Neoliberal Economic Globalization Research Articles

Riding out the Storm: How State-Owned Enterprises in China Fought the COVID Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted economic and social activities worldwide, exposing and exacerbating inherent flaws in the capitalist system. The pandemic’s devastating impact highlights the need for the state and its institutional agencies to actively intervene in public health crises and mitigate the economic damage they cause. This article situates the effectiveness and contribution of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the context of the COVID crisis in China. It first examines how SOEs successfully mobilized their productive capacity at the beginning of the pandemic. Using empirical evidence from publicly listed companies, we then demonstrate how SOEs engaged in countercyclical investment when private investment collapsed. The evidence suggests that SOEs served as a crucial instrument in strengthening social and economic stability, which helped China ride out the COVID storm. We conclude that SOEs are vital for achieving stable social and economic performance in a neoliberal global economy. JEL Classification: E11, O47, P31

Situating platform gig economy in the formal subsumption of reproductive labor: Transnational migrant domestic workers and the continuum of exploitation and precarity

In conversation with critical platform and labor studies, which tend to focus on drivers and food delivery workers, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the platform gig economy from the perspective of reproductive labor and migrant domestic workers. The exploitation of women’s unpaid and low-paid reproductive work has persisted throughout various stages of capitalist development. Migrant domestic workers’ underpaid reproductive labor becomes an essential site for primitive capital accumulation and the production of the labor force in the contemporary neoliberal global economy. Building upon analyses of the historical and contemporary circumstances of transnational migrant domestic workers in Canada, I argue that digital labor platforms become a technology-enabled, capital-driven force in the larger commodification and exploitation process of migrant workers’ reproductive labor, and such processes are underpinned by entangled structural and institutional forces of the uneven capitalist development, racism, patriarchy, and the state’s discriminatory (im)migration and labor policies. The article suggests that understanding the seeming prevalence of platform work should be situated in the continuous formal subsumption of reproductive labor and the class immobility of migrant domestic workers, and labor activism and movements should contest the entwined power dominations beyond merely demanding regulations over platforms.

Precarity and Islamism in Indonesia: the contradictions of neoliberalism

ABSTRACT This article investigates the link between growing precarity – associated with the process of neoliberal economic globalization – and growing Islamist tendencies in Indonesian society, through a case study of app-enabled transport workers. It applies a Gramscian notion of common sense to understand workers’ responses to their experiences of socio-economic marginalization and the articulation of their grievances. The combination of the near hegemony of a neoliberal worldview that encourages individual entrepreneurial prowess and an Islamist focus on moral self-cultivation inadvertently contributes to workers’ normalization of their precarity, furthering the atomization of the workforce. It also helps provide the setting for mobilizations of the urban precariat under Islamic banners, without challenging the imposition of neoliberal ideology on work and life.

Dependent development in the twenty-first century

A key but neglected dimension of developmental industrial policy is the formation of a mutually beneficial relationship among developing country governments, domestic capital and multinational corporations, or what Peter Evans has termed ‘dependent development’. Such relationships were a prominent feature of the growth trajectories of Latin American and East Asian industrialisers in the 1960s and 1970s. This article argues, however, that dependent development is a historically specific phenomenon; it is much harder to achieve for developing countries attempting industrial development after the 1990s, when multinationals have significantly more power and autonomy in relation to the state in developing countries, as a result of domestic liberalisation and changes in the international regimes of trade and investment. These power imbalances have persisted in the last two decades. The article examines the institutional relationships among states, multinationals and domestic firms after neoliberal economic reform and globalisation, and demonstrates the substantive constraints of multinationals in executing externally oriented industrial policies in a most likely case, that of India.

Situating Petrostate Guyana in the Rise of China Discourse

By examining the Sino-Guyanese relationship and China’s parastatal involvement in Guyana, this paper seeks to demonstrate that the former’s potential for upending conventional geopolitical realities in Latin America and the Caribbean are overstated. As Western public concern regarding the perils of a China to the international order grows, the case of Guyana draws attention to China’s still deepening integration within the neoliberal global economy. Guyana’s historic relationship with China, geostrategic location as a Belt and Road Initiative partner country, and the recent emergence of the Guyana Basin as an energy nexus, suggests its importance as a bellwether of China’s presence in the region. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, assumptions regarding China’s re-emergence in the global order are being overturned frequently. It remains unclear what impact contemporary socio-economic, political, or ecological instabilities will have on a realignment of the incumbent international system, the need for nuanced and novel approaches for assessing the agency of a risen China is unequivocal.

