History Of Capitalism Research Articles

The Long Night

The Long Night Kathryn Savage (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Can healthy fruits and vegetables grow on polluted soil? "The Long Night," from Kathryn Savage's forthcoming Groundglass: An Essay, confronts the transgressions of US Superfund sites and brownfields against land, groundwater, neighborhoods, and people. The harm dragged on, spilled, emptied, but first day slipped into humid night and the seventy-two-car freight train moved northeast from North Dakota carrying nearly eight million liters of shale oil up into Canada, where the driver stopped for the night to rest in town, where all the rail yard attendants left the yard to sleep, where later, the unsecured tank cars moved as if waking, breached and derailed and exploded, killing forty-seven people in Lac-Mégantic. It was supposed to be just a stopover for the eight million liters of shale oil that night; the town, by then, was used to trains hauling Bakken Formation crude, the transitory constancy and dull rumblings. It was [End Page 10] Saturday, around one in the morning in the city of nearly six thousand. Music from downtown pubs lifting over those who were still out, bare-armed and smoking and dancing. The disaster destroyed more than thirty buildings. Lac-Mégantic decided to flatten the still-contaminated downtown, which had continued to soak oil after the crash: six million liters, what hadn't gone up in flames. Wrecked but not destroyed, some of the Lac-Mégantic businesses impacted by proximity to the crash opened their doors for the eight hours before they were set to be flattened. Some chose to visit sections of their downtown, see shop owners they were on friendly terms with, in a gesture of collective mourning. Other gestures like this would come later: galleries, on the anniversary, showed floor-to-ceiling framed photographs of the town and its citizens before the derailment. There were consequences of trauma. From a mental health study conducted in town after the crash: 25 percent of the children surveyed showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and the rate among adults was 50 percent; 39 percent of teenagers had suicidal thoughts, a rate twice the Quebec average. Solidarity and the pain of grief rose up in the days and months and years after the town was thrust into immediate and communal violence. A plurality of death, night of terror, a cruel night. People who loved each other and loved this place absorbed all that they had so suddenly lost together. This wasn't any grief; it was oil grief; it was capital grief. In their night sky installation, Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium, London-based artists Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway projected starlight on the inner sphere of a dome. They placed beanbags underneath, where viewers could lean back and look up. The constellations did not reflect suns or planets but instead publicly traded companies: a computer program turned the live financial activity of the world's stock exchanges into stars. The market slumped and the bright lights faded; a good day of trading, and the stars shined brightly. When I look up at night I see stars and planets, airplanes and satellites, astral bodies and industry; sometimes I cannot tell the real from the manufactured. The artists' installation imitates the co-opting of nature for corporate financial gain, critiquing the long capitalist history of colonizing and transgressing people and environments. The night sky installation hides the market that controls the sky. It performs an obfuscation. After the train derailment, three men sat trial—a train driver and engineer, a man in charge of rail circulation, and a manager of train operations—but not railway executives. It was wrong that they were the only ones to sit trial, and incomplete. How many lines of blame should be followed like track after such a violence? How wide is the reach of this disaster? My friend Gudrun says, while we walk our dogs through our neighborhood, "It's the same violence here. Just a matter of time before one of these trains derails." Around us, tankers full of liquified petroleum gas rumble past. The black cylinders are sleek as stones. There are fifty...

Історія в Українському таємному університеті (1921–1925 рр.)

