The Rise and Fall of the Medical Gaze: The Political Economy of Immigrant Medical Inspection in Modern America

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy L. Fairchild

ArgumentIn this paper I examine the mass medical inspections of immigrants to the United States from the 1890s through the 1920s. I show how, framed as it was not only by nativism and eugenics but also by national industrial imperatives and priorities, scientific medicine served dual purposes. On the one hand, the medical exam was a tool for managing cultural and biological threats to the nation. There were regional variations in medical inspections that reflected the politics of race. On the other hand, the medical exam played an important role in the process of building an unskilled, highly mobile labor force. The industrial demands of the nation provided a rationale for drawing and absorbing millions of European immigrants into the labor force. It was thus a distinct product of the political economy of immigration. It was this second function that characterized the exam for the majority of immigrants entering the nation.

2021 ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke

This chapter applies theoretical insights around misrecognition to better understand the intersection of misinformation and ideology in the United States. It argues that misinformation practices are products of modernity. American modernity is characterized by contradictions between its basic social forms such as the money form, the commodity form, and so on. The contradictions create a bind for rulers. On the one hand, these contradictions mean that their rule is never stable. On the other hand, acknowledging the contradictions risks courting redress that also threatens their minority rule. Due to the imperative to mystify these contradictions, social problems are subsequently treated as anomalies or otherwise externalized; they can never be features of the capitalist political economy itself. Misinformation is a common by-product of this externalization as the capitalist ruling class uses it to weld together pacts and alliances that preserve the social hierarchy. The chapter outlines the broad argumentation offered by securocrats, reactionaries and technologists on Russia-gate. It takes a look at the proof put forward, the ethical reasoning invoked and the emotive appeals employed. It also looks at why these explanations fall short.


Author(s):  
Emilios Christodoulidis ◽  
Johan van der Walt

This chapter traces the tradition of critical theory in Europe in the way it has informed and framed legal thought. A key, and distinctive, element of this legal tradition is that it characteristically connects to the state as constitutive reference; in other words it understands the institution of law as that which organizes and mediates the relation of the state to civil society. The other constitutive reference is political economy, a reference that typically grounds this tradition of thinking about the law in the materiality of the practices of social production and reproduction. It is in these connections, of the institution of law to the domains of the state and of the political economy, that critical legal theory locates the function of law, and the emancipatory potentially it affords on the one hand, and the obstacles to emancipation it imposes, on the other.


1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. V. K. Fitzgerald

Any attempt to define the changes in the Peruvian political economy that have taken place since 1968 1 must be made in terms of the relationship between the state and domestic capital on the one hand and foreign capital on the other, and must offer an explanation of the way in which this military- controlled state has tended to replace the former and establish a new relationship with the latter. In particular, the confrontation between the government and foreign capital, and the significance of internal ownership reforms cannot be understood without reference to the development of Peruvian capitalism before 1968.


Author(s):  
Louis W. Pauly

This chapter examines the political economy of global financial crises. The current world economy reflects an experiment involving the opening and integration of financial markets on the one hand, and the dispersion of political authority on the other hand, The resulting governance challenges are evident in the circumstances surrounding financial crises spilling ever more readily across national borders. In the late twentieth century, most such crises began in emerging-market countries. In 2008, however, the experiment almost failed catastrophically when policy mistakes in the United States combined with an economic downturn to spawn a global emergency. This chapter considers the changing political economy of systemic risk assessment, crisis prevention, and emergency management as the experiment continues. The timeline for the financial crisis of 2008 is presented.


2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 723-742 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi ◽  
Rigas Arvanitis

This article aims at questioning the relationship between Arab social research and language by arguing that many factors including the political economy of publication, globalization, internationalization and commodification of higher education have marginalized peripheral languages such as Arabic. The authors demonstrate, on the one hand, that this marginalization is not necessarily structurally inevitable but indicates dependency by choice, and, on the other hand, how globalization has reinforced the English language hegemony. This article uses the results of a questionnaire survey about the use of references in PhD and Master’s theses. The survey, which was answered by 165 persons, targeted those who hold a Master’s or PhD degree from any university in the Arab world or who have dealt with a topic related to the Arab world, no matter in which discipline.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12(48) (2) ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Stefano Zamagni

The essay pursues a double aim. On the one hand, it offers a comparative analysis of the two main economic paradigms of the Enlightment period, i.e. the political economy one, associated with the name of Adam Smith, and thecivil economy one, associated to the name of Antonio Genovesi. On the other hand, it gives reasons why, in the last quarter of a century, the civil economy paradigm is gaining more and more grounds. The paper ends up with some considerations on the major drawbacks of libertarian individualism in the present epoch.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 889-905
Author(s):  
Siyaves Azeri

