Political Economic Interests Research Articles

The influence of artificial intelligence within health-related risk work: a critical framework and lines of empirical inquiry

In this editorial we highlight the need for empirical studies into the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in healthcare and social work settings, especially studies which are theoretically informed by critical social science studies of risk and uncertainty. In setting out the importance of interpretative and critical traditions for research into such AI-oriented forms of risk work, we propose three important conceptual lines of inquiry which empirical studies might follow. First, we sketch ways in which the enactment of AI in healthcare work may be changing how risk is handled amid professional decision-making, and creating new categories of patient/service-user. Patients may be evaluated as being at lower or higher risk depending, respectively, upon their engagement or non-engagement with AI-technologies. These questions of (non-)engagement lead us to consider, second, the trust and distrust dynamics around AI-technologies, exploring the potential inequalities that can emerge as a result of (non) engagement. We then consider drivers of this technological embrace in terms of hope and magical thinking in technological-imaginaries, connecting these cultural tendencies to broader structures of ideology and political-economic interests. We conclude this editorial with a plea to social scientists to be cautious to avoid both techno-optimistic narratives and alarmist warnings regarding the implications of artificial intelligence (AI). Instead, we argue that our focus should be a theoretically informed and detailed examining of how expectations (pertaining to risk, trust, and hope) materialise in practice, particularly in the daily experiences of those who develop and enact AI technologies in care settings.

Unjust by default: The political economy of Indonesia's local government policy on infrastructure development

The Indonesian government's attention to economic infrastructure development has increased over the last two decades. However, there has been a trend of rampant rent-seeking in infrastructure projects by elites in both local and central governments. Nonetheless, why and how rent-seeking practices in infrastructure projects have been so endemic in Indonesian local government remains poorly understood. This article addresses this by investigating how infrastructure development in local government serves dual functions of economic growth and political commodity by utilising qualitative data obtained from interviews in Central Kalimantan (2016) and East Nusa Tenggara (2020) provinces. This data confirms the existence of infrastructure's dual function, in which official regional development planning documents and accompanying regulations are more likely to function as a legal umbrella for legalising rent-seeking practices. The term ‘unjust by default‘ identifies the practice of rent-seeking by formalising political-economic interests into regional development planning documents and manipulating regulations in order to implement infrastructure development programmes.

Standing against racial capitalism: Reconsidering psychology's role in dismantling systemic racism.

The American Psychological Association's resolutions on dismantling systemic racism represent a watershed moment in our discipline, yet confusion remains as to what it means to "dismantle" racism given psychology's emphasis on changing individual beliefs. This submission will review the tension between "idealist" interpretations of critical race theory emphasizing individual beliefs and "realist" perspectives contextualizing racism within political economic arrangements. Psychology's adoption of an "idealist" framework will be shown to privilege a neoliberal project emphasizing individual change and symbolic performances of racial justice instead of structural changes benefitting people of color's material existence. Drawing on a decolonial critique of racial capitalism, we propose an alternative framework to challenge our discipline to broaden its political imagination by supporting evidence-based policies to dismantle racism as a structural and political force. This includes universal policies to reduce racial and economic inequality and population-specific policies such as reparations for African Americans predicted to stimulate economic growth. Urgently, the decolonial lens challenges psychology to theorize racism not as a primarily individual phenomenon but a political force that divides and conquers while enriching white economic elites. To fulfill the promises of the American Psychological Association's resolutions, we must directly challenge the political economic interests that benefit from racism and contribute to the common good as a form of "loving care." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Application of Media Political Economic Theory in The Kick Andy Program on Metro TV with Childfree Theme

The phenomenon regarding Childfree has now become a Viral and Trending Topic on social media. Childfree itself is a decision for married couples who decide not to have children in their household. This decision is being widely discussed so that when this issue is broadcast on television media it has the opportunity to get high ratings. This research aims to analyze editorial in commodifying the content (commodification of content) of an event into an interesting show that is worth broadcasting and worth selling to produce a profit for the company. This research method uses a qualitative approach, with a constructivist paradigm and uses data collection methods through observation. The findings from this research are the commodification of content or issues regarding childfree. There are political economic interests carried out by capital owners so if we look at it from this point of view, it can be seen as something that was born because of the domination of one group over another group in the form of control for profit and being a capitalist agent. It is hoped that the implications of this research can enrich case studies regarding the political economy of the media. Thus, in the future the viewing public will be "media aware" and the media can be utilized as fully as possible, not only from a commercial perspective.

