scholarly journals Für einen labour turn in der Umweltbewegung

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (189) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Pye
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Accumulation By Dispossession ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Changes ◽  
Ecological Landscape

Oliver Pye: For a labour turn in the environmental justice movement. Struggles over the social relations of nature and strategies for social-ecological transformation. This article discusses struggles in the social relations of nature and how these relate to strategies of socialecological transformation and calls for a labour turn in the environmental and climate justice movement. Taking the rapid changes to the social-ecological landscape of the Kapuas River in Indonesia as a starting point, it shows how this “accumulation by dispossession” is connected to a “corporate food regime” that is embedded within global “postfordist relations of nature”. I then argue that the global production networks linking appropriation to exploitation should themselves be viewed as alienated steps in the social metabolism with nature. Struggles against accumulation by dispossession need to connect to the labour movement, which holds the key to overcome the alienated work that lies at the heart of society’s alienation with nature.

Market analysis beyond market fetishism

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Cahill
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Market Analysis ◽  
Production Of Space ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
Unique System ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Capitalist Firm ◽  
Embedded Economy

This article responds to Peck’s call for a heterodox economic analysis of markets that is sensitive to their sociality and spatiality with Polanyi’s work as a starting point. It is argued that while Polanyi’s concept of the socially embedded economy offers a useful heuristic for apprehending the social foundations of economic activity, his analysis exhibits ‘market fetishism’ – a tendency to treat markets as things in and of themselves, without a proper appreciation of their inherently social foundations – and that this is reflected in broader scholarly discourses with respect to markets. Thus, it is argued, we need to augment Polanyi’s framework with other heterodox economic insights. The article outlines a four-step approach to ‘de-fetishizing’ markets. First, the article foregrounds the specifically capitalist nature of the global economy, and the ‘unique system of market dependence’ to which capitalist social relations give rise. Second, it is argued that de-fetishizing markets requires that an agent-centred approach be adopted. Rather than viewing markets as ‘things’ it is argued that they are most usefully understood as the interactions between agents, the most significant of which, within the contemporary global economy, is the large capitalist firm. Third, the interaction between such agents is structured by pervasive frameworks of rules. Fourth, it is argued that markets are inherently spatial phenomena. They are spatially constituted and contribute to the production of space.

scholarly journals The erosion of relational values resulting from landscape simplification

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (11) ◽  
pp. 2601-2612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maraja Riechers ◽  
Ágnes Balázsi ◽  
Lydia Betz ◽  
Tolera S. Jiren ◽  
Joern Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Landscape Sustainability ◽  
Rural Landscapes ◽  
Relational Values ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
The Social ◽  
Instrumental Values ◽  
Landscape Sustainability Science

Abstract Context The global trend of landscape simplification for industrial agriculture is known to cause losses in biodiversity and ecosystem service diversity. Despite these problems being widely known, status quo trajectories driven by global economic growth and changing diets continue to lead to further landscape simplification. Objectives In this perspective article, we argue that landscape simplification has negative consequences for a range of relational values, affecting the social-ecological relationships between people and nature, as well as the social relationships among people. A focus on relational values has been proposed to overcome the divide between intrinsic and instrumental values that people gain from nature. Results We use a landscape sustainability science framing to examine the interconnections between ecological and social changes taking place in rural landscapes. We propose that increasingly rapid and extreme landscape simplification erodes human-nature connectedness, social relations, and the sense of agency of inhabitants—potentially to the point of severe erosion of relational values in extreme cases. We illustrate these hypothesized changes through four case studies from across the globe. Leaving the links between ecological, social-ecological and social dimensions of landscape change unattended could exacerbate disconnection from nature. Conclusion A relational values perspective can shed new light on managing and restoring landscapes. Landscape sustainability science is ideally placed as an integrative space that can connect relevant insights from landscape ecology and work on relational values. We see local agency as a likely key ingredient to landscape sustainability that should be actively fostered in conservation and restoration projects.

Crime and the Global City

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharyne Mitchell ◽  
Key MacFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Global City ◽  
Production Networks ◽  
Global Production Networks ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Control

In recent years social scientists have been interested in the growth and transformation of global cities. These metropolises, which function as key command centers in global production networks, manifest many of the social, economic, and political tensions and inequities of neoliberal globalization. Their international appeal as sites of financial freedom and free trade frequently obscures the global city underbelly: practices of labor exploitation, racial discrimination, and migrant deferral. This chapter explores some of these global tensions, showing how they have shaped the strategies and technologies behind urban crime prevention, security, and policing. In particular, the chapter shows how certain populations perceived as risky become treated as pre-criminals: individuals in need of management and control before any criminal behavior has occurred. It is demonstrated further how the production of the pre-criminal can lead to dispossession, delay, and detention as well as to increasing gentrification and violence.

scholarly journals „Wenn ich es nicht tue, dann macht's ein anderer“ – Subjektwerdungen und Verantwortung

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Klaus Geiselhart ◽  
Tobias Häberer
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
Autonomous Action ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mind