The Halalisation of Islam

Abstract This article charts the history of the invention of halal and of its extension to an increasingly diverse range of goods, services and even modes of behaviour. Following the works of Bergeaud-Blackler, it argues that halal is not the industrialization of traditional practices but rather that it is ‘born industrial’ as the result of the encounter between neoliberal economic globalization and the spread of consumerism across the Muslim world. It argues that the wild development of halal and its extension well beyond the edible is part of a wider reconfiguration of Islam within a Global-Market frame, away from Nation-State bound forms. From its inception within industrial processes of meat production, halal has been extended to qualify vacation packages, refrigerators and proper sexual morality.

The resilience of popular national cinemas in Europe (Part Two)

ABSTRACT This the second of two articles looking at the persistence of popular national cinemas in contemporary Europe. Drawing on research undertaken for the MeCETES project, the first article (Part One) examined admissions data for domestic productions in the period 2005–2015, demonstrating that most European countries enjoy a small number of considerable national successes each year. This second article (Part Two), provides further evidence that the national has not withered away in the era of globalisation, and revisits the concept of national cinema in this context. The majority of the national successes in European countries were small-scale films, with themes, characters or subject-matter that resonated in the country of production, and few of them travelled successfully across borders. Among strategies deployed to create attractive and repeatable consumer products, the most common was genre: most domestically successful national productions were comedies set in the present. Clearly, popular national cinema is still a meaningful presence across Europe, but it provides a different version of the nation to those presented under the auspices of nation-branding. These are two variants of national cinema in the era of the neo-liberal global economy.

African Studies Keyword: Oil

AbstractOil is a metonym for terms in books and articles in diverse disciplines in African studies. Some portray oil as a causal agent that thrusts formerly low-income countries into the highly competitive neoliberal global economy. Others present it according to the oil curse/blessing binary. As a curse, petroleum causes dysfunctional and costly behavior. But increased revenues from oil just as certainly result in concrete improvements demonstrating a resource blessing. Heilbrunn uses case materials to explore environmental degradation, oil theft, community-company relations, post-conflict reconstruction, local content in contracts, and corruption. These key concepts form a basis for the keyword/concept essay on oil in Africa.

Role of economic development cooperatives in improving the livelihoods of women in Gauteng, South Africa

ABSTRACT It is widely acknowledged that the limitations of neoliberal politics and economic globalisation have contributed to feminisation of poverty in Global South countries. The implementation of cooperatives has played a visible role in localising the economy and addressing poverty amongst women. This paper attempts to advance empirical evidence in the field of social development and feminisation of poverty. Using qualitative methodology, I present evidence from eight women who were involved in a sewing cooperative in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. Underscored by the sustainable livelihood approach, this article presents three interconnected themes: human capital development, building social capital and striving for economic capital. Ultimately this cooperative project presents a positive social development strategy that community development practitioners can embrace to assist women to work towards sustainability of their livelihood activities in the informal economy.

Informal Adult Learning: Advertisements in Women’s Magazines in Turkey

This study examines the visual and verbal content of advertisements in women’s magazines published between 1980 and 1990 in Turkey. Based on content analysis, we established the categories of products and services, age, body parts, women’s roles, clothes, and locations. We determined the five most frequent words employed in all grammatical or lexical forms: beautiful (güzel), to live (yaşamak), new (yeni), skin (cilt), and young (genç). By examining the data through informal learning, the study looks at how consumer-oriented values were taught informally to women readers during a period when Turkey underwent integration with the neoliberal global economy. We argue that the advertisements in women’s magazines were effective both in terms of disseminating the dominant values of the era and in causing women to informally internalize the consumer-oriented values required for the development of the desired female subjectivities of an emerging neoliberal society.

