Global Capitalist Economy Research Articles

An Age of Transition: The United States, China, Peak Oil, and the Demise of Neoliberalism

Until recently, the global capitalist economy has enjoyed a period of comparative tranquility and grown at a relatively rapid pace since the global economic crisis of 2001-02. During this period of global economic expansion there have been several important economic and political developments. First, the United States—the declining hegemonic power but still the leading driving force of the global capitalist economy—has been characterized by growing internal and external financial imbalances. The U.S. economy has experienced a period of debt-financed, consumption-led "expansion" with stagnant wages and employment, and has been running large and rising current account deficits (the current account deficit is a broad measure of the trade deficit). Second, China has become a major player in the global capitalist economy and has been playing an increasingly important role in sustaining global economic growth. Third, global capitalist accumulation is imposing growing pressure on the world's natural resources and environment. There is increasingly convincing evidence that the global oil production will reach its peak and start to decline in a few years. Fourth, the U.S. imperialist adventure in the Middle East has suffered devastating setbacks and there has been growing resistance to neoliberalism and U.S. imperialism throughout the world.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Between the Fall of the Gang of Four and the Rise of Bestsellers

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. In 1978 less than one per cent of China's urban population possessed a television set; ten years later the figure stood at nearly forth per cent, according to Joshua Aleksandr Harman in ‘Relative Deprivation and Worker Unrest in Mainland China’ (<http://mcel.pacificu.edu/aspac/papers/scholars/harman/ Harman.htm>, accessed 15 Feb. 2007). 2. In 1932 a debate over the concept of ‘Third Kind of Writer’ raged between Lu Xun on the one hand and Du Heng and Dai Wangshu on the other, who maintained that there was a third position between a bourgeois writer and a writer committed to the Party line. For more on this controversy see Gregory Lee, Dai Wangshu: The Life and Poetry of a Chinese Modernist, chapter 2. 3. At the same time it should be recalled that, even within the Communist Party and its pre-Liberation cultural front, the League of Left-Wing Writers, there were divergent politico-literary lines. The prominent metropolitan writers, such as novelist Mao Dun, were attached to a more Soviet-style socialist realism, while the Party theorist Qu Qiubai, whose ideas presaged much of what was preached at Yan'an, was critical of the use of such bourgeois forms as the novel and, in the face of mass illiteracy, favoured a recuperation of popular lyric and visual forms so as to achieve a mass democratisation of literature and culture. As for Lu Xun himself, in the late 1920s and early 1930s he had abandoned his critical realist narratives, for which he is celebrated, for a more polemical revolutionary line which he promoted in numerous essays. Both Qu Qiubai (1899–1935) and Lu Xun (1881–1936) died before their ideas and reputations could be recuperated, normalised and exploited by Communist Party theorists. For more on Shanghai literary politics see Wang-chi Wong Wang-chi Wong . Politics and Literature in Shanghai: The Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, 1930–36 . Manchester : Manchester UP , 1991 . [Google Scholar], Politics and Literature in Shanghai: The Chinese League of Left-Wing Writers, 1930–36. 4. First published as an article in Wenyibao, II (1982). 5. Mang Ke, Mang Ke shixuan [Selected poems of Mang Ke], Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chunban gongsi, 1989. Printed and ‘published’ in February 1989 but, because of the events leading up to and following the debacle of Tiananmen and Mang Ke's history as an underground poet, this book was not distributed. When I visited Mang Ke in May 1990 in his flat in Beijing, I found him surrounded by cartons containing several hundred copies of his book that he had rescued just before they were pulped by the publisher. 6. For Bai Hua's own full account of the ‘Bitter Love’ controversy see his interview with Cheng Yingxiang in Dégel de l'intelligence en Chine 1978–1989. 7. Following Party intervention in local elections in November 1986, the dissident Fang Lizhi made controversial speeches that led to students’ demonstrations against the authorities. Hu Yaobang, the relatively liberal party chairman, was held responsible, officially criticised and forced to step down on 16 January 1987. The following week the Anti Bourgeois Liberalism campaign was re-launched. The untimely death in 1989 of Hu Yaobang and the mass mourning that followed was reminiscent of the massive mourning and demonstrations that followed the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, held in high esteem by liberal intellectuals, in 1976. The brutal suppression of the mourners, deemed counter-revolutionary by the authorities, was termed the Tiananmen Incident. Those involved were later ‘rehabilitated’, or found to be innocent and the ‘Incident’ itself labelled progressive. After the massacre at Tiananmen in 1989, the authorities declared the student occupation and demonstrations to be counter-revolutionary, and described the event once again as the ‘Tiananmen Incident’. The 1989 ‘incident’ and those who participated in the democracy movement have yet to be ‘rehabilitated’. 8. The participation in the global capitalist economy of former state-controlled socio-economies has not significantly democratised them, while democracy in those countries that ‘won’ the Cold War has suffered serious reversals.

