiding the demands of one's job, is generally seen as unethical. Drawing on empirical evidence from the sociology of work, I develop a normative conception of shirking as a form of worker resistance against illegitimate managerial power. In doing so, I present a new approach to the political theory of the firm, which is more adversarial and agent-centered than available alternatives. It is more adversarial as it recognizes the political value of counterproductive and disruptive behavior in capitalist firms. It is more agent-centered because it theorizes the firm from the perspective of workers, asking what pro tanto reasons they have to shirk. I show that shirking under the structural domination of capitalism has diagnostic, agential, and epistemic values. The paper contributes to the wider methodological ambition to tailor political theorizing to the positionality of social actors by shifting attention from the institutional design of the firm to the methods of worker resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the facilitation of the emancipatory in an International Baccalaureate (IB) context of privilege. It aligns with the idea that capitalism, even in welfare state democracies or 'do good' corporations, maintains the interests of the owners of capital. It is by nature unjust and exploitative and must conceal this injustice by securing a (spurious) legitimacy for itself. This makes a rare methodological contribution as the article provides critical 'meta-analysis' of IB research literature by prioritising work that affords insight into the lived reality within the IB-Sphere. It then triangulates this analysis through the work of German Social Philosopher Jürgen Habermas. This work provides a significant and timely contribution to 'franchised education' in the twenty-first Century, and will be of essential reading to scholars, policymakers and leadership whether involved in the IB, or active in the Neo Liberal spaces of education more generally: such as Multi Trust Academies, Free Schools, or Charter Schools. This is thanks to the lessons learned over nearly 60 years of educational franchise in a diverse and globalising sphere as presented here from IB research through critical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research investigating young people's social media use has been criticized for its limited theoretical foundations and scope. This paper elaborates young people's social media activity from a socio-ecological evolutionary perspective (SEE), where young people's online exchanges cannot be divorced from the highly competitive and achievement-oriented modern market cultures in which they live. In highly competitive and achievement-oriented forms of life, young people's social media environments are often constituted as dynamic and evolving extrinsically oriented ecological niches that afford for status and identity enhancement while also affording for peer approval, belongingness, and selfworth nested within, and subordinate to, these higher-order affordances. The extrinsic value organization of social media platforms that serve young people's status and identity-enhancement are embodied by a community of mutually interdependent criteria that are evolutionary-based, developmentally salient, and market-driven: physical attractiveness, high (educational and extracurricular) achievements, and material success. Young people's online signaling of these interdependent extrinsic criteria affords for status-allocation and selfenhancement, where each criteria becomes an arena for social competition and identity formation, enabling young people to build personal and optimal models of social success congruent with their own interests and abilities. Young people's status and identity enhancing signaling of these extrinsic criteria is moving toward increasingly idealized or perfect embodiments, informed by accelerating, shortterm positive feedback processes that benefit from the technological affordances and densely rewarding peer environments instantiated on social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on research on infrastructure‐led development and urbanisation in Nairobi to explore the new urban geographies of rentier capitalism in Africa. Under the banner of Kenya's Vision 2030 national development strategy, Nairobi's agrarian hinterlands have been transformed by major road building projects. These initiatives have catalysed a peri‐urban property boom characterised by the conversion of agricultural and ranching land into urban real estate and the verticalisation of road corridors. The paper identifies four processes of land transformation driving this real estate market expansion: commodification; speculation; autoconstruction; and assetisation. Adopting a multi‐scalar conjunctural approach, it argues that rentier capitalism in this context is spatialised through the dramatic extension of real estate frontiers along the route of peri‐urban road corridors. Development along these corridors assumes a “grey” character that defies conventional formal–informal distinctions, enabling the extraction of large rentier profits and encouraging the further proliferation of frontier spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper progresses research on resistance in the context of financialisation by drawing on various social reproduction legacies. I explore how social reproduction theory offers conceptual and methodological tools that can deepen research on de‐financialisation and resistance against predatory finance. Expanding upon relational approaches to social