post-Fordist Regime Research Articles

On “Multitude” and the Urban Question: Reading in Times of Pandemics

“Multitude” is a term popularized by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt to conceptualize the labor condition and its political possibilities in the post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation. This paper seeks to explore such a concept in the context of an Indonesian city. It argues that the Indonesian multitude is formed through the worldwide division of labor, which involves the urban majorities whose work cut across formal and informal sectors. It teases out the absence of the “urban question” in the Indonesian city as a context for understanding the challenges faced by the Indonesian multitude. The paper (in light of post-pandemic) calls for the role of the state to serve as a medium for achieving societal goals and a guarantor of public access to Universal Basic Assets covering education, health, housing, technology, and information.

Smart Cities in the Global System of City-Regions: The French Regulation School’s Perspective

The study aims to analyse the rise of the smart city as part of the global trend of the rise of city-regions in late capitalist society. By using the methodology of the French Regulation School (FRS), the authors show that political and economic significance of smart city projects are based on their unique role in revamping the failing consumption characteristic of the ongoing crisis of the late capitalist, or as the FRS theorists call it, the post-Fordist regime of accumulation. Through the analysis of the smart city’s role in stimulating innovations and maintaining the consumption patterns needed for the continuing market growth, the present research postulates the hypothesis of the rise of the city-centred system of global developmental governance as a necessary move along the existing trajectory of transition toward the post-Fordist system of production and regulation. The authors argue that the worldwide rise of the smart city movement should be seen through the lens of stabilization of the late capitalist mode of development. A key shift in evolution of the existing global political and economic system is the formation of networked organizations that connect smart cities of the first, global, and the second, regional, echelon into a unified system of governance, which represents a new mode of regulation for the post-Fordist society.

Toward a Criminological Understanding of Financialization

This article weaves together the ascendancy of financial markets and the field of critical criminology. It argues that critical perspectives such as crimes of the powerful and crimes of globalization may benefit from analyzing financialization as a key economic and cultural transformation in today’s capitalism. The analysis of financialization is made through the literature that addresses the economic transformations of capitalist accumulation, thus framing finance capital in the post-Fordist regime of production. By using this perspective, this article develops the argument that the cyclical speculative waves of finance are not a congenital pathology of capitalism but its very mode of governmentality. Overall, this article claims the analytic potential of financialization studies to deepen our understanding of the social and environmental harms produced by powerful corporations and financial institutions.

Global dimension of labor inequality

The transition of the world economy from Keynesianism to neoliberalism at the end of the twentieth century entailed tectonic shifts in the sphere of labor and employment. The organization of the production process on neoliberal principles under the conditions of the post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation has led to instability and insecurity of employment, a high level of labor underutilization, widespread labor poverty, as well as the rapidly increasing inequality that threatens social development today and stability of society. Based on the economic-sociological approach the author examines the reasons for the expansion and the specifics of the manifestation of inequality in the world of work in the context of the post-Fordist neoliberal reform of the global economic system. The article characterizes the key trends in the functioning of the labor market, contributing to the increase in inequality over the past decades (a decrease of the labor share in the national income, a reduction in the relationship between productivity and wages growth, the erosion of the trade union movement and the destruction of the welfare state). The main attention is paid to the study of the phenomenon of labor income inequality, its dynamics and forms of manifestation in the modern world, as well as to identify the impact on this type of inequality, both individual characteristics of workers and the characteristics of the industry, size of the enterprise, as well as the level of socio-economic development of the country. Based on the study of these processes, the author concludes that the redistribution of income in favor of capital and their high differentiation are the quintessence of neoliberal capitalism. The economic and political depletion of nation states in the context of neoliberal reforms led to their low resources, insufficient either to carry out a broad social policy and help those in need, or to adequately combat the consequences of crises characteristic of capitalism or any force majeure situations, such as, for example, the current COVID-19 pandemic. To get the global economy out of the current crisis requires the implementation of fundamental changes not only in the field of economic policy, but also in the entire system of distribution of public goods.

