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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]

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]

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]

The study investigates the effects of drastic institutional changes on the reduction of zombie enterprises in China and the underlying mechanisms of this relationship. We employed data from the ASIF from 1998 to 2007 and adapted the difference-in-difference approach to analyze the effects based on China's investment approval system reform. We find that the reform can reduce the proportion of zombie enterprises by 13.3%. This result is driven by competition and scale effects. The former reduces institutional transaction costs by 12.8% and increases innovation capacity by 6.1%. The latter significantly improves the total factor productivity of enterprises; the reform promoted the expansion of enterprise size by 7.1% and the enhancement of market accommodation capacity by 13.2%. The reform had a weak effect on state-owned and non-competitive industrial zombie enterprises. This paper contributes to debates concerning the effect of institutions on entrepreneurship and the disposal of small zombie enterprises. Plain English Summary: As the "entrepreneurial economy" shifts to an "ossified economy," the rate of zombie enterprises is increasing, while entrepreneurship is decreasing. This study finds that lowering barriers to entry by reducing government intervention and breaking administrative monopolies can facilitate the disposal of zombie enterprises and stimulate entrepreneurship. The competition effects originating from the entry of new firms promote a shift in the business strategy of zombie enterprises from rent-seeking to innovation-driven. The scale effect shows that the improved business environment breaks restrictive growth barriers, expands market boundaries, and improves total factor productivity. Eventually, zombie enterprises recover and survive in a healthier, more dynamic, and sustainable way. Economic vitality and resource allocation efficiency increase significantly. Our findings inform best practices for a policy designed to stimulate the "entrepreneurial economy." Moving forward, the government needs to reduce barriers to entry and strengthen market mechanisms to promote disruptive entrepreneurship and dynamic capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the work of Michael Novak, a prominent American philosopher and theologian with roots in Central Europe. The study focuses on Novak's understanding of democratic capitalism and its role in promoting economic growth and human flourishing. Novak argues that when properly understood and practiced, capitalism can lead to a more just and prosperous society, as it is based on the human desire for freedom, creativity, and self-expression. However, he emphasizes that the success of capitalism depends on the presence of moral and spiritual values, which he believes are necessary for it to function properly. This paper explores Novak's arguments and evaluates them in the light of current knowledge. It also examines which values Novak deems important and why. The paper concludes that while Novak's understanding of capitalism has some limitations, it offers valuable insights into the relationship between economics and morality. Novak's framework provides a starting point for future discussions on how to ensure that capitalism operates ethically and promotes the common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the voices of resistance against the Dakar Rally's decade-long operation in South America. Drawing upon the three-prong framework of environmental justice (EJ), the analysis showcases how the less powerful stakeholders in the hosting countries articulated the deleterious consequences caused by the event to the local communities and ecologies. Moreover, by situating the Dakar Rally's expeditions in South America within the global capitalist economy, the paper explains why the most prestigious car rally is an exemplary manifestation of ecological imperialism, as it is not only a showcase of unsustainable industries (represented by fossil-fuel vehicles) with European colonial hubris but also a newer stage of an ongoing centuries-old process of extracting ecological resources from the Global South to benefit the increasingly mobile, vampire-like transnational capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the contemporary climate crises we see around our planet correlate with a colonial crisis of (literary) imagination. The author engages with Caribbean literary scholar Sylvia Wynter and other anti-colonial scholars to trace how the colonial literary imagination is rooted in the euro-western humanism and racial capitalism that governs the west, the stories and literary forms that frame it, and whose logics continue to be rehearsed across the disciplines—particularly in English literatures taught in school. The paper then argues that to understand the histories of this crisis of imagination and its link to climate crises, and perhaps paradoxically access literature's speculative potential to imagine different climate futures, literary educators and scholars need to prioritize literatures and literary critiques that are embedded in a different relationship to the imagination and ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies a more-than-human, relational, new materialist ontology to ask the Deleuzian question: what does capitalism actually do? The transactions identified in Marx's Capital are re-analysed as more-than-human assemblages, constituted by affective flows involving both human and non-human matter. The paper then identifies further more-than-human affects that produce the fluctuations in prices and quantities of goods sold, described in classical economics as the 'laws of supply and demand'. Analysis reveals these affects to be associated with the affective and relational capacities of commodities. The consequences of this more-than-human ontology of capitalism are explored by means of a short case study of the digital economy. This demonstrates how more-than-human affects are responsible for many of the negative consequences of a capitalist economy, including uncertainty, waste and social