Crisis of capital accumulation and global restructuring of social reproduction: a conceptual note

2015 ◽  
pp. 470-475
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Global Restructuring

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Mode Of Production

This book investigates two questions, how did finance become hegemonic in the capitalist system; and what are the social consequences of the rise of finance? We do not dwell on other topics, such as the evolution of the mode of production or the development of class conflict over the longer run. Our theme is not the genesis, history, dynamics, or contradictions of capitalism but, instead, we address the rise of financialization beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. Therefore, we investigate the transnationalization of the circuits and processes of capital accumulation that originated the expansion and financialization of the mechanisms of production, social reproduction, and hegemony, including the ideology, the functioning of the states, and the political decision making. We do not discuss the prevailing neoliberalism as an ideology, although we pay attention to the creation and diffusion of ideas, since we sketch an overview of the process of global restructuring of production and finance leading to the prevalence of the shadow economy....

The “laborless fuel”: Landscape, energy transitions and natural gas in the postwar U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862098712
Author(s):  
Carlo Sica
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Energy Landscapes ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Landscapes

The dire need for an energy transition to mitigate and reverse global warming is inspiring scholars to reexamine political influences on technological systems. The multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transitions framework acknowledges how technological systems are affected by the social and political landscapes where they are built. Energy landscapes literatures elaborate on the socio-technical transitions framework by explaining how the boundaries of landscapes are negotiated in the context of energy transitions. Energy scholars have found that negotiations over the form and purpose of energy landscapes frequently skew in favor of capital accumulation instead of social reproduction. Studies of landscapes in human geography and labor history have shown how the power imbalance energy scholars observed can be corrected by workers and their communities struggling against business owners and the state. Using archival data, I show how U.S. natural gas legislation in the postwar period was intended to limit coalminers’ demands for landscapes of social reproduction. This point matters because the vulnerabilities of industrial capitalism to energy worker organization could be exploited to push for a just and sustainable energy transition like the Green New Deal.

The Work That Plants Do

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Value Creation ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Plant Science ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Societal Dynamics

Whether driven by developments in plant science, bio-philosophy, or broader societal dynamics, plants have to respond to a litany of environmental, social, and economic challenges. This collection explores the `work' that plants do in contemporary capitalism, examining how vegetal life is enrolled in processes of value creation, social reproduction, and capital accumulation. Bringing together insights from geography, anthropology, and the environmental humanities, the contributors contend that attention to the diverse capacities and agencies of plants can both enrich understandings of capitalist economies, and also catalyze new forms of resistance to their logics.

scholarly journals Sophia’s choice: Debt, social welfare, and racial finance capitalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 026377582097368
Author(s):  
Erin Torkelson
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Cash Transfers ◽  
Cash Transfer ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Developmental Needs ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Finance Capitalism

In this article, I examine normative assumptions about cash transfers as public goods and the lived experience of cash transfers as private debts. Policy makers and social scientists often assume cash transfers are apolitical, value-neutral monetary instruments, which improve upon inappropriate, top-down, universalizing development projects. Instead, I show how cash transfers introduce their own universals, by imagining liberal sovereign subjects, who use credit and financial markets to manage their own financial and developmental needs. I argue that this narrative elides the deep historical and geographical production of racial difference through credit and debt in South Africa’s Western Cape farmlands. I call this phenomenon racial finance capitalism. First, I trace how coloured people have been racialized as debtors for the benefit of capital accumulation across generations. Then, I explore how the contemporary spatial and temporal realities of cash transfer distribution continue to racialize grantees as debtors and dispossess them of their social entitlements. Finally, I demonstrate how grantees draw upon transgenerational experiences of debt to challenge the continued social reproduction of themselves as debtors. Some South African social grantees demand recognition that they are, and have been, net creditors to the nation.

scholarly journals Moral economy: Rethinking a radical concept

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaime Palomera ◽  
Theodora Vetta
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Economic Practice ◽  
Cultural Domination ◽  
The Common

This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated and attempts to cast it in a new light by bringing class and capital back into the equation. First, it reviews the seminal works of Thompson and Scott, tracing the origins of the term. It deals with the common conflation of moral economy with Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness, differentiating the two concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these perspectives have been criticized. Second, it dispels dichotomist conceptions separating economic practice from morality, or embedded configurations from disembedded ones. Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, it posits that social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values, which can only be fully grasped by delineating the contours and characteristics of capital accumulation. Third, it contends that moral economy is a dynamic concept because it accounts for class-informed frameworks involving traditions, valuations and expectations. Finally, it argues that moral economy can enrich the concept of hegemony because it pays attention to the often-contradictory values that guide and sustain livelihood practices, through which cultural domination is reproduced or altered.

From Theory of Accumulation to Social-Reproduction Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 37-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ankica Čakardić
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Reproduction Theory ◽  
Preliminary Application ◽  
Dynamic Link

AbstractThe paper functions as a contribution to feminist analyses that are methodologically based on Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of political economy and her understanding of capital accumulation, but also as a contribution to contemporary social-reproduction theory which aims to integrate Luxemburg’s legacy alongside that of Marx. The essay offers a sketch for a ‘Luxemburgian feminism’ consisting of (1) an overview of Luxemburg’s critique of bourgeois feminism and (2) a preliminary application of Luxemburg’s ‘dialectics of spatiality’ to contemporary social-reproduction theory. With Luxemburg’sThe Accumulation of Capitalin mind and her several essays on the so-called ‘women’s question’, we shall attempt to relate Luxemburg’s explanation of the dynamic link between capitalist and non-capitalist spatialities with the commodification of women’s reproductive labour.

Urban Design in Capitalist Society

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J King
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social System ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
System Degeneration ◽  
Fundamental Transformation ◽  
The Aesthetic

Urban design is concerned with the purposive production of urban meaning, through the coordinating design of conjunctures or relationships between spatial elements. It is argued that, in capitalist society, this production of meaning has typically supported shifts in capital accumulation, social reproduction, and legitimation in ways crucial to the reinforcing of dominant interests. Its effect has been to help counteract instability, system ‘degeneration’ (from the standpoint of such interests), and any fundamental transformation of the social system, This effect is termed ‘counteraction 1’. From considerations of urban design as production of values and as a body of practice, it is concluded that an urban design practice that is counteractive to dominant interests is, however, possible (‘counteraction 2’), Such a practice will be characterised by three ‘rules’, relating to the aesthetic program, the discursive penetration of the social context of urban design, and the breaking down of the present autonomisation and obfuscation of design as a domain of social interaction or discourse.

Social Reproduction at Work, Social Reproduction as Work: A Feminist Political Economy Perspective

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Susan Braedley ◽  
Meg Luxton
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Mass Movements ◽  
Conceptual Confusion ◽  
Recent Attention ◽  
The U.S

Abstract Social reproduction has received considerable recent attention from academics and activists aiming to stimulate and advance transformative political change. Yet, an understanding of social reproduction as “work” has sometimes slipped away, leaving behind important anti-racist feminist insights. Engaging with recent contributions from scholars in the U.S., U.K., and Canada, we argue that social reproduction is most useful as a concept, not as a theory, and is best understood as “work”. We point out quandaries and ambiguities that have produced conceptual confusion in scholarship on social reproduction and argue for a conceptualization offered by feminist political economy. We conclude that social reproduction, when understood as work, can support efforts to build the mass movements and solidarity necessary for effective anti-capitalist politics if its relationship to, and contradictions with, the processes of dispossession and capital accumulation are taken into account.

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