The transition game: Toward a cultural economy of football in post-socialist China

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (6) ◽  
pp. 711-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Yu ◽  
Joshua Newman ◽  
Hanhan Xue ◽  
Haozhou Pu
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Adult Participation ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Commercial Viability ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Mass Privatization ◽  
And Function ◽  
Political Economic

Following decades of significant economic and political reform, a once-closed China has emerged as the world’s fastest growing and arguably most interconnected political economic system. In the context of what has been termed a “post-socialist” transition, China’s sport system has similarly undergone rapid marketization (bringing in market actors and action). In this article, we examine the changing state and function of football (soccer) within this period of post-socialist transition. We provide a critical analysis of recent (c. 2010–2017) private and state-based initiatives to develop the commercial viability, international interconnectivity, and cultural significance of football (soccer). Drawing upon theories of cultural economy as developed by the globalization theorist Arjun Appadurai, we provide an historical and conceptual investigation of the strategic efforts to nationally imagine football culture as, and within, transitioning China. To do this, we examine how state actors and private intermediaries have leveraged increases in high-profile player transfers, domestic franchise valuations, investment in foreign teams, development of player academies, overall youth and adult participation, and expanded media rights agreements to simultaneously economize Chinese football culture and culturalize the logics of commercial sport and free market capitalism more generally. In so doing, we map the various “scapes” through which people, capital, images, technologies, and ideologies have been set aflow and thereby frame new imaginings of mass privatization, mediation, and consumerism for a national football consuming public.

Economy

Religion ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 89-103
Author(s):  
David Chidester
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Free Market ◽  
American Petroleum Institute ◽  
Cultural Economy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sacred Values ◽  
Animated Film ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Economy Of The Sacred ◽  
Market Capitalism

This chapter explores possibilities for locating religious formations at the intersections of culture and economy. Not solely the preserve of professional economists, economy is a term that has expanded in scope to include economies of signs and desires that generate values beyond the pricing mechanisms of the modern capitalist market. To illustrate how religion can be situated in a cultural economy, this chapter focuses on how one animated film, Destination Earth (1956), sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, serves to illustrate a political economy of the sacred in which the oppression of communist collectivism is opposed to the freedom promised by American free-market capitalism. Viewing this film provides an occasion for highlighting three features of the political economy of the sacred: mediations between economic and sacred values; mediations between economic scarcity and sacred surplus; and mediations among competing claims to legitimate ownership of the sacred.

The Legacy of Iraq

2015 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Iraq War ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
The World ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

This book critically reflects on the failure of the 2003 intervention to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy, underpinned by free-market capitalism, its citizens free to live in peace and prosperity. The book argues that mistakes made by the coalition and the Iraqi political elite set a sequence of events in motion that have had devastating consequences for Iraq, the Middle East and for the rest of the world. Today, as the nation faces perhaps its greatest challenge in the wake of the devastating advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and another US-led coalition undertakes renewed military action in Iraq, understanding the complex and difficult legacies of the 2003 war could not be more urgent. Ignoring the legacies of the Iraq War and denying their connection to contemporary events could mean that vital lessons are ignored and the same mistakes made again.

Is There a Future for Bourgeois Liberalism?

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-129
Author(s):  
Robert J. Antonio
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Corporate Scandals ◽  
Global Environmental Problems ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Formal Rationality ◽  
Bourgeois Culture ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

Distinguished by extreme, systematized rationalism, Weber argued, bourgeois culture makes the social world in some ways more predictable and more comfortable but precludes a widely shared good life and social justice. He stressed emphatically that free-market capitalism, by maximizing formal rationality oriented to capital accounting and profitability, produces substantively “irrational” consequences that undermine the sociocultural and material fabric needed to sustain it. More than forty years of neoliberal restructuring, designed to accelerate capital accumulation at almost any cost, has generated massive corporate scandals, extreme economic inequalities, and global environmental problems that threaten its political legitimacy and social and ecological foundations. This chapter explores how Weber anticipated the types of substantive irrationalities suffered by today’s neoliberal regimes.

scholarly journals Estonia’s Digital Transformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 143-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Kattel ◽  
Ines Mergel
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Social Inequality ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Digital Transformation ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Distinct Features ◽  
Market Capitalism