inequalities. The paper suggests that capitalism is progressively becoming a 'black hole' from which neither workers nor capitalist enterprises can escape, and draws conclusions that diverge radically from both neoliberal and Marxist analyses of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The improvement of the level of market economy has driven the rapid development of urban culture, and urban cultural space, as one of the components in the overall development of smart cities, plays an irreplaceable and key role in the display of urban spiritual connotation and style. Today's urban cultural construction is not only limited to cultural individuals but also a comprehensive construction work that needs to be considered and coordinated with the overall development of the city. However, in today's cultural space construction, there are few cultural space construction strategies that can integrate economic characteristics, spatial characteristics, and cultural characteristics. This paper incorporates multisensor data fusion technology into a strategy for building cultural spaces in smart cities, and the theoretical basis of smart city cultural space construction is combined with multisensor functional model and fuzzy integral algorithm, and the realization of cultural space strategy is studied. And compared with traditional methods, it provides scientific basis for actual construction work in the aspects of collection, analysis, estimation, and integration of urban cultural environment and spatial information of cultural space construction. The final experimental data show that the method in this paper can achieve up to 96.2% integration of the cultural space in the experimental development area, which verifies the effectiveness and feasibility of this method. If it is popularized in the current stage of smart city cultural space construction, it can effectively improve the degree of spatial coordination and spatial effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper examines the spillover effect of US monetary policy shocks on five emerging market economies--Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS). The study aims to compare the impact of the US crisis on the BRICS nations considering three crisis periods--1992 Crisis, 2008 Financial Recession, and 2013-Taper Tantrum. The two models used for analyzing the impression of US policy are Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model and Impulse Response Function. Research proved that the exchange rate and balance of trade of each of the emerging nations are affected by either policy change or unpredictable circumstances that arise in the US. This impact is mostly because of the high trade relations those countries have with the US. Nevertheless, there exist some other factors like economic integration and macroeconomic features, which further stimulate the spillover effect. This paper suggests that the US policymakers should consider such effects during policy formation/change. The paper makes an essential contribution to the existing literature by mapping the footprints of US policies on the five emerging market economies on the premise of pre-crisis and post-crisis spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous deepening of enterprise system reform and the rapid development of national economy, enterprises are facing the great challenge of market competition. In the new market and social environment, the role of human resource management in enterprises becomes particularly important. To further improve the level of enterprise human resources strategic management has become an urgent problem to be solved. In the process of human resource management, enterprises are faced with complex and changeable environment and other influencing factors. Therefore, in the human resource information retrieval, this paper uses the method of deep learning to screen human resource management indicators and constructs the human resource management index system of power supply enterprises. In this paper, the nonlinear characteristics of neural network are used to establish a deep neural network human resource cross-media fusion model, which provides an operational method for enterprise human resource management. The human resource allocation relationship of enterprises is predicted, and the influencing factors and trends of personnel post-matching are analyzed. The demand forecasting results show that the neural network depth has a good fit with the enterprise staff, and the actual forecasting error is less than 3.0. It can accurately predict the human resource allocation of enterprises, improve the scientificity and effectiveness of human resource strategic decision-making, and make enterprises better adapt to the requirements of market economy. This will be of practical significance to the modernization of enterprise management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the in-depth analysis of the characteristics of anti-dumping investigations against China from the industry and country concentration degree, this paper finds that NES countries were still the main initiators of anti-dumping investigations, and the industrial sector was the concentrated area. On this basis, this paper adopts the comprehensive feasible generalized least squares method and negative binomial regression to empirically examine factors in anti-dumping investigations against China. The results show that market economic status is not the most critical factor in anti-dumping investigations against China, and the domestic economic situation of importers has a stronger impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Capitalism is "often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society" (Sarwat & Ahmed, [11], p. 2). Valeria Andreoni, Sophia Kuehnlenz, and Imko Meyenburg present a macro-perspective article entitled "Capitalism and Crises: A Comparative Analysis of Mainstream and Heterodox Perceptions and Related Ethical Considerations." Paul Oslington, in a macro-perspective paper, entitled "Alasdair MacIntyre and Adam Smith on Markets, Virtues and Ends in a Capitalist Economy" offers a perceptive, reflective analysis of MacIntyre and Smith on markets, virtues and ends in a capitalist economy. Almost two centuries later, the world is dominated by the dual powers of information and communications technologies, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the clash between capitalism and various socialist-inspired economic systems, in an increasingly sophisticated and normally stealthy battle for global dominance. [Extracted from the article]

