The Contemporary Dystopian Reality of Slavery and Modern Capitalism in Octavia Butler’s Parable Novels

Critical dystopia as an analytic category for historical enquiry explores contemporary reality and its specificities in time and space. It functions as anagnorisis or recognition of the dystopian realities in the present through its generic mode of familiarising the heightened dystopian elements of the text as possible evolutions of current oppressions. This paper suggests that this anagnorisis through comparison and extrapolation is limited and needs to consider how the text ironically reveals the absence of historical specificity through its comparison of the contemporary present and the imagined future. Instead, specificity is replaced with a linear historical trajectory where dystopia occurs cyclically in metamorphosed forms within a fixed, yet evolving power-structure. This projects the nature of the dystopia in the text part of an evolutionary process, not a product of its historically specific period. Through the interrogation of how the legally abolished system of slavery is historically shifted into the future hyper-capitalist market system in Octavia Butler’s Parable novels, this paper will reveal how the anagnorisis of the novels functions to locate dystopia as present and evolving in a historical trajectory of cyclical structural repetition. This familiarisation of the historical event of slavery in the novels posits the dystopian text’s anagnorisis as not simply the recognition of dystopian elements specifically in the present but broadens it to the recognition of the historical evolution of those same human atrocities that appear to ‘resurge’ in dystopia.

Download Full-text

Some Notes on Coerced Labor

The Journal of Economic History ◽

10.1017/s0022050700106758 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 30 (4) ◽

pp. 861-866 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Robert Evans

Keyword(s):

Western Europe ◽

New World ◽

Historical Evolution ◽

Ancient China ◽

Modern Capitalism

Though Social critics have often spoken of the “wage slavery” associated with modern capitalism, it is more common to believe that coerced labor was banished with the coming of modern standards of civilization. Thus the corvee of ancient China, the feudalism of Western Europe and Japan, and the New World enslavement of blacks in the 17th-19th centuries are seen as products of those earlier and less enlightened ages, mere way stations in the historical evolution of modern day economies.

Download Full-text

Keynes and the historical specificity of institutions: a response to Rod O'Donnell

Journal of Institutional Economics ◽

10.1017/s1744137418000528 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (4) ◽

pp. 733-740 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Geoffrey M. Hodgson

Keyword(s):

General Theory ◽

Karl Marx ◽

Market Institutions ◽

Full Agreement ◽

Historical School ◽

Modern Capitalism ◽

Adequate Understanding ◽

Historical Specificity

AbstractThis is a response to the criticism by Rod O'Donnell of the account of Keynes’ notion of a general theory in the book How Economics Forgot History (Hodgson, 2001). Several points of full agreement are noted, including the fact that Keynes’ work contains much discussion of historically specific institutions, including the financial and market institutions of modern capitalism. But it is argued here that even copious discussion of historically specific institutions is insufficient to indicate an adequate understanding or conceptual appreciation of historical periodisation or evolution, as developed in various ways by Karl Marx, the German historical school and the original American institutionalists. Keynes’ General Theory is best understood as a theory of modern capitalism. But Keynes did not have sufficient acquaintance with these historically oriented schools of thought to even define the concept of capitalism, or to make that specific historical association clear.

Download Full-text

From corner store to superstore: a historical analysis of Sainsbury’s co-evolution

Journal of Management History ◽

10.1108/jmh-04-2017-0017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 423-435 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Olu Aluko ◽

Helen Knight

Keyword(s):

Institutional Environment ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Evolutionary Process ◽

Historical Narrative ◽

Research Approach ◽

Content Type ◽

Corporate History ◽

History Approach ◽

Historical Trajectory ◽

Joint Evolution

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore the conceptualisation of co-evolution using a corporate history research approach. While the application of the co-evolutionary perspective to the organisational-environmental relationships has uncovered significant evidences, little is understood about how the co-evolutionary process occurs over time between organisations and their institutional environment. Design/methodology/approach A co-evolutionary corporate history approach in used, as the authors investigated Sainsbury’s historical trajectory, exploring the role specific family members played in the evolution of the firm and the co-evolution of Sainsbury’s with its environment. This research design framework encompasses longitudinal archival analysis which incorporates both external and internal engagement which fostered Sainsbury’s joint evolution. Findings The findings from this study clearly suggest that certain organisations can and do co-evolve with their environment. However, organisations need to build legitimate cases for co-evolution to occur. In addition, they need to acquire certain resources that can be used to stimulate changes within their institutional environment. Originality/value Through a corporate history archival analysis, this study presents a UK company’s evolutionary narrative. The authors contribute to the growing literature on co-evolution in management studies by presenting a detailed historical narrative and interpretation of Sainsbury’s evolution at different time periods.