Business As Usual? Corporatization and the Changing Role of Social Reproduction in the Organic Agrofood Sector1

Lisa F. Clark’s article is concerned with the evolution of organic food production, particularly in Canada and the United States, where large agro-industrial corporations are becoming a major presence in what was once a niche market dominated by small producers. Their products, she argues, are organic only in the sense that they are produced without direct chemical inputs; the broader historic concerns of organic food producers with specific marketing and production relations and their broader ecological commitments are being left behind as this sector is further incorporated into the global capitalist economy.

Introduction: (Re)thinking the scales of lived experience

Introduction: (Re)thinking the scales of lived experience

No Sex, No Crime, No Shame: Privatized Care and the Seduction into Responsibility

The article reflects on the interrelation between neo‐liberal economy and sexuality. The neo‐liberal paradigm issues a paradoxical appellation of individualization and privatized responsibilities. The latter not only refer to personal well‐being and growth, but also demand for care relations, which substitute for the shrinking of the social system. The thesis is that homosexual lifestyles figure as avant‐garde positions, which promise to provide a “solution” to the paradoxical demands for individualization and care. Reading visual representations of lesbian and gay figures in media and advertisements the author argues that non‐normative genders and homosexual ways of existence gain access to the mainstream via the mechanism of “projective integration”. This mechanism stimulates a new hegemonic consensus via the disarticulation of the socio‐political contradictions of the global capitalist economy and the affirmation of not only new forms of intimacy, but also new forms of exclusion.

John S. Saul. The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa. Toronto: Between the Lines/Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press/New York: Monthly Review Press/London: The Merlin Press, 2005; 341 pp. Index. $21.95. Paper.

John S. Saul. Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Southern Africa. Toronto: Between the Lines/Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press/New York: Monthly Review Press/London: Merlin Press, 2005; 341 pp. Index. $21.95. Paper. In Next Liberation Struggle John S. Saul brings together essays written over the last forty years (some were co-written) to show that a new liberation struggle is developing in Southern Africa. first part, Continental Considerations, traces Africa's insertion into the global capitalist economy as a producer of raw materials. Saul shows that rather than being the solution, capitalism is part of the reason for Africa's underdevelopment. In chapter 1 (co-written with Colin Leys) the authors ask: Is Africa a victim of exploitation or of marginalization? short answer must be that it is both. In the popular meaning of exploitation, Africa suffers acutely from exploitation: every packet of cheap Kenyan tea sold in New York, every overpriced tractor exported to Nigeria, every dollar of interest on ill-conceived and negligently supervised loans to African governments (interest that accrues to Western banks)-not to mention every diamond illegally purchased from warlords in Sierra Leone or Angola-benefits people in the West at the expense of Africa's impoverished populations. (20-21) According to Saul, in the short run three developments might occur. First, the AIDS crisis, mercenaries, and hunting grounds in Africa will present dangers to the rest of the world. Second, in the countries of the North, more people oppose The Washington Consensus. Finally, global capitalism is reaching limits of growth because within a few decades continued broad-based growth will be increasingly impossible and market logic will be in question on all sides (28). Why did socialism fail? Saul notes that Mozambique's leadership succumbed to Marxist-Leninism and became a leftist developmental dictatorship while it faced various challenges in the economy. Socialism also failed because of lack of resources. External pressures added to its woes. In Tanzania, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere's economic development attempts failed to materialize because of both poor implementation and lack of resources. Saul seems very disappointed and surprised by the African National Congress's adoption of neoliberalism; for him, South Africa's industrialized economy made it a good candidate for socialism. However, Saul overestimates the ANC's ability to control the economy. He does not ask why capitalism believed the ANC was a good partner-it had done the same throughout the continent (except in Algeria and the socialist states). Saul's subtitle, Stigmatizing Socialism: Market as Common Sense, is interesting. Nobody needed to stigmatize socialism. …

