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Bill Brydon

The Economic Sociologies of Pierre Bourdieu - 0 views

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    Instead of trying to locate the economic sociology of Bourdieu, I argue that his analysis of the economy was developed over such a long time period, is so rich and goes in so many interesting directions, that we are justified in speaking of Bourdieu's economic sociologies in the plural. While most sociologists know about Bourdieu's study Distinction (1986) and its analysis of consumption, there is less awareness of the fact that Bourdieu himself, towards the end of his life, said that he had produced three major studies of economic topics. These are: his work in Algeria on 'the economy of honour and "good faith"' (1950s and 1960s); his study of credit (Bourdieu et al., 1963); and his study of the economy of single-family houses (Bourdieu et al., 1999). These three studies are presented and discussed in detail, and so is Bourdieu's attempt to formulate a general program for 'economic anthropology' in his article 'The Economic Field' (1997), drawing on such concepts as field, habitus and capital. Some critique has been directed at Bourdieu's analysis of the economy, and this is also discussed.
Bill Brydon

Introduction: Uneven Development 25 Years On: Space, Nature and the Geographies of Capi... - 0 views

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    This article, along with this special symposium, engages with the lasting significance of Neil Smith's Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space 25 years after its publication. Few books have made such productive contributions to expanding the horizons of political economy, particularly the spatiality of political economy, as has Uneven Development. This introductory article explores some of these aspects of the book's significance for the readership of New Political Economy; it remarks on the lasting if not growing significance of Smith's intellectual and political contributions two and a half decades after one of his, and the discipline of geography's, crowning achievements. At the same time it foreshadows ways in which the text can continue to push our understanding of the interconnections among nature, capital and the production of space.
Bill Brydon

Polanyi and Post-neoliberalism in the Global South: Dilemmas of Re-embedding the Econom... - 0 views

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    Although Karl Polanyi Studied a different epoch and focused on Europe, his ideas have inspired an outpouring of studies on contemporary problems and prospects in the neoliberal era. The bulk of these studies pertain to industrial countries or global economic issues. However, the human, environmental and financial impact of market deregulation is arguably more devastating in the 'developing' countries than in the core. A question thus arises: do Polanyi's reflections on progressive alternatives to liberalism clarify contemporary debates on development alternatives in the Global South? I contend that democratic socialism - Polanyi's preferred remedy to the 'demolition' of society and nature occasioned by market civilisation - is problematical in light of what we have learned from the twentieth century, but his framework for evaluating alternatives - featuring the re-embedding of economy in society - remains as powerful as ever, I support this argument with an exploration of socialism and social democracy - as well as community - based alternatives arising from 'reciprocity'. Each possibility raises distinctive dilemmas, as an analysis of cases reveals.
Bill Brydon

Economics, Performativity, and Social Reproduction in Global Development - Globalizations - 0 views

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    Over the past decade, international development policy has paid increased attention to social reproduction. While this offers an improvement over past practices in which care work was all but ignored, these policy frameworks continue to fall short of feminist goals. One reason for this is the way that dominant economic representations of social reproduction continue to rest on a universalizing portrayal of the household economy and family life as mired in patriarchal tradition, which fails to capture the diversity of economic and affective arrangements in which reproductive labor takes place at the local level. In this paper, I develop an alternative conceptualization of economic and affective life that challenges dominant understandings of the distinctions between market and non-market activity, paid and unpaid labor, and work and intimacy to provide space for new feminist conceptualizations of economy and care that can capture the diversity of its sites and practices.
Bill Brydon

Tourism, Consumption and Inequality in Central America - New Political Economy - 0 views

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    Much research in international political economy (IPE) has been criticised for focussing on large and powerful actors in post-industrial countries, to the neglect of sites, processes and actors in the global South. This article offers a corrective to this bias in two ways: by locating the analysis in two rural Central American communities; and by exploring the social relations of consumption in these communities. In doing this, I challenge assumptions about rural places being excluded from global processes and explore the complexities and contradictions of how such communities are inserted into global circuits of production and consumption.
Bill Brydon

Narrating administrative order: Treaty 8 and the geographical fashioning of the Canadia... - 0 views

