Emergence Of Modern Capitalism Research Articles

Restorative justice as customized creativity: Tinker Bell's magic.

While many scholars have noted a rise in boredom coinciding with the emergence of modern capitalism, philosophers have long maintained that boredom is part of the horizon of human experience. Although specific social conditions may exacerbate it, boredom will never be completely eradicated. Nevertheless, its presence indicates that something is not right. Recently, cultural criminology has highlighted that boredom and monotony can trigger criminal behavior. If boredom is a contributing factor to crime, then I propose that creative, restorative justice processes can serve as an effective antidote. These practices aim to make things right by establishing obligations that restore the dignity and meaning of a victim's life.

Dread Dialectics

Rounding out a discussion of Moving Against the System: The 1968 Congress of Black Writers and the Making of Global Consciousness, the author engages in a dialogue with his respondents about the significance of the congress. This essay assesses the legacy of the 1968 congress as a manifestation of the black radical tradition and a critical involvement with socialism. Drawing on C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter, it argues that black freedom struggles in the Americas and Europe, including slave revolts, have been an essential part of the history of labor and freedom struggles. It also contends that race has been overdetermined in ways that have historically understated the centrality of black labor to the emergence of modern capitalism, to anticapitalist struggle, and to the movement for universal freedom and a more broadly defined socialism. The essay concludes by asserting that black radical politics pose a challenge to the color- and colonial-blindness of the conventional Left while at the same time reimaging what freedom can mean in the present.

Gestures toward a Hemispheric Theatre History: A Work in Progress

Gestures toward a Hemispheric Theatre HistoryA Work in Progress Patricia Ybarra (bio) For this issue on hemispheric theatre history I ask the following question: How does one teach a theatre and performance history survey course from a hemispheric perspective? For me, this investigation has a long history. It is an ongoing practice responsive to methodological and theoretical changes in the field and to the political conditions within which I teach. The recent incorporation of Latin American theatre forms into canonical theatre history texts attests to the fact that these performances are now a part of a global theatre history.1 This is not merely an additive operation but an epistemological one that questions the definition of performance. That is, survey classes can frame performance in the way advocated by Diana Taylor and others: as a mode of knowledge production including indigenous forms of cosmology that are not contained by Western European definitions of theatre.2 I have been an advocate of this shift in focus—a commitment I share with many scholars whose work in this area preceded my own: Taylor, Adam Versényi, Jean Graham-Jones, Jill Lane, and Tamara Underiner, among others.3 The recent revisions to my syllabus, however, signal a move from teaching theatre history as a Latin Americanist to teaching theatre history from an Americas or hemispheric perspective. This move overtly links global theatre history to Aníbal Quijano’s conception of the coloniality of power and to Gerald Vizenor’s theorization of indigenous survivance. Quijano’s theory maintains that the creation of race and the emergence of modern capitalism are coincident with an idea of America created during the Spanish Conquest, during [End Page 123] which European invaders labeled non-European people as inferior so as to dominate them.4 Gerald Vizenor’s term “indigenous survivance” frames creative practice by indigenous people as an active presence outside of the tragedies of colonialism and disappearance that occurred subsequent to the events Quijano describes. Vizenor’s theorization, it should be said, emerges from forms of settler colonialism that utilize reservation and boarding school systems, which were largely with the US and Canada, rather than forms that attempted to destroy indigenous culture through other means.5 Ironically, then, making my syllabus truly hemispheric meant paying more attention to the US and Canada. This shift in thinking was made possible by two people: my student Lilian Mengesha, whose dissertation brings together Canadian, US, and Mexican/Central American thinking about land, gender, and vulnerability, and Monique Mojica, with whom I taught a course on indigenous performance in fall 2016.6 In this essay, I will narrate my development of a theatre history course that meets the demands of the move to decolonize one’s syllabus while teaching the fundamental methods of performance historiography. A History of My Theatre History When I arrived at Brown in 2004, I began teaching a theatre history course, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies (TAPS) 1240, which covers theatre and performance history from 1500 to 1850. I have taught it most years from then until now. TAPS 1240 is a required course for most tracks in our theatre arts and performance studies concentration (our term for a major). The course is one of a three-course sequence on theatre and performance history. The course is part lecture and part discussion and usually enrolls between twenty and thirty students, most, but not all, of them concentrators. Presently, I combine a textbook (Theatre Histories, Tobin Nellhaus, General Editor) with plays, performance scripts, and theoretical essays as readings for the course. The course has a midterm, a presentation, a final exam, and a final paper that requires archival research. When I began teaching, the faculty wanted to change the curriculum so that TAPS 1240 would be global rather than simply Western in focus.7 The political and social movements during these 350 years necessitated that this course not simply be one about theatre and performance during a particular period but an historiographical investigation into how theatre and performance participate in, embody, and defy the emergence and development of colonialism (the policy of acquiring full or partial control over another country or area, exploiting [End Page 124] it...