The article considers and analyzes the origin and the activity of Ukrainian Secret University (USU) in Lviv through 1919–1925 and presents its significance for the development of Ukrainian national culture after the defeat of the Ukrainian liberation struggle in 1917–1921. Special attention focused on the reconstruction of historical studies at this university. General features of the USU history represented today in a number of essays and articles wrote by Ukrainian authors. This article offers new facts about the activities of USU teachers from unpublished materials of historians Myron Korduba and Ivan Krypiakevych, in particular about the organization and conduct the historical studies, conditions of teaching and learning. USU was established in Lviv in 1919 after the capture of the city and Eastern Galicia by Polish troops as a result of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918–1919 and the Polish administration introduction there. The defeat of the Ukrainian national liberation movement led to a policy of repression and persecution by the Polish authorities. There was a threat of liquidation the Ukrainian national life due to the lack of opportunities for national professionals training. The Ukrainian intelligentsia sought to use the organizational and cultural-scientific potential accumulated in the previous period to preserve and develop national culture and education, contrary to the prohibitions of the Polish administration. In 1919, Ukrainian scientists, united in the Shevchenko Scientific Society and with the support of leading Galician politicians, created “university courses”, which in 1921 were transformed into a Ukrainian university. Under the conditions of bans and persecution by the Polish authorities, the activities of the university took place semi-legally, and the institution itself in journalism and literature was soon called a “secret university”. Despite the persecution and repression USU went down in history as a powerful factor in the consolidation and mobilization of Ukrainian society after the defeats in the struggle for national statehood. During the existence of UTU more than 1,300 students studied there, and 55 professors and associate professors taught them. The Faculty of Philosophy of USU managed to create a “history department”, which in different years studied from 20 to 50 students, and teaching was conducted by famous Ukrainian historians Myron Korduba, Ivan Krypiakevych and some others. The article lists the subjects they taught, as well as the high level of history teaching. In particular, for the first time in Ukrainian historiography, the courses “Methodology of History” by M. Korduba, “Ukrainian Historiography” and “History of the Ukrainian State of the XVII-XVIII centuries” by I. Krypyakevych were read and later published here. The Polish authorities created constant obstacles for the work of USU and historians, used attacks, pogroms and arrests of participants, did not allow the creation of scientific societies, in particular the Ukrainian Historical Society in 1924. Despite the generally modest results of the Ukrainian Secret University in Lviv in 1919–1925, it was noted that what was done by the efforts of USU teachers in the scientific and didactic spheres was worthy of respect. The creation of the national higher school foundations in the conditions of the defeat of the national-state building and in spite of the power of the occupying state was a bright manifestation of the high patriotic consciousness and moral qualities of the Ukrainian Galician intelligentsia. The responsible attitude of the representatives of Ukrainian historical science to the fulfillment of their civic and professional duty deserves special mention. They were able to create the professional historical studies, through which many figures of national science and culture have passed. Historians who have made a great contribution to the preservation of the national consciousness and culture of the Ukrainian population of Galicia in the unfavorable conditions of the defeat of the liberation struggle, have managed to preserve and later increase the historical capital of national history. They continued to build a network of national public scientific, cultural, and educational organizations and societies in Poland, which replaced state institutions and thus ensured the further development of the Ukrainian cause.

The dangerous intensifications of surplus alienation, or why platform capitalism challenges the (more-than-)human

This response gratefully acknowledges and engages with the commentaries on my article ‘The nonhuman turn: Critical reflections on alienation, entanglement and nature under capitalism’. It highlights the importance of further defining key concepts like anthropocentrism, ‘the human’, more-than-life and others in discussions of the more-than-human. It challenges desires for ‘returning’ to idealised forms of relationality or animism or the idea that historical, ‘basic alienation’ between humans and the rest of nature rests on some notion of ‘The Fall’. Overall, it aims to reemphasize one of the core arguments in the original article, namely the dangerous intensifications of historical capitalism, how this is critical for both non-human turn scholars and their critics and how this may provide common ground for opening up space for postcapitalism. Central to this argument is a further elaboration of the dangers of intensified surplus alienation due to contemporary platform capitalism for the (more-than)human but also, more specifically, for academic exchange.