Cosmopolitanism and solidarity: studies in ethnoracial, religious, and professional affiliation in the United States

Who are we? is the question at the core of these fascinating essays from one of the nation's leading intellectual historians. With old identities increasingly destabilized throughout the world - the result of demographic migration, declining empires, and the quickening integration of the global capitalist economy and its attendant communications systems - David A. Hollinger argues that the problem of group solidarity is emerging as one of the central challenges of the twenty-first century. Building on many of the topics in his highly acclaimed earlier work, these essays treat a number of contentious issues, many of them deeply embedded in America's past and present political polarization. Essays include Amalgamation and Hypodescent, Enough Already: Universities Do Not Need More Christianity, Cultural Relativism, Why Are Jews Preeminent in Science and Scholarship: Veblen Thesis Reconsidered, and The One Drop Rule and the One Hate Rule. Hollinger is at his best in his judicious approach to America's controversial history of race, ethnicity, and religion, and he offers his own thoughtful prescriptions as Americans and others throughout the world struggle with the pressing questions of identity and solidarity.

Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason. By Bill Maurer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. xix+217. $55.00 cloth;, $19.95 paper.

Mutual Life, Limited: Islamic Banking, Alternative Currencies, Lateral Reason. By Bill Maurer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Pp. xix+217. $55.00 cloth;, $19.95 paper. Mark Twain's short story Million Pound Banknote ([1893] 1996) concerns a bet that a person will be unable to live for one month with only a million-pound banknote. The main character discovers that he has a problem: how can he spend such a large note when it is not possible to get change? Artist J. S. G. Boggs (Weschler 1999) draws replicas of currency (with slight changes) and offers to exchange these original works of art for goods and services at their face value (and wants to get change in the actual currency in the process). On the one hand, there is a fictitious story about a real bank note whose value cannot be realized, as it cannot be exchanged. On the other, there is a factual story about fake money whose value comes about because it is an authentic, original work of art that can be exchanged. While Bill Maurer's Mutual Life, Limited references neither of these stories, their juxtaposition provides a good hint at the substance of the book, based on a comparison of Islamic finance and Ithaca HOURS, an alternative currency in the upstate New York city. Both Islamic banking, with its principle of lariba (attempting to avoid interest), and HOURS, ostensibly based on an hour's worth of work, seem at first glance to be alternatives to dominant capitalist finance. But beneath the immediate surface, these the dominant currency-may not be so distinct. Islamic banking and HOURS are inherently bound together with the prevailing capitalist global economy. Yet Maurer is hardly out simply to unmask these alternatives as mere shadows of the dominant economy. Rather, he argues, these alternatives restage the underlying forms of the economy, bound up with questions of equivalence as a moral form and the difficulty of a distinguishing test of truth when there are multiple worlds and uses of money. In short, both the alternatives-and the dominant economy-work and are enacted by agents despite (and perhaps because of) their impurities. Mutual Life, Limited also speaks to debates in anthropology and other social sciences about the scholarly enterprise. Maurer finds that his research subjects have debated the purity, truth, and status of Islamic finance and HOURS as alternatives. His research subjects have already made some of the comparisons that he set out to make and recommended reading lists to him before their interviews. Reflecting this experience and connecting the substantive discussion about alternative economies, Maurer aims for lateralizations, rather than descriptions or explanations, reflecting the ways in which his field experience seems largely prefigured and anticipated. As a strategy of lateralization, Maurer holds the book out as performance, attempting to re-create a sense of field experience: The point here is the achievement of a homology of form and ... a ramping up of the kinds of textual achievements of my interlocutors. …

Global Governance, State Agency and Competitiveness: The Political Economy of the Commission for Africa

The Commission for Africa has been presented as a moral crusade, and linked by its proponents to the ‘anti-globalisation’ activism of such campaigns as ‘Make Poverty History’. But detailed analysis of the genesis and content of its report reveals direct continuity with EBRD and World Bank programmes from the 1990s onwards. It continues and extends a series of supranational initiatives aimed at endowing transitional and developing states with the capacity to pursue and legitimise capitalist development. Its principal focus is shown to be on the need to enhance the capacity of the state to impose and maintain the social relations of capitalist production. The emphasis on restoring rather than replacing state agency is identified as a constant feature of such projects, related to the promotion of competitiveness in the global capitalist economy. Finally, this is shown to be a feature shared with New Labour's programme for the ‘modernisation’ of Britain, and the broader theoretical implications are briefly explored.

