Industrial Capitalism Research Articles

Reframing the Antarctic as polar planetary commons: moving beyond rights of nature

ABSTRACT This conceptual paper seeks to unravel the processes of assigning rights to nature (RoN) in the polar context through recognising how current efforts of assigning these are steeped in property relations and express an inherent anthropocentrism. The paper critically synthesises ideas from across the disciplines of environmental law, geography and cultural theory to understand how the process of assigning rights to nature takes place – or effectively how rights of nature makes for Antarctic geographies today and into the future. The Antarctic is currently promoted, depicted and popularly imagined as a pristine wilderness. As such, it represents the final frontier of techno industrial capitalism on the planet. In this context, the wilderness qualities of the region need to be confronted as places of our making. This calls for a radical realignment of the assignation of rights to nature, whereby any diminutive apprehensions of nature or objective measures of wilderness need to be countered. Any assignation of rights needs to be informed by how values and representations are continually relationally constituted and have a planetary dimension. This reframing implies that places do not possess some inherent or authentic value, or rights. The way they are valued is made here and now, there and then, in the moments we make sense of and relate to place. In this frame of ongoing valuing, this paper explores how RoN takes place in the polar regions, revealing the Antarctic as a planetary hydrocommons. Underpinned by notions of geopower and sympoietic earth jurisprudence these planetary hydrocommons are illustrated through ice and the question posed is how our ongoing relation configuration to place can feature in Antarctic policy and governance.

The City, the Neighborhood, and the Street: Toward a Global Urban Labor History?

Abstract Labor scholars have increasingly recognized the need to look beyond the workplace and explore where and how workers lived, socialized, shopped, or protested. The six books reviewed in this essay contribute to understanding how modern cities shaped the process of working-class formation as well as workers’ identity, experiences, and economic and material conditions. From different standpoints, these urban and labor histories of Paris, Mexico City, Miami, Port Said, Montevideo, and Santiago, Chile, demonstrate the impact of urban modernization, industrial capitalism, and migration on working families. By bringing together books from different regions and historiographical traditions, this essay also reflects on the possibilities and challenges of writing a global labor urban history.

Beyond samplism: Rethinking the field in exposure science.

Given the many forms of environmental pollution that have accompanied the global spread of industrial capitalism, there is an urgent need to carry out extensive assessments of the potential toxicity of many compounds on human and nonhuman populations. However, the scientific procedures developed to carry out such assessments present several critical shortcomings that greatly diminish their capacity to protect populations at risk. Through an ethnographic analysis of two field campaigns centered on the assessment of polluted sites in northern Chile, this article will reveal that these campaigns are embedded in what we can call samplism. Contrary to approaches that see fieldwork as generative spaces for knowledge creation, samplism radically simplifies the field into a neutral space for the collection of singular and well-defined lab-bound samples. However, samplism entails that multiple field phenomena relevant for assessing pollution levels are left completely unaccounted for, which greatly diminishes exposure science's overall capacity to help improve the lives of those in need. Thus, exposure science urgently needs todevelop more capacious forms of engagement with the field, an ecological fieldwork that truly represents the complexity of forces and processes behind contemporary processes of pollution and damage.

A figura do narrador como inspiração para a prática docente no ensino de sociologia na educação básica

The debate on Sociology in basic education in Brazil refers to the clash experienced by the figure of the narrator in medieval Europe by enabling individuals to become aware of a distant reality through the narrative whose content had meaning and distanced itself from common sense, but society Capitalist industrialism created an urban and increasingly individualized way of life in which facts became disposable when presented in the information format that made up the modern press. A similar situation finds Sociology in high school when faced with technological innovations that reiterate the immediacy of social relations in our daily lives.

Civilising subject(s): drawing pedagogy in Bombay in the age of industrial capitalism and empire

ABSTRACT This article charts a critical history of drawing, as it was taught within “general” schooling in colonial Bombay (now Mumbai), beyond the artisanal workshop, art, and industrial schools. Rather than children’s creative or subjective expression as it is commonly seen today, drawing’s presence in the school curriculum was a sign of the efforts being taken to create a workforce suitable for industrial capitalism, in Britain and in India. Analysing archival sources, and situating them within the broader discourses around colonialism, work, and the industrial subject, the article points out that when drawing was taught in Bombay it was hamstrung by issues metropolitan in origin, viz. course design, inconsistent pedagogic vision, lack of financial outlay as well as local conditions of low industrialisation. Similar problems plagued drawing in Britain. However, colonial power relations held Indian teachers and school-goers responsible for drawing’s “failures” in addressing the crisis of technical skilling and employment generation in India, while in Britain the critique was directed towards the system. Drawing – despite these “failures” – came to be valued as a practice necessary in and of itself. Drawing, the article contends, offered an embodied and verifiable response to wage labour, as seen in its unfolding in the colony, i.e. a moral technology geared towards wage labour.