A Critical Reflection on Neoliberalism

: In this interview, we first scrutinise the meaning of classical liberalism and its revision by New liberalism in the twenties as social liberalism to demonstrate the conceptual confusion in using the term ‘neoliberalism' as an economic doctrine. We then discuss the emergence of American neoliberalism as developed by the economic and law departments of the University of Chicago in the seventies notably by the Monetarist school. The anti-inflation program of Milton Friedman and Washington consensus provide a particular version of neoliberalism as economic policy. However, neoliberalism also pertains to a transitional, and non viable post-Fordist accumulation regime that has collapsed by 2007-2008 crisis. We also demonstrate the opposition against neoliberal economic policy not only by left critics but also by many right and center economists, politicians and scholars. Finally, we refute the idea of considering the political economy of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) as neoliberal. Borrowing Vahabi’s theoretical framework, we characterise parallel institutions and foundations as political capitalism with the predominance of predatory para-statal sectors. The limits of reformist and transformationalist discourses are revisited in light of political economy of the IRI, and the need for a social and political revolution is concluded.

Smart city in the global system of developmental governance

The study aims to analyze the rise of the smart city as a global project for the improvement of the territorial governance of social and economic development in late capitalist society. By using the methodology of the French regulation school, the author shows that political and economic significance of the smart city projects is defined by their role in the global network of information exchange characteristic of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation. Through the analysis of the smart city’s role in stimulating innovations and maintaining the consumption patterns needed for the continuing market growth the present research demonstrates the objective necessity of installation of the city-centered system of global developmental governance.

Практики та режими бачення сучасного урбаністичного простору

The article is devoted to the cultural analysis of the influence of the theory of postfordism, which considers post-Fordist production with post-industrial technology as the basis of industrial reproduction at the global level and the reproduction of capitalist social relations after the crisis of the Fordist mode of production and consumption. The abstract social space of the city is studied, which is formed by abstraction of labor and fetishization of things at the level of practice and the formation of a visually geometric representation of space with sign power repressive in relation to reality. The basis of the concept of sociality as the basis of a unified theory of space was developed by the French philosopher and sociologist A. Lefebvre and further developed by American social geography and urban studies, in particular in the works of D. Harvey, E. Soggy, D. Gottdiener and others. The followers of Lefebvre (apart from those important are F. Jameson's influence) refer in particular to the interdisciplinary trend of post-Fordism, within which postmodernism is considered in connection with the post-Fordist regime of accumulation (a concept developed by the Marxist regulatory school). S. Lesch focuses on the cultural mode of signaling. Likewise, D. Hartmann considers the influence of postmodernism on the post-Fordist regime of capitalism. Paolo True and Pascal Gillen consider within the limits of post-Fordism the existence in modern conditions of the plural. V. Martyanov examines the links between post-Fordism and the post-industrial / information society conceptualized by D. Bell, E. Toffler, M. Castels and others. The article deals with the reconstruction of the theory of social space and post-Fordism and outlines the social transformations of the twentieth century. In essence, it was a search for confirmation that the accumulation mode produces and reproduces social space. Architecture and urban space have become an important structural link through which to consider this connection and justify the invariance of the basic mode of accumulation through the reproduction of abstract social space and vice versa. The analysis of the discourse around the urban abstract space associated with the identity of the bourgeois class and the need for the formation of a hierarchized homogeneous spatial texture of production is carried out. As well as post-Fordist globalization and post-industrialization, which led to a change in the function and structure of the city with the main role of the post-modernist regime of signification as the logic of late capitalism in the context of programmed consumption.

Building Online Academic Community: Reputation Work on Twitter

Building Online Academic Community: Reputation Work on Twitter

La no-ciudad posmoderna en "El Jardí del Set Crepuscles" de Miquel de Palol

El Jardi del Set Crepuscles –the first novel of Catalan writer and architect Miquel de Palol– gives us the opportunity to reflect on the metamorphosis of western cities in the early seventies of the last century. According to authors such as Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, Giandomenico Amendola or Edward Soja, the emergence of the postmodern city during the transition to the post-Fordist regime of accumulation occurs accompanied by a weakening of the public sphere. The objective of this paper is to illustrate the narrative and rhetorical strategies used by Miquel de Palol to represent and analyze this transformation.

CCB with...: Displaying Curatorial Relationality in dOCUMENTA (13)’s The Logbook

Focusing on the construction of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s curatorial authorship in The Logbook published by dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), this article addresses the politics of publishing personal relationships in the context of current post-Fordist regimes where immaterial and affective labours such as communicating, networking and self-promotion have moved to the core of the capitalist production of value. I discuss how the third volume of dOCUMENTA (13)’s three-part catalogue turns into a curatorial autobiography that not only exhibits Christov-Bakargiev’s authorship by exposing her conviviality, familiarity and friendship with significant others, but also provides an updated version of the 1981 Harald Szeemann monograph Museum der Obsessionen. My aim is to scrutinize the intersection of historically shifting (bio)political implications of affective labour and the gendering of curatorial practice.