Book Review: Comparative Political Economy: States, Markets and Global Capitalism by Ben Clift

Ben Clift Comparative Political Economy: States, Markets and Global Capitalism, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2014; 392 pp: 9780230555174, 28.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) Ben Clift provides an innovative textbook that integrates numerous accounts and perspectives within the study of political economy. The book focuses especially on highlighting and explaining the linkages between political economy, international political economy (IPE) and comparative political economy (CPE). In doing so, the book successfully fills a gap between IPE and CPE, interpreting the historical evolution and transformation of state-market relations, and providing theoretically and empirically rich explanations for those transformations. Chapters 1 and 2 justify the importance of historical change in state/market relations and contemporary capitalist restructuring, locating the discussion within the context of theoretical debates in political economy. Clift situates CPE as a field of study within classical political economy, tracing especially the influence of key thinkers, including Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Friedrich List. In doing so, he grounds the history of political economy in the emergence of modern capitalism and market societies, before subsequently integrating IPE and CPE by emphasising the importance of the analysis of both international and domestic forces, and discussing how international influences are mediated and channeled in domestic contexts. Chapters 3 to 7 introduce the theories and approaches that comprise CPE, again highlighting their emergence from classical political economy. Chapter 3 introduces Adam Smith and classical liberal political economy, which emphasises the importance of free market principles. The chapter also examines economic nationalism by introducing Listian political economy, in which List highlights the importance of nations as intermediaries between individuals and humanity, and the way in which this was earlier ignored by classical political economists. Clift goes on to contrast Smithian and Listian approaches with Marxian political economy on one hand, on the other, to highlight the different understanding of wealth, value, and the concepts of capital, capitalist market and exploitation contained within Marx's work, contrasted with both liberal and nationalist understandings. Not only does Clift describe Marxian political economy concisely and clearly, but he also develops the argument that Marx's formation of the problem of historical specificity is something that can and should be adopted within theories of CPE. Clift's analysis of Marx therefore brings to the fore the potentiality for Marx's insights, especially when integrated with other theories, to understand state-market relations, social relations and structure, and how and why human beings act in the way they do. Chapter 4 describes disciplinary politics and genealogy by introducing debates on methods between protagonists and schools that include the German Historical School, Marx and historical materialism, marginalist political economy, Hayek and Keynes. Clift introduces these debates with a specific focus on the way in which CPE has emerged, and the focus and research questions that have developed at its core. In Chapter 5, the book turns to consider the influence of institutional analysis upon CPE, focusing in particular upon the varieties of capitalism (VoC) literature. This highlights the significance of institutions and approaches that examine the role of political, societal, and economic institutions in studying political economy. The strength of Clift's analysis of CPE is here particularly evident; that is, his ability to discuss, contextualise and integrate both contemporary and classical debates in a way that shows considerable attention to state-of-the-art developments within the literature. Chapter 6 moves to a focus on 'interest-based approaches' to CPE, which are considered in terms of their exploration of the question 'Who benefits? …

Questioning the Weber Thesis: Capitalist Ethics and the Hebrew Bible?

Weber’s thesis proposed that it was ascetic Protestantism which supported the emergence of modern capitalism in 17th and 18th century Europe, and that this was a completely new and unique phenomenon in the history of mankind up to that point in time. This paper casts doubt on the Weber thesis by examining findings from an economic reconstruction of the Hebrew Bible, and proposing that modern capitalism the way Weber understood it is already visible in the ancient religious text of the “Hebrew Bible”. By means of institutional economic reconstruction, I show that the Hebrew Bible and particularly the stories involving Jacob and Joseph reveal a conceptual structure that can be compared with ideas of modern constitutional and institutional economics. Through this reconstruction, I find myself in agreement with one of Weber’s early but largely forgotten adversaries, Werner Sombart, who suggested, in a behavioral tradition, that other religions, and more specifically Jewish thought, contributed to the emergence of modern capitalism long before the advent of Protestantism.

Religion and capitalism

The main concern of this article is Weber's antagonism with respect to materialism and the distance or affinity between Marx's and Weber's standpoints. It focuses on two interconnected issues: the social and political role of religion and the emergence of modern capitalism. These two points are justified because of their strategic importance and because, with them, Weber's distance with respect to materialism apparently reaches its zenith. Through them, this text attempts to expose the main features of the controversy between Marxism and Weberianism, evaluating the alternatives on the matter offered by different perspectives.