Estonia’s transition to free-market capitalism and liberal democracy is marked by three distinct features: economic success, digital transformation of its public sector, and a rapid increase and persistence of social inequality in Estonia. Indeed, Estonia has become one of the most unequal societies in Europe. Economic success and increasing social inequality can be explained as different sides of the same coin: a neoliberal policy mix opened markets and allowed globalization to play out its drama on a domestic stage, creating winners and losers. Yet Estonia has been highly successful in its digital agenda. Particularly interesting is how the country’s public sector led the digital transformation within this highly neoliberal policy landscape. While within economic policy, Estonia did indeed follow the famed invisible hand in rapidly liberalizing markets, in ICT, Estonia seems to have followed an entirely different principle of policymaking. In this domain, policy has followed the principle of the hiding hand, coined by Albert Hirschman: policy-makers sometimes take on tasks they think they can solve without realizing all the challenges and risks involved— and this may result in unexpected learning and creativity. The success of Estonia’s e-government has much to do with the principle of the hiding hand: naïvety and optimism propelled initial ‘crazy ideas’ in the early 1990s to become ingrained in ICT policy, enabling the creation of multiple highly cooperative and overlapping networks that span public–private boundaries.

scholarly journals A Complicated Alchemy: Theorizing Identity Politics and the Politicization of Migrant Remittances Under Donald Trump's Presidency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Tax Compliance ◽  
Recent Experience ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
Migrant Remittances ◽  
Remittance Flows ◽  
And Function

Cornell International Law Journal: Vol. 50 : No. 2 , Article 4.Using law to conscript financial technology in aid of state goals is not new. Financial institutions have long been subject to myriad legal and regulatory reporting requirements designed to combat money laundering, enforce economic sanctions, support tax compliance, and interdict the financing of terrorism. Trump's particular approach to this tradition, however, seeks to capitalize on a particularly toxic convergence of race, class, economics, and globalization. America is not alone in its recent experience with surges in right wing, nationalist populism. Globalism's winds have posed challenges to those who have enjoyed the benefits of protectionist trade policies that no longer exist, placing them on a collision course with diaspora migrants from the poorest countries who are now mobile, thanks to financial technologies that ease the process of remitting funds home. This collision is a complicated alchemy, which lays bare the ways in which populist faith in the free market appears to be eroding under the strain of globalization's effects. In politicizing migrant remittance flows to Mexico, Donald Trump has signaled both a political recognition of this erosion and a willingness to exploit it. In doing so, he has done more than simply peddle a narrative that appeals to a base of voters increasingly dissatisfied with America's political class. He has likely prompted a new set of considerations among diaspora communities anxious to preserve existing remittance flows in the face of intense anxiety about America's working poor. Yet this conflict demonstrates how modem payment platforms now serve a range of functions one might have seen in a medieval town square: they facilitate commerce while serving as points of conflict and as places of protest. Every possible kind of human and institutional actor passes through this square, shaping its form and function, whether deliberately or unwittingly. The respective aspirations of globalism's human casualties are a deeply complex ecology-reflecting a range of outlooks in relation to one another. On the heels of a presidential campaign defined by explicitly divisive rhetoric transcending the traditional limits of dog-whistle politics, dismissive attitudes towards Trump's campaign proposal have crystalized into palpable fears among progressives who now worry about the potential of witnessing the deployment of proposals that once seemed unlikely. Whether or not President Trump ultimately expands federal regulations to require proof of lawful presence in the country as a precondition of access to international remittance services may matter less than the consequences of linking these transactions to undocumented immigrants in the minds of the white working class.

scholarly journals The Cultural Significance in Greeting Practices in Belo Dialect of the Bima Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-234
Author(s):  
Alek Alek
Keyword(s):  
National Language ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Vast Array ◽  
Personal Names ◽  
Daily Interactions ◽  
And Function ◽  
Local Languages