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

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of oil demand and supply shocks on an emerging market economy using a Bayesian vector autoregressive model combining zero and sign restrictions. The empirical analysis relies on a rich set of macroeconomic indicators mirroring the economic performance in Brazil. The effects on the Brazilian output of oil price changes driven by global demand shocks are much larger and more persistent than those driven by oil production. Oil price changes that are not related to changes in oil supply or global economic activity have a small impact on the Brazilian variables. The main policy implication of this study is that emerging market economies should identify correctly the source of oil price fluctuation for implementing the best economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the main perceptions of capitalism and crises from a mainstream and heterodox perspective. Broadly defined within the neoclassical structure, the mainstream approaches support the idea of long‐term stability of capitalism and describe crises as exogenous events. The heterodox perceptions, on the contrary, perceive crises as an internal feature of capitalism and propose to reframe the global economy within the limits of the socio‐environmental systems. Despite the historical recurrence of crises, the neoclassic capitalist framework and the related mainstream perceptions are still dominating the international economic debate. Most of the crises have then been addressed with reforms oriented to adjust some elements of the system without changing the overall economic structure. On the contrary, limited numbers of initiatives have been implemented to reorganise the economy according to the heterodox perspectives. Within this context, further analysis would be needed to investigate the feasibility of the proposed heterodox solutions. By discussing the main perceptions of capitalism and crises and by considering the ethical implications of the mainstream and the heterodox approaches, the present paper contributes to the existing debate around stability of capitalism and provides a starting point for analysis oriented to investigate the feasibility of alternative economic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on the history of capitalism documents the key role that racial exploitation played in the launch of the global cotton economy and the construction of the transcontinental railroad. But racial exploitation is not a thing of the past. Drawing on three case studies, this Paper argues that some of our most celebrated innovations in the digital economy have gotten off the ground by racially exploiting workers of color, paying them less than the marginal revenue product of their labor for their essential contributions. Innovators like Apple and Uber have been able to racially exploit workers of color because they have monopsony power to do so. Workers of color have far fewer outside options than white workers, owing to intentional and structural discrimination against workers on the basis of their race. In the emerging digital economy, racial exploitation has paid off by giving innovators a workforce that is cheap, easy to scale, flexible, and productive--the kind of workforce that is especially useful in digital markets, where a first-mover advantage often translates to winner-take-all. This Paper argues that these workers should be paid the marginal revenue product of their labor, and it proposes a number of potential ways to do so: by increasing worker compensation or worker power. More generally, I argue that we should value the essential contributions of workers of color and immigrant workers who make innovation possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose. Improving the efficiency of interaction between enterprises that operate public and private railway infrastructure when performing cargo transportation and cargo operations. Methodology. The studies were carried out using the methods of the theory of railway operation and economic and mathematical modeling. Findings. The study found that the transition from a planned economy to a market economy along with increasing customer requirements for the composition and quality of transport services is an objective reason for an increase in carriage downtime at private sidings and junction stations, a shortage of track capacity and shunting locomotives. It is shown that the existing approaches to assessing the effectiveness of the interaction between train tracks of enterprises and mainline railways are aimed at improving the performance of the rolling stock and do not create incentives to solve the problem of the shortage of transfer and processing capacity of the railway infrastructure. Originality. The paper proposes an improved method for assessing the effectiveness of the interaction of participants in the transportation process when performing transportation and cargo operations on the private sidings of industrial enterprises, based on the time the infrastructure is occupied. This approach, unlike the existing one, encourages railways and industrial enterprises to jointly search for the best technological solutions for the use of public and private railway infrastructure. Practical value. The method proposed in the paper for assessing the interaction of participants in the transportation process makes it possible to separate station services in the tariff for the use of the railway infrastructure into separate services of service facilities and track access to them. This will create a competitive environment and encourage participants in the transportation process to use the existing railway infrastructure and develop a new one to obtain a synergistic effect more efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Social & Cultural Geography is the property of Routledge 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.)