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    Examining two published narrative accounts of the signing of Treaty 8 in northwest Canada at the close of the nineteenth century, this essay highlights how the administrative practices and spatial discourses inscribed in the accounts of Charles Mair and Dr O C Edwards are implicated in the geographical fashioning of the Canadian north. The Treaty 8 Commissions of 1899 and 1900 were empowered by the Dominion Government of Canada to extinguish Aboriginal title to the vast territory of the Athabasca District. What the written narrative accounts of the treaty signing reveal are how the administrative practices of treaty making were strongly marked by the physicalities of travel, by the visual economies of spatial and cultural encounter, and by the recoding of the social and historical geographies of Aboriginal occupancy by an emergent national order. The accounts examined in the essay underscore how the geographies of northern Canada have been particularly drawn around the misapprehending of the patterns of Aboriginal land use and economy within governmental frames of knowledge.
Bill Brydon

Introduction: rights, cultures, subjects and citizens - Economy and Society - 0 views

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    This special issue arose from a concern with the political logic of the foregrounding of collective culture(s) in the context of changing citizenship regimes.1 Its key focus is the conjuncture in which 'culture' - claims of a collective distinction concerning heritage, location, moralities and values - has become the terrain of political struggles over the subject of rights in national and international politics, the re-allocation of entitlements, definitions of value and new forms of political representation. This appears to be linked to contemporary processes of neoliberalization, the politics of which are often defined in terms of economic policies promoting private accumulation, entrepreneurship and free markets, but which typically also include a project of governance in which not only individuals, but also collective agents - which may be 'cultural' entities - are charged with increasing responsibility for their own regulation, welfare and enterprise, but in a depoliticized and bureaucratized mode (Santos, 2005). Citizenship is central here as the modern political and legal institution which links certain notions of personal rights and duties with the structures of governance and political agency, on the one hand, and with the national and, by extension, transnational economy, on the other.
Bill Brydon

The Afterlives of "Waste": Notes from India for a Minor History of Capitalist Surplus -... - 0 views

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    We contend that "waste" is the political other of capitalist "value", repeated with difference as part of capital's spatial histories of surplus accumulation. We trace its work on India through a series of historical cuts, and suggest that the travels and perils of waste give us a "minor" history of capitalist surplus-the things, places and lives that are cast outside the pale of "value" at particular moments as superfluity, excess, or detritus; only to return at times in unexpected ways. The neologism "eviscerating urbanism" becomes our diagnostic tool to investigate both urban transformations in metropolitan India and their associated architectures for managing bodies and spaces designated as "wasteful". In sum, our essay reveals how "waste" begins as civil society's literal and figurative frontier only to become its internal and mobile limit in the contemporary era-a renewing source of jeopardy to urban life and economy, but also, in the banal violence and ironies of fin de millennium urbanism, a fiercely contested frontier of surplus value production.
Bill Brydon

Upgrading the self: Technology and the self in the digital games perpetual innovation e... - 0 views

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    This article explores the upgrade and perpetual innovation economy of digital gaming as it informs understandings and practices of the 'self'. Upgrade is situated in terms of digital gaming as a globalized techno-cultural industry. Drawing on accounts of governmentality and cultural work, research with digital games design students is drawn on to explore the overlapping twin logics of technological upgrade and work-on-the-self. The games industry-focused higher education context is examined as an environment for becoming a games designer and involving processes of upgrading the self. Having examined processes and practices of upgrading the self in terms of technological skills and personal development/enterprise, the article turns to some of the critical issues around anxiety, industry conventions and working practices.
Bill Brydon

On the Farm and in the Field: The Production of Nature Meets the Agrarian Question - Ne... - 0 views

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    Neil Smith's Uneven Development has had profound impacts on the way geographers have come to understand questions related to space and nature. In this short piece I explain what UD brings to a longstanding literature and set of debates that is commonly named 'the Agrarian Question' and revolves around agriculture's unique relationship to capitalist relations of production. Smith's distinctive approach that sees nature and space as produced by capitalist relations of production helps resolve some of the longstanding debates within the study of agriculture. While this piece applies the production of nature thesis to one particular social scientific field, I hope it points to the currency and significance of this understanding for many other academic fields and for political economy more generally.
Bill Brydon

Migration and ethnic nationalism: Anglophone exit and the 'decolonisation' of... - 0 views