Одеська школа політичної економії і проблема розвитку промислового капіталізму в Україні

The scientific traditions of the Odesa school of political economy, which was created by Professor A.K. Pokrytan, can play a significant role in the further development of the logical-historical approach to the analysis of economic development. The purpose of the article is to consider the scientific traditions of the Odesa school in the context of a kind of historical paradox. This paradox consists in the fact that the most fundamental problem of Ukraine's economy in the 21st century, related to the development of industrial capitalism here, has remained unresolved and, in principle, has not changed since the end of the 19th century. For analyzing this historical paradox, the methodology of the Odesa school of political economy is used, which is based on the consistent distinction between the legal form and the economic content of property, formal and real socialization, genetic and structural foundations of the economic system, its initial and main economic relationship, market economy and industrial capitalism, production relations and institutional forms of management, etc. On the basis of this methodology it is proved, that the main problem of the Ukrainian economy is that the transition to the market does not mean the transition to industrial capitalism, but, on the contrary, is accompanied by the deindustrialization of the national economy. This analysis substantiates the objective necessity of both the new industrialization of the Ukrainian economy and the economic relations of state capitalism as an adequate economic form of this transformational process. This historical necessity is considered in the broad international context of the crisis of globalization and the tendency to localization of production in the world economy. In this way, the article reveals the relevance of the Odesa school methodology in the analysis of both the transitional economy of Ukraine and the modern process of development of the world economy.

Difference between Global South cities: Mexico City, Freetown and the global division of urban informal labour

This work pursues a new explanatory framework for understanding some of the variance and homogeneity of informal work between cities in the Global South. Rooted in a materialist approach to informality, it seeks to explain the dynamics of informal work in different urban contexts via a novel application of the global division of labour, termed the global division of urban informal labour. Through a comparative analysis of the urban labour regimes of Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Mexico City, Mexico, the work argues that each city’s respective location within the global capitalist system largely determines the nature of their informal economies. It posits that a city’s informal labour regime is shaped by whether a city’s economy is predominantly defined by financial, industrial or extractive capital, and explores the ramifications of the financialised economy of Mexico City and the extractivist economy of Freetown for shaping informal work in each city. Such an approach attempts not only to explain urban and labour regime variance but also to highlight the essential and foundational nature of informal work in global capitalism today. It also seeks to aid in the task of recentring capitalism and class considerations into understandings of the internal and external dynamics of Global South cities in general.

The Hidden Labour of Digital Capitalism: Changes, Continuities, Critical Issues

Abstract Rapid technological development means that the ground on which recent academic studies and public debates about the future of work organisation are based is shifting too rapidly for predictions to be credible. Organisational studies scholars have provided a counterpoint to this futuristic, speculative debate about the world of tomorrow with studies that contextualise seemingly new trends within a longer history of industrial capitalism. In this article, using Moritz Altenried's The Digital Factory (2022) as a starting point, I further explore the historical contextualisation of two aspects of platform capitalism: its de-spatialisation and its use of “autonomy”.

Efficiency and the Productive Body: The Gilbreths’ Photographic Motion Studies of Work

This article examines the images of working bodies seen in the photographic motion studies of work undertaken by the management consultants Frank and Lillian Gilbreth in the 1910s and 1920s. It contextualises their studies, called chronocyclegraphs, as the product of two key cultural developments: first, new practices of measuring and assessing productivity in the context of workplace management and second, the use of new technologies for visualising the body, which brought with them new aesthetics and visual conventions for representing bodies in motion. The Gilbreths’ chronocyclegraphs provide a striking new vision of the working body in industrial capitalism, not as a thing of flesh and blood, but as a luminous field of energy or line of force. Taking these images as representative of new ideas about efficiency and productivity emergent at this time, this article examines their popularisation through the work of Lillian Gilbreth, who promised that the reward for increased productivity was a greater quantity of ‘happiness minutes’.

Putting Back Together

Composed of diptych photographs stitched together in a poetic travelogue through nuclear-infused (Indigenous) lands, annie ross's Pots and Other Living Beings reenvisions social and ecological relations, value structures, and knowledge frameworks in its encounter with violated landscapes of the American Southwest. In its embrace of the blighted remainders of nuclear testing, industry, and consumerism, Pots and Other Living Beings is not a typical “environmental” text. Like ross's weaving and visual installations, this work is alive to relations of reciprocity and kinship with more-than-human worlds in what one could best describe as a spiritual engagement with the abandoned, unremarked leavings of nuclearization, industrial capitalism, and waste cultures.

