Political-economic Structures Research Articles

Food and Language: Production, Consumption, and Circulation of Meaning and Value

We interrogate the many ways that language and food intersect. Food and its uses provide setting and structure for language, just as language and its uses constrain and inform food activities. We illuminate where and how food and language co-occur and how they are dynamically co-constitutive, foregrounding the potential for food-and-language scholarship to contribute to understandings of political economic processes and structures. We organize our review around the mutual production, consumption, and circulation of food and language. We show that the richness of scholarship about consumption (especially around the family meal) has not been matched by research concerning the production of food and language, whereas the co-constituting circulation of food and language contributes to new meanings and values for both. More research is needed to clarify the surging attention to food, which may be motivated by the complex global food system and the speed and ease of mediatization and circulation of food images and ideologies.

Establishing a Critical Framework for the Appraisal of “Noise” in Contemporary Sound Art with Specific Reference to the Practices of Yasunao Tone, Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda

Yasunao Tone, Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji Ikeda are three practitioners representative of electronic music and sound-art practices that emerged in the 1990s where sound materials not normally considered musical, such as digital clicks, glitches and bursts of white noise, are prevalent. It is notable that the origins of this body of work lay outside of the established music institutions of academia and the mainstream popular music industry. Practitioners such as these are often associated with particular record labels including Mille Plateaux or Raster-Noton and attempts to coalesce these practices into a single, unified genre have been made by Cascone (2000), Sangild (2004) and Kelly (2009). These assessments however, tend to critique work mainly in technological terms. In contrast, this thesis draws out deeper philosophical concerns relevant to these practices through a critical analysis of materials produced by and about these practitioners, including commercial releases, works, writings and interviews. What emerges from this is that Heidegger's notion of truth as `revealing' and Derrida's critique of phonocentrism can provide a clearer philosophical framework for a consideration of this work. This framework, by extension could be used to critique other sound art or music practices. Moreover, ideas found in Attali's (1985) telling of economic history through music are applied to these practices in order to argue that the use of materials reflects a wider cultural shift away from the notion of value as something quantified, abstract and intrinsic, predominant since the Age of Enlightenment, towards one concerned with the qualitative, contextual and extrinsic. This is related to Kim-Cohen's (2009) advocacy of a conceptual sound art to argue that noise practices represent forms of practice that challenge both notions of absolute music - music primarily understood 'as a numerical sign system' (Kim-Cohen 2009: 40) - and prevailing political-economic structures.

‘Marching from all governorates’: labour lacunae in Mubarak’s Egypt

Starting in 1991, Egypt undertook ‘structural adjustment’ reforms at the behest of international financial institutions and the country’s foreign donors. These reforms have often been included in a larger discussion of economic reforms and the withdrawal of the state from the Egyptian market. While certainly market-based, these reforms were interpreted and implemented in a uniquely Egyptian context and moved forward not through a market logic but with a specific understanding of political feasibility. Despite these local peculiarities, Egypt experienced a backlash familiar to researchers of structural adjustment internationally. How did Egypt’s structural adjustment and other ‘liberalizing’ reforms produce spatialized and sectoral backlash and drive workers from quiescence to militancy? Based on extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted in 2011–2013, this paper argues that the choices made by the Egyptian regime from 1991 to 2010 generated ‘labour lacunae’ – spaces in the political-economic structure where methods of interest aggregation were replaced by coercion or neglect – allowing militancy to flourish. I explore how labour entrepreneurs exploited these ‘lacunae’ to redefine ‘local’ protest in the run-up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

The politics of the China\u2015Pakistan economic corridor

China’s presence in the Global South has increased dramatically over the course of a decade. The discourse of mutual benefit and non-intervention has attracted much attention in the developing world, which is now facing the consequences of Western interventions. However, the extent to which Chinese engagement in the developing world stays true to these principles needs to be evaluated in terms of its effects on the political economic structures of the host nations. This study analyses how China and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is interacting with the political and economic realities of Pakistan. Firstly, the study traces the history of regionalism in Pakistan and shows that over the years, the developmental mission of the central state has created deep-seated regionalism in Pakistan. The study shows that CPEC is deepening such cleavages. The regionalist forces have opposed the project in two broad ways: through demanding a greater share in the project or through completely rejecting the interventions. Secondly, the study analyses the lop-sided civil-military relations in Pakistan and concludes that Chinese engagement in Pakistan is leading to the military’s tighter control of civilian and economic matters relating to CPEC.

