“Our Fight is for Life”: Encountering Arts and Rebellions in the Zapatista Struggle Against Capitalism

This paper addresses coliving as a product shaped to attract both young professionals in a student-style accommodation and investors of various scales, while integrating new geographies and housing types into capital accumulation. Taking Brussels as case-study, it answers the question ‘how are new residential products created by the financialization process affecting the private rental sector?’ by combining quantitative and qualitative methods. The paper also provides results on intra-urban geographies of financialized housing. First, coliving is aimed at a particular market segment consisting of young international workers attracted by the international functions of Brussels. To attract this clientele to a student-style accommodation, operators must promote a unique experience. Second, the Brussels coliving market illustrates that the financialization of the private rental sector relies notably on the creation of new products shaped so that investors of various scales can easily inject their capital. Third, most Brussels coliving establishments remain small-scale projects located in renovated old single-family houses.

In this paper we analyze Augusto Graziani’s numerous contributions to the monetary theory of production, which he developed from a theoretical but also a policy-oriented perspective. We focus on the rejection of the neoclassical dichotomy, the causal relation between production and money creation, and the definition of macroeconomic saving. These three dimensions of Graziani’s work can be identified in the framework of the monetary circuit, in the tradition of classical and Marxian economic thought. The outcome of Graziani’s investigations sheds light on the working of a monetary economy of production from the issuance of bank money to the distribution of income and capital accumulation.

The Problem of Affective Nihilism in Nietzsche: Thinking Differently, Feeling Differently

Despite ongoing efforts to articulate radical methods and theoretical frameworks for social movement research, the field remains embedded in exploitative, oppressive, and hierarchical modes of knowledge production. Following Foucault, I argue that this is because societies like ours, founded through racial and patriarchal violence, are invested in a regime of truth supportive of that violence. In light of this, I argue that social movements scholars need to adopt a radically different form of knowledge practice. Building on anarchist, anti-racist feminist, and anti-colonial scholarship, this paper begins by analysing how liberalism constrains social justice organizing and how academic norms foreclose accountable social movements scholarship. I then introduce three unique ethics emerging in resistance to this situation: movement-relevant, anti-oppressive, and prefigurative. The first confronts the extractive imperatives of enlightenment truth-making; the second resists its neutral and disinterested tendencies; and the third models a rejection of its hierarchical and exclusive mode of authority. I argue that together they provide scholars with a strategy for re-/orienting their research towards what Foucault theorizes as an insurrection of knowledges. These three ethical frameworks combine to facilitate an insurrectionary power/knowledge that fosters collective struggle as it progressively dismantles the regime of truth underlying social movements research.

Introduction. In modern foreign policy problems of Russia’s development, the need to implement the formation and preservation of the human capital of the population is increasing. Formation and effective use of human capital influences the creation of new technologies and products. At the same time, for many less developed regions – the so-called depressed territories – their socio-economic condition is associated with a low level of reproduction and implementation of the human capital of the population. The accumulation of human capital can have a beneficial effect on the development of depressed territories. The purpose of the article is to assess the human capital of municipalities with different levels of socio-economic status. Materials and Methods. The study has used a database of statistical indicators of municipalities of the Perm region. To assess the human capital of the population, we have used the index method, in which statistical indicators are combined into blocks: demography, education, health and sports, economics, culture. Results. A correlation between the values of the educational and demographic indices has been revealed. We have found a relationship between the level of socio-economic status of the territory and the educational index. Territories develop most rapidly in the presence of not only the necessary infrastructure for the formation of human capital, but also a developed economy. None of the development indices of the quality of human capital (education, health and sports, culture) have a direct impact on the economic growth of territories. In some depressed municipalities, there is a high birth rate of the population in the presence of social infrastructure and the quality of human resources necessary for the development of human capital. Discussion and Conclusion. The practical significance of the study is determined by the need to influence the regional policy of human capital management in peripheral and depressed territories. It is proposed to adopt at the legislative level mechanisms for identifying depressed areas and measures to support them. This article can be used in public administration to create a strategy for the spatial development of the country.