The Road to Modernity: “Railway Texts” of the Meiji and Taishō Eras

Abstract While the railway played a critical role in contributing to the industrial capitalism of almost every modern nation, it was particularly crucial to Japan’s experience of modernity. With their astonishing speed and power, trains not only altered the physical landscape but also created novel spaces within them, fostering new sensibilities at both the individual and national levels. “Railway texts” – literature featuring representations of trains – can thus demonstrate how rail transport took part in everything from transforming quotidian life to nation building. Touching on selected “railway texts” by Meiji and Taishō era authors Natsume Sōseki, Tayama Katai, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, and Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, this paper illustrates how trains provided a means to reflect on Japan’s cultural, social, and political contexts, serving as a space for imagining modernity.

Turning Adversity into a Bottle of Wine: Black Women Wine Industry Entrepreneurs and Capital

Turning Adversity into a Bottle of Wine: Black Women Wine Industry Entrepreneurs and Capital

Liquor Rations and Labour Management in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World

Abstract A striking yet underexamined system of labour management circulated between land and sea in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world: the use of liquor rations to stimulate worker productivity. Turning to the British naval warship and the American slave plantation, this article depicts how labour supervisors in both settings relied on carefully regulated quantities of alcohol to extract more labour from their workforces. Even as Anglo-American temperance activists called for sobering up the working classes, many naval commanders and slaveholders held firm to the belief that managed intemperance was an essential tool for mobilizing workers. The study of liquor rations and the arguments endorsing their distribution helps to reveal how a spectrum of coercive labour practices swept through the Atlantic world amid the emergence of an industrial capitalist order. Zooming in on the history of these rations enables us to discern labour extraction strategies that operated between the poles of violent coercion and market-based exploitation, and that animated vital sectors of the Atlantic economy during the nineteenth century.

Impact of grain export on the Russian Empire’s industrial development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the influence of grain export on Russia’s industrial development during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Employing ARDL, NARDL, and VECM models, the authors explored how grain export affected industrial growth, ultimately concluding a long-term negative impact on Russia's industry. The study identifies four channels of influence: consumption, savings, distribution of labour, and investment. Specifically focusing on the investment-related channel, the authors observed a negative long-term impact of grain export on industrial capital. This deduction is rooted in the dominance of small-scale grain exporters during the period, resulting in widely dispersed export profits among intermediaries. Moreover, traders showed a preference for investing outside Russia, contributing to the limited investment within the country's industrial sector.

Efficiency evaluation of intellectual capital for value creation: a case study of the semiconductor industry in Taiwan

PurposeThis study constructs an efficiency evaluation framework for assessing the human, structural and relational capital in the semiconductor industry of Taiwan. Furthermore, we analyze whether there are significant differences in efficiency across different levels concerning the industry supply chain (upstream, midstream and downstream), employee service tenure, capital scale and company establishment years.Design/methodology/approachThis study focuses on Taiwanese semiconductor companies, utilizing data sourced from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) Database for the period spanning 2017 to 2021, encompassing a total of five years. Due to the nondisclosure of intangible asset values by all companies, an effort was made to ensure a comparable baseline by excluding companies with incomplete or missing data. Finally, empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of 64 companies using the dynamic network data envelopment analysis method.Findings(1) Overall efficiency demonstrates structural capital as the most prominent, followed by relational capital, while human capital shows relatively poorer efficiency. (2) To enhance the efficiency of intellectual capital, priority should be given to improving the efficiency of outputs related to intellectual property rights such as patents. (3) The midstream segment exhibits the best efficiency in both structural and relational capital. (4) Companies with longer employee service tenures exhibit superior efficiency in human capital in the long run. (5) Companies with extended establishment years and larger capital scales demonstrate superior efficiency in both human and structural capital.Originality/valueReflecting on past literature, scholars have primarily focused on the relationship between intellectual capital and firm efficiency, often emphasizing the overall efficiency of intellectual capital. However, within organizations, human capital, structural capital, and relational capital are interrelated. This study, for the first time, assesses the efficiency of these three components within an organization. The research addresses the challenges in analyzing the efficiency of intellectual capital and introduces a highly contemporary approach – dynamic network data envelopment analysis (DNDEA). Using the semiconductor industry in Taiwan as a case study, this paper conducts empirical analysis in a captivating and worthy industry. Therefore, the ideas presented in this paper are original.