FROM CALVIN TO SPINOZA

Max Weber employed the concept of a spirit of capitalism only in the context of the historical emergence of modern capitalism. Following Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello this article presents a transformed concept that applies also to established capitalisms. The concept includes justificatory orders of worth, the “grammars” of which are articulated by political philosophy. According to Boltanski and Chiapello a New Spirit of Capitalism has emerged since the 1980s. The new spirit is founded on a “project-oriented” order of worth, which, they argue, does not yet have a grammar. Extending their argument, Spinoza is proposed as the grammarian. This implies the paradox that Spinoza, the philosopher of immanence, is turned into a grammarian of a transcendent order of worth. However, this paradox exactly preserves a central ingredient of Weber's concept: transcendence.

Mediterranean and total Bureaucracies: Some additions to the Weberian theory of Bureaucracy

Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is generally thought to be his outstanding work, for it describes the past of much of Western Europe and the United States, as a partial expla? nation for emergence of modern capitalism. But his essay on Bureauc? racy may be a far more important work because it describes much of our past, our present, and the future. Wherever this work has appeared, it has transformed the relevant academic fields, whether sociology, politics, public administration, political science, or history. It has stimulated a vast literature, much of which attempts to argue with its central thesis and to suggest the limits of the ideal-type, not only in reference to its subject matter but also as a methodological framework for the social sciences. Weber's essay brought about a radical transformation of the field of studies of bureaucracy. Prior to its publication, the dominant attitude to bureaucracy was expressed by James Mill in his essays Govern? ment and Jurisprudence, Essay on Government, and his essays in the British Encyclopedia Brit?nica and the Edinburgh Review. These essays emphasized the arbitrary, undemocratic aspects of bureauc? racy, particularly the attempt of English monarchs to use star chamber procedures against an emerging democratic parliament.1 In addition to secrecy, favoritism, and arbitrariness qua Mill, bureaucracy favored inefficiency, red tape, delay, confusion, and error. Much of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, an interpretation of bureauc? racy, which is perhaps best embodied in Harold J. Laski's essay on bureaucracy in the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences2 and in Dimock and Hyde's TNEC Report? emphasized those elements in bureauc? racy that contribute to delay, duplication, and red tape. A large part of the relevant tradition of political theory and popular imagery also reflects this older tradition. In the United States, at least, it is a secure political campaign theme for office seekers in national and lower level politics to oppose bureauc? racy, even during the very period when bureaucracy as an organiza

THE JEWS AND MODERN COMMUNISM: THE SOMBART THESIS RECONSIDERED

The recent reissuance of Werner Sombart's classic work on The Jews and Modern Capitalism is a welcome event-both in itself and for making available once again this significant effort to understand the relationship between religion and the economy.' But rather than simply recreate the past, it is important to evaluate the present. Specifically, we should reconsider, against the background of Sombart's understanding, the global problem of Jews and their place in a variety of social systems, particularly in the light of the rise of modern communism as a major political and economic force of our age. But before getting directly to our topic, it is worthwhile to briefly summarize just what the actually states. For like the so-called Weber thesis concerning the relationship of Protestantism and the emergence of modern capitalism, the actual writings of Sombart are more often discussed than digested. Sombart employs a benign transvaluation of Marx's capitalism as that organization wherein regularly two distinct socio-economic groups cooperate. They are the owners of the means of production and the great body of workers who possess essentially only their labor power. The pursuit of gain is the mainspring of the system; the procedure is rationalism, planning and efficiency in the means of production. Economic activity is regulated by a cash nexus requiring exact calculations. The structure of cooperation is induced by a common appeal to the marketplace. In this context, the apparent success of the Jews under capitalism is attributed by Sombart to four factors: their dispersion over a wide area, their treatment as perennial strangers, their semi-citizenship, and their liquid wealth. But these objective circumstances are important only in the context of special Jewish characteristics: religious values are taught

The European-Asian Trade of the Seventeenth Century and the Modernization of Commercial Capitalism

The emergence of modern capitalism in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries has been a major topic of historical research and interpretation for many years. Among the current generation of historians there has been an ex,-plosion of interest in the relationship between the growth of capitalism and the expansion of Europe in the early modern era. The interpretive work of Wallerstein and Braudel and the detailed research of a host of others have added immensely to our knowledge of this relationship. They have led many historians to break away from the conceptual frameworks traditionally employed to explain both pre-industrial capitalism and European expansion.