The rhetoric of nostalgia: postcolonial Alexandria between uncanny memories and global geographies

Memory, nostalgia and place are subjects of increasing scholarly interest. While invoked by cultural geographers as a ‘productive force’ moulding urban landscape, nostalgia often remains an unexamined, a priori concept. Through the exploration of different reactions to the spatialized history of postcolonial Alexandria, I consider nostalgia as a fluid, multifaceted, and performative force operating at different scales and levels: on one hand, an unconscious phenomenon in the years following Egyptian nationalization, intertwining with the uncanny and bringing to surface ‘unwanted’ memories; on the other, a powerful device increasingly exploited by urban developers and the state for the construction of a ‘cosmopolitan memory’. While the former kind of nostalgia presents itself as an effective counterpart to the colonial ‘cartographic gaze’, the latter responds to the logics of cultural consumption, and constitutes a strategy adopted in an increasing number of former cosmopolitan cities seeking to negotiate a position within the global capitalist economy.

Globale Ordnungspolitik im Zeitalter amerikanischer Hegemonie: Kritische Anmerkungen dazu, wie man Demokratie und Kapitalismus nicht verbreiten kann / Global Order in the Era of American Hegemony

Zusammenfassung Wenn es am Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts ein funktionales Äquivalent zu einer Weltregierung gibt, dann nehmen nicht die Vereinten Nationen oder deren Sicherheitsrat, auch nicht die Triade von Weltwährungsfond, Welthandelsorganisation und Weltbank, sondern die USA bzw. die amerikanische Regierung die Aufgaben einer Weltregierung war. Das ergibt sich aus dem weltwirtschaftlichen und mehr noch dem militärischen Übergewicht der USA. Wenn öffentliche Güter für die Welt überhaupt beschafft werden, wenn die politischen Rahmbedingungen für eine freie oder kapitalistische Weltwirtschaft gesichert werden, dann kann das auf absehbare Zeit nur unter amerikanischer Führung erfolgen. Sowohl der Versuch, mit militärischen Mitteln die Demokratie zu verbreiten, als auch der Versuch mit tendenziell planwirtschaftlichen Mitten, die Armut zu überwinden, gefährden diese nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg von den Amerikanern selbst geschaffene freiheitliche Weltordnung. Die Werte der wirtschaftlichen Freiheit und des Freihandels und deren Wohlstandfolgen sind attraktiv genug, dass ihre Verbreitung weder militärischer noch planwirtschaftlicher Mittel bedarf. Die Führungsrolle der USA in der Welt ist zwar nicht demokratisch legitimiert, aber sie läuft auf eine begrenzte Regierungstätigkeit und Standortwettbewerb hinaus und trägt damit zur Erhaltung freiheitlicher Gesellschaften und Volkswirtschaften bei.

A taste of ‘modernity’

What does working in a western restaurant mean to people in urban China? This article, based on ethnographic research at three western food places in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin, argues that for Harbiners at the turn of the century, working in western restaurants was meaningful for two reasons. First, these workplaces were seen as connected to the global capitalist economy and the world of cosmopolitan consumerism, in contrast to the local, provincial, and backward. Second, these workplaces were seen as distinct, and indeed oppositional, to state socialist workplaces and to the socialist understanding of work where individual contribution was rewarded by state paternalism. People who worked in western food restaurants understood work through the concept of development – people should develop themselves by acquiring skills and experiences through work. In other words, for those who worked in western food places, jobs were something to be ‘consumed’ like courses in a self-designed training program for entrepreneurship.