About social contradictions

The article analyzes the nature of social contradictions from the positions of Marxism methodology and structuralist psychoanalysis. Dialectical analysis of Marxist interpreted contradictions allows the author to reveal the essence of industrial capitalism. Structuralist psychoanalysis in understanding the nature of social contradictions makes it possible to investigate the question of Russia’s retrograde return to capitalism and is able to explain the functioning of the modern capitalist system of global exploitation through the use of mechanisms of ideological phantasm. The procedure of neutralization of contradictions in modern Russian society is carried out by converting economic contradictions into political ones and through the implementation of the idea of “export of chaos”.

Barclay Curle & Co. Ltd, Britain’s First Ocean-going Motor Ship, MS Jutlandia, and the Scottish Shale Oil Industry

This article explores the link between the building of the pioneering motor ship Jutlandia by Barclay Curle & Co. Ltd in 1912 for the East Asiatic Company of Copenhagen and the Burmeister & Wain oil engines which powered it, notably through Scottish shale oil. It traces the difficulties in building and installing machinery that was unfamiliar to Clydeside engineers and the impact that the ultimate success of the vessel had on marine engine building on the Clyde. After the Burmeister & Wain licence was awarded to Harland and Wolff, the North British Diesel Engine Works was created as a joint venture between Barclay Curle and Swan Hunter, brokered by the oil and shipping broker Frederick Lane and financed by oil industry capital. Despite early promise, the First World War and state control of the shale oil industry hampered the wholesale adoption of shale oil fuelled commercial motor shipping.

Organizing Minds and Managing People: J.P. Morgan Bankers on Transatlantic Consolidation of Communication and Capital, 1917–1920

AbstractDuring the Great War, J.P. Morgan bankers Thomas W. Lamont, Henry P. Davison, and Dwight W. Morrow expanded their visions of organizing across distances and supported the development of spaces where like-minded individuals could make coordinated decisions regarding the stability of industrial capitalism. These financial elites focused not only on profits but also on deeper ideas. Their experience organizing across distances, first domestically and then across the Atlantic, demonstrates the importance of these financiers to visions of global economic governance centered on information exchange and communication, intimate long-distance relationships, and deliberation among perceived equals, which are essential elements of merchant banking. Their visions further reflected a hierarchical and racial understanding of a liberal global order. Highly flexible in their strategies, these bankers possessed long-term views of national and global development that engaged overlapping connections among networks, institutions, and the public that privileged the creation of transatlantic spaces for deliberation and socialization among Western economic elites.

Controversy as Currency: An Investigation into the Economy and Politics of Literary Prizes

Literary prizes, while providing legitimacy of artistic excellence to authors, are delicately poised in modern prize culture. They must maintain a balance between the artistic merit of literature and the health of the economic capital of the publishing industry and sponsors. This paper meticulously examines the myriad proliferation of literary prizes and the convergence of its intricacies— the process of nomination and selection, sponsorships, promotion, media coverage of the award ceremony, celebratory nature of the occasion, the climactic drama of acceptance speech, and controversy— to characterize the centrality of economic force at play. It reflects the dependency of art form’s flourishing and sustenance on the logic of the economic marketplace. Through a close analysis of the controversial selection of certain authors and particular books, the paper looks at the epiphenomena of prestigious literary prizes to demonstrate a classic working of the neoliberal market outcome of controversy as publicity/currency, which not only brings about manufacturing of aura for controversial writers as celebrities but simultaneously radiates its effect on the demand value of their literary products and investing participants. It concludes that centrifugal dissemination and consumption of mediatised controversy events across national and international borders generates a centripetal concentration of socio-economic capital for writers, publishers and sponsors.

Precarious Lives of the Proletariat: Exploring the Human-Induced Catastrophe in the web series The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984 (2023)

This study explores the concept of ‘slow violence,’ a term coined by Rob Nixon to describe the insidious, often unnoticed effects of power imbalances over time. It examines how ‘state vampirism’ and ‘industrial capitalism’ oppress marginalized populations, with a focus on India’s dependency on countries like the USA. The research juxtaposes exploitation and deprivation in human-induced disasters, such as the Bhopal Gas tragedy (1984) and Chornobyl (1986), through the lens of Marxist subalternism. It also analyzes the portrayal of these themes in the 2023 Netflix series “The Railway Men: The Untold Story of Bhopal 1984,” highlighting the plight of slum dwellers near Bhopal’s carbide factory. Ultimately, this paper questions the victimization process by capitalist multinationals, positioning Bhopal as a prime example of ‘corporate violence.’