Estate landscapes in Gelderland

The Province of Gelderland has long boasted a large number of country houses and landed estates, which over time coalesced into estate landscapes around the historical capitals of the Duchy of Guelders quarters of Nijmegen, Arnhem and Zutphen.
 Rapidly increasing urbanization from the end of the nineteenth century onwards threatened the coherence and accessibility of these landscapes. Gelderland’s largest cities, Arnhem and Nijmegen, watched in dismay as many country houses and landed estates fell victim to subdivision and development. In response they started to buy up portions of that estate landscape to ensure that they would remain available to city dwellers. In addition, the ‘safety net’ provided by newly established nature and landscape organizations, in particular Natuurmonumenten and Geldersch Landschap & Kasteelen, also contributed to preservation and permanent accessibility by offering landed families the opportunity to keep their estate intact, albeit no longer under their ownership.
 Similar motives – the need to preserve attractive, accessible walking areas for the increasingly urbanized society – underpinned the government’s introduction of the Nature Conservation Act in 1928. The Act was invoked more frequently in Gelderland than in any other province. It promoted the opening up of private properties as well as the preservation of the cultural value of the kind of ‘natural beauty’ to be found on landed estates.
 After the Second World War, in addition to resorting to the Nature Conservation Act, the owners of country houses and landed estates could avail themselves of an increasing variety of grants aimed at preserving (publicly accessible) nature, landscape and heritage, although the emphasis was firmly on nature. Estate landscapes like the Veluwezoom and the County of Zutphen were eventually safeguarded by a patchwork of different government regulations.
 In the twenty-first century, government policy shifted towards providing financial support for both public and private contributions to nature, landscape and heritage by country houses and landed estates. This in turn has stimulated interest in estate landscapes. Instead of individual heritage-listed estates, the focus is now on areas with multiple country house and landed estates where there are spatial tasks waiting to be fulfilled: not just the preservation of natural beauty for outdoor recreation, but also spatial articulation, climate change adaptation, increased biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. Interest in design, both past and present, has burgeoned thanks to this development.

Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World, LiamCamplingAlejandroColásLondon & New York: Verso. 2021. pp. xiv + 418. £20/$29.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781784785239

Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World, LiamCamplingAlejandroColásLondon & New York: Verso. 2021. pp. xiv + 418. £20/$29.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781784785239

Onward To Liberation!—Samir Amin and the Study of World Historical Capitalism

This article presents theoretical and methodological insights of world-systems analysis via the works of Samir Amin and his major interlocuteurs. It is argued that Samir Amin was central to sparking the study of world historical analysis, and offered unique contributions to the discussions that emerged. It is demonstrated that this is due to Samir Amin’s ability to balance structure, specificity, and historical contingency, as well as his enduring commitment to human liberation.

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Uneven time-space of unpaid reproductive work: an intersectional analysis of the Balearic Islands

This paper aims to examine the relationship between social reproduction and the production of space and, more specifically, the role of unpaid reproductive work in the unequal production of urban space. Although many studies have addressed the social dimension of space in cities, there nevertheless remains a lack of theory relating to the production of space through the oppression and privilege associated, with or caused by, the relations of social reproduction. With the aim of helping to fill this gap, the spatiality of unpaid reproductive work was studied through intersectional analysis. This was done by exploring the spatial practice of the temporary load of unpaid reproductive work as an element responsible for inequality and by relating this to the dimensions of: 1) space and time, and 2) class, sex and age. This intersectional approach allowed us to analyse inequalities in social reproduction and identify spaces of privilege and spaces of oppression in terms of unpaid reproductive work. The study focused on the Balearic Islands and used the latest Time Use Survey (TUS) available in Spain. It is a dialogue between critical urban geography, urban sociology and feminist theory, which makes it possible to visualise the power relations and urban inequality that have derived from the sexual division of labour within the logic of historical capitalism.

The concept of creating an ethnographic miniature park “Armenia: historical capitals and masterpieces of architecture” in Armavir, Russian Federation

Today, the problem of preserving the huge material and intangible cultural heritage is very relevant in general, and for the Armenian people in particular. One of the problem solutions is the creation of the national ethnographic park “Armenia of all times” with the “Pan-Armenian Center for Armenian studies” in its structure, a network of regional ethnographic miniature parks in the territory of the Republic of Armenia, as well as abroad - in the countries with a significant Armenian Diaspora. The exposition of these parks can present the most significant objects of architectural and cultural heritage in miniature, located both on the territory of the Republic of Armenia as well abroad and created by the Armenian architects.Based on the research and design works carried out, the territory for the ethnographic miniature park “Armenia: historical capitals and masterpieces of architecture” creation in the city of Armavir in the Russian Federation was selected as an example. The conceptual proposals have been submitted, and a draft architectural layout solution was designed. 13 historical Armenian capitals, as well as the models of Armenian architectural monuments of great cultural and historical value, can be placed and displayed in miniature on the selected territory.