The production-protection nexus: How political-economic processes influence prospects for transformative change in human-wildlife interactions

This article advances a novel analytical framework for investigating the influence of political-economic processes in human-wildlife interactions (HWI) to support efforts to transform wildlife conservation governance. To date, the majority of research and advocacy addressing HWI focuses on micro-level processes, while even the small body of existing literature exploring social dimensions of such interactions has largely neglected attention to political-economic forces. This is consonant with efforts to transform conservation policy and practice more broadly, which tend to emphasize “circular” change within current political-economic structures rather than “axial” transformation aiming to transcend these structures themselves. Our analysis thus advances understanding of potential for axial transformation in HWI via confrontation with, and “unmaking” of, constraining political-economic structures. It does so through cross-site analysis of conservation policy and practice in relation to three apex predator species (lions, jaguars and wolves) in varied geographic and socio-political contexts, grounded in qualitative ethnographic study within the different sites by members of an international research team. We explore how the relative power of different political-economic interests within each case influences how the animals are perceived and valued, and how this in turn influences conservation interventions and their impact on HWI within these spaces. We term this analysis of the “production-protection nexus” (the interrelation between process of resource extraction and conservation, respectively) in rural landscapes. We emphasize importance of attention to this formative nexus both within and across specific locales in growing global efforts to transform situations of human-wildlife conflict into less contentious coexistence.

Pribumi Primary Education at Colonial Era (1900-1920)

This research discusses specfic primary education for pribumi children during the Dutch colonial period 1900-1920. To find out the forming and condition of indigenous primary schools that were established and operating, the researchers conducted this research with the following objectives: (1) to analyze the establishment of indigenous primary education during the Dutch colonial period 1900-1920 and (2) to analyze the implementation of indigenous primary education during the Dutch colonial administration in 1900-1920. The research method used consists of 5 steps namely: topic selection, heuristics, verification, interpretation, historiography. The results show that the establishment of indigenous primary education in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period was based on political-economic interests carried out by the government. The Dutch colonial government needed employees who could help on the plantations as clerks. Meanwhile, the problem of illiteracy among the indigenous people is still very high. Because of this, schools were opened for the Bumiputera community to educate prospective government employees who could read and write. The limitations of these goals resulted in minimal development in this Bumiputera school curriculum.
 Keywords: primary education, pribumi, colonial dutch period.

Rethinking elites in British sociology: Great Britain as a house-society

This article outlines a novel conceptual framework to examine English society’s ruling institutions. Usually called ‘The Establishment’, the term has been a thorn in the side of analyses of class, status and power in British sociology as it stands between polemic and an explanation for England’s peculiar exaggeration of status over class. Drawing upon Lévi-Strauss’s concept of a ‘house-society’, the article rethinks how England’s ruling institutions are called upon to do two things at once: disguise political-economic interests through the language of kinship and naturalise status and belonging. English society’s ruling institutions are overdetermined in the call to create legitimate and exclusive membership to something, perhaps anachronistically, called ‘ Great Britain’. Tracing this to the origins of English class nomenclature in early modern political thought, the article applies this framework to a discussion of Eton College and the Etonians’ relationship to our present political crisis.

The Turkestan Statute and the Reorganization of Administrative Divisions in Central Asia, 1886-1917: a Case Study of Jizzakh District

Abstract For both political and economic reasons, the Russian Empire sought to establish administrative units in Central Asia based on taxonomic principles relating to governmental control, taxation, and land use. From the first years after the conquest, the colonial authorities introduced various new types of political divisions in the region. But the most foundational step in this process was the Turkestan Statute of 1886, which formally enumerated the requirements and naming conventions for establishing official administrative units. It is clear from the available sources that, before the 1886 statute, colonial efforts to establish administrative control, taxation, and regulated land use were sporadic and imprecise at best. For this reason, the Turkestan statute pressured colonial administrators to reconstitute administrative units that did not meet the requirements of the new Russian statutes. In this respect, the colonial officials tried to find a balance between the law and political-economic interests in reorganizing political divisions. This paper examines the reasons for the rearrangement of administrative units and the differences between the law and the bureaucratic views of colonial officials in this process. Its primary objective is to delineate ways in which colonial administrators used laws to consolidate administrative control, taxation, and land use in the process of redistribution of administrative-territorial units. My argument is that colonial officials implemented reorganization in some administrative units but not in others: in some cases, redistribution took place in administrative units that did not meet the political and economic interests of the colonial authorities, or colonial officials flouted the law altogether. In other cases, the colonial administration did not engage in redistribution of administrative units that did not pose a problem in governance and tax collection despite the fact that they were in violation of the requirements of the Turkestan statute.