The hyper-competitive global economy of the twenty-first century has become an era of innovation, technology, productivity, new knowledge and skills and focused on sustainable and inclusive growth. Human capital is one of the fundamental factors for ensuring sustainable and inclusive growth. The process of human capital formation is long and is influenced by many factors. Its measurement is one of the actual issues. The article discusses the analysis of both theoretical concepts of human capital measurement, as well as measurement problems. We consider three approaches for human capital measurement: The Cost-Based Approach - measures human capital by looking at the stream of past investments undertaken by individuals, households, employers and governments. The Income-Based Approach - measures human capital by looking at the stream of future earnings that human capital investment generates over the lifetime of a person. The approach elaborated by Jacob Mincer is empirically implemented by explaining the logarithm of the wage of a worker from her/his educational attainment and labour market experience (which is another source of human capital formation), while controlling for a set of background characteristics such as gender, type of labour contract (e.g. full-time or part-time, fixed term or tenure). The Indicators-based Approach - recently are widely used for measurement of human capital. 1. The UN Human Development Index (HDI), which combines measures of average achievements in a country in three basic dimensions of human development, i.e. health, education and knowledge, and standards of living. The Human Development Index (HDI) provides a single index measure which aims to capture three key dimensions of human development: an access to knowledge, long and healthy life and a sufficient standard of living; 2. World Bank Human Capital Index (HCI); 3. The PISA, which tests 15-16 year olds students for their cognitive skills in terms of reading, mathematics, science and problem solving; 4. The PIAAC, which tests adults for their competencies in terms of literacy, numeracy and ability to solve problems in technology-rich environments. The PISA and the PIAAC are new measures and express cognitive skills and abilities of students. A new approaches of human capital measurement clarifies what indicators can be considered to precisely measure more accurate human capital. The paper presents an empirical analysis of the dynamics of human capital of the Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries and draws relevant conclusions. For this purposes we consider several measurements of human capital: Human Capital Index (http://databank.worldbank.org/data); Human Development Index (http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi), Public Expenditure on education (http://databank.worldbank.org/data) and (http://data.uis.unesco.org). Based on the analysis of the values ​​of the indicators and characteristics discussed above the following can be clearly identified: The higher government spending on education, the higher value of PISA (conclusion are similar regarding HCI and HDI). Georgia's favorable positions allows us to draw certain conclusions: the country requires active support from the government to improve problematic situation in terms of both healthcare and education. It is necessary to have an effective educational system that contributes to raising the level of education in the country (especially at the general education level), attracting qualified personnel to schools, supporting science, introducing scientific and technological achievements, analyzing and evaluating global technological trends. The high level of education of the population is a prerequisite for the development of demand for high-tech products and stimulates the creation of innovative products and processes. The current picture shows the impact of the pandemic on human capital through increasing mortality (which is related to the spread of infection), increasing government spending (related to manage the spread of the virus); It is clear that there is a transmission of the pandemic on the economic equilibrium (through the impact on demand and supply). At the same time, however there is the effect that we can consider as a positive result - acceleration of digitization. Since the process of formation and accumulation of human capital is not short-term, quantitative assessment of the impact will be possible after a certain period of time (the time lag should be taken into account); Keywords: Human Capital; Human Capital Index; Human Development Index; Government Expenditure on Education; PISA. JEL Codes: E24, J24, J41

El artículo examina la identidad colectiva que se va forjando en la vida cotidiana de las comunidades autónomas zapatistas en Chiapas. Se desarrollan tres argumentos: 1. La persistencia del movimiento zapatista, a 20 años de su aparición pública, se debe en gran parte a la construcción de una nueva subjetividad que se manifiesta como una identidad colectiva entre los participantes. 2. Esa identidad se caracteriza más por un proceso de construcción, en las prácticas de relaciones sociales y formas de hacer política en los territorios autónomos, que por un perfil fijo. 3. La autonomía zapatista es un ejemplo de «contrapoder», que puede ser relevante para otros movimientos sociales antisistémicos de América Latina.