Indonesia is the home to a vast array of cultures and many unique languages that are the mother tongues of these various islands and cultural groups. One of these is Bima language. Greeting systems and the address of personal names has long been a question of great interest in linguistic fields, especially sociolinguistic study. The main objective of the recent study was to answer some of the main issues as follows: (1) What are name variations in the greeting practices using in the Bima language? (2) How are the name variations applied in daily interactions of the Bima language? (3) Which syllables which are dominantly chosen in greeting terms? The results of my research will present the variations in the greeting system and address of personal names and their variety. Those variations are either at the beginning, the middle or the end of the syllables. However, none of the Bima people’s names begin with a consonant: “C, P, V, and X” as well as the vowel O.” it will also show that the variation of greeting practices and address of names applied in the daily interactions of the Bima language are different for men and women. The effort of maintaining the local style is essential to preserving and investigating as part of the national language because the position and function of the local languages are significant to the contribution and the progress and standardization of the national language. Keywords: Greeting practices, Bima language, and cultural significance

scholarly journals Double P! Public Spaces in Dubai: a Paranoiac Panopticon

2020 ◽  
pp. 247-262
Author(s):  
Therese Chidiac
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Design Guidelines ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Human Scale ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Back Stage ◽  
The City

Despite the crisis of the metaphoric growth of its superficiality to its deadening sterility, Dubai stands as an attractive destination in the desert simulating a collage of cultural images from around the world with a centrally-planned free market capitalism attracting investors and developers. This paper is part of my master in architecture thesis at Politecnico di Milano titled: 5km/hr Manifesto and it outlines the problematical aspect of Dubai DNA: Dubai public spaces. The city is metaphorically analysed, as a collage city of exogenous fragments and a system city resembling a biological cell with defects in it’s the so-called public spaces that are designed as a model of a virtual panopticon of social surveillance forged by a set of do’s and don’ts. Built up rapidly over the past few years on the wealth gotten from oil, public spaces in Dubai have no depth of history or indigenous culture, no complexity, no conflicts, no doubts, nothing to stand in the way of its being shaped into the ultimate wonderland. The Arab notion of public has been dramatically ignored in the planning of the city and has been replaced with a collage of regulated western modernist spaces that have failed to create pockets of interaction and communication bringing in mind a problematical situation and an utopic question: How to demystify the panopticon effect and make Dubai more liveable? This leads to the recall of the qualities of the endogenous Arabic Public Space: The Souk. A set of characteristics has been concluded and if integrated, might really change Dubai public spaces from a paranoic panopticon to a more liveable space. Enclosure and privacy, human scale and density, the stage and back stage effect were essential conditions in the souk and are elaborated in this paper presenting a set of new design guidelines for claiming back what is supposed to be public and might develop into further future research.

Revisiting Russian and Polish elite value orientations: Are the elites still committed to the original goals of post-communist transitions?

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Levintova
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Model ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Highly Sensitive ◽  
Independent Direction ◽  
Electoral Cycles ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This article investigates the extent of continuity and discontinuity of the original political, economic, and foreign policy value orientations of Russian and Polish post-Communist elites. I conclude that during the post-Communist period the Russian elite shifted the priorities from pro-democratic to authoritarian positions, engaged in a debate over the most desirable foreign policy course, and ultimately chose a pragmatically independent direction, but remained loyal to original beliefs in the free market. In Poland, with its cyclical rotation of governments, original pro-democratic and pro-Western elite value orientations survive to this day, while the issue of preferred economic model is contested and highly sensitive to electoral cycles.

Encounter Three: Art and the Socialist State

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
Jan Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Free Market ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Political Views ◽  
Free Market Capitalism ◽  
Market Capitalism

This chapter traces the tactics used by the art Slovenian collective, Neue Slowenische Kunst (NSK), specifically the art section, Irwin and the music group, Laibach, to criticise the socialist state of Yugoslavia. The chapter offers a brief overview of the political climate at the time leading up to and during the Yugoslavian wars (1980s and ‘90s). Closely analysed is NSK’s use of ambiguity and parody to hold a mirror up to authoritarianism and Irwin’s appropriation of early Russian avant-garde motifs to criticise socialist-realism and the State’s ‘misuse’ of art. As protection against retaliation by the state, NSK never prescribed their intentions, so audiences and viewers needed to bring their own context and perspective to events. Once Slovenia left the Yugoslavian Federation to enter into free-market capitalism, NSKs tactics seemed far less potent, flowing neatly into a 1980s western art context (a moment in history) that embraced ambivalence and indeterminacy. As an approach that hides a work’s political intent, allowing its viewers to have their own political views affirmed, it is argued that such a tactic fails to shake the political aesthetic. [181]

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document