This paper intervenes in ongoing discussions on emerging legislation and jurisprudence across jurisdictions offering employees the possibility to renounce established labour rights through individual labour rights waivers. Building on discussions about consent and coercion in the employment relationship, the paper argues that individual labour rights waivers in most cases undermine labour law's overall emancipatory potential, as they reverse the decommodifying effects of nonwaivable labour rights by re-appropriating the capitalist market logic that those very rights seek to offset. The paper's intervention is twofold. It first develops the argument about the emancipatory function of labour law, and uses it to examine the negative effects of individual waivers on labour law's capacity to emancipate working people and society at large. Second, the paper introduces a jurisdiction that until now has not been considered in the discussions on individual waivers, namely Germany. Although discussions on individual waivers in the scholarly discourse in Germany are marginal, the paper examines what current exceptions to nonwaivability might qualify as waivers, and argues that the reasons why individual labour rights waivers are less present lie in the strong collective dimension of the ideational framework that underpins German labour law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organisations often engage simultaneously in cooperation and competition. This has been termed coopetition. Previous research has treated coopetition as a feature of the market economy, situating the research primarily in the corporate and management literature. This paper provides an alternative snapshot of coopetition in a non-market economy – within Community Food Initiatives (CFIs) – and explores its impact on the community's resilience. Although externally, CFIs may appear entirely cooperative, data collected between 2019 and 2021 in Oxfordshire shows simultaneous cooperation and competition across a network of CFI actors. Applying the concept of coopetition to non-market economies extends our current knowledge and illuminates how the interplay between competition and cooperation informs decisions and relationships. This paper explores the role of coopetition between CFIs in relation to the community's resilience, or the ability of communities to adapt and maintain functionality during environmental, economic, social, or political challenges. It re-visualises Bengtsson and Kock's (2000) framework on coopetative typologies, creating a framework for dynamic coopetative relationships between CFI actors. It then outlines six 'insights' – the results of the work – and adds detail to the typology framework. It finds that, while competitive firms may consider equal relationships to be resilient, CFIs' 'comfort zone' is between cooperative-dominant and equal relationships, and that extremes in either direction can negatively impact CFI resilience if they are prolonged. It also highlights potential strategies for practitioners and supporters to improve CFI resilience, and suggests extending research to other non-market economy sectors to continue fleshing out coopetition research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on City's interview with the UK activist group, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), examining their practices of resistance within the broader structural frame of austerity capitalism. This enables an exploration of how capitalism has constructed disability as an exclusionary category over time to support the accumulation of wealth, from urban industrialisation to austerity capitalism. The paper also engages with Gargi Bhattacharyya's argument that austerity is deployed through a post-colonial logic of racialisation, exploring how this notion may be applied to disabled welfare claimants. It also explores her argument that austerity marks a shift towards a post-consent politics but argues that both coercion and consent are key dimensions of state governance that seek to produce public acquiescence to punitive policies that threaten disabled people's livelihoods and lives. Indeed, the multiple struggles against austerity, including those by DPAC, clearly indicate the failure of moves towards a post-consent politics. The paper demonstrates how the city, therefore, is not only a key site for exclusion but also a central site for resistance. DPAC's resistances disrupt and contest austerity's processes and model an alternative prefigurative politics based on collaborative care and the use value of social reproduction. This opens up possibilities for post-capitalist futures and a right to the city based on collective rights and power. DPAC positions itself as both an identity and a class campaign, integrating reformist strategies into a longer-term anti-capitalist agenda and reaching outwards to other urban struggles that are similarly resisting the harms inflicted on bodies and minds by global capitalism. Therefore, building on the work of Mary Jean Hande, this paper argues that disabled people are not simply worthy of inclusion when theorising and constructing anti-capitalist and urban resistance, but are integral to and at the forefront of such struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bill Watterson's comic Calvin and Hobbes problematises the complex feature of life called work for its sociological repercussions on human life. The preoccupation with work owing to the charm of capitalist excess entails a major transformation of lifestyle – of work as well as leisure – with a 'work minded' parallelism as will be discussed in this paper. In the comic's satire, it is within the contexts of subsistence, class position, technology, and other forces germane to contemporary market capitalism, that this work mindedness imperils the status of leisure and work. With its comical illustrations, Watterson brings into sharp focus the everyday play of the cultural economy. This paper further argues that the narrative universe constructed in Calvin and Hobbes explores the significance of agency and imagination, to struggle in turn for 'leisure mindedness' at all times, even at work, something which remains pertinent even 25 