From democracy at others’ expense to externalization at democracy’s expense: Property-based personhood and citizenship struggles in organized and flexible capitalism

This contribution investigates the anthropological foundations of European democracies’ continuous entanglement with economic and military expansionism and a hierarchical separation between public and private spheres, both of which have enabled the appropriation of nature and others’ labour as property on which citizens’ abstract personhood could be founded. Drawing on an argument made by David Graeber, it is suggested that modern European history can be interpreted as a process of the ‘generalization of avoidance’, in which such abstract, property-based forms of personhood, which were initially what defined the superior party in relations of hierarchy, came to be a model for the figures of market participant and citizen within the spheres of formal equal exchange of economy and politics. From this perspective, and building on an account of different stages of capitalist history as ‘subjectivation regimes’, the article then analyses the transition from the ‘exclusive democracy’ of post-war organized capitalism in Western Europe, in which citizens’ entitlement, through the collective guarantees of ‘social property’ (Castel), increasingly allowed individualized competitive practices of status attainment and gave rise to individualist movements for extended citizenship, to current-day flexible capitalism. This regime, seizing on those calls and instrumentalizing the desires for competitive status consumption, has effected a broad restructuring of the social as a unified field of competition in which new hierarchies and inequalities materialize in global chains of appropriation, causing a ‘dividual’ fragmentation of property-based personhood and generating calls for responsible citizenship as an inherent counter-movement. In conclusion, it is suggested that anthropologists have much to contribute to investigating the possibility of democratic, post-capitalist ‘anthropologies of degrowth’.

Methodology for compiling the ethnographic miniature parks’ exhibits nomenclature of the Armenian nation

The method of compiling the ethnographic miniature parks’ exhibits nomenclature of the Armenian people is proposed. Brief information about the historical Armenian capitals, which are included in the main exhibition basis, is presented. For each of the historical capitals, on the basis of the conducted research, the layout 3D visualizations, which will be presented in the form of architectural model-exhibits in the parks, have been developed by the authors. The virtual reconstruction of certain significant objects of historical and architectural heritage located both on the territory of Armenia and abroad, which are proposed to be included in the exposition, has also been carried out.

Os ciclos sistêmicos de acumulação e o continente africano: uma análise sobre o comércio de escravos na economia-mundo capitalista

A nossa pesquisa possui dois objetivos. O Primeiro objetivo de nosso trabalho é modesto, o segundo é ambicioso. O objetivo modesto será percorrer alguns caminhos conceituais para compreendermos a lógica estrutural da acumulação e expansão financeira do capitalismo histórico. O objetivo ambicioso será, por algumas vezes, desviar de nosso itinerário por atalhos da economia de mercado dos séculos da dominação do comércio escravagista africano em relação à economia-mundo. Nesses longos séculos, a apropriação impelida ao continente africano desempenhou diferentes formas de dominação por entre os ciclos de acumulação do capital, destinando os excedentes da espoliação das produções mercantis do tráfico de escravos, dessas terras longínquas, aos grandes centros do sistema hegemônico de cada época. Nesse contexto, a estrada que nos conduz pelos ciclos sistêmicos de acumulação de capital parece ser pavimentada com a inserção do continente africano na economia mundo capitalista. Mas, principalmente, gostaríamos de percorrer os caminhos sobre as grandes correntes da evolução histórica que conduziu a África até meados do século XIX, no bojo do moderno sistema-mundo capitalista, segundo a tese de que o tráfico de escravos foi tanto consequência quanto elemento chave da edificação da economia capitalista, iniciada em 1450, pelos europeus.