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World PAUL ROBERTS HOUGHTON MIFFLIN, BOSTON, 2004 399 PP. $25.00 HARDCOVER, $14.00 PAPERBACK The End of Oil is a semi-popular book written by an investigative journalist. Why should such a book be reviewed in the Journal of Ecological Anthropology? It is my considered opinion that good investigative journalism rivals ethnography in many ways, especially in cases where journalists spend significant time in the places they are reporting about. An example of this type of work is Michael Maren's Road to Hell (1997), a scathing account of the global development industry. Raymond Bonner provides an equally trenchant and well researched critique of the global conservation industry in his book, At the Hand of Man (1993). Another favorite of mine is Fast Food Nation (2001) by Eric Schlosser, which provides a compelling account of the impacts of the fast food industry on American culture, and especially the agricultural economy. What these works may lack in ethnographic connection and theoretical analysis they make up for in accessibility-in distilling complex issues for a popular audience without compromising their complexity. I have used all of these books in the courses that I teach. Not only do students respond very positively to them, they are also able to relate their detail to the ideas of theorists like Marx, Foucault, and others. The End of Oil is an especially salient example of this type of work. While a bit long on detail and a bit short on organization (a shortcoming of which many of my favorite ethnographies are equally guilty), it is definitely the most far-reaching and accessible work on the global oil economy I have ever read. The book addresses issues that I originally learned about in an unfortunately obscure book called Beyond Oil (Gever et al. 1986). This book, out of print since the early 1990s, pointed to the early warning signs of our current geo-political crisis, as well as the difficulties inherent in the inevitable transition to alternative fuel. It almost goes without saying that the need for this kind of insight and analysis is more pressing today than ever before-so I was delighted to see a popular book that repeats the most important insights of Beyond oil. Furthermore, The End of oil has direct relevance for anthropological theory, especially the works of Leslie White and Sydney Mintz. I was especially struck by how much this book illuminates White's 'Energy and the Evolution of Culture' (1943) as well as demonstrating its continued relevance to the present day. In this article, White argued that the capture of energy from the environment is the foundation of human culture. Roberts' descriptions and explanations of how we capture energy from the environment instilled me with a new appreciation for the significance of this seemingly facile observation. In an extraordinarily accessible passage, Roberts explains that most of the ways we capture energy have to do with breaking the bond between carbon and hydrogen to capture energy produced through photosynthesis or metabolism-energy that has been stored in the earth by binding with carbon. Just as White argued in 1943, Roberts explains that the increasing efficiency of human technology in capturing this stored energy has driven cultural change over time; for the most part this change has occurred in leaps rather than in increments. Specifically, Roberts traces the global capitalist economy to the invention of the engine in the 18th century. As an 'automatic self-acting device' the engine was capable of transforming chemical energy into physical work and to do it anywhere that fuel was available. More importantly, the engine could be used to capture energy from the environment in the form of fuel and to transport that fuel anywhere that work needed to be done. As long as fuel sources are abundant, it does not even matter if engines are especially efficient at doing this work. All that matters is that more energy is captured from the environment than is lost as heat by the engine doing the work. …

“Competing Conceptions of Globalization” Revisited: Relocating the Tension between World‐Systems Analysis and Globalization Analysis