Expansive and extractive networks of Web3

The self-proclaimed usurper of Web 2.0, Web3 quickly became the center of attention. Not long ago, the public discourse was saturated with projects, promises, and peculiarities of Web3. Now the spotlight has swung around to focus on the many faults, failures, and frauds of Web3. The cycles of technological trends and investment bubbles seem to be accelerating in such a way as to escape any attempt at observing them in motion before they crash, and then everybody moves on to the next thing. Importantly, Web3 was not an anomaly or curiosity in the broader tech industry. It articulates patterns that existed before Web3 and will exist after. Web3 should be understood as a case study of innovation within the dominant model of Silicon Valley venture capitalism. Our focus in this article is on understanding how the movement around Web3 formed through an interplay between (1) normative concepts and contestations related to ideas of “decentralization” and (2) political economic interests and operations related to the dynamics of fictitious capital. By offering a critical analysis of Web3, our goal is also to show how any even potentially progressive (or as we call them “expansive”) forms of Web3 development struggle for success, recognition, and attention due to the wild excesses of hype and investment devoted to “extractive” forms of Web3. In the process, they provide us a better view of how different arrangements of technopolitics can exist at the same time, side-by-side, in complicated ways.

Brahmanical patriarchy and the politics of anti-trafficking and prostitution governance: from colonial to contemporary India

Brahmanical patriarchy alongside the close relation of prostitution with human trafficking continues to mould contemporary anti-trafficking and prostitution governance policies in India. This study examines such relationships and breaks down how brahmanical patriarchy as a caste-driven hierarchy between the genders has shaped the historical and contemporary governance of human trafficking and sexual commerce, its political economy and its consequences for marginalised groups. It underlines how, originating in the colonial period, the components of brahmanical patriarchy advanced the marginalisation of women in sexual commerce by influencing anti-trafficking governance. In addition, it has produced the marginalisation of other communities such as religious minorities and immigrants, in contemporary times. This study suggests that it is the intersection of (colonial and/or current) political-economic interests and socio-cultural hierarchies and controls such as brahmanical patriarchy (as in this case of India) that moulds anti-trafficking and prostitution governance measures, continuing the marginalisation of subalterns such as sex workers, migrants and minorities.

Beyond the North-South divide: The political economy and multi-level governance of international low-carbon technology transfer in China

The rapid rise of emerging economies challenges the conventional understanding of international low-carbon technology transfer (ILTT) from a North-South perspective. Rather than acting like passive recipients of foreign investment and technology, actors in emerging economies have become more assertive, seeking control over the processes of ILTT. To understand this emerging trend, this paper conceptualizes ILTT as political-economic and multi-level governance processes involving two key elements—partnership building and technology adaptation. The empirical findings, drawing from a case study on the transfer of the passive house concept from Germany to China, show that the priorities of domestic rather than foreign actors have defined the scope for collaboration and the purpose of the technology, resulting in the adoption of a version of the technology that best serves domestic political-economic interests. These findings suggest that ILTT is becoming increasingly complex geographically, which opens new perspectives into the spatial dimension of socio-technical transitions.

The Civilizing Mission Persists

AbstractU.S. government leaders have long considered Latin America their proverbial backyard and have recurrently intervened in the region. In earlier periods of U.S. imperialism, U.S. government leaders justified such intervention with reference to allegedly scientific racial hierarchies, which placed White, Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) at the top of this artificial hierarchy. In more recent episodes of U.S. imperialism leading into the twenty-first century, however, U.S. leaders have publicly used the language of democracy and human rights to justify intervention. In the instance of contemporary Venezuela, while U.S leaders indeed use the language of human rights and democracy, they also draw on racist tropes of Latin Americans to justify their intervention. Through interviews with U.S. foreign policymakers and analysis of U.S. government documents, I find that U.S. leaders depict former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as an irrational, uncivilized, and beastly leader, who manipulates ideas of racial inequality to maintain power. In addition, U.S. leaders understand him as manipulating an uncritical mass of Venezuelans who cannot think for themselves. U.S. leaders believe it thus their duty to intervene in order to promote democracy and show Venezuelans their true political-economic interests. I connect these dynamics with a history of U.S. intervention into the region and a history of racist and imperial thinking that continues to shape the logic of U.S. foreign policymaking into the present.

Geopolitical Visions in Turkish Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT In the last two decades, Turkish foreign policy has undergone a remarkable transformation and Eurasianism, with its anti-Western and pro-Russian rhetoric, has become more visible in the foreign policy practices/activities of the JDP (Justice and Development Party) government. This article identifies Europeanization/de-Europeanization, Neo-Ottomanism and Eurasianism as geopolitical visions that have shaped Turkish foreign policy goals and instruments during the JDP government era. The article argues that Eurasianism is a result of necessity as Europeanization is off the agenda and neo-Ottomanism is not producing positive results. Overall, however, the evolution of geopolitical visions can be accounted for not only by foreign policy concerns. Domestic political goals and economic interests also matter.