Mining and historical capitalism

Books reviewed: Horacio Machado Aráoz, Mineração, genealogia do desastre. São Paulo: Editora Elefante, 2020; Martín Arboleda, Planetary Mine: Territories of Extraction under Late Capitalism. London: Verso, 2020

MUSEUMS IN KYIV (1830'S - 1919): FORMATION, DEVELOPMENT, TRANSFORMATION DURING THE REVOLUTION

The article analyzes the formation and development of Kyiv museums during the imperial period, as well as the transformations, that took place in this field during the revolutionary period (1917 - 1919). The article deals with the history of museums through the prism of analyzing the contribution of central and local authorities to the development and further activities of museum institutions. The influence of the state authorities and the Ukrainian national movement on the development of museums is considered in the example of the largest Kyiv museums. Museums have played an essential role in the formation of collective memory, memory policy, the nation-building processes et cetera. During the study period in European countries, national museums were opened. As P. Aronsson and G. Elgenius mentioned, «The national museum is thus a knowledge-based socio-political institution, with corresponding collections and displays that ultimately claim, articulate and represent dominant national values and myths». This article examines the potential of Kyiv museum institutions to become Ukrainian national museums. Kyiv during the imperial period was an important centre of Russian culture and power. For imperial authorities, Kyiv was the administrative centre of the Southwestern region, the city from which Christianity spread, the centre of Russification of Ukrainian territory et cetera. At the same time, Kyiv was the centre of the Ukrainian movement in the Russian Empire. The Ukrainian activists could perceive this city in a completely different way – as a historic capital. For the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the Russian Empire, museum institutions had great potential in the study of the history and culture of Ukrainian lands. The first museums in Kyiv were opened at St. Volodymyr University in the 1830s. The most significant museums in the city were the Church-Archeological Museum at the Kyiv Theological Academy and the Kyiv City (Art, Industrial and Scientific) Museum There was no purposeful state museum policy in the Russian Empire. At the same time, the imperial and local authorities had an influence on the creation of museum institutions and their further development (mostly through funding). From the point of view of imperial power, which acted in a particular paradigm of non-recognition of Ukrainians as a separate people, Kyiv museums were supposed to be “Russian”, followed by, or should be followed by, authorities of all levels. However, supporters of the Ukrainian national movement, occupying official positions, used the museums for their purposes, finding opportunities to involve local authorities and patrons. The city's museums operated under different signage, but they had the potential to become Ukrainian national museums, most of all the Kyiv City Museum. This museum has evolved accordingly, thanks to scholars associated with it. In 1917 - 1919 the situation in the city changed. Ukrainian state entities - the UNR and the Ukrainian state, of course, had completely different views on the development of the Ukrainian nation and sought to implement the "Ukrainian project" by creating their state. History and culture were now an essential lever of legitimizing the new government, which, thanks to the influence of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, understood the possibilities of the museum industry. The Ukrainian National Museum had a crucial role in this process. There was no doubt that it should be based in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

Subjectivising academics: the ranking apparatus, social transformation, and a 'crisis of subjectivity'

By positioning academic rankings as the telos of audit culture, the paper tries to demonstrate the transformative political reason that is immanent to the emergence of rankings. Given the imperatives in historical capitalism both to govern and to accumulate, rankings are analysed as an apparatus of social transformation for the production of more governable subjectivities for capital. The paper presents how rankings operate as one of the material-semiotic-affective apparatuses of capitalist governmentality, and how that apparatus both is constituted as a system of objects and in turn constitutes subjects of control. Perhaps most significantly, by understanding rankings simultaneously as ‘semiologies of signification’ and ‘asignifying semiotics’, a dialectical space of struggle over subjectivity production can be realised and a praxis of counter-conduct and resistance be conceived.

Two Theoretical Resources for the Nineteenth Century China’s Incorporation Process : A Strategy for Understanding China’s Capitalist Transition

In light of the encroachment of Western powers and a sharp decline of the self-sustained Qing Empire, prominent accounts of China’s historical capitalism have tended to mark 19th-century China as a decline. In contrast to the dominant view that sees 19th-century China as a dark age, world-systems scholars, implicitly or explicitly, conceive a basic premise that 19th-century China’s incorporation process can be understood as not China’s decline but China’s transition to capitalism. To that end, I identify some particularly salient problems of China’s incorporation studies in the past. To present a way for overcoming the theoretical problems of past incorporation studies, I explicate ideas of Immanuel Wallerstein’s and Giovanni Arrighi on China’s incorporation process and how their ideas cast a fresh light on the understanding of 19th-century China in transition from a precapitalist economy to a capitalist economy for dynamism. This paper would help to rethink the 19th-century Chinese history and to figure out how the 19th-century global connectivity between China and the capitalist world economy has paves the way for China’s new developmental path.

