scholarly journals ‘Post-pandemic’ transnational gentrifications: A critical outlook

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (15) ◽  
pp. 3202-3214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgia Alexandri ◽  
Michael Janoschka
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Economic Transformations ◽  
Culture Heritage ◽  
Systemic Violence

Transnational gentrifications have been occurring at the crossroads of capital investment fuelled to satisfy the remarkable increase of so-called leisure-oriented mobilities. Such mobilities, however, cause disruptive social, spatial and economic transformations of urban and rural landscapes across the globe. Consequently, transnational gentrifications may be considered a crucial testimonial of economic shifts, during the 2008–2020 period of accumulation. In this article, we argue that the underlying conceptual assumptions of transnational gentrifications require crucial adjustments. We should especially consider the intellectual roots that simply celebrate leisure-oriented mobilities while setting aside the exclusionary social practices of the consumption of space, culture, heritage and place. We do this by interpreting the phenomenon by means of a political economy that understands (i) the lens of the multi-scalar organisation of state power as a centrepiece for orchestrating the conditions for transnational gentrifications; (ii) transnational middle-class leisure-oriented mobilities linked dichotomously with labour precariousness and flexibility; and (iii) the rent gap as an analytical tool to understand dispossession, and corresponding displacement of people, practices and discourses. This approach sheds light on the nuances of gentrification as an attribute of systemic violence exercised in financialised capitalism. It also supports us to sketch out a theoretically informed outlook for the ongoing reorientation of intertwined gentrifications by transnational capital investments with intermittent flows of people in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Solar Renewable Energy Credit Price Volatility and Investment Returns: Have Policies Stranded Capital Investment?

Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Somayeh Youssefi ◽  
Patrick L. Gurian
Keyword(s):  
Solar Energy ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Price Volatility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Investment Model ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Demand Model ◽  
Market Prices ◽  
Investment Returns

Pennsylvania is one of a number of U.S. states that provide incentives for the generation of electricity by solar energy through Solar Renewal Energy Credits (SRECs). This article develops a return on investment model for solar energy generation in the PJM (mid-­Atlantic) region of the United States. Model results indicate that SREC values of roughly $150 are needed for residential scale systems to break even over a 25-­year project period at 3% interest. Market prices for SRECs in Pennsylvania have been well below this range from late 2011 through the first half of 2016, indicating that previous capital investments in solar generation have been stranded as a result of steep declines in the value of SRECs. A simple conceptual supply and demand model is developed to explain the sharp decline in market prices for SRECs. Also discussed is a possible policy remedy that would add unsold SRECs in a given year to the SREC quota for the subsequent year.

The moral and political economy of suicide prevention

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110011
Author(s):  
Scott J Fitzpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Suicide Prevention ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Economic Systems ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Policy Practice ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Norms And Values ◽  
The Way

Suicide prevention occurs within a web of social, moral, and political relations that are acknowledged, yet rarely made explicit. In this work, I analyse these interrelations using concepts of moral and political economy to demonstrate how moral norms and values interconnect with political and economic systems to inform the way suicide prevention is structured, legitimated, and enacted. Suicide prevention is replete with ideologies of individualism, risk, and economic rationalism that translate into a specific set of social practices. These bring a number of ethical, procedural, and distributive considerations to the fore. Closer attention to these issues is needed to reflect the moral and political contexts in which decision-making about suicide prevention occurs, and the implications of these decisions for policy, practice, and for those whose lives they impact.

IV. J. S. Mill and the Irish Question: Reform, and the Integrity of the Empire, 1865–1870

1970 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 419-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. D. Steele
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Complete Agreement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Harsh Criticism ◽  
Irish Question

The first part of this study of Mill sought to show how much less radical he was on the subject of Irish land reform than is often supposed. In the earlier editions of the Principles of Political Economy from 1848 to 1857 there were passages which constituted a terrible indictment of landlordism, and insisted on the need for legislation to convert the tenant farmers into joint owners of their holdings: but in another passage this harsh criticism was substantially withdrawn, and the demand for fixity of tenure effectively retracted. Although they continued to reproduce the criticism and the call for a drastic measure, the editions of 1862 and 1865 were more moderate still in their conclusions on Irish land. With the progress of the changes in the economy and society set in motion by the Great Famine, Mill became more strongly convinced that the country should be left to evolve slowly under the existing law of tenure, only slightly amended. One cannot imagine Mill saying, ‘tenant-right…is equivalent to landlords' wrong’: but he and Palmerston were none the less in nearly complete agreement by 1865 on the degree of laissez-faire that was desirable in Ireland. For all his strictures upon aristocratic misgovernment and middle-class prejudice, Mill was too warm an admirer of British institutions to want to undermine their social basis over a wide area of the United Kingdom. The second part of this study deals with his action and his motives, in briefly advocating, without any reservations this time, the revolutionary land legislation from which he had always previously shrunk, despite his brave words written for the earlier editions of the Principles.