years after the last comic strip bid us goodbye. This paper frames that leisure mindedness, in relation to both social theory and the critical discourse of the comic, highlighting here the magic of the social world, friendships as well as sensory experiences, while positing philosophical questions about the importance of creativity and aesthetic freedom over work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are important calls for greater inclusion of Indigenous and racialised communities in oral microbiome research. This paper uses the concept of racial capitalism (the extractive continuity of colonialism) to critically examine this inclusion agenda. Racial capitalism explicitly links capitalist exploitations with wider social oppressions e.g., racisms, sexism, ableism. It is not confined to the commercial sector but pervades white institutions, including universities. By using the lens of racial capitalism, we find inclusion agendas allow white institutions to extract social and economic value from relations of race. Racially inclusive research is perceived as a social good, therefore, it attracts funding. Knowledge and treatments developed from research create immense value for universities and pharmaceutical companies with limited benefits for the communities themselves. Moreover, microbiome research tends to drift from conceptualisations that recognise it as something that is shaped by the social, including racisms, to one that is determined genetically and biologically. This location of problems within racialised bodies reinforces racial oppressions and allows companies to further profit from raciality. Inclusion in oral microbiome research must consider ways to mitigate racial capitalism. Researchers can be less extractive by using an anti-racism praxis framework. This includes working with communities to co-design studies, create safer spaces, giving marginalised communities the power to set and frame agendas, sharing research knowledges and treatments through accessible knowledge distributions, open publications, and open health technologies. Most importantly, inclusion agendas must not displace ambitions of the deeper anti-oppression social reforms needed to tackle health inequalities and create meaningful inclusion., (Copyright© 2024 Dennis Barber Ltd.)

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.)

This paper aims to synthesize previous user innovation policy proposals into an adapted system of innovation framework, on which a future holistic user innovation policy for the household sector can be based. We do this in three steps. First, we introduce the systems of innovation framework as a comprehensive basis for a holistic approach to innovation policy. Second, we identify and review policy proposals made by user innovation researchers and categorize them according to ten key activities in the systems of innovation framework. Third, from a system of innovation perspective, we synthesize the policy proposals identified into an adapted framework, including determinants specific to user innovation in the household sector. The synthesized proposals are intended to strengthen the systemic and multi-causal effects of policy on household sector user innovation in a country, region, or sector. Future policies for user innovation may, on this basis, be instrumental in avoiding mono-causality, or the concentration on only a few policy instruments in a proposed policy. [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]

Social media platforms have played a significant role in recent elections in the U.S. and other democracies. While Facebook and Twitter (now renamed X) claimed that they are "on a journey to connect the world," to serve the goals of reforms and to bring about more democracy, their platforms have been effectively used to spread lies, misinformation, and disinformation which led some analysts to argue that we now live in a post-truth world and that the Orwellian dystopia is upon us. This paper is an attempt to assess whether big tech companies have created an Orwellian state in the U.S. We argue that the idiom of the Orwellian dystopia has been misused by scholars, commentators, and politicians on the political left as well as the political right. Our analysis of social media, especially Facebook, shows that the social media companies are not intentionally trying to subvert American democracy. Instead, as a business, they are driven by a profit motive and the logic of "surveillance capitalism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the (un)making of borders as a form of labour governmentality in one of Amazon's warehouses in Poland. Guided by a critical theory of borders as a form of labour governmentality under global capitalism, we identify organizational practices through which socio-demographic categories traditionally deployed as principles of organizing work (e.g., gender, age, ability) are un made: the management of deskilled labour through an algorithmic system, the non-selective hiring of workers, the enforcement of social norms of interpersonal respect and a universal system of casualized employment. Together, these practices constitute workers as undifferentiated, interchangeable and equal labour, let them compete with each other under harshly exploitative conditions, and continuously dispose of the least productive among them, keeping all in structural uncertainty. The study contributes to the critical diversity literature by showing a 'post-diversity' governmentality that rests on equality, competition and precarization of labour as a whole, rather than segregation and marginalization through an 'ideal worker' norm. This labour governmentality operates by eliciting consent from historically subordinated workers and eliminating the advantage of historically relatively privileged ones. Unmaking borders within labour inside the organization, this governmentality at the same time crucially rests on borders outside it. [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]

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]

Copyright of Revista Foco (Interdisciplinary Studies Journal) is the property of Revista Foco 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.)

