Commodity Form Research Articles

The fight for the right to the city: contributions from the State derivation debate

Abstract This paper aims to understand the limits and possibilities of the fight for the right to the city taking into consideration the recent contributions from the State derivation debate. The methodology utilized was the dialectical historical method, considering theoretical and historical-social aspects from the transformation of urban space fight. It was possible to verify that legal and political forms are essential for the reproduction of the current sociability as they derive from the commodity form. Thus, as a conclusion, the struggle for the right to the city based only on institutional demands by the positivation of rights and public policies reduces its emancipatory potential by restricting it to the social forms of capital.

On the methodological limits of the commodity form theory of law in The Corporation, Law and Capitalism

Grietje Baars’s The Corporation, Law and Capitalism is an impressive and ambitious historical unfolding of the corporate legal form starting in Northern Europe in the early modern period and expanding globally in the 20th and 21st centuries.1 Methodologically, it is centred on the abstracting of a specific institution—the corporation—as the key analytic for exploring the historical relation between law and capitalism. Baars argues the corporation is one of the most important structural mechanisms at the heart of this relationship. In effect, the corporation enables a tracing and mapping of the various subterranean links between institutions and actors of capitalism, imperialism, and law. In effect, the central institutions and actors Baars chooses to illustrate the ways in which capitalism, imperialism, and law are tied together belong to the domain of International Criminal Law (ICL). Tracing developments from Nuremberg and Tokyo to the ICTY, Rwanda, the ICC and, finally, the more recent development of Corporate Social Responsibility, Baars’s analysis shakes up the dichotomies created by these historical processes. In other words, the structural persistence of the capitalist corporation since the 17th century explains why ICL and the liberal ideal that accompanies institutions of the international legal order is made to fail, or why it cannot fulfil its promise of bringing anyone to justice regardless of who they are. Instead, the corporation reveals a world where the legal form distinguishes between those who can avoid justice and responsibility, and those who do not have the means to contest that structural impunity.

Second-hand shoe circulations in Tunis

Research on the second-hand clothes trade has focused on global value chains and transnational circulations from the Global North to the Global South. This article instead investigates the circulation of a ubiquitous and highly popular second-hand commodity, namely shoes, in the Tunisian capital city Tunis. The second-hand materials – referred to as “fripe” in Tunisia – that arrive in the Tunis cargo port have been donated or discarded in their countries of origin and their commodity value is thus uncertain. In addition, second-hand shoes are officially banned from sale on the Tunisian market. In order to explain how fripe shoes are nevertheless transferred into new commodity situations in Tunis, this article hones in on processes of valuation at the urban scale. Three locations that feature prominently in the urban trajectory of second-hand shoes – a sorting factory, the wholesale quarter, and a specialised market street – are examined as distinct sites for valuation that enable the renewed circulation of fripe shoes in the city. Investigating valuation and circulation with an explicit focus on urban space demonstrates how such processes not only transform fripe objects in circulation, but are also constitutive of socio-spatial relations: At times, valuation becomes manifest in urban form, or situated urban change; At other times, fripe shoe circulations generate linkages and interdependencies that tie seemingly bounded sites of valuation to diverse actors and spaces across the city. As inherently contested commodity form, second-hand shoes thus provide insight into the complex social and political negotiations that define commodity circulation as both contingent and productive urban process.

Komodifikasi Dalam Pengembangan Tradisi Okokan Sebagai Atraksi Wisata di Desa Kediri, Tabanan

This study aims to determine the forms of commodification in the development of the Okokan tradition as a tourist attraction in Kediri Village, Tabanan. The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative data collection techniques through observation, interviews, documentation, and literature study using a ladder of citizen participation theory, product life cycle theory, and commodification theory. This study found that the level of community participation was in the form of consultation with participation between the community and the government still being passive. While the stages of developing the Okokan tradition are at a stage of growth, where the wider community is getting to know Okokan with promotions carried out and proven by the appearance of the Okokan at various events. The forms of commodification in the development of the Okokan tradition as tourist attractions include the processes of production, distribution, and consumption.
 Keywords: Community Participation, Okokan Tradition, Commodification, Kediri-Tabanan Village

Twitter, Book, Riot: Post-Digital Publishing against Race

This article considers today’s ‘post-digital’ political publishing through the material forms of an experimental book, The 2015 Baltimore Uprising: A Teen Epistolary. Anonymously published and devoid of all editorial text, the book is comprised entirely of some 650 screen-grabbed tweets, tweets posted by black Baltimore youth during the riots that ensued on the police killing of Freddie Gray. It is a crisis-ridden book, bearing the wrenching anti-black terror and rebellion of Baltimore 2015 into the horizon of publishing. Drawing on critical theories of books and digital media, and bringing Saidiya Hartman and Frank Wilderson to bear on issues of publishing, the article appraises seven aspects of this book’s materiality: its epistolary structure and rupture with the book-as-closure; its undoing of the commodity form of books; the ‘poor image’ of its visual scene; its recourse to facial redaction and voiding of narrative progression; and its destabilization of readers’ empathy.