The share of Uganda’s population that lives below the poverty line has fluctuated over the last seven years, greatly influenced by shocks that have tested the resilience of the people. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed both urban and rural residents into poverty. Inequality, which reflects the extent to which different population groups benefit from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and affects the transmission of growth into poverty reduction, remained largely unchanged over this period and may even have worsened in urban areas. The findings of this report show that previously identified patterns and drivers of Uganda’s poverty changes persisted well into 2020 – shaped by low productivity and high vulnerability. Identified inequality of economic opportunities and unequal accumulation of the human capital could hold back structural change in employment. Accelerating poverty reduction in such a setting requires a two-pronged strategy. While at the macroeconomic level, policies addressing growth fundamentals are important for reducing poverty, from a microeconomic perspective, the report’s analysis shows that two strategies will be crucial. The first strategy is to lift the productivity and incomes of poor households in both rural and urban areas. While tackling agricultural productivity and job creation are at the top of the agenda here, making mobile phone services more widely accessible and affordable is a potential opportunity. The second strategy is to strengthen people’s resilience to shocks, particularly in rural areas. To have an impact, policies in both these areas will have to address the inequality in opportunities analyzed in the report. This document provides an overview of key report findings and identifies priority actions.

Las reflexiones que aquí se presentan nacen de las preocupaciones del área de investigación de “entramados comunitarios y formas de lo político” en torno a lo que hoy en América Latina significa defender la vida para un amplio y variado abanico de procesos organizativos y luchas comunitarias en medio de las renovadas dinámicas de apropiación, despojo, devastación y degradación de las naturalezas humanas y no humanas que las violentas lógicas de acumulación impulsan sin parar. Esta inquietud nos ha llevado a la tarea de dotarnos de una mirada analítica, ecológica, holística y relacional en torno a la noción de vida, que hemos ido componiendo en diálogo con la perspectiva de la ecología-mundo, la ecología política latinoamericana y la apuesta de algunas tradiciones del feminismo por poner en el centro la vida. En este texto, a modo de síntesis parciales, presentamos lo que, desde nuestras propias inquietudes políticas, implica pensar la vida, el Capitaloceno y las disputas planteadas por una multiplicidad de luchas en defensa de lo común con base en diversas investigaciones en diferentes países de América Latina, en particular en México y Bolivia, pero también en Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia y Uruguay. El texto se compone de tres apartados. En el primero, explicamos qué entendemos por condición de interdependencia y cómo, a partir de esta idea, recuperamos la noción de trama/tejido de la vida propuesta por diferentes autores. En el segundo, nos preguntamos por la vida que el proyecto moderno-capitalista ha ido produciendo a partir de la lógica de dominio de carácter antropocéntrico, patriarcal y colonial y los modos en los que se ha buscado reorganizar la condición de interdependencia, poniendo a trabajar a las naturalezas humanas y no humanas para garantizar la lógica de acumulación. Un ejemplo a través del cual ilustramos estas dinámicas es la gestión capitalista de las relaciones de interdependencia en torno al agua en tiempos neoliberales. Y finalmente, exponemos sobre la base de numerosas investigaciones, enfocadas principalmente en experiencias comunitarias en oposición a algún proyecto extractivista, nuestro acercamiento al antagonismo social y la disputa que entablan las luchas por lo común en América Latina para defender la vida y gestionar las relaciones de interdependencia en contradicción con los términos de coproducción capitalistas.

Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: A Reader's Guide

Valve Corporation’s digital game distribution platform, Steam, is the largest distributor of games on personal computers, analyzed here as a site where control over the production, design and use of digital games is established. Steam creates and exercises processes and techniques such as monopolization and enclosure over creative products, online labour, and exchange among game designers. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework places communication at the centre of the political economy, here of digital commodities distributed and produced by online platforms like Steam. James Gibson’s affordance theory allows the market Steam’s owners create for its users to be cast in terms of visuality and interaction design. These theories are largely neglected in the existing literature in game studies, platform studies, and political economy, but they allow intervention in an ongoing debate concerning the ontological status of work and play as distinct, separate human activities by offering a specific focus on the political economy of visual or algorithmic communication. Three case studies then analyze Steam as a site where the slippage between game-play and work is constant and deepening. The first isolates three sales promotions on Steam as forms of work disguised as online shopping. The second is a discourse analysis of a crisis within the community of mod creators for the game Skyrim, triggered by changes implemented on Steam. The third case study critiques Valve Corporation’s positioning of Steam as a new space to extract value from play by demonstrating historical continuity with consumer monopolies. A concluding discussion argues Steam is a platform that evolves to meet distinct crises and problems in the production and circulation of its digital commodities as contradictions arise. Ultimately, Steam shows how the cycle of capital accumulation encourages monopolization and centralization.