Notes from the Editors, June 2018

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 With the eruption in March of the scandal around Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, articles raising the alarm on "surveillance capitalism" are suddenly everywhere. The term, which was coined in MR in August of 2014, was developed to highlight the links between digital spying systems and contemporary capitalism as a whole. Academic interpretations of the concept effectively divorced surveillance capitalism from class analysis, and from the overall political-economic structure of capitalism—as if surveillance could be abstracted from monopoly-finance capital as a whole.
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Rethinking elite persistence in neoliberalism: Foresters and techno-bureaucratic logics in Mexico’s community forestry

Abstract Problems of elite capture continue to present challenges for sustainable and equitable forest governance around the world. Our understanding of elite capture, however, remains limited by conceptual approaches that pay insufficient attention to power in its various dimensions. Drawing on critical institutionalism and political ecology, I analyze how the power veiled in political-economic structures or ‘power fields’, embedded with local institutions and relations of conflict and negotiation, helps (re)produce elite power and persistence. I pay particular attention to the role of foresters as crucial yet understudied elite actors in community forestry. I employ an over-time comparative case study of processes of elite capture in four regional inter-community forestry associations (FAs) in the state of Durango, Mexico. I argue that foresters’ persistent capture of FAs is related to multi-layered power inequalities and persistent democratic deficits reproduced by techno-bureaucratic forestry and authoritarian corporatist logics. At the same time, I posit that this capture is not definite but is continually transformed by social struggles and grassroots institutional innovations.

Exploring the formation of the “leave-it-to-experts” storyline during the initial outbreak of the 2013 smog hazard in Beijing

Beijing’s smog hazard is one of the most urgent issues on China’s public agenda. Drawing on the recently developed dynamic discourse coalition (DDC) approach, this article examines the ways in which the hazard’s initial outbreak in early 2013 was reported by four news sources: the Xinhua News Agency; China Daily; South China Morning Post; and the Associated Press. The findings suggest that although domestic and overseas media first provided different explanations for the hazard, these were eventually consolidated into the same problem-solving discourse of “leave-it-to-experts.” This discourse included a proposal to address the hazard under the current political economic structure of industrial capitalism. The proposal, however, was constrained by an elitist bias that downplayed China’s existing social and regional inequalities. The article argues that environmental challenges such as the smog hazard call for not only a sustainable model to direct China’s future development, but also the explicit recognition of the country’s existing environmental injustices.

Rethinking PGIS: Participatory or (post)political GIS?

Participatory GIS (PGIS) emerged from the contentious GIS debates of the 1990s as a means of political intervention in issues of social and environmental justice. PGIS has since matured into a distinct subfield in which GIS is used to enhance the political engagement of historically marginalized people and to shape political outcomes through mapping. However, this has proven to be difficult work. We suggest that this is because PGIS, particularly in its community development incarnations, though well-intentioned in endeavoring to enhance the voices of the excluded, is inherently limited because it primarily aims to enhance the inclusion and participation of the historically marginalized by working within established frameworks of institutionalized governance in particular places. This, we suggest, has left this mode of PGIS ill-equipped to truly challenge the political-economic structures responsible for (re)producing the very conditions of socio-economic inequality it strives to ameliorate. As a result, we argue that PGIS has become de-politicized, operating within, rather than disrupting, existing spheres of political-economic power. Moving forward, we suggest that PGIS is in need of being retheorized by engaging with the emergent post-politics literature and related areas of critical social and political theory. We argue that by adopting a more radical conception of democracy, justice, and ‘the political’, PGIS praxis can be recentered around disruption rather than participation and, ultimately, brought closer to its self-proclaimed goal of supporting progressive change for the historically marginalized.

