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This article broaches a simple question: Was there a politics of commerce within Bengali society in the eighteenth century, or was such politics limited to disputes between the British East India Company (EIC) and the Bengal nawabs? I begin by discussing the literature on markets in eighteenth-century Bengal and argue that the relationship between commerce and politics has been too narrowly defined in this body of work. A one-sided focus on determining the impact of the early colonial state, coupled with an uncritical acceptance of Peter Marshall's Namierite story about the origins of the British empire, has led historians to downplay ideological conflicts within the EIC and British society. To show why these divisions matter, I build on the recent work of James Vaughn and Spencer Leonard, who have shown that between 1750 and 1770, political and ideological conflicts in both Britain and Bengal had far-reaching effects on the character of the British empire. Through an extended discussion of a dispute over market access in 1778 in the city of Calcutta, I show that petty merchants and shopkeepers often opposed arbitrary impositions by regional elites. To fully understand the motivations behind such challenges, I argue that we need to seriously consider divisions within Bengali society as well: namely, the reproduction of caste hierarchies through differential access to markets (and land). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of fluorescent probes for rapid and accurate detection of hazardous nerve agents (NA) has been a main focus of research because of their use as chemical warfare agents (CWA) for mass destruction in war and terrorist attacks, and lethal toxicity for human beings. In this paper, a probe (PPID) based on the phenanthrene-imidazole unit and the 4-phenyl pyridine group was synthesized and characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction, and could visually detect and quantify a nerve-agent simulant diethylchlorophosphate (DCP) with excellent sensing properties in solution and in the vapor phase. The probe with the nucleophilic pyridine-N atom as the active site reacts with the electrophilic central phosphorous atom of DCP and after that catalytic hydrolysis by moisture in the DMSO solution occurs to form a protonated sensor. Interestingly, the protonated chemosensor PPIDH showed an apparent intramolecular charge transfer (ICT), leading to a large red-shifted fluorescence "turn-on" response. The effects of the ICT character on the sensing properties displayed a ratiometric fluorescence response to DCP and a low limit of detection (1.4 nM). The sensing process was also verified by test strips by loading probe PPID with DCP vapor, response time, theoretical calculations, and live cell imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new type of styryl bridging triphenyl amine-indolium conjugated dye has been developed for the colorimetric and ratiometric detection of cyanide. The detection of cyanide is confirmed by means of the fast nucleophilic attack of cyanide by the indolium group of the probe that results a speedy sensing process for cyanide with clear color and fluorescence change of the ICT process. The ratiometric fluorescence changes illustrated a linear response in the range of 0-18 μM with a low LOD value (1.7×10-7 M-1). The as-reported sensor not only function as a colorimetric sensor for "in-the-field" measurement by virtue of a "dip-stick" approach but also interact with a human breast cancer cell (MDA-MB 231) which reveals the realistic value of this probe for tracking cyanide anions in biological systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is by now a truism that "capitalism" has made a comeback in the historical profession. It may serve rhetorical purposes to revel in the diversity of definitions and to argue that "capitalism arises as concepts of risk, systems of transportation, customs of labor, even religion, aesthetic values, and ideals of love and affection bump up against each other", but this does not answer the question of why we should call such an assemblage "capitalism", as opposed to anything else.[3] Analytical clarity about the boundaries of the concept is necessary to distinguish the history of capitalism as a specific field. The crucial point is that there is an undeniable need to move away from the diffusionist, Eurocentric view of capitalism and to analyze the merchant capitalism accompanied by the growth of commercial manufactures during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in several regions of the world within a comparative framework.[44] Without such a framework, even value critique runs the risk of falling prey to the idea that the rise of capitalism in the "periphery" can be attributed solely (or primarily) to imperialism. In the most comprehensive definition of the "essence" of capitalism offered in the book, Shaikh argues that it has three characteristic features: production is undertaken by many individual entities with no direct regard for their concordance with social needs; distribution is accomplished through generalized exchange; and profit is the dominant motive of all these activities.[18] Here, both the first and the third feature refer to subjective dimensions of human action under capitalism, and only the second refers to a generalized, objective system. [Extracted from the article]

This article argues that to gauge the significance of state planning in mid-twentieth century India, it is necessary to study the trajectory of what was called 'Indian political economy' during the late nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. Through a close reading of selected texts, I demonstrate that the transmutation of Indian political economy into an abstract science of economics was a function of Indian nationalists' inability to hold together the 'social', 'economic', and 'ethical' spheres within a single conceptual framework. The separation of these three spheres was the enabling factor behind the conceptualization of planning as a purely technical process of economic management. Further, the article contends that these conceptual developments cannot be adequately explained with reference to either 'elite' interests or the insidious effects of 'colonial' discourses. Rather, the narrative demonstrates that economic abstractions can—and must—be grounded in the historical development of capitalist social forms that transformed the internal fabric of Indian society. Drawing on a theory of capitalism as a historically specific form of social mediation, I argue that a Marxian social history of Indian state planning can overcome certain limitations inherent in extant approaches. Finally, the interpretation proposed here opens up the possibility of putting Indian history in conversation with a broader development during the first half of the twentieth century, namely the separation of political economy into economics and sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins with a critique of the well‐known claim by Besley and Burgess concerning the negative impact of labour regulation on organized sector manufacturing performance in India. In the second part of the article, the authors use a state‐level panel data set for the period 1969–2005 to analyse the relative importance of profitability (rate of profit as a percentage of the total replacement cost of capital stock) and industrial disputes (man‐days lost to all industrial disputes as a percentage of total workers employed) to explain cross‐state variations of manufacturing performance in India's organized sector. Using three different measures of manufacturing performance — net value added, investment and employment — they find that profitability is more significant than industrial disputes in explaining the variation of manufacturing sector performance across Indian states. The findings presented here therefore question the uncritical acceptance of Besley and Burgess's results in the literature on labour regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decade of the 1980s witnessed massive changes in the internal structure and functioning of English football.1 Several rules, instituted during the infancy of the professional game to limit profit-making, were overturned with remarkable rapidity within the space of a few years, culminating in the formation of the English Premier League (EPL) in 1992. In this paper, I engage with two questions. One, why and how was the century-old structure of English football so rapidly transformed and what were the consequences? Two, what sort of Marxian theoretical framework can we use to understand the historical trajectory of English football? With respect to the former, I follow David Harvey’s analysis of neoliberal strategies used to restore upper-class dominance to argue that the formation of the EPL can be interpreted as another instance of accumulation by dispossession, one among myriad attempts to solve the profitability crisis of the 1970s by creating an avenue for financial speculation in football clubs. Together with the deregulation of television, it converted football from a domain formerly regarded as “off-limits to the calculus of profitability” into a “business proper.” In terms of a theoretical framework, I propose that it is useful to think of football as serving global capitalism in a dual manner: as an avenue for accumulation (the accumulation function) and as a tool for legitimizing capitalist rule by producing alienated consciousness in society (the legitimation function). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I have argued elsewhere1 that the formation of the English Premier League (EPL) can be interpreted as an instance of accumulation by dispossession. This paper complements that analysis by arguing that the theory of “Social Structures of Accumulation” can also be used to locate the formation of the EPL within the modalities of the structural changes that characterized the move to neoliberalism. The conclusion remains that the role of football2 in the neoliberal restoration of capitalist class power cannot be ignored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]