Labor in the 21st century: challenges of post-Fordism / neoliberalism and the situation of working people in the modern global world

The article examines the current problems of the global sphere of work and employment. The author historically assesses the causes and consequences of the structural transformations of the economy and social and labor relations as a result of the transition of the capitalist economy from fordism and keynesianism to post-fordism and neoliberalism at the end of the 20th century. Based on the analysis of a significant array of statistical and sociological information the author concludes that in the conditions of neoliberal economic globalization, labor has undergone significant changes in comparison with the period of the "glorious post-war thirty years" of capitalism. The implementation of radical economic reforms has led to an increase in employment vulnerability and a decrease in the quality of working life for many categories of workers in the modern world. The decline in the share of labor in GDP, the lag in wage growth rates from labor productivity, and the widespread incidence of informal and vulnerable employment, characteristic of this period, have become the main reasons for the growth of socioeconomic inequality and widespread poverty and poverty in the working environment in recent decades. Having considered the impact of the current process of automation, robotization and digitalization of the global economy, the author concludes that without changing the socio-economic and political configuration of the structure of the modern world, the potentially high utility of the latest achievements of science and technology will be significantly limited and subordinated mainly to the economic interests of capital owners, and will not work for the benefit of all humanity and social progress. The article pays special attention to studying the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of their impact on the position of employees in the modern world.

The Transnational Mining Justice Movement: Reflecting on Two Decades of Law Reform Activism in the Americas

AbstractThis article tracks the activism of the mining justice social movement since the late 1990s. As a starting point, this movement is conceptualized as a transnational political project that seeks to transform the terms of corporate resource extraction pursuant to the political and legal arrangements of neo-liberal economic globalization. In this context, the author reflects on the movement’s most significant human rights-oriented law reform projects in the Americas: Indigenous peoples’ right-to-consultation legislation in several Latin American countries and a series of non-judicial grievance mechanisms in Canada in response to the right to remedy norm in international law. Drawing on existing research, the author concludes that in both cases the state has responded with law and policy reforms that fall far short of achieving advocates’ objectives. The author argues that these shortcomings are due in part to the persistence of three liberal/neo-liberal ideologies in the reforms in question: formalism, voluntarism, and privatism. To better understand and explain these findings, the author turns to three critical theories of human rights legal activism: pragmatism, left critique/critical legal liberalism, and counter-hegemony. Examining the work of a range of scholars writing under the banner of each theory, the author identifies key debates and insights that may be instructive as the mining justice movement, and related social and environmental justice movements, continue to aspire towards a law reform agenda capable of addressing pressing global environmental and social justice issues.

The Transnational Mining Justice Movement: Reflecting on Two Decades of Law Reform Activism in the Americas

In this article, I consolidate research that tracks the activism of the mining justice social movement from the late 1990s to present. As a starting point, I conceptualize this movement as a transnational political project that seeks to transform the terms of corporate resource extraction pursuant to the political and legal arrangements of neo-liberal economic globalization. In this context, I reflect on the movement’s most significant human rights-oriented law reform projects in the Americas: Indigenous right to consultation legislation in several Latin American countries, and a series of non-judicial grievance mechanisms in Canada, in response to the right to remedy norm in international law. Drawing on existing research, I conclude that in both cases the state has responded with law and policy reforms that fall far short of achieving advocates’ objectives. I argue that these shortcomings are due in part to the persistence of three liberal/neo-liberal ideologies in the reforms in question: formalism, voluntarism and privatism. To better understand and explain these findings, I turn to three critical theories of human rights legal activism: pragmatism, left critique/critical legal liberalism and counter-hegemony. I examine the work of a range of scholars writing under the banner of each theory in order to identify key debates and insights that may be instructive as the mining justice movement, and related social and environmental justice movements, continue to aspire toward a law reform agenda capable of addressing pressing global environmental and social justice issues.

Bridging sociology of religion to transition to adulthood: The emerging role of religion in young adults’ lives

The sociology of religion has not systematically explored the emerging roles of religion in the whole process of the transition to adulthood, especially in the changing contexts of delayed and complicated transitions to adulthood. Seeking to bridge the two different fields of sociology, we identify four directions of research: (1) a multidimensional approach that identifies the different dimensions of religion with varying degrees of relationship to young adults’ lives; (2) a close attention to racial/ethnic variation in the roles of religion for the transition to adulthood; (3) an open inquiry into the changing importance of religion for young adults in a rapidly shifting neoliberal global economy; and (4) the detrimental effects of religion in the transition to adulthood. We call for more research on the increasingly complex relationship between religion and the transition to adulthood.