Class Politics, American-Style

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 659-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Waddell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Rich ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Take All

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson's Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class is both a work of political science and a contribution to broad public discussion of distributive politics. Its topic could not be more relevant to a US polity wracked by bitter partisan disagreements about taxes, social spending, financial regulation, social insecurity, and inequality. The political power of “the rich” is a theme of widespread public attention. The headline on the cover of the January–February 2011 issue of The American Interest—“Inequality and Democracy: Are Plutocrats Drowning Our Republic?”—is indicative. Francis Fukuyama's lead essay, entitled “Left Out,” clarifies that by “plutocracy,” the journal means “not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others.” Fukuyama makes clear that he believes that this state of affairs obtains in the United States today.Readers of Perspectives on Politics will know that the topic has garnered increasing attention from political scientists in general and in our journal in particular. In March 2009, we featured a symposium on Larry Bartels's Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. And in December 2009, our lead article, by Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, starkly posed the question “Oligarchy in the United States?” and answered it with an equally stark “yes.” Winner-Take-All Politics thus engages a broader scholarly discussion within US political science, at the same time that it both draws upon and echoes many “classic themes” of US political science from the work of Charles Beard and E. E. Schattschneider to Ted Lowi and Charles Lindblom.In this symposium, we have brought together a group of important scholars and commentators who offer a range of perspectives on the book and on the broader themes it engages. While most of our discussants are specialists on “American politics,” we have also sought out scholars beyond this subfield. Our charge to the discussants is to evaluate the book's central claims and evidence, with a focus on three related questions: 1) How compelling is its analysis of the “how” and “why” of recent US public policy and its “turn” in favor of “the rich” and against “the middle class”? 2) How compelling is its critique of the subfield of “American politics” for its focus on the voter–politician linkage and on “politics as spectacle” at the expense of an analysis of “politics as organized combat”? 3) And do you agree with its argument that recent changes in US politics necessitate a different, more comparative, and more political economy–centered approach to the study of US politics?—Jeffrey C. Isaac, Editor

Cosmopolitan Consumption

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
Utsa Ray
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Hybrid Culture ◽  
Culinary Culture ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Alternative Modernity

This chapter demonstrates that, while scholars have long focused on the economic origins of the middle class, it is crucial to understand the ways in which it fashioned itself. Although the universe of the Indian middle class revolved around contesting colonial categories, the chapter shows that the project of self-fashioning of the Indian middle class was not an instance of alternative modernity, nor did the locality of the middle class in colonial India result in producing some sort of indigenism. This middle class borrowed, adapted, and appropriated the pleasures of modernity and tweaked and subverted it to suit their project of self-fashioning. An area in which such cosmopolitan domesticity can be observed was the culinary culture of colonial Bengal, which utilized both vernacular ingredients and British modes of cooking in order to establish a Bengali bourgeois cuisine. This process of indigenization was an aesthetic choice that was imbricated in the upper caste and in the patriarchal agenda of middle-class social reform, and it developed certain social practices, including imagining the act of cooking as a classic feminine practice and the domestic kitchen as a sacred space. It was often this hybrid culture that marked the colonial middle classes.

Capital Budgeting and Public Investment Projects in Ukraine

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Olha Krupa
Keyword(s):  
Capital Investment ◽  
Capital Expenditure ◽  
Public Capital ◽  
Capital Budgeting ◽  
Budget Process ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Capital Spending ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Performance

This chapter discusses the budget process for public capital investments in Ukraine, presents controversies in the current process, and offers several avenues for improvement. In doing so, the author provides a description of the country's normative capital public budgeting framework, presents the institutional setup, and tracks Ukraine's public capital expenditure trends for nearly three decades (1991-2016). The study then discusses implementation, audit, and performance issues in Ukraine's public capital expenditure management and provides recommendations. Because of the country's limited fiscal capacity as compared to its massive infrastructure needs, the author posits that Ukraine can no longer afford to delay or ignore its most pressing public capital investment needs. Because the current list of capital investment proposals is underfunded and too long, the author suggests that the government focuses on finishing strategic, high-priority public projects, while other capital spending proposals target private sector financing once it becomes more readily available.

Many Happy Returns? Investment Governance and the Political Economy of Time in UK Pensions Provision

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-246
Author(s):  
Craig Berry
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Institutions ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Pension Funds ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Pensions ◽  
Pension Schemes ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Uk

We are increasingly conscious that private pension schemes in the UK are primarily financial institutions. UK private pensions provision has always been highly financialized, but the individualization of provision means this dynamic matters more than ever to retirement incomes. Furthermore, individualization has occurred at a time when the UK economy’s capacity to support a long-term approach to capital investment, upon which pensions depend, has declined. The chapter argues that pensions provision essentially involves managing the failure of the future to resemble the present, or more specifically present forecasts of the future. As our ability to manipulate the value of the future has increased, our ability to tolerate forecast failure has declined. The chapter details how pension funds invest, and how this has changed, and provides an original understanding of several recent attempts to shape pensions investment, ultimately demonstrating the limitations of pensions policy in shaping how provision functions in practice.

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