Previous articleNext article No Access“Competing Conceptions of Globalization” Revisited: Relocating the Tension between World‐Systems Analysis and Globalization AnalysisThomas ClaytonThomas Clayton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 48, Number 3August 2004 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/421180 Views: 243Total views on this site Citations: 28Citations are reported from Crossref © 2004 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Edith Mukudi Omwami, Robin Shields The development of theory in comparative and international education: An analysis of doctoral theses at North American universities, Research in Comparative and International Education 2 (Jul 2022): 174549992211122.https://doi.org/10.1177/17454999221112231Edith Mukudi Omwami Globalization, the State, and Cultural Identity: Negotiating Minority Rights in Expansion and Quality Assurance in Public University in Kenya, (Mar 2022): 71–91.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83136-3_5Edith Mukudi Omwami Liberal Feminism in Comparative Education and the Implications for Women’s Empowerment, (Aug 2021): 171–196.https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920210000040011Holger Daun Globalisation: Meta-ideological Hegemony and Challenges in Education, (Sep 2021): 91–116.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66003-1_6Holger Daun Globalizations, Meta-ideological Hegemony and Challenges from Populism in Education, (Jun 2020): 57–81.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1743-2_5Irina Onyusheva, Lalita Thammashote, Jatuporn Thongaim , ( 2020): 219.https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-0111-5.ch012Mohammad Salehan, Dan J. 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A country-level trend study of the association between information communication technology and cultural values, Information & Management 55, no.66 (Sep 2018): 725–745.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.im.2018.03.003Holger Daun, Reza Arjmand Islam, Globalizations, and Education, (Jun 2018): 333–355.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64683-1_23Ashley Macrander Fractal inequality: A social network analysis of global and regional international student mobility, Research in Comparative and International Education 12, no.22 (Jun 2017): 243–268.https://doi.org/10.1177/1745499917712616Holger Daun, Reza Arjmand Islam, Globalizations, and Education, (Jul 2017): 1–23.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53620-0_23-1Ashley Macrander An international solution to a national crisis: Trends in student mobility to the United States post 2008, International Journal of Educational Research 82 (Jan 2017): 1–20.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.12.003Seth A. Agbo, Natalya Pak Globalization and Educational Reform in Kazakhstan, International Journal of Educational Reform 26, no.11 (Jan 2019): 14–43.https://doi.org/10.1177/105678791702600102M. K. Imam-Tamim, Najibah Mohd Zin, Norliah Ibrahim, Roslina Che Soh @ Yusoff Impact of globalisation on domestic family law: multi-tiered marriage in Nigeria as a case study, The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 48, no.22 (Jun 2016): 256–272.https://doi.org/10.1080/07329113.2016.1187053Robin Shields Globalization and International Student Mobility: A Network Analysis, Comparative Education Review 57, no.44 (Jul 2015): 609–636.https://doi.org/10.1086/671752Bonachristus Umeogu The Aftermath of Globalization on African Identity, Open Journal of Philosophy 03, no.0101 (Jan 2013): 174–177.https://doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2013.31A029Tom G. Griffiths, Lisa Knezevic Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis in comparative education: A case study, PROSPECTS 40, no.44 (Nov 2010): 447–463.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9168-0 in jae LEE, 이현숙 Globalization and Korean History Education in English in Korea, The Review of Korean Studies 13, no.22 (Jun 2010): 13–31.https://doi.org/10.25024/review.2010.13.2.001Wai-Chung Ho, Wing-Wah Law The struggle between globalisation, nationalism and music education in Hong Kong, Music Education Research 11, no.44 (Dec 2009): 439–456.https://doi.org/10.1080/14613800903390741Seung‐Hwan Ham and Yun‐Kyung Cha Positioning Education in the Information Society: The Transnational Diffusion of the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum Ham and Cha, Comparative Education Review 53, no.44 (Jul 2015): 535–557.https://doi.org/10.1086/603584Robert F. 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Chapman, John Weidman, Marc Cohen, Malcolm Mercer The search for quality: A five country study of national strategies to improve educational quality in Central Asia, International Journal of Educational Development 25, no.55 (Sep 2005): 514–530.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2005.02.003 On globalisation, hegemony and resistance in Selma K. Sonntag's The local politics of global English: case studies in linguistic globalization, Globalisation, Societies and Education 3, no.11 (Oct 2010): 127–135.https://doi.org/10.1080/14767720500046369Alan J. Deyoung Ownership of Education Reforms in the Kyrgyz Republic: Kto V Dome Hozyain?, European Educational Research Journal 4, no.11 (Jul 2016): 36–49.https://doi.org/10.2304/eerj.2005.4.1.3Robert B. Anderson, Benson Honig Communities and Corporations in the Neww Global Capitalist Economy, SSRN Electronic Journal (Jan 2005).https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2894739Robert F. 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Constructivism, identity and neoliberal (in)security

How do we understand the relationship between ‘national security’ and a global capitalist economy? I argue in this article that liberal constructivist scholars have tended to ignore the constitutive effects of the global economy in the process of distancing themselves from ‘materialist ontologies’ and ‘rationalist epistemologies’. I contend that an important aspect of state identities is that they are dynamic and are historically constituted in and through a relationship to global capital. Only by paying close attention to this fluctuating terrain, can one make sense of the security practices of nation-states. In the latter half of the article, I illustrate my argument with an analysis of the Indian nuclear tests of 1998.