Art and resilience: The spatial practices of making a resilient artistic career in London

This paper focusses on the spatial practices of resilience put in place by individual professionals who face changes and challenges related to their life and career aspirations. In the frame of changing labour markets, and a transition to precarious work in post-Fordist regimes of production, this paper draws attention to the case of visual artists in London. Through a multi-scalar approach to the analysis of resilience, the paper shows that artists have to learn how to navigate through temporary and flexible work arrangements by learning skills that enable a strategic adaptability. A resilient artistic career is portrayed as a geographically situated process that is often played out through complementary and alternative communication channels and spaces that are mostly located outside the mainstream and established art system.

Postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime: a comparative analysis of the USA, the UK and Germany

The article seeks to reanimate the early regulation theory project of building Marxist political economy through the development of mid-range institutional theory. The concept of a mode of regulation – central to the Parisian wing of regulation theory – is rejected in favour of a distinction between functional and dysfunctional accumulation regimes. The Fordist regime of accumulation provided a unique institutional context allowing an extraordinary combination of high profits, rising real wages and strong GDP growth. In contrast, the postfordist regime is shown to be inherently dysfunctional, characterized by manifest tendencies toward stagnation and associated regressive trends in work and employment relations. A comparative analysis of profit rates, wage shares, growth rates and debt in the USA, UK and Germany shows that the single model of postfordism as a dysfunctional accumulation regime fits all three countries, although with important differences in forms of dysfunctionality.

Transformative cities

Drawing on Lefebvre and others, this article considers contemporary urban social movements with a selective review of urban research and suggestions for future ethnographic, cultural, and sociological questions. Under a generalized post-Fordist regime of capital accumulation, cultural workers and laborers, service workers, and community activists have all participated in urban movements. We consider such collective action, generated in the crucible of urban life, as a reflection of three urban commons: labor, consumption, and public services; public space (including mass communications and the virtual); and art, including all forms of creative expression. We suggest that the three urban commons outlined here are not necessarily perceived everywhere, but as they momentarily come together in cities around the world, they give us a glimpse of a city built on the social needs of a population. That is the point when cities become transformative.

For My Own Pleasure and Delight

For My Own Pleasure and Delight

Disaffection in the Post-Fordist Workplace: Figurations of ‘Immaterial Labour’ in Recent French Theory and Literature

Between them, André Gorz and Yann Moulier Boutang have offered some of the most persuasive theorisations of what is at stake in the shift from a Fordist to a Post-Fordist regime of accumulation. Despite the various theoretical and political differences between Gorz and Moulier Boutang, both share the assumption that the affective, cognitive, and immaterial forms of labour on which Post-Fordism depends constitute, by their very nature, a fundamental challenge to the labour theory of value and hence may yet herald the advent of a new era of genuinely cooperative and creative labour. This article seeks to question that shared assumption. In the first instance, it focuses on a corpus of recent French representations of the realities of Post-Fordist labour to suggest that the dominant experience of affective, cognitive, and immaterial labour, far from being one of creative cooperation, is one of disaffection and refusal. Secondly, the article moves on to question the theoretical assumptions behind Gorz's and Moulier Boutang's accounts. It proposes that rather than being taken to be natural, inherently human characteristics, external and hence resistant to the workings of the market, the cooperative, affective capacities exploited under Post-Fordism might be better understood as the products of that economic conjuncture, the expressions of the specific mode of subjectivity Post-Fordism works to produce.

Sociology after Fordism: Prospects and problems

A number of commentators have suggested that the shift from a Fordist to a post-Fordist regime of political economy has had positive consequences for sociology, including the reinforcement of critical sociologies ( Burawoy, 2005 ; Steinmetz, 2005 ). This article argues that, although disciplinary hierarchies have been destabilized, what is emerging is a new form of instrumental knowledge, that of applied interdisciplinary social studies. This development has had a particular impact upon sociology. Savage and Burrows (2007) , for example, argue that sociological knowledge no longer has a privileged claim to authority and is increasingly in competition with social knowledge produced by the private sector and agencies of the public sector. The response of many sociologists to such claims has been to reassert the importance of the discipline as the purveyor of critically relevant knowledge about society. The article traces how the idea of internal critique within sociology has developed to embrace ‘knowing capitalism’ ( Thrift, 2005 ), at the same time as declaring the impossibility of sociological knowledge. The critique of sociology also becomes the critique of critique and what remains is the instrumentalization of knowledge. Where many sociologists continue to claim a special interest in critical knowledge, the article suggests that, in contrast, we potentially confront the problem that such knowledge may itself be facing a crisis of reproduction.