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    "This article explains the effects of ethnic nationalism on Anglophone and Francophone migration. The rise of Québec ethnic nationalism in the 1960s dismantled the cultural division of labour, which created new opportunities for Francophones but threatened Anglophones' traditional dominance over the Québec economy. This had negative consequences for Anglophones but positive outcomes for Francophones, which in turn accounts for differences in migration patterns. Drawing from the internal colony model as well as migration and exit-voice theories, and using ecological census data, micro-census data and election panel data, I find that the key variables that increase the likelihood of Anglophone out-migration either do not explain Francophone out-migration or have opposite effects. This is because ethnonationalist policies decreased the economic return particularly for well-educated, higher-earning, professional Anglophones in Québec, while increasing the economic position of Francophones and in particular well-educated professionals."
Bill Brydon

Transforming Korea into a multicultural society: reception of multiculturalism discours... - 0 views

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    "Since 2005, multicultural-based words such as multicultural society, multicultural family, and multicultural education have grown explosively in Korean society. Due to this social trend, adoption of the term multiculturalism has become a trend within the government and press to explain current social changes in Korea. Nevertheless, there have been few efforts to tackle multiculturalism as a crucial political project or a considerable academic theme of discussion. Thus, this study aims to examine how multiculturalism discourse in Korea has been received and draws its discursive disposition. It argues how the media, especially the press, incorporate other crucial issues such as 'diversity', 'human rights', and 'minority politics' in terms of multiculturalism. To analyse, a total of 275 journal articles were selected and scrutinised. This study contextualises Korean multiculturalism and suggests a meta-picture of the discursive economy of multiculturalism in Korea."
Bill Brydon

Marx, List, and the Materiality of Nations - Rethinking Marxism - Volume 24, Issue 1 - 1 views

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    "This paper contests the cosmopolitan consensus in contemporary Marxism that Marx and Engels's vision of capitalism was 'global' and that nations are essentially 'cultural' constructs. It contributes to a wider project arguing that nations are material by taking a closer look at Marx and Engels's writings on free trade and protectionism and, in particular, at Marx's notes on Friedrich List's National System of Political Economy (1841/56). This examination shows that Marx and Engels had a keen understanding of the economic roles of states, national and imperial, and thought about free trade and protection in geopolitical terms. Though Marx aimed his characteristically caustic wit and forensic critique at List's contradictions, silences, and hypocrisies as a bourgeois thinker, he accepted that nation-states played economic and geopolitical roles in a capitalist world and that developmental states were possible, indeed necessary. The ground for these arguments is prepared by outlining the centrality of the economic roles of states in the development of modern capitalism and by showing how the recent revival of Marxist accounts of capitalist geopolitics is hampered by a purely economic, non- or anti-statist conception of capitalism."
Bill Brydon

Post-Secular Turkey - GÖLE - 2012 - New Perspectives Quarterly - 0 views

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    "For 500 years the West was on the rise, culminating in Globalizaiton 1.0-the open system of trade, information flows and the spread of technology on the terms and in the image of the West. The benefits of that system over the last 30 years have led to the rise of the emerging economies. As a result we are entering the new era of Globalization 2.0 characterized by new forms of non-Western modernity and the interdependence of plural identities. The advent of this new era has been hastened by the fiscal and financial crisis in Europe and the United States. Turkey, with its Islamic-oriented democracy that has become a template for the liberated peoples of the Arab Spring, and China, with its effective neo-Confucian form of governance, are the most sharply defined new players in this multi-polar and multi-dimensional world. In this section, one of Turkey's most insightful sociologists examines the post-secular transformation of that nation. One of China's more provocative philosophers proposes a hybrid model that combines what has been learned from the experience of Western and Chinese governance in a way that "enhances democracy" in both systems."
Bill Brydon

THREATPRINTS, THREADS AND TRIGGERS - Journal of Cultural Economy - Volume 5, Issue 1 - 0 views

