More Lessons to Learn: Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology and Alternative Archives of Social Experience

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-146
Author(s):  
Andreas Langenohl
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Alternative Archives

Abstract Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology has been written with the intention to offer lessons from the historical trajectory of economic redistribution in societies the world over. Thereby, the book suggests learning from the political-economic history of ‘social-democratic’ policies and societal arrangements. While the data presented speak to the plausibility of looking at social democracy, as understood by Piketty, as an archive for learning about the effects of redistribution mechanisms, I argue that the book, or future interventions might profit from integrating alternative archives. On the one hand, its current line of argumentation tends to underestimate the significance of power relations in the international political economy that continued after formal decolonization, and thus form the flip side of social democracy’s success in Europe and North America. On the other hand, the role of the polity might be imagined in a different and more empowering way, not just-as in Piketty-as an elite-liberal democratic governance institution; for instance, it would be interesting to explore the archive of the French solidaristes movement more deeply than Piketty does, as well as much more recent interventions in economic anthropology that deal with ‘economic citizenship’ in the Global South.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Before And After ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Mobilization ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The introduction offers a ‘global’ survey of the history of communism not only in the geographical sense but also in the sense of seeking to integrate history from above and history from below, social and cultural with political and economic history. The first half offers a synoptic view of the history of communist revolutions before and after 1945, highlighting the tensions between ‘intentionalist’ interpretations that stress human agency and political will and structuralist interpretations that stress the role of impersonal forces. It traces the way in which the meaning of the Russian Revolution was revised in the 1920s from being a mass revolution involving soviet power and radical equality to one concerned with the state mobilization of the human and material resources of a backward society to bring about economic, social, and military modernization. The second half looks at a number of major issues relating to the political, economic, and social history of communism in power. In respect of politics, these include the role of ideology in politics, the relationship of informal to formal political practices, the relationship of ‘neo-traditional’ to modern political practices, and the problem of bureaucracy. In respect of the economy, they include the relationship of the planned economy to the ‘second economy’, difficulties of economic reform, and the shift towards meeting the needs of the consumer from the 1950s. In respect of social aspects, the essay stresses the importance of non-state-directed social processes in shaping the development of communist societies, the reconstitution of forms of social inequality, ideas of cultural revolution, and policy towards women and national minorities. While not attempting to summarize historiography, the introduction seeks to give readers a sense of issues currently under debate.

The Political Economy of Nonlife: Biopower, Ontosecurity, and the Shamisen Skin Trade in Japan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keisuke Yamada
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Times ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter examines the ways in which the trade in raw cat and dog skins and processed goods in the shamisen (Japanese three-stringed lute) industry has changed in the last five decades. It employs Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in order to analyze the causal relationship between the changing systems of governance through life and the historical trajectory of shamisen skin making and trade. Biopolitics, it argues, is not merely a means to incorporate different forms and modalities of life into political discourse, tactics, and rationalities, but it can also operate to marginalize the political presence, existential vitality, and ontosecurity of nonlife—individuated entities, such as the shamisen, that are conceived as “inert,” “inorganic,” or “nonliving” in society. This chapter approaches the political-economic history of music by closely examining the distribution and exercises of biopower and their effects on specific economic activities that surround the making of the instruments in historical times.

scholarly journals Pieniądz w "Historia religiosa" autorstwa Teodoreta z Cyru

Vox Patrum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 481-492
Author(s):  
Ireneusz Milewski
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Theodoret Of Cyrus ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

The paper analyses the reports regarding money, which appear in the Historia religiosa writen by Theodoret of Cyrus. Historia religiosa, on the one hand, presents the life of the Syrian monks, and the other hand depicts the realities of everyday life of the inhabitants of the collapsed provinces of the Roman East at the turn of the fourth and fifth century. On this occasion, we also find in Historia religiosa nu­merous references to the role of money in everyday life. In the work of Theodoret money appears in several contexts: as an important element of trade on the market, as taxes, as a ransom paid for releasing captives but also as a money in welfare ac­tivities (amounts of money donated to charity). Unfortunately, in Historia religiosa, we didn’t found any information about the prices and wages. The analyzed reports, despite a certain lack of precision, are a valuable sources of knowledge. They depicts everyday life in eastern provinces, “stories” unknown to the “great history”, allow­ing for a reconstruction of social and economic history of the later Roman Empire.

Directions and Perspectives of Political-Economic Studies

2008 ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
A. Libman
Keyword(s):  
International Political Economy ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Economic Power ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Policy Studies ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Economic Methods ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Economic Studies

The paper surveys the main directions of political-economic research, i.e. variants of economic and political approaches endogenizing political processes in economic models and applying economic methods to policy studies. It analyses different versions of political-economic research in different segments of scientific community: political economics, evolutionary theory of economic policy, international political economy, formal political science and theory of economic power; main methodological assumptions, content and results of positive studies are described. The author also considers the role of political-economic approach in the normative research in economics.