Соціально-економічні причини та наслідки пасивності адміністрації Б. Обами в глобальній політиці

The article examines the intra-American processes under the influence of which the B. Obama administration’s global policy course was formed and implemented. It is claimed that the passive global policy of the United States in 2009-2017 was formed in unfavorable for the adoption and implementation of ambitious foreign policy decisions conditions. Firstly, the psychological fatigue of American society from the «endless wars» of the previous administration of George W. Bush. Secondly, the negative effects of neoliberal economic globalization on the masses and industry of America. Thirdly, the impact of the global economic crisis of 2008 on the country. Solving the latter was the main task of the democratic administration in Washington, and the fight against this crisis determined the logic of B. Obama’s domestic and foreign behavior during the many years of his presidency, including identifying ways for America to address global environmental issues, its actions in intergovernmental organizations, responding to international social, including political crises. It is emphasized that due to the material and human losses caused by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the global economic crisis in the United States by the end of 2008 lost much of its potential «smart» power in the global arena – both military power and economic potential, the country was forced radically to limit the use of the military component of their «hard» force, instead, intensify the use of such components as sanctions, the role in the functioning of international regimes, until the potential of Washington’s force is restored. Along with the diminishing role of America’s «hard» power in the global arena, the importance of its «soft» power (bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, external attractiveness) has increased. The use of Washington’s material incentives to influence other capitals and non-state actors in the global arena has also been limited by the need to use them to overcome the effects of the economic crisis in America.

GLOBALIZATION AND MAIN TRENDS OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: TRADE AND INVESTMENTS

Globalization and its impact on developing and transition economies are among most debated issues in social sciences. Globalization is multidimensional, multipart and multispeed phenomena affecting all countries and nations in the world. However, economic dimension of globalization could be considered as foundation as well as determinant of development of other forms of globalization, including political and social globalization. It is obvious, that economic globalization intensifies cooperation as well as competition on regional and global level and therefore, enhances economic and political interdependence among countries. There are many conflicting approaches towards globalization. However, a leading form of globalization still is neoliberal globalization, while other perspectives are opposing ideas to neoliberal globalization. A fundamental idea of neoliberal economic globalization is socalled “small government” and openness for trade and investment, which has been considered as a necessary precondition for economic development of any nation in the world since 1980s. Noteworthy, that major negative aspects of neoliberal globalization, underlined by “skeptics” are negative effects of neoliberal globalization on trade and investment performance of developing and transition economies. Conducted analysis of trade and investment performance of developing and transition economies demonstrates their growing involvement in globalizing world economy. Ac- cording to data of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), during 1990-2018, exports an- nual average growth rates of developing and transition countries were 9,5% and 8,8% respectively, while exports annual average growth rate of developed countries was 5,7%. More - over, in 1990-2018, imports annual average growth rates of developing and transition countries were 9,3% and 7,7% respectively, while imports average growth rate of developed countries was 5, 9%. It is clear, that besides trade, Foreign Direct Investment is the major indicator to evaluate countries/ country groups’ involvement in globalization. Noteworthy, that between 1990 and 2000 average share of developing countries in world Foreign Direct Investments (inward) was 29,3%, in 2001-2010 was 34, 4%, while in 2011-2018 aver- age share was 44, 2%. In 2018, developing countries share in inward world Foreign Direct Investments was 54, 4%, while developed countries share was 42, 9%. It is clear, that countries/country groups’ involvement in the international capital movement and in globalization processes in general, depends not only on inward Foreign Direct Investments, but also on outward FDIs. In 1990-2000, average share of developing countries in outward FDIs was 10,4%, in 2001-2010 was 14,1%, while in 2011-2018 average share of developing countries in outward world FDIs significantly increased and reached 30,1%. The data underlines an intensification of trade relations of transition and developing countries as well as their increased openness for Foreign Direct Investments and rising share in outward world FDIs. As a result, during 1990-2018, developing and transition countries involvement in globalizing world economy significantly increased via increased trade relations and growing participation in movement of Foreign Direct Invest- ments. Consequently, despite some setbacks, economic globalization remains as the leading characteristic of the world economic development and process of deglobalization is not evident.

