Russian border regions in the economic corridor of China-Mongolia-Russia

The object of the paper are the border regions of Siberia as a part of the planned China-MongoliaRussia economic corridor in China’s foreign policy initiative “One Belt One Road”. The aim of the study is to reveal the nature of the interaction of these regions with the outside world to determine the ways of their development within a common economic space of the corridor. The study is based on the analysis of foreign investment flows to the border regions using macro- and microeconomic methods. The volume foreign capital goes mainly to mining, while other industries are dominated by small enterprises formed by foreign citizens, not corporations. In these areas, intermediary business prevails, which does not require increased human capital. China is gradually replacing other counter-partners in the use of natural resources, including mineral and forest ones. The problems of development of the border regions in common economic space of the corridor due to similar resource specialisation and weak development of the embedded economy have been identified. With the development of transit infrastructure, it is necessary to develop local industries integrated into large projects and capable of using this infrastructure to expand sales markets.

Reading the story of law and embeddedness through a community lens: a Polanyi-meets-Cotterrell economic sociology of law?

In this article I propose that the role of law in Karl Polanyi’s concept of the “always embedded economy”1 can be enriched by the application of the “lens of community” 2 developed by Roger Cotterrell.3 I begin with Polanyi’s suggestion that economic action and interaction are always “embedded” in wider social life. Reading through the lens of community, we can be more specific: any actor is at once engaged, to different degrees (from fleeting to stable), in multiple types (whether focusing on instrumental, traditional, affective and/or belief-based action) of social life. I then explore a second, implicit, cornerstone of Polanyi’s argument: that analytical and normative approaches to economy may become disembedded from wider social life. Reading through the lens of community we can again be more specific: in the transformation to a market society, the analytical and normative approaches that are central to economic actions and interactions are confused with, and privileged over, those that are central to non-economic actions and interactions. This confusion and privileging can have what we might call a performative effect on action and interaction. Finally, I explore Polanyi’s story of law as a facilitator both of disembedding movements and of re-embedding countermovements. The application of a law-and-community lens suggests some additional details of that storyline and that there are additional plotlines to be pursued. The practical potential of this Polanyi-meets-Cotterrell economic sociology of law is briefly illustrated with references to two twenty-first-century cautionary tales: the World Bank’s investment climate programme and the 2008 financial crisis.

Empowering Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal Using ABCDE

The paper addresses the foundations of governance and democracy by presenting an evidence informed strategy that supports the collection of new evidence through groundwork case studies delivered through a consortium of 11 HEIs in different nation states. The partners working with Senior Credentialed Educational Leaders in schools have developed research questions, addressed by applying A Blueprint for Character Development for Evolution (ABCDE). This paper presents ABCDE as the strategy. Community members start to develop their sense making from observations to their beliefs (A-B) and from their beliefs to their methods (B-C). Community members can move from methods to developing hypotheses (C-D) to developing principles and theories-of-change (D-E). Community members apply ABCDE to develop confidence and trust in themselves and others in a process of becoming self-governing. ABCDE Empowers Young Societal Innovators for Equity and Renewal (EYSIER) by mobilising grass roots up theories-of-change with new partnerships brokered by ‘Professional Educators and Administrators’ Committees for Empowerment’ (PEACE). PEACE is brokered by cross faculty partnerships of HEIs that partner with private, public and third sectors of all spheres in the wider society to produce and exchange knowledge to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The paper identifies PEACE needs supporting by coherent policy to build trust in societal institutions within a social contract and embedded economy that socialises investment, risk and rewards. The consortium seeks funding to deliver ABCDE and mainstream it, brokered by HEIs as hubs, to achieve the SDGs and address violent extremism including Nigeria, Pakistan and the broader MENA region and the Balkans.Keyboard: Empowering Young Societal Innovators, Equity, Renewal, ABCDE

Market analysis beyond market fetishism

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.