NURTURING OF CHILDREN THROUGH DRAMA AND THEATRE: THE CASE OF INTWASA KOBULAWAYO PERFORMANCES

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-99
Author(s):  
Vimbai Moreblessing Matiza
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Main Task ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Theatrical Performances ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One

Dramatic and theatrical performances have a long history of being used as tools to enhance development in children and youth. In pre-colonial times there were some forms of drama and theatre used by different communities in the socialisation of children. It is in the same vein that this article, through the Intwasa koBulawayo performances, seeks to evaluate how drama and theatre are used to nurture children and youth into different developmental facets of their lives. The only difference which this article will take into cognisance is that the performances are done in a different environment, which is not the one used in the pre-colonial times. Although these performances were like this, the most important factor is the idea that children and youth are socialised through these performances. It is also against this backdrop that children and youth are growing up in a globalised environment, hence the performances should accommodate people from all walks of life and teach them relevant issues pertaining to life as they live it now. Thus the main task of the article is to spell out the role of drama and theatre in the nurturing of children and youth through socio economic and political development in Intwasa koBulawayo festivals.

scholarly journals Authorial Self and Modernity as Reflected in Diaries and Memoirs. Three 19th-Century Hungarian Case Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-97
Author(s):  
Béla Mester
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Public Intellectual ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The One

Abstract The role of the diaries and memoirs in the process of the conscious self-reflection and their contribution to the emergence of modern individual personalities are well-known facts of the intellectual history. The present paper intends to analyze a special form of the creation of modern individual character; it is the self-creation of the writer as a conscious personality, often with a clearly formulated opinion about her/his own social role. There will be offered several examples from the 19th-century history of the Hungarian intelligentsia. This period is more or less identical with the modernization of the “cultural industry” in Hungary, dominated by the periodicals with their deadlines, fixed lengths of the articles, and professional editing houses on the one hand and the cultural nation building on the other. Concerning the possible social and cultural role of the intelligentsia, it is the moment of the birth of a new type, so-called public intellectual. I will focus on three written sources, a diary of a Calvinist student of theology, Péter (Litkei) Tóth, the memoirs of an influential public intellectual, Gusztáv Szontagh, and a belletristic printed diary of a young intellectual, János Asbóth.

Slavery and Scientific Management

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 811-824 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Keith Aufhauser
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
American South ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
Productivity Increase ◽  
History Of ◽  
The American South ◽  
The One ◽  
Early Discussion ◽  
Slave Mode ◽  
Mode Of Production

In the last few years, the controversy over the economic history of slavery has centered about two positions. On the one hand, Genovese has argued that the slave mode of production was fundamentally antagonistic to the bourgeois mode and that the conflicts between the two systems doomed slavery to a nineteenth-century grave. On the other hand, Conrad and Meyer spawned many studies which, on the whole, denied that any specifically economic difficulties resulted from the fact that the American south was based on slave labor. Against Genovese's original claim that “the material basis of the planters' power was giving way,” the statistical evidence indicated that the profits of the slave plantation were as high as those on non-slave business investments, and that the diffusion of technological changes was rapid enough to cause a rate of productivity increase equal to that of all but the most rapidly growing sectors of the free economy. Sheer volume supplemented the elegance of the early discussion and our knowledge of the slave economy expanded considerably.

Liat Steir-Livny, Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third-Generation Survivors in Israel. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019. 376 pp.

2021 ◽  
pp. 273-275
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The One ◽  
Changing Attitudes

This chapter assesses Liat Steir-Livny's Remaking Holocaust Memory (2019). This book is the first comprehensive English-language study of the Israeli Third-Generation engagement with the history of the Shoah in documentary films. In analyzing “how Third-Generation documentaries provide new ideas and concepts to commemorate and preserve the memory for future generations,” Steir-Livny contrasts Third-Generation documentary films with the works of second-generation directors and explores an extensive number of films in five key areas. These key areas include the role of gender; the changing attitudes toward Germany; the use and exploration of historical film footage in Third-Generation documentary films; the function of testimonies that feature in Third-Generation documentaries “in more complex ways”; and the representation of perpetrators and bystanders in Third-Generation films. Throughout her study, Steir-Livny discusses the documentaries against the background of documentary film theories, on the one hand, and Israeli/Zionist Holocaust memory, on the other.

Karl Polanyi’s Anthropological Theory of Economy

Naukratis ◽  
2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Moller
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Economic Organization ◽  
Ideal Types ◽  
Use Of Resources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One

In accordance with the hermeneutical principles laid down in the introduction, this chapter will be devoted to an account of the theoretical models underlying the analysis and interpretation of the source material. Karl Polanyi’s empirical observations resulted in a series of ideal-types such as can be employed for the evaluation of the evidence from Naukratis in the following chapters. Polanyi’s works do not form one single, complete theory of economy; rather, they should be seen—as Sally Humphreys has put it so aptly—as sketches of areas within largely unexplored territory. It is of course true that George Dalton went to great lengths to develop Polanyi’s ideas further; the fact nevertheless remains that they continue to be far from accepted as paradigms for all further research in the field of economic anthropology or economic history. Indeed, such continuations of Polanyi’s approach have served only to limit unduly the openness that is the very advantage of his ideal-types. It is for this reason that one should return to Polanyi himself and employ his original ideas. His work has been taken up by only a few within the realm of the economic history of classical antiquity, something due partly to his own—problematic—statements on the subject of Greek history, and partly to lack of interest shown for anthropological approaches within ancient history. Polanyi disagreed with the view that markets were the ubiquitous form of economic organization—an attitude regarding the notion of the market as essential to the description of every economy—and also with the belief that it is the economic organization of any given society which determines its social, political, and cultural structures. For his part, Polanyi contended that an economy organized around the market first came into being with the Industrial Revolution, and that it was not until then that the two root meanings of the word ‘economic’—on the one hand, in the sense of provision with goods; on the other, in the sense of a thrifty use of resources, as in the words ‘economical’ and ‘economizing’—merged.

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