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]

Just as the Frankfurt School responded to the radicalisation of the working class in Germany and the rise of post-war consumerism in the United States, today, we are confronted by platform monopolies, automated hyper-consumption and technological control. Critical approaches to digital media have exposed the structural coupling of Internet use and capital accumulation for almost two decades. However, many authors building on this tradition can struggle to understand how online social interaction is controlled beyond the worn-out critique of false consciousness or beyond conceptualising all digital activity mediated by data as labour. This paper will attempt to theoretically untangle the Marxian ontology of labour and the Frankfurt School-inspired critique of everyday life. This is not just theoretical nit-picking. Society becomes completely dominated if we accept no difference between wage labour and lifeworld activities. Each contains its internal struggles. The value form regulates both in different ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The article analyses two transformation variants: the Polish variant and the variant used in the People's Republic of China. This analysis was carried out in the context of the cultural background of both nations. The authors also tried to answer the question to what extent the reform programs of both economies, known as the Balcerowicz Plan and the Beijing Consensus, were culturally compatible and whether they impacted their effectiveness this. The article draws attention to the level of social acceptance of the transformation scenario adopted in the country and the role of both decision-making centralism and economic democracy in the conditions of a market economy. Methodology: The review of literature. Findings: As a result of the literature analysis, it was established that the reforms carried out as a result of the Balcerowicz plan took into account the cultural conditions of the Polish economy to a limited extent, which resulted in incomplete and delayed use of the potential of Polish social and intellectual capital. Chinese reforms, on the other hand, were carried out in a way that was more suited to Chinese realities, which, among other factors, enabled China to develop more dynamically without leading its economy to a periodic collapse caused by the transformation processes. Value of the paper: The article is analytical and synthetic in nature and is addressed to a wide audience, primarily to decision-makers managing the economy at various levels and to students of economics and management. The article is not only retrospective in nature, but also encourages deeper reflection on the future and may be helpful to managers in making economic decisions, in which they should take into account the cultural aspect to a greater extent than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the working practices of several feminist creative and cultural enterprises in London (which I term 'feminist CCIs'). In particular, it shows how pandemic precarity has driven feminist CCIs towards more entrepreneurial, self-promotional, and self-branding practices in order to sustain their work. Drawing on both digital ethnographic material and interviews with 12 workers in feminist CCIs conducted online between 2020 and 2022, the article provides insights into the landscape and contemporary realities of arts and cultural funding within these fields. It considers how decades of austerity measures and cuts have forced some feminist CCIs to operate independently outside of the UK public sector funding models. Survival tactics include adopting corporate funding models, subscription and membership schemes, platformisation and digitalisation. Focusing on funding, money and subjectivity, it unpacks the contradictions these imperatives bring to feminist politics: tensions about which some feminist CCI workers themselves are aware of and critical of. In the process, this paper considers how activism, feminism, entrepreneurialism, and precarity are fused together and negotiated in this form of 'freelance feminism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the 'blind spots in IPE' recently addressed in related Special Issues of Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. It identifies a blind spot of law in IPE, tracing the problem to a blind spot in the discipline of international relations (IR) generated by tendencies in dominant theories to consider international law to be super-structural, epiphenomenal, and not worthy of political analysis, and to associations of international law with idealism. The analysis notes an inverse blind spot in international law (IL), wherein legal scholars tend to regard IL as autonomous of politics and the political economy of 'who gets what, when, how'. These blind spots contribute to the neglect of how legal forms function to mystify the political economy of IL, thereby advancing transnational capitalism and inequality. The empirical focus is on transnational contract law, dispute settlement, and value and production chain contracting. These laws function as Capital's law and central pillars of the transnational politico-legal order by reaching deep inside states to restructure domestic spheres according