Abstract. Poststructuralist theory focuses largely on describing how and why subjects reproduce the social conditions they have internalised. This is a deconstruction of the central idea of the Enlightenment, the human capacity for autonomous action. At the same time, however, it also denies all individuals any responsibility and ultimately leads criticism into a crisis. Pragmatist philosophy offers the possibility of determining the role of the mind in processes of becoming a subject without abandoning the achievements of the poststructuralist concept of subjectification. The concept of transaction describes how actors constitute each other as subjects within social situations. The relationships that arise through such processes depend, among other things, on the personalities of those people involved. Accordingly, it is possible to identify the responsibility of individuals to govern their social relations and personality development. Since these aspects can only be determined in localised individual cases, this offers a particularly suitable starting point for geographical critic.

scholarly journals The integration of minorities in the security forces in Israel: the case of Muslim Arab citizens in the Galilee

1970 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamleh Abu Ismail-Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Israeli Society ◽  
Arab Population ◽  
Security Forces ◽  
Social Ecological ◽  
Economic Dependency ◽  
Ecological Isolation ◽  
The Social

Although many changes have occurred and accumulated significantly in Arab society in Israel and in the majority-minority relationship, the great class gap between Arabs and Jewish has been retained. This gap depends on the division of the resources in Israeli society. Inequality in this division and in the social relations between Jewish and Arabs continues, although there are indications that it is lessening. It is difficult to speak about co-existence and peace between Jews and Arabs, since today the Arabs of Israel are integrated in Israeli society primarily by negative and involuntary forces, such as economic dependency, political heresy, and social ecological isolation (Smooha, 2011: 13). The present research focuses only on the Muslim Arab population integrated into the security forces in Israel.

Civic Organization beyond the ‘Open Society’ Battle: Cases from Hungary

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-177
Author(s):  
Ágnes Gagyi ◽  
Márton Szarvas ◽  
András Vígvári
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Civic Organization ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Debates

Our paper aims to contribute to the understanding of civil society in Hungary by looking beyond the struggles around open society and international NGOs, a topic that has dominated public debates on civil organizations in Hungary for the last decade. Our starting point follows the literature that has broadened the understanding of NGOs in the post-socialist space with the perspective of their insertion in global hierarchies in terms of unequal knowledge and resource transfer, material dependencies and the effects in local social settings. More attention recently has been given to the social positions of domestic civil organizations and the political and material dependencies they operate within. The analysis of organizations which represent and defend different interests within different social strata is crucial to understanding civil society in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Following this thread of discussions, we look at three segments of civil society which were previously understudied, to expand on how social relations structure civil society in contemporary CEE: 1) nationalist but anti-governmental organizations, for example in the field of housing; 2) urban and rural informal self-organization in order to cope with material hardships collectively has been significantly growing in the recent years; 3) rural civil organizations aligned with local elites, embedded in material dependencies, which have been present since 1990, but occupy a more and more significant role after the illiberal turn. We think that adding these segments to the study of civil society in CEE can help to broaden the analysis beyond the discursively and ideologically thematized struggles around NGOs, and contribute to a better understanding of illiberal regimes and the counter-movements they produce.

Critical political economy and the critique of comparative capitalisms scholarship on capitalist diversity

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Bruff ◽  
Matthias Ebenau
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The Self ◽  
German Language ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Significant Potential ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Comparative Capitalisms

This introduction to the special issue focuses on the rise to dominance in debates on capitalist diversity of approaches which take institutions as their starting point, rather than the wider social relations in which institutions sit and are constituted by. However, although this is part of broader trends across the social sciences over the last three decades, the self-marginalisation of critical political economy perspectives from these debates was also a factor, as was the declining dialogue between critical political economy researchers rooted in different geographical and philosophical traditions. Echoing the influence on the emergent Conference of Socialist Economists of German-language debates on the state in the 1970s, we call for renewed dialogue between researchers from different linguistic and intellectual backgrounds in the name of a renewed critique of dominant comparative capitalisms (CC) approaches. In so doing, we emphasise the range of alternative perspectives that can be offered through such dialogues and critiques, and thus the significant potential for further collaboration and advances in our understanding of capitalist diversity.

scholarly journals Kritische Gesellschaftstheorie und die Vielfalt der Emanzipationsperspektiven

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (165) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Demirović
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Relation ◽  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sexual Orientations

Social Movements have during the recent decades challenged the priority of the labour movement. Not only the liberation from wage labour is on the agenda of social movements and the left but also the overcoming of racism and sexism, equality of sexual orientations or the reconciliation of the social relation to nature. This is what Marx claimed when he spoke about the categorical imperative to overthrow all relations in which man is a debased, enslaved forsaken, despicable being. But the question arises as to how to bring these different perspectives together and whether the Marxian project of a critique of political economy is appropriate to its own claim or tends to reduce the whole of emancipation to only some limited goals. Demirovi? proposes making use of Marx’ conceptualisation of structure and superstructure and elaborating this distinction with further arguments from Althusser, Adorno and Gramsci in order to conceive of the superstructures as a strategic means of differentiating the bourgeois society as a complex whole of social relations.

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