Fear, of which the fear of death is a variation, can be analysed in its relation to forms of societies. Pertaining to Marx’s concept of ‘surplus-population’ and his analysis of the capitalist law of population, it is argued that the main source of anxiety and fear in capitalist society is the fear of life, which is expressed in the form of fear of the dead and of monsters. Capital posits the identity of every human individual through its law of population. What humans fear the most is the life that they live, which turns them into walking dead. Human’s fear of life is twofold: on the one hand, she fears from being posited a zombie, a piece within the pile of human trash, that is, the surplus-population; on the other hand, she is scared of the dead, capital the spectre, which vampire-like sucks upon living labour.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Güllistan Yarkın

When founded in 1978, the PKK defined itself as a socialist movement aiming to create a classless society through the formation of a new state-power. In the 1990s, the ideology of the PKK began to change and this transformation became apparent in the 2000s. The PKK has since completely abandoned its statist Marxist-Leninist national liberationist ideology, and has instead proposed to build “democratic modernity” through the creation of an anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist, women emancipatory and ecologist “democratic confederalism” framework. This project defines the ecologist-rural communes grounded on food sovereignty as its basic economic units. This article argues that the transformation of the PKK’s goals on the political economy of the Kurdish region is shaped by, on the one hand, the world systemic and internal restraints acting upon the PKK, and on the other hand, the ideological responses of the PKK to those restraints.Keywords: The PKK; Abdullah Öcalan; democratic modernity; democratic confederalism; anti-capitalist movements.Guherîna îdeolojîk di PKKyê de û aboriya siyasî ya herêma kurdî li TirkiyeyêGava di sala 1978an de hate damezrandin, PKKyê xwe wek hereketeke sosyalîst pênase kiribû û armanca xwe wisa danîbû ku civakeke bêçîn durist bike bi rêya avakirina desthilata dewleteke nû. Di salên 1990an de îdeolojiya PKKyê dest bi guherînê kir û di salên 2000an de ev guherîn pir aşkera bû. Ji hingê ve, PKKyê bi temamî dest ji îdeolojiya xwe ya Marksî-Lenînî ya azadiya neteweyî kêşaye, li batî wê, ragihandiye ku dixwaze “modernîteya demokratîk” ava bike bi rêya duristkirina çarçoveyeke “konfederaliya demokratîk” a dij-sermayedarî, dij-endûstrîgerî, jin-rizgarkerane û ekolojîk. Di vê projeyê de yekeyên aborî yên esasî ew komûnên ekolojîst-gundî ne ku li ser serbixweyiya xwe ya xurekî pêk hatine (anku ji bo bidestxistina xureka xwe ne muhtacê derve ne). Ev gotar diyar dike ku guherînên di armancên PKKyê yên li ser aboriya siyasî ya herêma kurdî, ji aliyekê ve, ji ber wan zext û berbest û mehdûdiyetên sîstemî yên global û navxweyî pêk hatine ku kar di PKKyê dikin, ji aliyê dî ve, ji ber bersivên îdeolojîk ên PKKyê ne bo wan berbest û mehdûdiyetan.


2021 ◽  
pp. 179-220
Author(s):  
John Haldon

Empires are both simple and complex, since on the one hand they are broadly identifiable through a small number of key elements in common, yet on the other hand, no single “version” of empire exists. The political economy of traditional empires can be approached through certain key features, even if their forms and their “cultural geography” vary widely—in particular, the acquisition of and control over resources, and the closely associated issue of how rulers or governments maintain control over those who manage resources on their behalf. Understanding these entails analysis of many other features, including the ways in which central and local elites were formed or transformed and the ways in which identities and loyalties evolved or were created, compromised, or transformed to generate what we might call “imperial capital” (in kind and in ideas). Their importance is crucial to understanding how empires rise, reproduce themselves, and fail or transform.


Author(s):  
Tom Wagner

This chapter explores how the music creators group Fair Trade Music International (FTMI) applies the ethos and methods of Fair Trade in attempts to reform how, and how much, music creators are paid for digital music sales. The term “Fair Trade” has since the 1980s become synonymous with “ethical consumerism,” a set of ideals and practices that seek to mitigate the deleterious effects of “unethical” capitalism. Yet the overall effects of “ethical consumerism” itself are debatable: on the one hand, it often improves the material conditions of producers, especially in the “global south.” On the other hand, it does so within—and therefore reinforces—the existing political-economic structures that produce what it seeks to mitigate. How does this paradox manifest in the context of digital music sales?


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