The Impact of Economic Nationalism on Investment Arbitration - A Central European Perspective

The paper indicates a correlation between the investment dispute resolution crisis and the rise of populist movements in the example of Central Europe. Central Europe perfectly exemplifies the sources of the current global crisis of liberal democracy. Both in Central Europe and the larger world, the rise of populist movements reflects the frustrations of social groups that suffer from globalization and laissez-faire trends in the global economy. An increase of inequality fosters feelings of social exclusion among the “have-nots.” Rising antagonism between social groups is proportional to the expanding economic gap between them. In Central European Countries the problem was intensified when states opted out of redistribution policies of communist regimes. The rising antagonism fuels social polarization which is a vital element for populist movements. Economic nationalists will maintain their allegations that foreign tribunals favour foreign investors with detriment to domestic competitors and domestic social development. It is worth mentioning that this narration attracts not only the less-educated portion of the electorate, but also domestic small and medium businesses and sometimes even environmental activists. In parallel have-nots blame “elites”, neoliberal economic processes and globalization for their social degradation and grant their support to those who challenge this status quo. Current investment policy which focuses mainly on the protection of single foreign investor might be effective for these investors in the short term perspective, but it fails in the longer period. If the investment protection goal continues to be treated as paramount, economic nationalism will continue its triumphant march. The paper indicates modifications in investment treaty philosophy necessary to neutralize rising popularity of economic nationalism. In this context the text is strongly linked with current discussion on investment arbitration reform.

Law as Geopolitics: Judicial Territory, Transnational Economic Governance, and American Power

The extension of domestic U.S. judicial authority to govern transnational economic relations involving foreign governments beyond official U.S. borders has been an important but largely overlooked component of the post–World War II international economic order. Using a critical spatial lens to analyze important U.S. common law changes, I show that a key strategy for achieving this extension has been redefining legal dichotomies to recode activity once considered public, political, and in the executive domain as private, commercial, nonpolitical, and judicial. This process has contributed to the depoliticization of fraught geopolitical conflicts and the production of a neoliberal global economy. The expansion of what I call judicial territory has occurred in response to acute political and economic challenges to U.S. interests and has been a means of forging an international economic order with the United States at the forefront. It has unilaterally extended U.S. state space and restricted the economic sovereignty of other countries, in ways that have benefited U.S. and transnational capital and underwritten the extraction of resources into the United States, especially from the Global South. At the same time, the unique characteristics of the common law have helped make these imperial relations hegemonic. Key Words: economy, hegemony, imperialism, law, territory.

“The Right to Shrine”: Global Celebrity, Colonial Logics, and Local Knowledge in Aspen’s Mountainside Memorials

On the mountains surrounding Aspen, Colorado, skiers build shrines dedicated to celebrities, pastimes, and deceased loved ones. Charmed journalists and local promoters describe these shrines as homespun and quaint reminders of the human factor in recreational tourism. As this paper demonstrates, however, these shrines represent a more complex space-marking practice of outdoor alpine culture. Embedded within ski resorts, these Aspen shrines are part of the global spatial products—the banal, familiar, and predictable architectural forms—of a leisure economy that deflect a suspicious gaze. By looking at the shrines as spatial products of a neoliberal global economy, we may come to better understand how materiality creates claims to space. In this capacity the shrines make visible the continuity of settler-colonial logics that facilitate practices of territorial entitlement and accumulation. The shrines challenge us to interrogate the innocence of our objects, and to move beyond surface readings to find what is otherwise obscured.

The Eruption and Ruination of ‘Rising India’: Rana Dasgupta's Capital and the temporalities of Delhi in the 2010s

AbstractIn 2000, the writer Rana Dasgupta moved from New York to Delhi, reversing his father's act of migration in the 1960s, to find a new, but already obsolescent, ‘rising India’. This was the India of the economic boom, whose extent and import have been increasingly under scrutiny. With reference to the temporalities of ‘rising India’, the purpose of this article is to examine the representation of globalization's multiple temporalities in Dasgupta's non-fiction work Capital: The Eruption of Delhi (2014). Capital is a returnee author's personal attempt to inhabit the multiple temporalities of Delhi, wherein the pull of globalization—here understood as neo-liberal corporate economic globalization—is alternatively embraced and resisted. This article argues that the conceptual limitations of the multiple-modernities framework are reflected in Dasgupta's representation of the multiple temporalities of globalization. It is through politicized and territorialized genealogies of ‘imperial debris’ such as Dasgupta's that we can arrive at new critiques of modernity. At the same time, this article is concerned with the ways in which Dasgupta's fractured and multi-temporal present of Delhi, inhabited by the old and the new, is being captured by a returnee from the United States of America to India who is concurrently the ‘other’ from ‘abroad’ and the ‘same’ at ‘home’. Ultimately, the book's re-Orientalist frame underscores, from the outset, the difficulty in decoupling ideas of modernity and progress from a Eurocentric, Enlightenment project.