Political economy: the social and ecological anatomy of transformation

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.


Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 


2020 ◽  

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential


Author(s):  
Micheál L. Collins ◽  
Mary P. Murphy

The political economy of Irish work and welfare has dramatically changed over recent decades. Since the 1980s, Ireland has experienced two periods of high unemployment followed by two periods of full employment. Alongside this, we see considerable shifts in both the sectoral composition of the workforce and in the institutional architecture underpinning the labour market. Focusing on the last decade, this chapter contextualizes the Irish labour market in the Irish growth model, highlighting issues including occupational upgrading, low pay, gender composition, and migration. The chapter then explores links between this employment structure and Ireland’s changing welfare regime. It considers recent institutional changes, as the welfare regime shifted to a work-first form of activation, and the long-term sustainability of the social protection system. The chapter concludes by highlighting what we see as the core challenges for the political economy of work and welfare in Ireland.


1973 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-279
Author(s):  
Trevor Smith

DISSATISFACTION WITH ESTABLISHED MODES OF SCHOLARSHIP IS A contemporary manifestation common to all the social sciences in varying degrees. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, which in its widespread adoption seems in no small measure to have contribted to the new waves of methodological consciousness, the prevailing ‘paradigms’, which were largely consolidated in the 1950s, are being explicitly and often vehemently challenged. A burgeoning critical literature is readily apparent throughout the social sciences and, for that matter, beyond.


2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (45) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Thiago Vargas

Retomando uma leitura política e social da Carta a d’Alembert proposta por Bento Prado Jr. e Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes, este artigo busca estender e desdobrar algumas importantes implicações desta tradição de leitura: investigar uma reflexão econômica e os desenvolvimentos de uma economia política associada aos espetáculos, conforme apresentada na Carta. Afinal, contestando uma específica concepção de espetáculo defendida pelos enciclopedistas, Rousseau, sublinhando o caráter político presente nos debates sobre a atividade teatral, incessantemente se atenta para o contexto social e econômico no qual uma peça se insere. Neste contexto, considerando-se ainda a oposição que a Carta apresenta contra etnocentrismo dos philosophes, pretendemos analisar como então é desenvolvida uma crítica à ociosidade – ou uma apologia ao trabalho – que tem em vista fortalecer os argumentos dirigidos contra o teatro parisiense. Exploraremos, portanto, os aspectos de economia política que compõem a argumentação de Rousseau ao longo do texto. [Resuming a political and social reading on the Letter to d’Alembert proposed by Bento Prado Jr. and Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes, this paper aims to further important consequences carried out by this tradition: to analyze an economic reflection and the developments of political economy thoughts associated with the theatre, as presented in Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert. Challenging a specific conception of spectacles advocated by the encyclopedists, Rousseau, highlighting the political character present in the discussions on the theatrical activity, draws attention to the social context in which a play takes place. In this context, and considering the opposition that the Letter presents against the philosophes’ ethnocentrism, we aim to analyze how a critique of idleness – or a praise of labor – is developed, with a view to strengthen the arguments pointed against the Parisian theatre. Most of all, we will seek to highlight the political and economic aspects that make up Rousseau’s arguments.]


2021 ◽  
pp. 44-72
Author(s):  
Michael A. Wilkinson

<Online Only>This chapter examines authoritarian liberalism as a more general phenomenon ‘beyond Weimar’. It looks outside Weimar Germany and takes a longer historical perspective, revealing deeper tensions in liberalism itself, specifically its inability to respond to the issue of socio-economic inequality in a mass democracy. The major Weimar constitutional theorists—Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt, and Hermann Heller—had no answer to the social question as a matter of constitutional self-defence. The chapter then discusses the political economy of the various crises across Europe—in Italy, France, and Austria—revealing a similar quandary. As Karl Polanyi argued, in these contexts, the turn to authoritarian liberalism fatally weakened political democracy and left it disarmed when faced with the fascist countermovement. Later in the interwar period, proposals for neo-liberalism would be introduced, symbolized by the organization of the Walter Lippman Colloquium in 1938.</Online Only>


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