Valve Corporation’s digital game distribution platform, Steam, is the largest distributor of games on personal computers, analyzed here as a site where control over the production, design and use of digital games is established. Steam creates and exercises processes and techniques such as monopolization and enclosure over creative products, online labour, and exchange among game designers. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework places communication at the centre of the political economy, here of digital commodities distributed and produced by online platforms like Steam. James Gibson’s affordance theory allows the market Steam’s owners create for its users to be cast in terms of visuality and interaction design. These theories are largely neglected in the existing literature in game studies, platform studies, and political economy, but they allow intervention in an ongoing debate concerning the ontological status of work and play as distinct, separate human activities by offering a specific focus on the political economy of visual or algorithmic communication. Three case studies then analyze Steam as a site where the slippage between game-play and work is constant and deepening. The first isolates three sales promotions on Steam as forms of work disguised as online shopping. The second is a discourse analysis of a crisis within the community of mod creators for the game Skyrim, triggered by changes implemented on Steam. The third case study critiques Valve Corporation’s positioning of Steam as a new space to extract value from play by demonstrating historical continuity with consumer monopolies. A concluding discussion argues Steam is a platform that evolves to meet distinct crises and problems in the production and circulation of its digital commodities as contradictions arise. Ultimately, Steam shows how the cycle of capital accumulation encourages monopolization and centralization.

This paper studies the role of endogenous producer entry and product creation for monetary policy analysis and business cycle dynamics in a general equilibrium model with imperfect price adjustment. Optimal monetary policy stabilizes producer prices, but lets the consumer price index vary to accommodate changes in the number of available products. The free entry condition links the price of equity (the value of products) with marginal cost and markups, and hence with inflation dynamics. No-arbitrage between bonds and equity links the expected return on shares, and thus the financing of product creation, with the return on bonds, affected by monetary policy via interest rate setting. This new channel of monetary policy transmission through asset prices restores the Taylor Principle in the presence of capital accumulation (in the form of new production lines) and forward-looking interest rate setting, unlike in models with traditional physical capital. We also study the implications of endogenous variety for the New Keynesian Phillips curve and business cycle dynamics more generally, and we document the effects of technology, deregulation, and monetary policy shocks, as well as the second moment properties of our model, by means of numerical examples.

This paper studies the role of endogenous producer entry and product creation for monetary policy analysis and business cycle dynamics in a general equilibrium model with imperfect price adjustment. Optimal monetary policy stabilizes product prices, but lets the consumer price index vary to accommodate changes in the number of available products. The free-entry condition links the price of equity (the value of products) with marginal cost and markups and hence with inflation dynamics. No-arbitrage between bonds and equity links the expected return on shares, and thus the financing of product creation, with the return on bonds, affected by monetary policy via interest rate setting. This new channel of monetary policy transmission through asset prices restores the Taylor Principle in the presence of capital accumulation (in the form of new production lines) and forward-looking interest rate setting, unlike in models with traditional physical capital. We also study the implications of endogenous variety for ...

Globally, smart cities attract billions of dollars in investment annually, with related market opportunities forecast to grow year-on-year. The enormous resources poured into their development consist of financial capital, but also natural, human and social resources converted into infrastructure and real estate. The latter act as physical capital storage and sites for the creation of digital products and services expected to generate the highest value added. Smart cities serve as temporary spatial fixes until new and better investments opportunities emerge. Drawing from a comprehensive range of publications on capitalism, this article analyzes smart city developments as typifier of 21st century capital accumulation where the financialization of various capitals is the overarching driver and ecological overshoot and socio-economic undershoot are the main negative consequences. It closely examines six spatial manifestations of the smart city – science parks and smart campuses; innovation districts; smart neighborhoods; city-wide and city-regional smart initiatives; urban platforms; and alternative smart city spaces – as receptacles for the conversion of various capitals. It also considers the influence of different national regimes and institutional contexts on smart city developments. This is used, in the final part, to open a discussion about opportunities to temper the excesses of 21st century capitalism.