Universal History and Immanent Critique in Anti-Oedipus

This essay considers Deleuze and Guattari’s paradoxical claim that Marx’s critique of political economy implies as a universal history derived from the singular features of capitalism. In this critique, capitalism is defined by the commodity form, as a relationship of economic equivalence that replaces the bonds of dependence underlying other social formations. By negating relations of kinship and caste, capitalism reveals, a contrario, the universal foundation of other societies. As the “negative of all social formations,” capitalism conditions a universal history, defined, retrospectively, from the singular standpoint of a society, based upon the negation of kinship and caste. In this universal history, moreover, the negation of capitalism is identified with the possibility of a new and equally singular form of society. In Anti-Oedipus, the latter is defined as a “schizophrenic” condition liberated from the commodity as well as from the bonds of dependence that constituted the universal foundation of earlier societies.

Commodification of Program Directors in the Digital Equipment Period: Case Study of Liputan 6 SCTV

This research attempts to explain the commodification of workers of a program director in the mass media industry, a case study on Liputan 6 SCTV. The researcher applies the concept of Media Political Economy theory, which is the focus of the research of workers' commodification. This research uses a critical paradigm with a qualitative approach and case study methods. This research revealed that SCTV Television Media continues to develop business and innovation to adapt to the development of the media and technology industry, including the application of digital equipment. In doing so, there is a commodification of workers in the coverage of SCTV 6 through the addition of workload and responsibilities or the provision of dual tasks and low wages. The forms of commodification that occur are body exploitation, economic exploitation, and ability exploitation. The Program Director accepts exploitation as natural for his profession because of the benefit principle process. With limited human resources utilized to be able to maximize the ability to be able to complete two or more jobs at one time with the reward not directly proportional to the workload provided.

CYBERNETIC FUNDAMENTALS FOR THE FORMATION OF PUBLIC GOVERNANCE SYSTEMS WITH MODERN SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

The theoretical and methodological principles of the formation of the system of state administration in the current conditions of transformation of Ukrainian society are generalized. It is established that to make effective management decisions it is necessary to develop an adequate model of information support on the basis of regulation of information exchange between subjects and objects of public administration. In modern conditions, the cybernetic approach, in which management processes are not separated from the processes of information processing, comes to the fore when investigating the problems of managing complex systems. Management efficiency is first and foremost a rational organization of information processes. There are three determining factors for the development of socio-economic systems: energy potential, information potential and synergism. From the standpoint of classical economic science, information is the specific commodity on which the creation of an information product or information service is based and acquires a commodity form, determined not by value, but by a monopoly price because of the balance of demand and the level of solvency of the buyer. As an element of the market mechanism and one of the most important factors in competition, information influences the determination of the optimal state of the national economy and its equilibrium. The main factors of formation of the information society as a strategic goal of the developed countries of the world, which consider the development of the information sphere as a guarantee of ensuring the competitiveness of the national economy, are analyzed. The management of socio-economic systems in the conditions of the information society should be aimed at the implementation of the information-technological model of development of Ukraine. It should be borne in mind that today the dominant role in development processes is played by positive feedback mechanisms, not by negative feedback mechanisms. Therefore, one of the main tasks of improving the development management system of Ukraine should be the informatization of socio-economic processes, as a basis for reforms in the national economy of Ukraine. Keywords : information, management, cybernetics, cybernetic system, information society.

CONSUMER WORTH AS A SYSTEM

Consumer worth is a system of relations between people and things regarding the correspondence of endowing things with certain functional properties (production) to their socially determined extraction (consumption). Consumer worth in a post-industrial society serves as an effective tool for determining the behavior of economic entities - people and their organizations - in the coordinates of the commodity economy, their orientation on the production of value on the principles of abstract equivalence, combinatorics and virtual calculus. Creation of new functional properties of things as a consumer values, their integration into society and building society for them pushes the boundaries of the commodity form of economy.