Download Full-text

I fattori soggettivi nel «moderno capitalismo». La complicata ricezione italiana e le questioni insolute nel pensiero di W. Sombart

Studi e saggi - I mille volti del regime ◽

10.36253/978-88-5518-202-7.09 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 163-190

Author(s):

Vitantonio Gioia

Keyword(s):

Specific Aspect ◽

Innovative Approach ◽

Historical Evolution ◽

Distinctive Features ◽

Modern Capitalism ◽

Interesting Object ◽

Phases Of Development ◽

The Many ◽

Object Of Study ◽

The Relationship

W. Sombart has always represented "a significant intellectual puzzle", but, beyond the contradictory (often overemphasised) aspects of his thought, he continues to be an interesting object of study, because of the innovative capacities that he showed in the analysis of the many original phenomena characterising the historical evolution of "modern capitalism". His innovative approach emerges in his interpretation, not always linear and univocal, of thinkers such as Marx and Schmoller, in his analysis of the relationship between religion and capitalism (and in his comparison with M. Weber on this specific aspect), and, finally, in his reconstruction of the distinctive features of the phases of development of capitalism analysed in his Der moderne Kapitalismus.

Download Full-text

Who's in Charge? Some Recent Works on the Historical Evolution of Power Structure in Urban America

The Public Historian ◽

10.2307/3377107 ◽

1987 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

pp. 83-92

Author(s):

Mark S. Foster

Keyword(s):

Power Structure ◽

Historical Evolution ◽

Urban America

Download Full-text

Pandemic, Exception and the Law: Notes on the Shattered Nomos of Europe

Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Iuridica ◽

10.18778/0208-6069.96.07 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 96 ◽

pp. 83-97

Author(s):

Cosmin Cercel

Keyword(s):

Critical Evaluation ◽

State Of Exception ◽

Liberal Democratic ◽

Modern Capitalism ◽

Legal Responses ◽

History Of ◽

The Law ◽

Historical Trajectory ◽

The Relationship ◽

Legal Normativity

In this article I propose a critical evaluation of the current European politico-legal landscape that unfolds under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. My aim is to off an analysis of the symbolic status of legality in this context and to reflect on its historical trajectory, by introducing it in a longer historical timescale than usually proposed as well as by insisting on the specific nexus between emergency legislation and authoritarian ideologies within Europe. In doing so I propose a new genealogy of the state of exception apt to articulate the relationship between the force of law, legal normativity, and ideology in modern capitalism. The thesis that I defend here is a simple one: the ongoing pandemic has operated a historical acceleration that the law, understood here as medium that articulates power symbolically in a public and ostensible manner, is not able to catch up with. To substantiate this thesis, I venture first to take stock of the existing theories, analyses and narratives on the relation between the pandemic and the politico-legal landscape of Europe. In doing so I shall focus fi on traditional constitutional law accounts and on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s criticism of the legal responses to the pandemic. Following this analysis, I move towards a situation of the pandemic within the sphere of the multiple crises befalling Europe that have become visible since 2015. At this stage I draw attention to the manifold layers of emergency legality and states of exception that have been sapping the liberal democratic nomos putatively defended within Europe. In a third move, I embark on a synoptical clarification of the relationship between law, ideology and the history of class struggle. In a fourth and last intervention I intend to assess the current nexus between the pandemic, exception and the law as a specific form of dissolution of the liberal nomos.

Download Full-text

Transformações físicas e apropriações sociais da Praça Tiradentes em Ouro Preto-MG

Ornamental Horticulture ◽

10.14295/aohl.v21i2.670 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 209

Author(s):

Schirley Fátima Nogueira da Silva Cavalcante Alves ◽

Cecília Souza Gontijo Garcia ◽

Patrícia Duarte de Oliveira Paiva

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Urban Development ◽

Evolutionary Process ◽

Social Representation ◽

Collective Unconscious ◽

Historical Evolution ◽

Subjective Analysis ◽

Applied Method ◽

The Government ◽

Morphological Transformations

Tiradentes Square, an Ouro Preto’s importante place, has importance in the regional and national scenery. There are studies about its surroundings but no information concerning its historical evolution. In prospect to know its evolutionary process and identifying its landscape representation in the collective unconscious of the inhabitants from Ouro Preto-MG, it was analyzed the city’s urban development and the transformations undergone by this square. The applied method had an interface between inventive and subjective analyzes. This study focused its interest on its morphological transformations and its social representation. It was possible to identify the physical evolution processes and the place’s practices using inventive analysis, and esthetic and symbolic values using the subjective analysis. Tiradentes Square showed his vocation to represent the government, reaching its peak when it received the monument to Tiradentes, becoming a national symbol during the twentieth century.

Download Full-text