Transnational Hazard: A History of Asbestos in South Korea, 1938-1993

How do hazardous industries move around the world? Hazardous industries, those that deal with toxic materials or significantly pollute the surrounding environment, have a history of relocating to so-called pollution havens. This paper examines a history of asbestos in South Korea that begins in 1938 when the largest asbestos mine in East Asia started operation and ends in 1993 when an asbestos textile factory worker was recognized as the first occupational cancer case. It highlights how global political and economic regimes introduced, supported, and depended on the asbestos industry. Towards the end of Japanese Colonialism, asbestos mines were developed in the peninsula to support the increasing need in the archipelago. After the Second World War, U.S. foreign aids supported asbestos manufacturing, together with the areas deemed foundational to industrial rehabilitation and self-reliance. Pushing for the modernization of landscapes, and industrialization of the economy, the South Korean government in the 1960s and the 1970s actively promoted foreign investments in the asbestos industry. This paper pays attention to the movements of things, people, and knowledge between borders in following asbestos dust from the present to the past. This paper illuminates how political economic interests intervene in a slowly and steadily progressing disaster by engaging this history of asbestos with today''s occupational and environmental health problems.

The New World Architectonics, Macroregional Transformations of Potentially Global Character and the Significance of Chinese Experience

The world becomes polycentric, but the theoretical foundations of this state of affairs remain not fully explained yet. The necessity to create a national-oriented theory of international relations is proclaimed. The question of a possibility of «tightening» macroregions in the form of a «Greater Eastern Asia» and «Greater Eurasia» is raised as well as the transformations of China being at least an influencing factor at the macroregional level with consequences of potentially global significance. It is possible to hypothesize that specifics of a megatrend of regional transformations of potentially global character may be connected with a rise of China to a global level and risks and consequences of this process. Since China has internal and external challenges, further development will be dependent on the level of China’s integration into world processes as well as wills, perspectives, and consequences of other states’ involvement in the orbit of common political-economic interests, humanistic nature of these processes as well as reactions of the world to them.

Lessening Anti-Jewish Hate Speech in Service of the Egyptian Regime: State Media under Mubārak, Re-Examined

Abstract This article aims a spotlight at an unusual chapter in the development of the Egyptian regimes’ policy toward antisemitism in the state media. While the various regimes allowed anti-Jewish speech in the governmental media since its nationalization by the Nasserite regime and used it for acquiring legitimacy, this article points to a different policy adopted by the Mubārak regime, following 11 September 2001. From the end of 2002, the Egyptian regime redirected the journalistic editing guidelines to cease anti-Jewish hate speech, resulting in a considerable decrease in the volume of anti-Jewish expressions and desecration of the Holocaust memory, until Mubārak’s downfall in 2011. This change was motivated by the regime’s concern for its political survival and economic interests, which were endangered by the democratization policy of the Bush Administration that linked the effort to combat terrorism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East with the struggle against antisemitism.

Platform Power and Regulatory Politics: Polanyi for the 21st Century

The rapid rise, expansion, and growing asymmetric power of online platform firms towards other businesses, labor and even the state itself occurred in a context of minimal regulatory oversight. In many respects, because the existing legal system was handicapped in understanding and regulating the new platform business models. The platform firms undermined traditional industry boundaries and developed surprising synergies by expanding in unexpected ways due to their ability leverage data and computational expertise. The growth of these platforms was accompanied by minimal intervention by state actors until recently, as concerns about the platform firms’ remarkable power has attracted the concern of States globally and the previous regime is giving way to intense debate and increasingly interventionist governmental policies and enforcement actions. We examine several salient aspects of this emerging regulatory and political reaction, and suggest that this represents an attempt to rebalance the positions of social groups in their relationship to the increasingly central platform firms. First, we view the rise of, and recent political responses to, the often-predatory power and manipulative conduct of platform firm in terms of a “Polanyian” double movement in which the destabilizing and destructive effects of unchecked corporate power and market development eventually generates political and regulatory responses to constrain private actions by new economic actors as they threaten the social, political, and economic order. Second, incipient legal changes, most notably the EU’s proposed Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, indicate a shift in regulatory emphasis from competition (and antitrust) policy and law, which has proven limited in its capacity to address inherent monopolistic tendencies of platform firms and markets, towards more intensive and encompassing forms of social and economic regulation. Finally, the political dynamics of legal and institutional change open up new possibilities for political economic and societal reordering, but the particular changes will likely vary in character and significance across political jurisdictions, and therefore follow distinctive and possibly divergent developmental trajectories. We hypothesize that the EU may be able to become the first-mover in regulating the powerful multinational platform firms. We recognize that we are at the very beginning of a transformational process that is likely to reorder old and generate new political economic interests, identities, coalitions, and conflicts at the sectoral, national, regional, and international levels.