COST NATURE OF WAGE

The article is devoted to the theoretical study of the wage's nature value. Without touching upon the problem of the substance of value in the article the following questions are considered and the relevant conclusions are drawn.
 The value nature of wages has nominal (monetary) and real (natural) values.
 The starting and final point of the circuit of nominal (monetary) wages are money, or rather money as capital. Real (natural) wages in this movement is only a moment. The purpose of this circuit is to recover from the cash proceeds of the advanced monetary wage Fund.
 On the contrary, the source and end point of reproduction of the labor commodity form is its commodity-natural form. Money, more precisely, money capital is only a passing moment. The purpose of this cycle is the reproduction of the labor force in its natural and commercial form.
 The article shows that the purchase and sale of goods labor and its use has two forms of advance funds.
 On the part of the employer there is an advance of cash wages (prepayment), that is employees need an advance for the normal reproduction of the labor force before the end of the reproduction cycle of finished goods. On the part of the employee can observe the advance of labor before the end of the work specified in the employment contract.
 In General, the two-way advance of funds allows us to say that from the position of property rights, there is both the rent of labor and the rent of capital.
 Value as a substantive basis of wage date and wage labor has three forms of existence: 1) cash existence of money; 2) non-cash existence of cash prices and 3) the estimated value of goods.

What is reification in Georg Lukács’s early Marxist work?

After the initial formulation of the concept of reification in Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness (HCC, 1923), a series of confusing uses of it within critical theory have contributed to blurring its contours. In his pre-Marxist work, while analyzing the social rationalization process, Lukács located the modern form of mediation between subject and object and connected it with certain effects on the level of human consciousness and behavior. This very scheme is repeated and refined in HCC. In the Reification essay, Lukács uses the neo-Kantian concept of the “form of objectivity” to grasp the central constitutive form of all kinds of objects in bourgeois society. He interprets Marx’s commodity form as the “archetype” of all capitalist objectivity, which consists in converting qualitative contents into quantitative categories. Thus, the formal/calculative rationality of exchange penetrates all kinds of objectification in modern society. In Lukács’s view, only in its modern, universalized form does rational objectification bring about the phenomenon of reification, i.e. the de-historicization and political neutralization of the social relations that constitute the social system and the dominant forms of consciousness. This systemic, cultural, and political understanding of reification can prove to be fruitful in the context of contemporary discussions on democratic transformative praxis.

СПОЖИВЧА ОЦІНКА АСОРТИМЕНТУ ТА ЯКОСТІ ПРОДУКТІВ ДЛЯ ЕНТЕРАЛЬНОГО ХАРЧУВАННЯ

Мета. Проведення споживчої оцінки асортименту та якості продуктів дляентерального харчування із застосуванням методології товарознавства для розробленнянових видів продуктів з урахуванням специфіки метаболізму хворих.Методика. В основу методологічної бази дослідження покладено методи науковогопізнання, системного підходу та узагальнення. Для виявлення потреб та вимог споживачівдо продуктів для ентерального харчування використовували результати попередньогоопитування. Індекс задоволеності потреб споживачів визначали розрахунковим методом.Результати. Розроблено модель вимог споживачів до продуктів для ентеральногохарчування. Модель базується на вимогах до їх функціонального призначення, щовизначається направленістю продуктів Ергономічні вимоги визначаються розширеннямасортименту продуктів за рахунок використання різних товарних форм продуктів,сучасних видів паковання різної місткості, легкістю приготування, зручністю споживанняпродуктів; економічні - ціною, наявністю альтернативи існуючим продуктам дляможливості раціонального вибору за співвідношенням “ціна-якість”). Вимоги доінформативності є надбудовою моделі, які без базових вимог не створюють умов для їїефективного функціонування.На основі даних щодо рейтингу задоволеності та рейтингу важливості, розрахованоіндекс задоволеності потреб, за допомогою якого виявлено певні проблемні питання, якіпотребують вирішення задля максимізації задоволення потреб споживачів. Встановлено,що нагальним нині є питання зниження вартості продуктів, що може бути досягнутошляхом налагодження їх виробництва в Україні із використанням потенціалу вітчизняноїсировинної бази; розширення асортименту продуктів із урахуванням специфічних потребпевних категорій споживачів та використання різних товарних форм і паковальнихматеріалів.Наукова новизна. Запропоновано підходи до споживчої оцінки асортименту таякості продуктів для ентерального харчування із застосуванням методології товарознавства, які дали можливість визначити критерії їх споживних властивостей для розроблення нових видів продуктів з урахуванням специфіки метаболізму хворих.Практична значимість. Одержані результати були використані при розробцінових продуктів для ентерального харчування вітчизняного виробництва. Розробленіузагальнена модель вимог споживачів забезпечує виконання одного із базових принципівсистеми управління якістю – орієнтацію на споживача при формуванні асортиментупродуктів для ентерального харчування.

