Europe as a Civilisation and the Hidden Structure of Modernity

2020 ◽  
pp. 14-33
Author(s):  
Toby E. Huff
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Charitable Organizations ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Economic Downturns ◽  
Depression Level ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Institutional Foundations

The economic crisis of the EU in 2007-9 needs to be seen against the backdrop of Europe as a civilisational entity. It has withstood the challenges of hundreds of years, including religious conflicts, revolutions, fascist takeovers, depression-level economic downturns and transnational wars. During the same time it created unique sociocultural, political, economic and legal innovations that have put Europe in a position of high standing that can hardly be imagined outside Europe prior to the 20th century. Foremost among those innovations is the legal revolution of the European Middle Ages that laid the institutional foundations for new structures such as universities, cities and towns, charitable organizations, private and professional corporations, constitutionalism and parliamentary democracy. These same institutional structures paved the way for the rise of a public sphere, a free press, the scientific revolution, and later the economic revolution of modern capitalism.

Capitalist Futures and Socialist Legacies: Urban Development in East Germany Since 1990

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hartmut Häußermann
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Socialist Country ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
The Political ◽  
Federal States ◽  
Institutional Conditions ◽  
Western Model ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
German Model ◽  
Political Economic

Since unification, the political, economic, and institutional structuresin the new federal states have been patterned in accordance with theWest German model. This is due in part to the extension of theWestern legal framework to the eastern Länder. The fact that thepolitical and economic actors of the once-socialist country are nowsubject to the institutional conditions of the West encourages convergencetowards the western model. But questions have been raised asto whether the cities in the new federal states are also adaptingrapidly to the western model of urban development. Their layoutand architecture resulted, after all, from the investment decisionsmade by several generations and cannot be shifted or transformed asrapidly as legal or institutional frameworks.

scholarly journals Universal Basic Income: The Political Economic Aspect

2019 ◽  
pp. 70-79
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Lower State ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Size Of Government ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Administrative Costs ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
State Interference

The idea of universal basic income first emerged in the Late Middle Ages. In the second half of the 20th century, it began to be actively discussed as a political al become very popular. In a number of countries, such as Canada, Finland and the Netherlands, local experiments involving basic income have been taking place. This article addresses the main arguments for and against basic income. Some authors regard basic income as a populist and paternalist policy, which is an incorrect judgment, as its adequate implementation could lead to budgetary savings, reduce the size of government, and lower state interference in the lives of citizens. Another objection is that basic income would discourage labor and stimulate social dependency; however, local experiments in partial introduction of basic income and similar benefits have not confirmed this statement. The claim that basic income is too expensive of a measure does not consider that it is supposed to replace numerous other social benefits and would therefore most likely result in reduced administrative costs. Basic income is a social welfare measure most compatible with the nature of labor and the labor market under the technological revolution that has begun, where labor has been getting increasingly distributed and aimed at the workers’ self-realization rather than their survival. In practice, basic income is to be implemented gradually, only covering selected groups of individuals at first and expanding the range of recipients over time. In basic income administration, a certain role can be played by municipal governments.

scholarly journals POLITICAL ECONOMICS MEDIA: AT THE BANTEN SELECTION OF 2011 BY RADAR BANTEN AND BARAYA TV

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Ahmad Nashrudin Priatna
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Head Region ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Media Institutions ◽  
Economic Practices ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Economic

The mass media, whether print or broadcast (TV and Radio) plays a significant role in disseminating important messages to the public / society. Karl Marx said "that the media referred to as the class that set, in the system of modern capitalism. So therefore the media in the present era, into a commodity economy and politics, because of its function and because ownership massive by individuals (owners of capital). That allows, position the media and not only to function as a disseminator of information, but because of the ownership of such individuals, are very likely to be a tool for "political dealings", rather than as a function of social control. in the practice of political communication, media becomes a medium that is not inevitable in conveying messages politics, especially during the campaign, the elections political leadership, good legislative elections, presidential elections, and the elections. Radar Banten and Baraya TV is a media agency which is recognized as a great and influential in Banten province, which is a member of the Jawa Pos ( Java Post News Network) beperan menyerbarluaskan major messages of the prospective head region in the activities of the campaign. The phenomenon of political economic practices, be a gamble for the function and positioning to the two media institutions. Is capable of functioning media (read: news) or more tend to promote the business side, perhaps, their political position. Keywords: media, political communication, the Regional Head Election (Election) Banten, The political economy of the media

Entangled Systems at the Energy-Water-Food Nexus

2017 ◽  
pp. 144-165
Author(s):  
Joseph Nyangon ◽  
Nabeel Alabbas ◽  
Lawrence Agbemabiese
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Food Resource ◽  
Institutional Processes ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Energy Economy ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Resource Systems

