Mexican Capitalism Research Articles

Book review: States, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in Mexico and Turkey, by Thomas Marois

Thomas Marois States, Banks and Crisis: Emerging Finance Capitalism in Mexico and Turkey, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2012; 263pp; 9780857938572, 70 [pounds sterling] (hbk), 29.95 [pounds sterling] (pbk) The study of banking and finance in developing countries has historically been dominated by mainstream economists working within a neoclassical approach, and preoccupied with the financial sector's capacity to mobilise savings for the development of a 'modern', i.e. capitalist, economy. In the neoliberal era, this approach has focused on issues such as privatisation, the development of financial markets, and the management of financial liberalisation, both domestic and international. Against this background, Marois's study of banking and finance in Mexico and Turkey provides an excellent corrective, for be combines a detailed knowledge of recent developments in the two countries with an original critical perspective on the neoliberal promotion of 'emerging economies' and their incorporation into global finance. The first two chapters set out his general argument about emerging finance capitalism (hereafter EFC), and Chapter 3 gives historical background on the two countries studied. Chapters 4 and 5 then look at the transformation of banking and the wider economy in the 1980s and 1990s in each country, leading up to the crises of 1994 (Mexico) and 2000 (Turkey). Chapters 6 and 7 then analyse in detail the emergence of a distinctive finance capitalism in each country thereafter, while Chapter 8 then summarises the research and briefly proposes alternative courses of action aimed at subordinating finance once more to social goals. Anyone looking to understand the changes in Mexican and Turkish capitalism over recent decades will find here an account that, while focused on banks and financial capital, situates them fully in the wider context of neoliberal transformations. But States, Banks and Crisis is also important for the whole political economy community, for Marois's account offers the prospect of resolving many of the obstacles that we have faced during the long retreat of the left. First of all there is the question of the state and its relation to capital and to markets. While it has happily become commonplace in Marxism to reject mainstream analyses that counterpose states and markets, the question of how their relationship is to be specified has been strongly contested. Many of us have remained preoccupied with the rights and wrongs of major contributors on this issue such as Gramsci and Poulantzas, but Marois does not get bogged down in such arguments, focusing instead on what we can call the historical sociology of the state: the investigation of institutional change in the ways in which states serve the interests of capital. Without denying the need for theoretical debate, he does not feel it necessary to take sides over concepts such as 'relative autonomy' or 'depoliticisation'. The value of his approach is evident in his treatment of bank ownership, where he shows that the role of state ownership during the period under study signals a choice of nationally appropriate political strategy for financial capital, rather than a systemic challenge to it. Second, this book signals, surely, the end of the debate over whether globalisation has taken place. Marois shows the fundamental unity, in discourse and in practice, that has been forged between 'the national' and 'the global': financial sectors and states (here in the Turkish and Mexican cases) have conjoined an increasingly imperative global requirement to allow the free movement of capital and commodities to the specific national circumstances generated by long-run uneven capitalist development. …

Fajitasand the Failure of Refrigerated Meatpacking in Mexico: Consumer Culture and Porfirian Capitalism

Tourists who visit a Mexican market to observe a butcher at work will readily notice the difference between the material cultures of meat in Mexico and the United States. Instead of thick, neatly cut steaks, wrapped in clear plastic, they will find butterflied strips of meat, corresponding to no known part of a cow, sawed with ragged edges but remarkable thinness, and hung on hooks and rods. Thick slabs calledsuaderomight be steak except for the checkerboards carved across the front, and seemingly random chunks ofretazocomplete the baroque display of craftsmanship. Although of little use in making Anglo-American roasts or steaks, these cuts are ideal for such delicacies ascarne asada(grilled meat) andmole de olla(chili pepper stew). Indeed, fajitas—skirt steak pounded thin and marinated, then seared quickly on a hot fire, and served with salsa and fresh tortillas— are nothing more than a Tex-Mex version of the standard method of cooking and eating beef in Mexico. Moreover, the differences between U.S. supermarket meat counters and Mexican artisanal market displays extend beyond national culinary preferences to reflect the historical growth of industrial supply chains. Indeed, meat provides a case study demonstrating the significance of consumer culture in shaping the development of Mexican capitalism during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911).

Ethnicity and community in Oaxaca: Nursery, hospital, and retirement home1

Cook, Scott and Leigh Binford. Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. xix + 316 pp. including 15 black‐and‐white illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $37.50 cloth. Nader, Laura. Harmony and Ideology: Justice and Control in a Zapotec Mountain Village. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. xxiii + 322 pp. including photos, bibliography, and index. $37.50 cloth. Stephen, Lynn. Zapotec Women. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991. xiii + 316pp. including photos, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $ 14.95 paper.

Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. SCOTT COOK and LEIGH BINFORD

Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. SCOTT COOK and LEIGH BINFORD

Distorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy. David BarkinObliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. Scott Cook , Leigh Binford

Previous articleNext article No AccessReviewsDistorted Development: Mexico in the World Economy. David Barkin Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism. Scott Cook , Leigh Binford Peter GregoryPeter Gregory Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Economic Development and Cultural Change Volume 42, Number 1Oct., 1993 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/452075 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1993 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism:Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism.

Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism:Obliging Need: Rural Petty Industry in Mexican Capitalism.

Obliging need: rural petty industry in Mexican capitalism

Obliging need: rural petty industry in Mexican capitalism

Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism. Scott Cook

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews and NotesZapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism. Scott Cook Robert S. SantleyRobert S. Santley Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Anthropological Research Volume 42, Number 1Spring, 1986 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jar.42.1.3630385 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1986 The University of New MexicoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Mexican Politics and the Journals

For the past two decades, the standard perception of the Mexican political system was more or less as follows. Following the Revolution and, even more so, the Cardenas presidency the Mexican political elite won the support of most of the country's peasantry and proletariat. Rather than continuing with its revolutionary policies, however, the post-1940 elite (particularly during the presidency of Aleman) used its 'popular' organizations to control rather than represent the masses while initiating a process of capitalist industrializa? tion. Subsequently, the PRI and its ancillary organizations were used to maintain social peace by the notorious process of 'co-optation and control' while income inequality grew alongside the power of the bourgeoisie. All of this was due to the logic of capitalist development to which the course of Mexican politics was increasingly subordinated. However, while earlier writers (Scott, Brandenburg) saw these developments as relatively benign and the more arbitrary and authoritarian elements of the system as on the whole transitional, later writers (Hansen, Johnson, Hellman and, in his later work, Cockroft) concentrated more on the system's repressiveness and remoteness from most of civil society. The watershed of this perceptual change was the Tlatelolco massacre of October 1968. Despite this shift, however, all of these writers implicitly or explicitly accepted the premises of desarrollo estabilisador. Work which was sufficiently recent to take account of Echeverria's presidency tended to dismiss it as an aberration, or as a heroic but doomed attempt to raise the ghost of Cardenas in a radically changed society. Indeed this perspective was shared by most non-academic observers of Mexico until about mid-1982. Faced with developments in and after 1982, it now seems clear that this textbook account of Mexican politics is either incomplete or outdated, and that a change of paradigm is necessary if one is to keep up effectively with the rapidly changing situation in that country. To put it briefly, it is no longer possible to regard Mexican capitalism as a success or to see the Mexican state as uncomplicatedly pro-middle class or pro-bourgeois (still less to see these sectors as uncomplicatedly pro-system). An early example of what will assuredly become a flood of revisionist writing is provided by Olsen (1985). Although the author (or was it the editors?) is excessively fond of post-dependencia jargon, the article does make some important points. It seeks to fit the Mexican economic crisis into the familiar pattern of late ISI crises (cf. pre-1964 Brazil) with the original policy leading to 'demand bottlenecks' and a halt to further expansion. In the Mexican context Olsen sees this crisis developing from the mid-1960s with

Rural Industry, Social Differentiation, and the Contradictions of Provincial Mexican Capitalism

Rural Industry, Social Differentiation, and the Contradictions of Provincial Mexican Capitalism

Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism. SCOTT COOK

Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism. SCOTT COOK

: Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism . Scott Cook.

: Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism . Scott Cook.

Zapotec Stoneworkers: The Dynamics of Rural Simple Commodity Production in Modern Mexican Capitalism.

An analytical study of rural craft industry in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico that produces metates or grindstones to supply a traditional regional demand which, like its object commodities, is an aspect of pre-capitalist economy. An analytical study of rural craft industry in the valley of Oaxaca, Mexico that produces metates or grindstones to supply a traditional regional demand which, like its object commodities, is an aspect of pre-capitalist economy. The metate (grindstone), with its companion mano (stone rolling pin), is unique among a series of commodities invented in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica that combine use, exchange, and symbolic values and are still manufactured, sold, and used. Zapotec Stoneworkers is the first and only detailed ethnography that explains and analyzes all aspects of the production, exchange, and use of metates and manos in rural twentieth-century Mexico. It incorporates interview and case study material of metateros (metate makers), their households, and communities, as well as extensive empirical data regarding output, pricing, and marketing in the metate industry of the Oaxaca Valley in southern Mexico.