THE ROLE OF POLLUTANTS OF ATMOSPHERIC AIR AND PESTICIDES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIABETES MELLITUS TYPE 2

Introduction. Primary and secondary review of epidemiological studies on the importance of atmospheric air pollutants and chemical pesticides for the development of diabetes mellitus is presented. Material and methods. The article includes reviews using the ISI-Web of Science, EMBASE and PubMed database for systematic review and meta-analysis, and original studies from PubMed and RISC until March 2018 to assess the cause-effect relationships of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus with air pollutants and chemical pesticides. Results. Chemical pollution is considered as a new risk factor for insulin resistance and development of CD2, although the number of publications is limited, and the degree of validity of the findings is very wide. The evidence base for the effect on the incidence of diabetes type 2 is the most complete for organochlorine pesticides (DDT, DDE, HCH) and persistent organic pollutants, which are impurities of the commodity forms of individual preparations. It is supported by systematic reviews, meta-analysis, survey results, the content of active ingredients in biomaterial, risk calculations. Data for assessing the interrelationships of diabetes and glyphosates, chlorophenoxyacetates, pyrethroids and other pesticides widely used in the last two decades are insufficient for statistical generalizations. Intermediate position on the degree of evidence of diabetogenic properties occupies air pollutants (PM2,5, PM10, NO2). The role of the genetic component, obesity, metabolic disorders for the incidence of diabetes in conditions of technogenic pollution is discussed. Conclusion. Targeted epidemiological studies are needed on the environmental risks associated with the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus caused by air pollutants and pesticides used at this stage for the organization of preventive measures.

A study of community response and determination of priority areas for the application of integrated coconut agroindustry system through the revitalization of coconut plantation and local wisdom for the community of West Muna District

The purpose of this study was: a) to Analyze the policies of the West Muna Regency government towards the development of integrated coconut agroindustry; b). Establish the priority of the coconut plantation revitalization area and the development of integrated coconut agroindustry and; c) Analyzing the response of coconut farmers to efforts to develop and manage coconut trees by implementing integrated coconut agroindustry systems. The study method used was the Focus Group Discussion and the Exponential Comparative Method. The results of the study shown that the policy of the West Muna Regency government regarding land use has existed. But it has not been focused and has not been realized in the form of commodity zoning designed to the integrated development of agro-industry with the Farmer's positive response as evidenced by the proportion of coconut farmers who agree and strongly agree to the revitalization of the coconut. Plantations and the development of integrated coconut agroindustry supported by several traditional uses of coconut plants in the form of local wisdom such as utilization coconut leaves in traditional wedding ceremonies and various products including rice steamer (Muna regional language called KANTOFI).

Taboo news about Sweden: the transnational assemblage of a racialized spatial imaginary

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the construction of Sweden as a racialised spatial imaginary in the emerging transnational networks of far-right media production. Departing from President Donald Trump’s widely reported remarks, in 2017, as to “what happened last night in Sweden”, it examines the racializing discourses through which Sweden is constructed as a dark future to be averted; a failed social experiment in immigration and multiculturalism symbolised by the “no-go zones” held to be dotted, yet denied, in its major cities. While the symbolic production of “problem areas” is a familiar dimension of the politics of immigration, the paper explores why Sweden-as-nation is so insistently and intimately associated with its putative no-go zones in what are termed the “revenge fantasies” of the far-right. Further, it argues that these modes of representation cannot be understood without examining the value of Sweden as a news commodity in the expansive far-right media environment.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis offers the idea of “taboo news” to conceptualise putatively “alternative” news about Sweden which is confirmed through its denial in the mainstream.FindingsIt argues that examining the increasing importance of “taboo news” as a commodity form must be integrated into a reading of how these racializing narratives are produced and circulated.Originality/valueIn so doing, it examines the shaping of this racialised imaginary as a digital assemblage taking shape as a commodity in a newly emerging and under-researched field of communicative and ideological action.