This chapter assesses energy, water, and food resource systems based on their inter- and intra-sectoral imperatives of large scale development investments at the institutional level (including private and public activities) and how to achieve security of resource supplies. It identifies key interrelated processes, practices, and factors that underpin integrated resource management (IRM) and their attendant benefits. Applying the E4 framework concerned with energy, economy, environment, and equity to identify the main threats to these systems, the chapter evaluates their institutional, political, economic, cultural and behavioral components, and characterizes the forces that drive each of them at different governance scales. The chapter is guided by political economy, economic, and sociological theories that suggest that institutional structures affect economic factors and processes (i.e. production, distribution, and consumption processes). A case study of energy, water, and food (EWF) conflicting sectoral imperatives in Delaware is discussed in detail to better understand how these policy and institutional processes occur, which forms they take, and in which ways they define the quality and quantity of EWF resource systems in the State. In order to verify these parameters, the analysis considered the advantages of a sectorally balanced, E4 framework, in particular to evaluate the valency and magnitude of cross-sectoral connections, balance competing needs, and identify policy options that address various trade-offs.

J.M. Keynes as Sociologist

2019 ◽  
pp. 6-30
Author(s):  
Ross McKibbin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Political Sociology ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Social Tensions ◽  
Conflicting Interests ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter is concerned with J.M. Keynes’s analysis of the rentier, the ‘functionless investor’ in Britain (and Europe) in the interwar years. Even though Keynes had no coherent idea of who the rentier was, he was central to Keynes’s economics and to his political sociology. The rentier was also essential to Keynes’s political-economic account of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Hence, Keynes was forced to a view that while the rentier remained unchained society would be based upon conflicting interests and social tensions. Such a view undermined Keynes’s original allegiances to the kind of Liberalism associated with the former Liberal prime minister, H.H. Asquith, and the argument Keynes sometimes presented, that economic policy was determined by an intellectual muddle, not warring interests. Asquithian Liberalism, however, depended on notions of political agreement and social harmony and that was, in practice, not something Keynes ever believed characterized modern capitalism.

Functionalism and Stratification, Socio-Cultural Evolution and Revolution

2016 ◽  
pp. 107-130
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
And Function ◽  
Political Economic

In the previous chapter we argued that the conception of creatio ex nihilo is the determinant of hierarchy and stratification in Judaism and Christianity; Islam teaches that God created divisions as a way for human beings to recognize each other. The metaphysical origin of sociality and the reality of tribal and clan structure are reflected in the Islamic conception of community, gamaat; on a larger scale it is called ummah. Members in Islamic ummah are set apart from non-Muslims. This is dissimilar to the ancient Judaic racial and ethnic symbiosis which came to be known as the “chosen people,” an early manifestation of stratification in monotheistic religions. Among the Muslim scholars of the Middle Ages, Ibn Khaldun approached the objective foundations of sociality, attending to an implicit conception of stratification by appropriating detached observational methods to explain the rise and fall of dynasties. Principally, his work demonstrates the possibility of synthetically a posteriori, based on his personal experience and analytical a priori by which he asserted that the rise and fall are part of the definition of all dynasties. However, since Ibn Khaldun's day, our notion of the objects of structure and function of societies requires that we distinguish many variables in order to understand Islamic societies – particularly the way that their stratification systems are affected by globalization, or their transition toward, or their opposition to modernity. Using geometry metaphorically, it is true that we have departed from Euclidian theorems with the advent of various geometries. Yet Euclidian geometry still has many functions, a point that amplifies the intersections of both Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometries. Notwithstanding the various intersections among political, economic, religious, cultural and social matrices that provide multiple logics to understand the operations of societies, the Khaldunic notion of rise and fall has survived to this day.

Phantoms and Spectres: Capital and Labour at the Millennium

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Merrifield
Keyword(s):  
Social Movement ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Communist Manifesto ◽  
Social Movement Unionism ◽  
Modern Capitalism ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Fictitious Capital ◽  
Political Economic

As the financial system tailspins and ‘Asian Flu’ reverberates everywhere and as 950 million people in South-East Asia struggle to get by on less than one dollar a day, Marx's ideas continue to nourish radical critique and action. If anything, his vision is more economically meaningful and more politically viable today than ever before. In this paper I try to bring Marx's insights on the “laws of motion” of modern capitalism to bear on prevailing global political-economic disorder. I discuss, more specifically, his theory of crisis and the dialectics of accumulation and circulation of “real” and “fictitious” capital as sketched out in the Grundrisse and Capital (volumes 1 and 3). I end with an exploration of the famous political prognosis from The Communist Manifesto of mass collective class struggle and the development of a “world literature”, and set all this within the context of a newly emerging workers' internationalism and social-movement unionism.

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