The Role of Neoliberal Capitalism in Reproducing Gender Inequality in Italy

This article considers the reproduction of gender inequality in Italy today. The post-Fordist regime is seen to exclude the former relationship between capital and labour: the absence of social and economic regulation assigns to the international division of labour the affliction of redistribution and reduces government's interest and efforts to produce social cohesion and remove discrimination. Accordingly, the unavoidability of the work of social reproduction, the transformations of family structures and the inadequacy of state intervention in social policies present significant challenges to the welfare system. The analysis of the working and living conditions of Italian women illustrates the close relationship between the structure of the labour market and social reproduction, and allows us to examine the impact of economic and social changes on the role of both men and women in public life and in the private sphere.

An Operationalization of the Strategic-Relational Approach: The Contested Privatization of the Mexican Oil Sector (1982–2006)

This article is based on the strategic-relational approach developed by Bob Jessop and investigates the contested privatization of the Mexican oil industry. Privatization has been rampant all over Latin America throughout the 1980s and 1990s. There are, however, some important exceptions from this general trend towards privatization which go widely unnoticed within the academic debate. The Mexican oil sector is one such exception as steps towards its privatization have been undertaken since the 1980s but until today ownership-rights for the enterprise remain with the Mexican state. The strategic-relational approach assumes that despite the pressure exercised by a post-Fordist accumulation regime towards privatization, the contingent interaction of actor strategies and institutions allows for alternative historical paths and may lead to the collapse of privatization processes. In order to conduct a detailed case study, an operationalization of the strategic-relational approach is necessary. Following this path, virgin soil is entered as date only a few attempts have been made to operationalize strategic-relational categories. The case study of the privatization conflict over the Mexican oil industry reveals that in this specific case decisive resistance against privatization stems from the Ministry of Finance, which is normally considered the most important institutional basis of neoliberalism in Mexico. Este artículo se basa en el enfoque relacional estratégico desarrollado por Bob Jessop, e investiga la controvertida privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana. Durante los años 80 y 90, la privatización ha sido dominante en toda Latinoamérica. Sin embargo, hay algunas excepciones importantes de esta tendencia general hacia la privatización, que han pasado desapercibidas en el debate académico. El sector petrolero mexicano hace parte de tal excepción, en la medida que los pasos hacia la privatización se iniciaron en los años 80, pero los derechos de propiedad de la empresa son del estado mexicano. El enfoque estratégico relacional asume que, a pesar de la presión ejercida por un régimen de acumulación hacia la privatización posterior a Ford, la interacción contingente entre las estrategias del actor y las instituciones permiten vías históricas alternas y pueden conducir al colapso de los procesos de privatización. Con el fin de llevar a cabo un estudio detallado del caso, es necesario adoptar un enfoque operacional de las relaciones estratégicas. Continuando con esta idea, hasta la fecha, muy poco se ha hecho para establecer categorías relacionales estratégicas de operación, ejemplo, las tierras vírgenes. El estudio del caso del conflicto de la privatización de la industria petrolera mexicana, revela que en este caso específico, la resistencia a la privatización del petróleo se origina en el Ministerio de Hacienda, considerado como la base institucional más importante del neoliberalismo en México. 本文是以鲍勃·杰索普所发展的战略-关系路径为基础，考察有争议的墨西哥石油工业私有化。在整个20世纪80年代和90年代，私有化在全拉美盛行。然而，在这一私有化的大趋势中，也存在一些重要的例外，它们在学术辩论中未受关注。墨西哥石油部门就是这样一个例外，因墨西哥石油部门的私有化20世纪80年代即开始着手，但至今公司的所有权仍掌握在国家手中。 战略-关系路径假定，尽管后福特主义的资本积累机制对私有化施加了压力，但行为体战略与机构之间有条件的互动提供了可供选择的历史路径，并可能导致私有化进程的瓦解。为了进行详细的案例研究，对战略-关系路径进行操作化是必要的。沿着这条路径，把未开垦的土地纳入了进来，因迄今为止只进行了个别尝试把战略-关系分类可操作化。 对墨西哥石油工业的私有化冲突案例研究表明，在这一特定例子中，反对私有化的决定性阻力来自通常被认为是墨西哥新自由主义最重要制度基础的财政部。