Added metals in non-ferrous metallurgy of Perm Cis-Urals: commodity form and possible sources of incoming

Added metals in non-ferrous metallurgy of Perm Cis-Urals: commodity form and possible sources of incoming

STUDY OF MAIN QUALITY AND SAFETY PARAMETERS OF STRUCTURED OLIVES AND THEIR CHANGE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS

Today scientific-practical bases of technologies of structured food products allow to create a principally new segment of products at the food market. Introduction of new principles of processing raw materials and ingredients, practical production methods allows to get food products with a new commodity and consumption form. There were studied technological aspects of producing structured food products of a round form on the example of the structured olive technology. Experimental studies and practical achievements in structuring (capsulation) allowed to create a product-analogue with quality and safety parameters, maximally approximated to the natural product. Principles of extruding formation with the synchronous combination of principles of external gel-creation allow to get a three-phase structure of a product (skin, internal content, filler), high organoleptic indices and target food value. At the same time the developed technology allows to involve in the technological process low-value parts of an olive-fruit and raw materials with decreased commodity-technological properties. In its turn, it allows to increase profitability indices and economic capacity of the new technology.

Os Extremos Da Mercantilização Da Vida Social Na Contemporaneidade Do Capitalismo:

No presente trabalho, busca-se situar a problemática marxiana do fetichismo da forma-mercadoria no contexto contemporâneo do capitalismo. Nossa proposta é a de reivindicar, por um lado, a tese segundoa qual é da natureza mesma da forma-mercadoria manifestar na superfície das relações cotidianas a personificação das coisas e a reificação das pessoas. Por outro lado, pretendemos situar que atualmente a expansão das relações de troca mercantis reproduzem o recrudescimento do fetichismo inscrito nessa inversão, tornando cada vez maior a submissão das pessoas aos imperativos da forma-mercadoria do produto do trabalho humano. Na conclusão, pretendemos abordar as possíveis tendências econômicas e políticas abertas ao Brasil, no que tange ao rebatimento das inovações tecnológicas estruturadas em nome da chamada quarta revolução industrial ou indústria 4.0.

ABOUT CAPITAL TURNOVER AND THE METHODOLOGY OF ITS ANALYSIS

Capital turnover is constantly repeating process of capital transformation from one to another form and turning it in its initial form. This process comprises capital advance for acquisition of production means and manpower, the use of the resources in the production of finished goods, sale of finished goods, and the return of capital in its original form.We will study the capital turnover with view of the stages of its movement. During the first stage, the capital is transformed from monetary into product form, as production means (long-term tangible assets and material resources) and manpower that are required for the enterprise’s business. The second stage – the stage of the production process, capital is transformed from one commodity form (production resources) in another commodity form (finished goods). During the third stage, the capital is transformed from commodity to monetary form, i.e. it recovers its original form.The issue of capital turnover is topical at all phases and stages of enterprise’s development. The acceleration of capital turnover results in release of capital embodied in different resources that can be advanced in appropriate activities, thus to increase the enterprise’s gains, and therefore – the capital return. The deceleration of capital turnover results in shortage of means required for the normal course of the enterprise’s business, and in its turn the enterprise is thus forced to raise additional funds in order to operate. This increases the share of borrowings and the level of financial risk the enterprise is exposed to.The interest to capital turnover is due to the insufficient understanding of the importance of this issue both for the successful and efficient development of enterprises’ business, as well as for the prosperity of economy as a whole. This is one of the most important issues – driver of business and economy, which is topical, irrespective of the type of ownership of the production means, the organization of the economy and the specific public and political environment. As a result of the insufficient understanding of the importance and significance of capital turnover, some thoughts exist that these are obsolete, archaic and all but unnecessary methodologies for analysis of capital turnover in the conditions of market competition.Capital turnover may be analyzed and assessed from different points of view. For example: according to the sources of its formation (equity and borrowings); according to the duration of capital involvement in the enterprise’s turnover (fixed capital and short-term borrowings); according to the resources in which the equity is embodied (share equity and working equity), etc.The object studied in this publication is the capital turnover of enterprises with industrial principal business, and the subject matter of the study covers the methodology for analysis of equity turnover with view of the resources it is embodied in.The aim of this publication is to reach a methodology for analysis and assessment of equity turnover, which is feasible for the economic practice and useful for the industrial enterprises’ management to make proper and reasonable decisions for the business development in operational and strategic aspect.

Integrated commodities in the digital economy

At the heart of the digital economy is the willful imposition of a powerful combination of hardware and software, time and data, surveillance, prediction and behavourial control. This article argues that a central ambition of digital society has been the pursuit of an integrated commodity form. The novelty of this integrated commodity stems not only from the convergence of production and consumption but also from the subsumption of sociability itself. As a consequence, we are required to consider all social actions within digital society as being transactions enshrined within an economy of integrated markets. Our acceptance of these new commodity relations is paving the way for a ‘great integration’ of simultaneous transactions across different social domains. Borrowing from Karl Polanyi’s account of an earlier transformation, this article will propose that the prerequisites of digital society and the integrated commodity form have been established through the constitution of a series of ‘fictitious commodities’.