The State of the Art of Social Structure of Accumulation Theory

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the state of the art of the social structure of accumulation (SSA) literature produced since 1994. Any such project must start with David Gordon’s last contributions before his untimely death in 1996. In addition, there have been a a number of contributions from the academic discipline of sociology including the founding of a “spatialization” school extending the work of Gordon, Edwards, and Reich’s original Segmented Work, Divided Workers. There have been a number of works extending the geographic reach of the SSA framework to new areas, most prominently to developing countries. Several authors have applied the SSA framework to the history and analysis of specifi c institutions. Such an overview is supplied in the fi rst section below. Following that section we will assess the theoretical contributions made by these works in the last ten years or so. Finally we will discuss the debate over whether a new SSA was consolidated after the stagfl ation crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. 1 If an SSA was consolidated, the current economic crisis results from the disintegration of that SSA. If an SSA was not consolidated, what we are witnessing today is the continuation of the unresolved collapse of the postwar SSA.