reproduction, this paper frames “the financialisation of social reproduction” as the dialectics between the reproduction of financialised capitalism and the regeneration of life. This supports a perspective on resistance through the identification and analysis of the interplay between the objective and subjective limits to the financial extraction from life. I examine how methodologies like “counter‐topographies” can demystify financialisation while supporting the cultivation of alternative geographies of finance. Through “financial counter‐topographies”, I explore how global reproductive entanglements contradictorily fragment working‐class interests across space while creating conditions to envision and cultivate de‐alienated financial landscapes. This approach seeks possibilities for collective action and international collaborations beyond financialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the actors in the new emerging Cold War. In the last century, the world was experiencing a phase of geopolitical rivalry between two major powers, commonly referred to as the Cold War. After surviving fifty years of proxy warfare, sanctions, arms race, and security concerns between the two dominant worldwide factions, the struggle finally came to an end. The USA exerted significant influence over the western bloc, while the Soviet Union dominated the eastern bloc. The global geopolitical scenario has seen substantial transformations in the twenty-first century. The global landscape has shifted towards a multipolar configuration, resulting in conflicts that have highly unorthodox characteristics. China, being a major player, actively engages in world politics and is enjoying a fair share in a market economy and the development of infrastructure. Amid the ongoing global quest for dominance, Europe is experiencing an emergence of new dynamics, each with its unique alliances and ideas. This article aims to analyze the potential for collaboration and conflict between the major players in the emerging global power transition during the early stages of this Cold War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last few years there has been growing attention to and discussion of the so-called militarization of policing. Unfortunately, much of this discussion poses the militarization of policing as a recent phenomenon. This paper examines policing in Canada within the context of an ongoing military practice. It shows that policing was founded on a military basis and continues to be carried out on a military basis as exemplified in the more recent developments that have raised alarm about militarization. It raises the need for a retheorization of policing within the context of capitalist social struggles and highlights some instructive recent theoretical developments toward that end. Properly understanding the police in Canada can help to contextualize and challenge current responses that are limited to reforms for police (de-militarization, de-escalation, improved training, non-lethal weaponry, etc.) or which even allow for the expansion of policing (community policing, drones, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores Michael Novak's understanding of the human person and his normative case for the market economy, specifically its points of agreement and tension with natural rights libertarianism. For Michael Novak, the imago dei provides the strongest account for the relationship between the market economy, human dignity, and natural rights. Rationalistic attempts, such as those within libertarianism, cannot adequately ground human dignity or sustain free institutions capable of serving the common good, the market economy, and political liberty. However, Novak's affinity to his libertarian interlocutors presents an opportunity for dialogue on the necessity of economic freedom and related theological influences on natural rights theory for securing human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to validate the theoretical finding that digital MNEs avoid physical presence norms of permanent establishment and royalty characterization rules for business and royalty taxation, respectively, to escape tax incidence in the market economy, using information, communication and technology features and transfer pricing (TP) manipulations. Design/methodology/approach: Multiple case studies of MNEs from technology sector, based on judicial decisions in 141 cases, over taxability of profits earned from Indian economic activities. Additional in-depth case study of the Uber Group to study the tax avoidance structures under platform economy, by routing of Indian profits through The Netherlands, a tax haven. Findings: The study finds a significant number of digital MNEs earning profits from India and avoiding tax by defying physical presence and royalty characterization. In majority of the cases, demand-side business activities are discharged through incorporating and remunerating affiliates at cost plus low markup, thus avoiding tax incidence, using TP manipulations under the arm's length principle applied by governments for benchmarking the intragroup transactions of the MNEs. Research limitations/implications: The research findings validate the view that digital features promote tax avoidance in the market economy. Originality/value: The originality of the study lies in the validation of profit shifting through digital features from the developing market economy and portending that digital MNEs defy physical presence to avoid business taxation through TP manipulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]