to new constitutionalism and the demands of transnational capital. Drawing on critical political economy, the paper develops a historical materialist analysis to denaturalize and demystify Capital's law. This is a necessary move for scholars interested in the progressive and emancipatory potential of IL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been considerable philosophical attention given to injustices surrounding work, there has been much less on those injustices that pertain specifically to workers' commutes. In this paper, I argue that commutes are important parts of people's working lives, and thus deserve attention as sites of potentially considerable injustice. I evaluate commutes in terms of their impact on people's work, their rest, the control they exercise over their lives outside of work, and their ability to meet the demands of democratic citizenship. In the second half, I offer some proposals that could reform commuting, while recognizing the ways in which commuting injustice is not incidental to structures of contemporary capitalism, especially with regards to housing, but is rather a structural and constitutive feature. As a result, remedying the injustices of the commute might require a more radical restructuring of current modes of urban development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Sport has undergone a data revolution. The unrelenting extraction of athlete data has become a topic of controversy and the focus of recent public campaigns and policy proposals. However, research and governance are lagging in addressing the full scope and complexity of sport's data ecosystem and the commercial assemblage involved in the generation and subsequent exploitation of athlete data. This paper examines the need to move beyond the current emphasis on the role and use of data as a product of situated surveillance practices in the sporting workplace to the capitalist orientation at the centre of a burgeoning data economy. In so doing, two interdependent theoretical concepts – surveillance culture and surveillance capitalism – are introduced as an analytical framework to shape future research, policy and debate aimed at understanding and protecting the rights of athletes in the light of their exposure to highly surveillant digital technologies used in the production of elite performance, and sport as a multi-mediated form of consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study offers, by an empirical analysis, another perspective on post-socialist development, highlighting the role of the urban–rural interface in regional dynamics. The current literature on the relationships between both issues is not too rich and our paper analyzes the relationships between core cities, their peri-urban areas, and their regions, through a comparative overview of their growth over the last three decades. Romania, as a special case study for a contradictory transition, due to the great step from a drastic dictatorial regime to a democracy and a market economy, is a good example to test these complex relationships. Considering the new development trend at the urban–rural interfaces, our key idea was to depict their contribution to regional development (NUTS 3) compared to city cores. The second question was how this differentiated contribution can be measured, using the simplest tool. The starting point was the fact that population dynamics reflect all changes in the city core and at the urban–rural interface, and less so at a regional level. Consequently, we selected the dynamics of the number of inhabitants for the first two, as well as the dynamics of GDP per capita at the regional level. We found higher and significant correlations between GDP per capita and urban–rural interfaces, but no significant correlations in the case of city cores. Our conclusion is that, in the transition period, the dynamics of urban–rural interfaces influenced more regional development dynamics, than those of city cores. This means that urban–rural interfaces amplify the development coming from cities, adding their own contribution and then dissipating it regionally. Future research should identify what the urban–rural interface offers to regions, in addition to the city core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The examination of housing shortages in China presents a fascinating subject that is rarely directly addressed. This topic not only captures our interest due to the irony in a communist country but also in light of the profound transformation of Chinese society, evolving from an agrarian civilization to a modern industrialized state. The objective of this essay is to establish a comprehensive framework that encompasses economic, social, and architectural narratives as an integrated whole. This essay delves into the historical trajectory of housing shortages in modern China, tracing the evolution of this issue within Chinese society since the founding of the communist regime in 1949. Given China's unique industrial and residential policy framework, housing provision is intrinsically linked to state-owned factories and residential certification, commonly referred to as hukou. As the political and economic foundations have shifted over time, so too has the root cause of housing shortages. In addition to general