The political technology of the ‘Camp’ in historical capitalism

So much of what we experience in neoliberal capitalism resembles the operation of the camp. How then can we understand the camp as a political technology of labour control recurrent in historical capitalism, and why would we want to? Driven by the perennial imperatives to govern (Foucault) and to accumulate (Marx), the camp as a modulation of social control allows us to explore the role of ‘meta-disciplinary’ technique in the ‘real subsumption of labour’. The aims here are (1) to question the sanguine expectations of a liberal pastorate that is inextricable from the needs of capital; (2) to articulate the ‘techniques of domination’ experienced in the idiom of neoliberal capitalism; and (3) to find inspiration for corresponding counter-conducts and ‘techniques of the self’. This article offers a kind of historical archaeology of ‘meta-disciplinary’ technique by resuscitating Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, a surprisingly rich source of insight into the operations of the camp modulation and the counter-conducts it engenders. The analysis to follow works in the space between Marxian and Foucauldian political thought opened up by the new materialisms, and draws upon the recent works of Lordon, Lazzarato, Negri, inter alia, that are currently enriching critical theory.

The European Union building from Public Choice to Ordo, Röpke’s and Einaudi’s ideas of Europe

The first part the article deals with the Public Choice approach to the European Union as a club of sovereign states that decide to share, without losing sovereignty, some segment of their public goods and related power under the subsidiarity principle. It also deals with Ordo, Röpke’s and Einaudi’s liberal third way between historical capitalism and a competitive market economy, with – at its centre – the people and the civitas humana. The second part presents the dualistic performances of the main countries of the euro area, building on the analysis of eight parameters for the period 2013–18, and discusses the incompleteness of the institutional construct of the European Union. The third part discusses potential solutions to these problems in the light of Ordo, Einaudi’s and Röpke’s ideas of Europe.

The problem of virtual reconstructions of “places of commemoration” in light of the spatial cultural turn

This article examines the problem of historical-cultural significance of virtual reconstructions of places of commemoration and creation of digital museums in the context of spatial turn in cultural sciences. &amp;ldquo;Places of commemoration&amp;rdquo; are viewed not only as the objects of virtual reconstruction, but also as the sources of social constructs and social practices, as the elements of cultural capital of the city. In this vein, the projects of digital museums can be viewed as the program for creation of commemorative environment, which in turn, contributes to formation and development of the sense of solidarity in the society. An interdisciplinary approach is realized through the use of methodology of historical and culturological studies, with consideration of the so-called spatial turn in cultural sciences, as well as technologies of virtual design and mathematical modeling. Formation of commemorative environment and civil identity is intensified by any form of reference (including virtual space) to the places of commemoration as to the landmarks of social memory and tradition, key components of historical capital of the city. The projects of virtual reconstruction (creation of digital museum) of memorial places using software platforms with an open code OpenSimulator should be perceived as &amp;ldquo;augmented reality&amp;rdquo; of historical capital of the city.

Comparando e integrando: entre o crescimento econômico, a história global e a grande divergência

O artigo discute o método comparativo-integrativo como ferramenta de análise de estudiosos – tais como Kenneth Pomeranz, André Gunder Frank, Jack Goldstone e John M. Hobson – ligados à perspectiva da Grande Divergência. Esses historiadores, chamados de revisionistas, criticam noções que reputam eurocêntricas sobre o crescimento econômico global entre os anos 1400 e 1800, aproximadamente. Com a comparação e a integração, os revisionistas escrutinaram os fatores holísticos que favoreceram o desenvolvimento do capitalismo histórico, apontando uma perspectiva que permite vislumbrar uma história global com amplas integrações no mundo afro-euro-asiático antes do capitalismo globalizante dos séculos XIX e XXI. Como conclusão, pode-se entender que o desenvolvimento do capitalismo histórico a partir do longo século XVI integrou múltiplos espaços do mundo afro-euro-asiático, que se condicionaram mutuamente, num processo sempre crescente de globalização das relações econômicas e de desenvolvimento de amplas redes comerciais.