Abandoned Hungarian workers and the political economy of care work in Austria

In an era of globalization, the institutional system of mass migration is being substantially reorganized: its intensity and the variation in its forms are increasing. Global production chains combine diverse areas and different forms of work with varying wage levels by forming worldwide networks. In the Eastern European region, the growing level of emigration and relatively low fertility are leading to population loss. Hungary is not among the Eastern European countries with a high level of emigration; nevertheless, it faces serious challenges, particularly in some regions where after the transition losses of jobs were massive, and a greater proportion of people live under the poverty line than the national average. Our analysis is based on interviews, containing narrative and semi-structured parts, among domestic workers working mainly in Austria and Germany. The paper reveals possible causal mechanisms and the political economic structures behind this type of labour migration. We seek to understand how migrationrelated decisions are embedded in a global and highly unequal economic order.

El petróleo en México y sus impactos sobre el territorio ed. by Martín M. Checa-Artasu and Regina Henández Franyuti

Kane, J. 1995. Savages. New York: Knopf. Nixon, R. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Simpson, A. 2014. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham: Duke University Press. Martín M. Checa-Artasu and Regina Henández Franyuti, eds. El petróleo en México y sus impactos sobre el territorio Distrito Federal, México: Instituto de Investigaciones Dr. José María Luis Mora, 2016. 268 pp. Maps, tables, introduction, bibliography, index. $235.00MXP paper (ISBN 978–607–9475–43–7). The apocryphal eagle with a snake initsbeakstandingatopanopalislikely the most recognizable symbol of Mexico. It is the central figure of the bandera nacional and serves as a statement of ethnic and cultural hybridity linked to deep (pre)historical roots. However, considering the developmentofMexicosincetheearlytwentiethcen tury —throughtheRevolution,the“Mexican Miracle,” the long PRI hegemony, the neoliberal turn, and now into the post-neoliberal era it may be entering—perhaps a gushing oil derrick would be a more fitting, if less aesthetically pleasing, symbol at the center of the flag. Oil has been central to Mexico’s revenues and the economic and social development it has paid for have created a general sense of national pride and self-determination around oil. Today, Mexico is the twelfth largest producer in the world of oil and eighteenth globally in natural gas. Despite declining production from the Cantarell and Ku-Maloob-Zaap superfields, oil and gas development remains a linchpin of Mexico’s financial bottom line and thus its political stability. The edited volume El petróleo en Mexico y sus impactos sobre el territorio takes this as a given fact and goes a step further, through geographical explorations of how oil has made itself spatially manifest, via the concepts of territory and landscape. The editors, Martin M. Checa-Artasu and Regina Hernández Franyuti, note from the outsetthatthisbookisthesummaryresultof a 2015 symposium of presentations concerning the clearly stated title of the book. The editorsmakethisbookmoreconceptuallyfocusedbyleadingitssixoriginalcontributions with well-written and deeply-researched introductoryandbibliographicchapters .What follows are an assortment of chapters that range from the theoretical to the methodological and empirical investigating the spatialities of hydrocarbons in Mexico. In the opening bibliographic chapter, Martin Checa goes through an impressively expansive epistemology of hydrocarbon extraction in Mexico. Aiming this work at scholars of hydrocarbon extraction in Mexico , Checa begins by framing the epistemology within the political-economic structures that produced it. He then organizes seminal works on the subject by theme and chronology . Later in the chapter, Checa narrows this broad literature to works that bear a “vinculo territorial,” rolling them out through their 6 Journal of Latin American Geography evolutionary stages or turns, geographic/ regional focus, and thematic categories, all which serve to create the broader context into which the following six chapters fit. The heart of the book begins with a historical examination on the potential ecological consequences of the 2013–2014 Energy Reforms in Mexico. Author Myrna Santiago, a preeminent environmental historian of oil, begins by providing a legal history of Mexican constitutional law related to hydrocarbons ,fromtheearlytwentiethcenturytothe 1938 expropriation and Pemex years, to modifications of Article 27 and the recent energy reforms. In a compelling narrative, Santiago showshowtheselegalchangestohow,andby whom, hydrocarbons can be extracted have affected people and environments in Mexico . The violent dispossession of campesinos and indigenous people amid ecological ruin that are associated with twentieth-century hydrocarbon development serve as a warning for the post-reform hydrocarbon regime in Mexico. The next chapter, again by Checa, positions itself at the thematic core of the volume . In it, he explores the concept of territoriality of hydrocarbon development in Mexico by showing how the interrelation of geology, infrastructure, and professional practice have produced the fundamental territorial unit of the Mexican energy sector , the campo or “field.” This in-depth and well-researched chapter illustrates how the hydrocarbon campo is defined as a legal entity , as a resource, and a container for the environmental and the demographic. In essence, Checa outlines the social and discursive production of space embodied in the Mexican hydrocarboncampo.Checa’stakehereisthat the campo is but a mere spatial construction that fundamentally hides a richer, more “real” understanding of Mexican hydrocarbon territoriality .Hethenproposesthattheconcept...