historical and theoretical research, we have undertaken an in-depth examination of Lanxi City, one of the industrial clusters established in China. The case study of Lanxi City involves a series of visits and interviews conducted within local factories and communities. Our analysis identifies two distinct phases in this evolution: the "fundamentalist communist era" and the transitional period toward a market economy. Each of these eras can be further subdivided into four distinct phases, providing a more nuanced perspective. Our findings reveal that various housing distribution mechanisms have contributed to the issue of housing shortages. During the first era, housing shortages were primarily a result of hukou restrictions, industrial disparities, sluggish construction processes, and corporate profit considerations. In the latter phase, spanning the 1980s and 1990s, housing shortages were exacerbated by escalating costs and a slow rate of housing unit replenishment. As the new millennium unfolded, real estate bubbles compounded the housing crisis, with older neighborhoods ill-suited for modern living. Our interviews and visits complemented our literature research, offering valuable insights into the systemic exploitation of specific groups in pursuit of broader goals, hence the title. This paper underscores the housing shortage in China as a consequence of economic disparities between urban and rural regions, as well as between the prosperous East coast and the underdeveloped West hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Naturaleza y Sociedad. Desafíos Medioambientales is the property of Universidad de los Andes 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.)

This paper examines the preoccupation of modern migration with late capitalism and how migrant characters' identities are formed in tandem with commodities both in pre-migratory contexts and in the diaspora space. Specifically, the discourse focuses on diaspora space as site where multiple processes are at work as fluidity of identities; formation and reformation of peoples are at the centre. It hinges solidly on the templates propounded by Avtar Brah (1996) in her book titled Cartographies of diaspora: contesting identities and Chika Unigwe's On Black Sister's Street. The impulse is to delineate the characters in On Black Sister's Street with a view to divulging the identity constructions of the self and the other both in the homeland and in the new world. Brah's propositions on diaspora space forms the theoretical scaffolding on which the study is hinged. It is deduced that the multiple representations of people within the diaspora space is congruent with capitalism thereby commodification of identities becomes inherent. It is established that the objectification and commodification of characters result in alienation, exclusion and aloofness, hence, entrenching these fervours of migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an important paradigm of contemporary capitalist criticism, the theory of "degrowth" has gradually converged with socialism in the face of global energy exhaustion, unequal distribution of resources and its own theoretical shortcomings. This paper analyzes the internal tension between the two, based on the weakness of the degrowth theory which cannot break with capitalism completely and the experience and lessons of the socialist planned economy, and examines the possibility of the combination of degrowth and socialism. On the basis of going beyond the simple dichotomy, this paper discusses the scientificity and operability of combining market and plan, unifying self-discipline and heteronomy, and coordinating democracy and centralization, and puts forward three theoretical approaches of localization, autonomy and negotiation to overcome the one-sidedness of existing theory and practice. Finally, the article emphasizes the primacy of practical movement, whether it is degrowth or socialist theory should take realistic movement as the premise. To enhance human welfare and demonstrate the superiority of the socialist system in the criticism of the reality of capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maui residents are reckoning with tourism in the aftermath of the 2023 fires. Drawing from historical sources and popular media reports, we argue that beyond the island's strained relationship with the tourism industry, residents are contending with the slow emergency of plantation disaster capitalism. We draw from Naomi Klein and Kapua'ala Sproat's (2023) concept of plantation disaster capitalism which identifies the plantation industry's domination of resources as the basis of tourism's untethered control of land and water on the island. These crisis-driven industries perpetuate dependence through ongoing cycles of accumulation by dispossession. The concept of 'slow emergencies' further accounts for how, while the Maui fires rapidly destroyed lives, over a century and a half of settler colonial, racial, and capitalist relationships had already restructured landscapes and livelihoods and set the stage for the 2023 disaster. In critically addressing calls for tourism's resurgence, this conceptual paper contributes to emerging scholarship on plantation disaster capitalism in tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]