Развитие экономического сотрудничества России с Китаем

The article presents the results of the analysis of Russian-Chinese economic cooperation over the past 70 years in light of the shift happening in both countries’ political paradigms and economic interests. The evolution of trade, economic and political relations, along with a detailed study of its stages, is described. The author examines the current state of economic relations between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China and pays attention to both positive and negative development trends as well as their further prospects. Despite the fact that economic relations at the state level do not have a very long history from the point of view of a historical perspective and are less than 100 years old, they had a serious impact on the development of China: the participation of the Soviet Union was marked not only by the modernization of production field, but also by extensive investments and training of specialists. The development of Russian-Chinese cooperation was significantly influenced by the well-known political events of 2014 and the subsequent sanctions against the Russian Federation by Western countries, which gave rise to retaliatory sanctions from Russia. At the same time, despite the obvious successes of international economic cooperation between Russia and China, there are still many factors that have or may potentially harm their development. Most economists, along with public administration experts, understand the importance of eliminating the “commodity roll” of Russian exports since the benefits for both countries are relevant only for short time periods, but in the long term, both countries benefit from diversifying production and increasing exports from Russia to China of mechanical engineering products, chemical production, as well as other high-tech products.

Shifting sands: Legal dispossession of small-scale miners in an extractivist era

This article argues that the entanglements of a growing global demand for construction material and neoliberal resource governance result in an incremental and piecemeal form of dispossession. While mining in Colombia has been broadly researched, little has been said about sand extraction and the challenges small-scale artisanal miners face when trying to formalise their activities. This article seeks to fill this gap by following a group of areneros (manual sand extractors) who attempt to defend their right to sand extraction against a competing mining claim. Drawn into the domain of the state, the areneros navigate a changing institutional setup and a complex legislation that favours the wealthy, the lettered and the connected. Political-economic interests are masked behind procedures, symbols and legal-administrative means, which create a ‘state effect’ and result in a subtle form of legal dispossession. The article points towards a scalar model of dispossession, in which small-scale mining activities pass through ‘small-scale intermediaries’ to end up in the hands of private corporate actors with capital and technical expertise to conduct large-scale extraction. The article adds to the limited literature on sand extraction and challenges the view that the activity is merely conducted by criminal actors; yet, it argues that subsistence mining is under threat by government and corporate interests, positioning sand extraction as a new resource frontier. As small-scale miners find themselves in the conflict between two competing rights regimes and two competing production logics, they are doubly stretched between proletarianization and eviction, criminalisation and self-erosion.

Infrastructural instabilities of urban river restoration: Towards a metropolitan political ecology in the Tel Aviv region

This article draws on the case of the Yarqon Restoration Project (YRP) in the Tel Aviv metropolitan region (TAMR) to highlight the infrastructural instabilities of urban river restoration and their theoretical implications. It analyzes the YRP as an outcome of multiple material interdependencies between “gray” and “green” infrastructures that are embedded in metropolitan-scale flows and politics. Methodologically, the article focuses on the main infrastructural projects constructed as part of the YRP and on subsequent polluting events that have since undermined the project. It uses data collected from policy documents, protocols, media coverage, and interviews conducted with stakeholders and professionals. The analysis shows that infrastructural instabilities are directly marked by the recurrence of “old” polluting uses within “new” recreational and ecological uses. These instabilities are deeply embedded in the metropolitan region’s unequal spatial-political structure, particularly disparities between upstream and downstream municipalities. We use the YRP case to develop a preliminary conceptual outline of a metropolitan political ecology, which highlights the spatial, environmental, and political complexities and inequalities of the metropolitan region and their consequences for the production of urban nature. This perspective extends the critical approach of urban political ecology, highlighting the metropolitan region as a critical scale at which natural watersheds intersect with geopolitical arrangements of territorial control, and at which environmental concerns are negotiated between numerous jurisdictions, conflicting land uses, and competing political-economic interests. The article suggests that metropolitan political ecology is a distinct and useful approach to understand not only urban river restoration but also other complex environmental issues.Keywordsurban rivers; green and gray infrastructure; pollution; metropolitan regions; urban political ecology; Yarqon river