Resisting Whig History: Putting the Australian New Left in Perspective

The theoretical insights associated with the Australian New Left contribute to enriching our understanding of the intricacies of Australian history. Two of the most influential works associated with the movement, A New Britannia and Class Structure in Australian History, are compared to enable a consideration of both objective and subjective accounts of class. This paper has three parts. First, it identifies the historic context of history written in Australia within the Whig tradition of the Old Left. Second, it examines how debates within the British New Left came to influence discussions in the Australian New Left. Finally, it suggests that McQueen provided foundations to the theoretical approach to class undertaken inClass Structure in Australian History. It is argued that class remains an important and necessary abstraction in order to engage with the relationship between existing political economic structures and social subjects.

The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism ed. by Kevin Skerrett et al.

Reviewed by: The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism ed. by Kevin Skerrett et al. Andrew Stevens Kevin Skerrett, Johanna Weststar, Simon Archer, and Chris Roberts, eds., The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2017) Published in 2017 as part of the Labor and Employment Relations Association Series, The Contradictions of Pension Fund Capitalism assembles an international cast of researchers that bridge financial capitalism with the crude reality of employment entitlements that are increasingly under threat. The editors begin with a concise introductory chapter that captures the focus of subsequent contributions. "Invested across the planet," Skerrett, Weststar, Archer, and Roberts write, "in every conceivable industry, commodity, and asset class, pension funds are today leading agents in, and beneficiaries of, liberalized and globally integrated markets." (1) The narrative throughout the book is one that follows an unraveling of the post-war class compromise and the various features that have jeopardized pensions coverage and benefit entitlements. [End Page 306] Andrew Pendelton and Howard Gospel's treatment of the UK experience in Chapter 2 similarly claims that the development of an employer-based or occupational pension scheme contributed to financialization through the marshaling of a "large and liquid stock market and financial sector." (10) From here the authors examine today's reality in which, as a neoliberal policy agenda that launched in the 1980s, individualized self-invested personal pensions (SIPPS) have become fashionable. SIPPS have, of course, failed to fill gaps in provision, instead leading to pockets of pensioner poverty whereby retirees must rely on other means-tested and universal benefits in order to survive. Financialization has also provoked firms to respond to competitive pressures by adopting human resource requirements that rest on flexible and less costly labour forces. Financial capitalism is advancing this objective to a point where, the authors conclude, defined benefit schemes "have 'fed the beast' that eventually turned on them." (24) Chapter 3 moves from the political economic structure of finance capitalism to investigating the effects on workers across industrialized countries. Specifically, the extent to which the reduction of benefits in the pay-as-you-go (paygo) state social insurance plans and the emphasis on savings and personal wealth as a source of retirement income defines the lived realities of financialization and the erosion of formerly collective entitlements. What Teresa Ghilarducci and Amanda Novello recognize is that life expectancy, leisure time, and health outcomes are not shared evenly across classes and that, ultimately, higher-income workers "are most likely to have the economic lives that dovetail well with a financial retirement system." (49) Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty further engage with the outcome