Between a World Summit and a Chinese Movie

In this personal reflection from a non-direct participant, the author compares the visions of the ‘information society’ at the WSIS with fragments of imagined and lived experiences of such a society in China, which has emerged as an increasingly important player at the global stage. While the author praises the liberal and egalitarian visions articulated in both the state and civil society declarations, she is wary of a technology-driven notion of social progress in the official documents. She also notes how the highly abstract language of the Declaration of Principles glosses over the specific logics of a capitalist global political economy and conceals the complicated and unequal power relationships between the various ‘partners’ and ‘stakeholders’ in the global political economy – governments, private corporations, civil society organizations and international and regional institutions. Finally, the author discusses how the complicated alignment of various positions at the WSIS underscores the inadequacy of a simplistic dichotomy between state and civil society and between the North and the South, and raises questions about the theoretical and strategic challenges of addressing issues such as uneven global civil society participation at the WSIS process.

Gendering Global Governance

In this article I map out the major debates on global governance and the feminist critiques of the mainstream interventions in these debates. I argue that the shift from government to governance is a response to the needs of a gendered global capitalist economy and is shaped by struggles, both discursive and material, against the unfolding consequences of globalization. I suggest feminist interrogations of the concept, processes, practices and mechanisms of governance and the insights that develop from them should be centrally incorporated into critical revisionist and radical discourses of and against the concept of global governance. However, I also examine the challenges that the concept of global governance poses for feminist political practice, which are both of scholarship and of activism as feminists struggle to address the possibilities and politics of alternatives to the current regimes of governance. I conclude by suggesting that feminist political practice needs to focus on the politics of redistribution in the context of global governance.

Neoliberalism and Nature: The Case of the WTO

Political pressures exerted by environmental movements have forced governments otherwise committed to neoliberal policies to find reconciliatory policy positions between two contradictory political imperatives—economic growth and environmental protection. This article explores some ideological means of reconciliation, as with notions of sustainable development, which appear to bridge the impassable divide, and some of the institutional means for dealing with contradiction, as with the displacement of political power upward, away from elected national governments and toward international agreements and nonelected global governance institutions. Through these two strategic maneuvers, the authors argue, environmental concern has been ideologically and institutionally incorporated into the global neoliberal hegemony of the late twentieth century. The global capitalist economy can grow, if not with clear environmental conscience, then with one effectively assuaged. This process of neoliberal deflection is illustrated using the case of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization.

The true nature of the World Bank

In Saravanamuthu’s article, “What Is Measured Counts”, the World Bank’s dismal record in promoting sustainable economic development is used to illustrate accounting’s role in privileging the economic over the social. Saravanamuthu argues that the accounting standards used to evaluate the overall performance of the World Bank are the cause of the Bank’s failure. She further argues that if a ‘socially responsible’ institution such as the World Bank cannot get the balance between the economic and the social right how can lesser organizations—such as commercial corporations—be expected to behave in a socially responsible manner. In this commentary, I argue that Saravanamuthu’s choice of the World Bank as a test case of accounting’s role in this tension is misguided because of a naı̈ve interpretation of the nature of the Bank and its role in the management of today’s global capitalist economy. I will reveal the financial and institutional pressures that drive the Bank to pursue the interest of private international capital and will show how these pressures, coupled with operational factors ensure that the Bank’s socio-environmental goals remain at best marginal to its overall agenda. Further I will explore the role of accounting in the nexus of relationships within which the World Bank is situated and will consider critical accounting’s potential contribution to research on the role of accounting and accountants in Third World Development.

Chinese Early Childhood Educators’ Perspectives

To study changing beliefs about early childhood education, educators in Beijing were asked to discuss a 20-minute video of a typical day in a Beijing preschool. This paper focuses on reactions to a segment in the video where a teacher, Ms Chang, speaks harshly to a four-year-old girl who cries throughout breakfast. The preservice educators who commented on the videotapeon the whole were unsurprised by and supportive of Ms Chang’s approach to dealing with a crying child. In contrast, the inservice teachers expressed surprise and indignation. The experts (professors and graduate students in early childhood education) were also generally critical, but they saw Ms Chang’s approach as symptomatic of an emphasis on control that remains common even in an era that emphasizes respect for children, creativityand freedom. These disparate reactions expose the tensions and contradictions facing Chinese early childhood educators as they struggle to maintain cultural values while preparing children to compete in the global capitalist economy.