Reflections On Feminism, Immaterial Labour And The Post-Fordist Regime

1. OPERAISMO AND THE SUCCESSES OF CLASS STRUGGLE? In the many articles and books written in recent years on the topics of precarious labour, immaterial and affective labour, all of which are understood within the over-arching frame of post-Fordist regimes of production, there is a failure to foreground gender, or indeed to knit gender and ethnicity into prevailing concerns with class and class struggle. I seek to rectify this by interrogating some of the influential work in this terrain. I will also draw attention to those accounts which have reflected on gender and on changes in how feminists and sociologists nowadays think about the question of women and employment. (It is almost unnecessary to indicate that the critical paradigm underlying the shift in feminist debate is performativity theory and the radical de-naturalising of gender therein.) I ask the question, how integral is the participation of 'women' to the rise of post-Fordist production, and later in this article I ask what kind of role do women, especially young women (dispensing from now on with the need for the commas that query the category) play in the urban-based new culture industries? By prioritising gender I am also critiquing its invisibility in this current field of new radical political discourse associated with writers like Hardt and Virno, and Hardt and Negri. (1) I propose that the transition to precarious work or immaterial labour which is now so profoundly felt by vast numbers of young people, especially young women, (2) across Europe and under the age of 40, is inadequately understood without recourse to a critical interface that develops from the late 1970s onwards, between the wider impact of the women's movement (going well beyond the confines of self-declared feminists), and the modes of counter-response which capital, the state and consumer culture develop to constrain and re-shape, by means of a range of biopolitical strategies, the whole terrain of gender and sexuality. I challenge writers like those associated with the Italian Operaismo School for their insistence on class, as the defining meta-concept for understanding contemporary work and for imagining a radical political future. Fundamentally this is a 'labour-society' model where the 'decline of labour' and the shift of the centre of gravity to the non-work sphere, is blamed for a wide range of contemporary pathologies including the 'opacity of groups' and the 'ruin of the self'. (3) Counter to this I would argue that the way in which class now needs to be retained, (in its always-existing entanglement with gender and ethnicity) is, paradoxically, in its decline, something which has been displaced as a primary or foundational concept. This is not quite the same as Beck's idea of the zombie concept, more a governmentally-directed shift which fades out the social and political salience of class permitting at the same time a coming forward of gender as a source of self-validation. An understanding of this as a political strategy does not negate the place of class, but it does require a different kind of thinking about class, one which focuses on this twilight status. The sustained attempts within contemporary governmentality to 'de-classify' society in the name of a gendered modernity (the New Labour strategy in the UK) have, I would suggest, had tangible effects. This is partly due to the successes of 'make-over' lifestyle television programmes, and to the growth of aspirational media and popular culture. (4) This is not to say that class is irrelevant. But does it have, and can it have, quite the fundamental analytical purchase writers like Hardt, Lazzarato, Negri and Virno claim? If we agree that class is neither a sociological descriptor, nor a question of social identity, but primarily, though by no means exclusively, a set of antagonistic relations formed in the struggle between capital and labour, or between the state and subordinated social groupings whose subjugation entails a distinctive relation to labour, (for instance the unemployed), are these class antagonisms today such primary structuring mechanisms when labour comprises of subjects now much less engaged as 'workers'? …

Oser pleurer:Horaceand the Power of Tears

While there is an agreement that the Fordist accumulation regime has come to an end in the course of the 1970s, there is no agreement on how to characterize the post-Fordist regime (or if a such is already in place). The paper seeks put together various arguments related to financialization (in the broad sense) from a macroeconomic point of view and investigate the relevance of these arguments by means of an analysis stylized facts for EU countries. The paper discusses changes in investment behaviour, consumption behaviour and government expenditures, investigating to what extent changes are related to financialization. Households experience higher debt levels. Rising profits of businesses come with only moderate investment. The notion of a “finance-dominated” accumulation regime is proposed to highlight that financial developments crucially shape the pattern and the pace of accumulation. The finance dominated accumulation regime is characterized by a mediocre growth performance and by higher volatility. However, so far deregulated financial markets have not lead to major financial crises in advanced capitalist economies. A possible reason for this is that the size of the state sector has not been substantially reduced despite neoliberal attempts to do so.