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    "The international 'data war' that is fought in the name of counter-terror is concerned with mobilising the uncertain future to intervene 'before the terrorist has been radicalised'. Within this project, the digital footprint has become increasingly significant as a security resource. At the international border, particularly, the traces of data that cannot help but be left behind by everyday consumption and travel activity are mobilised within 'smart' targeting programmes to act against threat ahead of time. Subject to analytics, rules-based targeting and risk-scoring, this data is believed to offer a fuller picture of the mobile subject than conventional identification information. This paper places the data footprint alongside the history of the conventional criminal 'print' within forensic science to examine the future-oriented modes of governing that are emerging within smart border programmes such as the UK's e-borders. The digital print has less in common with the criminal print as objective evidence of past events and more in common with early efforts in anthropometry and biometrics to diagnose a subject's proclivity ahead of time. In the context of contemporary border security, this is unleashing uneven and occluded governmental effects."
Bill Brydon

The dog that did not bark: Anti-Americanism and the 2008 financial crisis in Europe - R... - 0 views

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    "The financial crisis that erupted in September 2008 seemed to confirm all the worst stereotypes about the United States held abroad: that Americans are bold, greedy, and selfish to excess; that they are hypocrites, staunch defenders of the free market ready to bail out their own companies; and that the US has long been the architect and primary beneficiary of the global economic system. So the crisis had an enormous potential for deteriorating further the global image of the United States, already at an all-time high during the George W. Bush era. Yet anti-American sentiments did not surge worldwide as a result of the crisis, neither at the level of public opinion, nor at the level of actions and policy responses by foreign policy-makers. This article explains why the dog did not bark and reawaken anti-Americanism in the process. The central argument is that this potential anti-Americanism has been mitigated by several factors, including the election of Obama, the new face of globalization, and the perception of the relative decline of US power coupled with the rise of China, which suggests that the 'post-American' world may be accompanied by a 'post anti-American' world, at least in Europe."
Bill Brydon

Sen and Commons on Markets and Freedom - New Political Economy - 0 views

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    Amartya Sen's enlarged conception of freedom has augmented the scope of economic analysis but it also has had the surprising effect of being more supportive of the free market than conventional welfare economics. It is argued here that a comparison of Sen's position with that of the American institutionalist, J R Commons, highlights some problems with Sen's approach and points to possible ways in which they might be addressed.
Bill Brydon

New Left Review - Francisco de Oliveira: Lula in the Labyrinth - 0 views

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    The re-election of Luiz Inácio da Silva in October 2006 allows us to decipher the ways in which Brazil's political landscape has been reconstituted under the Workers Party government. The whirlwind of deregulation, privatization and restructuring under Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the 1990s-and with it, the dissolution of the industrial working class created during the developmentalist era-had torn up all established relations between economy and politics, classes and representation. The result was a period of indeterminacy, the context of Lula's first presidential victory in 2002. Since then, a novel combination of neo-populism and party statification, shored up by social-liberal handouts, on the one hand, and government graft, on the other, has helped to forge a new form of class rule in Brazil that could be characterized as 'hegemony in reverse'.
Bill Brydon

Bourdieu's Rationalist Science of Science: Some Promises and Limitations - 0 views

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    At several points over his career, Pierre Bourdieu articulated a framework for a sociology of science, derived mostly from a priori reasoning about scientific actors in competition for capital. This article offers a brief overview of Bourdieu's framework, placing it in the context of dominant trends in Science and Technology Studies. Bourdieu provides an excellent justification for the project of the sociology of science, and some starting points for analysis. However, his framework suffers from his commitment to a vague evolutionary epistemology, and from his correlative and surprising neglect of science's habituses, with their particular practices, boundaries, and political economies. To be productive, Bourdieu's sociology of science would have to abandon its narrow rationalism and embrace the material complexity of the sciences.
Bill Brydon

Articulation, antagonism, and intercalation in Western military imaginaries - 0 views

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    This article provides a discursive grounding for understanding the construction of military imaginaries by adding the concepts of 'antagonism' and 'intercalation' to articulation theory. By examining the cases of industrial-mechanized warfare theory and network-centric warfare theory through the lens of this expanded articulation theory, it is argued that military imaginaries often serve to define and link conceptions of science, technology, society, economy, war, and military organization, thought, and practice into a unified image of the larger security environment - that is, the military imaginary. Military imaginaries often share a common narrative structure that privileges co-periodized change among the elements of the articulation, resulting in the phenomenon of 'antagonism' serving as a generic threat used to justify military modernization and even the use of force.
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