Brokering Servitude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Urban
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Domestic Labor ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Unfree Labor ◽  
Border Controls ◽  
Static Space

Brokering Servitude examines how labor markets for domestic service were identified, shaped, and governed by philanthropists, missionaries, commercial offices, and the state. Because household service was undesirable work and stigmatized as menial and unfree, brokers were integral to steering and compelling women, men, and children into this labor. By the end of the nineteenth century, the federal government—as the sovereign power responsible for overseeing immigration—had become a major broker of domestic labor through border controls. By determining eligibility for entry, federal immigration officials dictated the availability of workers for domestic labor and under what conditions they could be contracted. Brokering Servitude is the first book to connect the political economy of domestic labor in the United States to the nation’s historic legacy as an imperial power engaged in continental expansion, the opening of overseas labor markets in Europe and Asia, and the dismantling of the unfree labor regime that slavery represented. The question of how to best broker the social relations of production necessary to support middle-class domesticity generated contentious debates about race, citizenship, and economic development. This book asserts that the political economy of reproductive labor, usually confined to the static space of the home, cannot be properly understood without attention to labor migrations, and especially migrations of workers who were assisted, compelled, or contracted. Their interventions responded to household employers who were eager to not only compare the merits of different labor sources, but also pit these sources against each other.

scholarly journals The impact of product and labour market deregulation

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-37
Author(s):  
Armend Muja
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Labor Markets ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Incremental Innovation ◽  
High Tech ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Impact

Economists have often talked about the European Paradox:” - Europe having the necessary knowledge and research but failing to utilize these advantages and bring them to the markets. The perception, largely attributable to the media reporting, is that Europe lags behind the United States in innovation. While it is true that most of the e-commerce innovations were developed in the United States, Europe’s economies did well over the 1990s despite the lack of major breakthroughs in high-tech sphere. Thus, it is hard to say that Europe is facing an innovation crisis, and I will argue that Europe has other advantages that make it competitive globally. While Europe might not have as much success in innovation as the United States, it nevertheless, has been successful in more developed and mature segments of the markets. Moreover, I will argue that country’s specialization depends on the setup of the institutions in the political economy. The countries utilize their comparative institutional advantage (CIA) to maintain competitive globally. Finally, I will argue against the idea of drastic deregulation of the product and labor markets in Europe. Doing so would be like shooting yourself in the foot since individual European countries would lose their comparative institutional advantage that allows them to stay competitive globally in the market for incremental innovation products.

The Political Economy of Academic Publishing

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Pirie
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
The Political ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
Interested Party ◽  
The Social ◽  
Technical Possibility ◽  
Critical Literature

AbstractThe digitisation of academic journals has created the technical possibility that research can be made available to any interested party free of charge. This possibility has been undermined by the proprietary control that commercial publishers exercise over the majority of this material. The control of commercial publishers over publicly-funded research has been criticised by charitable bodies, politicians and academics themselves. While the existing critical literature on academic publishers has considerable value, it fails to link questions of control within the journal-industry to the wider restructuring of economic and social relations that has taken place over the last three decades. This article seeks to complement this literature by highlighting how broader profitability pressures and the subsequent attempts by state-managers to expand the social space for capitalist accumulation have structured the development of the journal-industry.

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

Applied Linguistics in the Neoliberal University: Ideological keywords and social agency

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marnie Holborow
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Social Agency ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Discourse ◽  
The Social ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
The University

AbstractNeoliberalism and neoliberal ideology has only recently begun to gain attention within applied linguistics. This paper seeks to contribute to this development with a focus on neoliberal keywords in official texts. The ideological content of these keywords can best be understood within the political project of neoliberalism and within the political economy of contemporary capitalism. Studies which have highlighted the marketization of institutional discourse have analysed this phenomenon from a discourse-based perspective, rather than seeing neoliberal ideology in language as a contradictory manifestation of wider social relations in periods of social crises. The appearance of ideology in language, this paper holds, is unstable, unfinished, unpredictable and dependent for meaning on what Dell Hymes characterised as the “persistent” social context. The ideology of neoliberalism, for all its apparent hegemony, is not guaranteed full consent, and this applies also to its presence in language. The question of social agency is crucial to understanding the social dynamic and unpredictability of ideology in language, both in terms of who produces neoliberal keywords and how they are received and understood. This paper argues that international think tanks, articulating the interests of capital, act as powerful keyword standardisers and their influence will be examined in the production of texts in the Irish university context. However, neoliberal keywords, in certain conjunctures, will also be contested, as will be shown. The paper concludes that applied linguistics is uniquely placed to both critique and challenge neoliberal keywords in the university and that such a challenge has the potential to find wider political resonance as governments, amid continuing economic recession, recharge the ideology of neoliberalism.

The Political Economy of Work and Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 422-444
Author(s):  
Micheál L. Collins ◽  
Mary P. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Full Employment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Welfare Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sectoral Composition ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Institutional Architecture

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.

Book Reviews

2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-367
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Exchange Rates ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Currency Crises ◽  
The United States ◽  
Exchange Rate Policy ◽  
Monetary Integration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Currency Policy

Benjamin J. Cohen of University of California, Santa Barbara reviews “Currency Politics: The Political Economy of Exchange Rate Policy”, by Jeffry A. Frieden. The Econlit abstract of this book begins: “Analyzes the politics surrounding exchange rates, including the influence of industries on the political process. Discusses the political economy of currency choice; a theory of currency policy preferences; the United States─from greenbacks to gold, 1862-79; the United States─silver threats among the gold, 1880-96; European monetary integration─from Bretton Woods to the euro and beyond; Latin American currency policy, 1970-2010; the political economy of Latin American currency crises; and the politics of exchange rates─implications and extensions.” Frieden is Professor of Government at Harvard University.

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