question in Chapter 4, concluding that the "defined contribution superannuation is one of the starkest expression of the risk shift from states to citizens, and the associated role of finance." (80) A reversal, they point of out, of the Keynesian macroeconomic policies that dominated the political arena for decades. What the authors go on to query is the extent to which labour's capital represents a check on capital's power. Their resolution: labour's capital, manifested in pension funds, has behaved just like "capital's capital," providing little hope of wielding these massive pools of wealth to advance workers' interests. Indeed, their contribution is punctuated by the realization that labour is not just a working and consuming class but exists also as a financialized asset for capital. (93) To these points, Michael McCarthy addresses the social investment framework - or, concerns about environmental, social, and governance (esg) factors - that took off following the 2008 Great Recession. His conclusion here is that workers' retirement capital mirrors that of Wall Street investment trends, as conservative law makers and employers have blocked unions from "democratizing their funds and advancing an alternative approach to finance." (115) Contradictions also reveals the role of fiduciary responsibility in disciplining union pension trustees who might look to labour's capital as a venue to advance non-financial interests. Bernard Mees reflects on the realities of financialization in Australia and what impact this has had on the running of union-sponsored pension schemes. Part of the lived reality is how labour has responded to the growth of infrastructure privatization and subsequent investment...

Reshuffling of Vice Minister Nobusuke Kishi Political Economic Structure and Ministry of Commerce and Industry “after Party Politics”

Reshuffling of Vice Minister Nobusuke Kishi Political Economic Structure and Ministry of Commerce and Industry “after Party Politics”

AGAMA DAN MASALAH KORUPSI :

One of the most serious social problems in this country is corruption. From New Order to Reformation today, corruption continues craze and for the most part, due to lack of morals and integrity of officials, politicians and businessmen who are often easily slip into the trap of corruption. Consequently, in Indonesia, Muslims as a majority of the people, is still suffering and marginalized due to rampant corruption, feudalism power, and political-economic structures that lame. Admittedly, in this reform era, corruption was threatening the safety of the nation so much shouting that stern action be taken against the corrupt and violent. This paper would like to provide critical remarks about religion and the problem of corruption in Indonesia.
 KEY WORDS:Corruption, Religion, Moral and Integrity, Official, Politician, Businessmen, KPK

Planning centrality, market instruments: Governing Chinese urban transformation under state entrepreneurialism

This article defines the key parameters of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ as a governance form that combines planning centrality and market instruments, and interprets how these two seemingly contradictory tendencies are made coherent in the political economic structures of post-reform China. Through examining urban regeneration programmes (in particular ‘three olds regeneration’, sanjiu gaizao), the development of suburban new towns and the reconstruction of the countryside, the article details institutional configurations that make the Chinese case different from a neoliberal growth machine. The contradiction of these tendencies gives room to urban residents and migrants to develop their agencies and their own spaces, and creates informalities in Chinese urban transformation.

AnnSwidler and Susan CottsWatkinsA Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in AfricaPrinceton University Press, 2017. 304 p. $35.00.

AnnSwidler and Susan CottsWatkinsA Fraught Embrace: The Romance and Reality of AIDS Altruism in AfricaPrinceton University Press, 2017. 304 p. $35.00.

The recent trend of ethnic intermarriage in China: an analysis based on the census data

Interethnic marriage is a key field in ethnic relations study. A high level of interethnic marriage only occurs in a multiethnic society in which the political system, economic structure, laws, and cultural environment allow young people with different ethnic backgrounds to mingle with each other. This is why the interethnic marriage rate can be used to measure the degree of interactions among different ethnic groups. It is the most reliable indicator for a trend of long-term ethnic relations. Due to the lack of relevant data in official statistics, there are limited studies focusing on interethnic marriage at the macro level. Based on the 1990, 2000, and 2010 census data and the special volume on ethnicity edited by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, this paper attempts to determine the basic trend of interethnic marriages in China over the past three decades. It discusses some basic characteristics of interethnic marriages among different ethnic groups. How to strengthen national unity, ethnic solidarity, and improve the relationships among different ethnic groups are major challenges faced by China in the twenty-first century. Studying the interethnic marriage from sociological and demographic approaches may help us understand the basic trend of interethnic integration in today’s China.

Spectacular, realisable and ‘everyday’

‘Sustainability’, often presented through an ecological–economic–social triad, is today one of spatial planning’s absolute key concepts (and key priorities). But it is also a highly contested concept, whose meaning is often considered evasive or vague. In this paper, we try to counterweigh such evasiveness by putting emphasis on the material landscape produced within a project that is frequently depicted as a pinnacle of sustainable planning: the Western Harbour in Malmö, Sweden. Regardless of how vague discursive definitions of sustainability are, we argue that there is a sense in which planning projects such as this one help stabilise the meaning of the concept. They become material manifestations of particular takes on sustainability. Through examining what has emerged as former shipyards and factory grounds have since 2001 been transformed within the Western Harbour, we develop a heuristic triad that highlights what is presented as sustainability therein. We argue that through the Western Harbour’s development, sustainable planning becomes ‘spectacular’ through a focus on building sustainably in a way that also attracts public attention. It becomes regarded as ‘realisable’ in that it should be achievable within current political and political–economic structures. And sustainable planning becomes about the ‘everyday’ in that technological solutions for greening inhabitants’ everyday lives are developed in a way that emphasises the local scale.

Representation of New Media in Cinematographic Apparatuses: Critical Analysis of “<i>The Social Network</i>” as One of the Social Media Themed Hollywood Movies

As new and old media articulate with each other, it is possible to find traces of each media in the other one. Although new media is fed from old media by re-telecasting [rebroadcasting] what has been telecasted [broadcasted] in old media, old media subject new media in to its various programs or products. As it is known, cinema, which can be considered as old media and as an ideological state apparatus, is one of the influential medium in the process of naturalizing and normalizing ‘dominant’ as dominant. Because of this, representation of new media in old media is explored to understand how the dominant power relations or old mainstream media represent or portray new mainstream or new (?) dominant power relations. During the present study, “unchanging political economic structures in the field of media industry” and the way they legitimate and naturalize their superiority is the main argument that has been taken for granted. For the purpose of the present study, the motion-picture “The Social Network” is analyzed in terms of investigating how the messages were coded and how the reality of Facebook as a new product of dominant power relations was constructed.

New media–new voices: satirical representations of Nigeria’s socio-politics in Ogas at the top

ABSTRACTNew media are increasingly providing spaces and opportunities for media houses and activist groups engaged in socio-political reform in Africa. In Nigeria, social media are becoming platforms for communicating messages of resistance against oppressive political and exploitative economic power structures. This study analyzed Ogas at the top (OATT), an online puppetry series by Buni TV, as a way of examining new platforms and message content in Nigeria’s rapidly changing media sphere. Relying on semiotics and critical discourse analysis perspectives, the study analyzed select episodes of the series, to gauge how producers constructed powerful visual and linguistic messages to boldly satirize social injustices perpetrated by Nigeria’s political elites.