Postwar Capitalism Research Articles

Poverty and social exclusion in European cities: diversity and convergence at the local level

In the paper that follows, Enzo Mingione identifies five different models of postwar welfare capitalism. The models were all based around “full” employment, the nuclear family and the regulatory monopoly of the nation‐state. He argues that as a result of economic and demographic change, the very foundations of each model are eroding. As a result certain groups not previously catered for in traditional welfare systems (particularly migrants, single parents, the young, the poorly skilled and low income nuclear families) are now facing social exclusion. Mingione’s analysis has abroad European focus, but also looks at the cases of specific cities (Rennes, Milan and Bremen among others) which demonstrate pressures on welfare services of a varied nature. The variety of local scenarios requires a localised response; though Mingione states that these should include: “three main ingredients: the development of forms of partnership between private and public agencies; activation and professionalisation of new and old institutions in the third sector [and] professional and coordinating abilities on the part of local authorities”.

The revolutionary imagination in the Americas and the age of development

In The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development, Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo boldly argues that crucial twentieth-century revolutionary challenges to colonialism and capitalism in the Americas have failed to resist - and in fact have been constitutively related to - the very developmentalist narratives that have justified and naturalized post-war capitalism. Saldana-Portillo brings the critique of development discourse to bear on such exemplars of revolutionary and resistant political thought and practice as Guevara, Malcolm X, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, and the Guatemalan guerrilla resistance. She suggests that in each of these diverse sites, developmentalist constructions frame the struggle as a heroic movement from unconsciousness to consciousness, from a childlike backwardness toward a disciplined and self-aware maturity. Reading governmental reports, memos, and policies, Saldana-Portillo traces the arc of development narratives from its beginnings in the 1944 Bretton Woods conference through its apex during Robert S. McNamara's reign at the World Bank (1968-1981). She compares these narratives with models of subjectivity and agency embedded in the autobiographical texts of three revolutionary icons of the 1960s and 1970s-those of Ernesto Che Guevara, Guatemalan insurgent Mario Payeras, and Malcolm X-and the agricultural policy of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Saldana-Portillo highlights a shared paradigm of a masculinist transformation of the individual requiring the transcendence of ethnic particularity for the good of the nation. While she argues that this model of progress often alienated the very communities targeted by the revolutionaries, she shows how contemporary insurgents such as Rigoberta Menchu, the Zapatista movement, and queer Aztlan have taken up the radicalism of their predecessors to re-theorize revolutionary subjectivity for the twenty-first century.

The ‘Place’ of Land in Japan's Postwar Development, and the Dynamic of the 1980s Real-Estate ‘Bubble’ and 1990s Banking Crisis

In this paper I seek to unfold the place of landed property within Japan's postwar uneven development and the way in which this found expression in the 1980s real-estate ‘bubble’ and subsequent 1990s banking crisis. I argue that landed property was both internal to and constitutive of the social relations that marked the specificity of Japan's postwar capitalism. As a national state within the accumulation of global capital, however, Japan's specificity only existed as ‘difference-in-unity’. Furthermore, I suggest that the 1980s real-estate ‘bubble’ and 1990s banking crisis were specific and culminating expressions of changes within the form of those social relations, as mediated by Japan's changing position within the process of global uneven development. Important in this respect was the way in which credit, fictitious capital, and spatial restructuring became precarious expressions of attempts to achieve a temporal and spatial displacement of crisis.

States and Markets in an Era of Globalization

The paper considers how states and markets shape one another at the national and world-system levels and how globalization is transforming that relationship. This process is illustrated through a review of research on liberal, social rights, developmental, and socialist states in the postwar capitalist economy. These state models were reconciled with expanding international markets through a series of controls on trade and capital flows. Globalization has undermined many of these controls so that states must increasingly integrate themselves into local and global networks. States are experimenting with organizational and strategic changes nationally and internationally in order to respond to a networked economy and polity. Neoliberal institutions are the dominant force shaping the relation between states and markets in the contemporary era, but alternative state-society alliances are emerging to contest the hegemony of neoliberalism in shaping globalization.

Crisis of Japan's Postwar Capitalism : Reorganization of the Post-Cold War World and Resolution of Postwar Reproduction Structure(PAPERS READ AT THE AUTUMN CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUM, 1999 : The Japanese Depression of the 1990s in Global Historical Perspective)

Crisis of Japan's Postwar Capitalism : Reorganization of the Post-Cold War World and Resolution of Postwar Reproduction Structure(PAPERS READ AT THE AUTUMN CONFERENCE SYMPOSIUM, 1999 : The Japanese Depression of the 1990s in Global Historical Perspective)

Brenner on Distribution

AbstractThe publication of Bob Brenner's long-awaited analysis of the development of post-war capitalism is to be welcomed. Brenner's systematic review of a mass of data on the development of the US, German and Japanese economies finally, and incontrovertibly, destroys the ‘profit squeeze’ explanation for the tendencies to stagnation and crisis which have afflicted global capitalism over the past thirty years. This once fashionable theory explained the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of the ability of workers to restrict profitability through their demands for higher wages and their resistance to the intensification of labour. It is manifestly the case that the struggles of workers over the past thirty years have been predominantly defensive struggles, attempting, at best, to limit the erosion of relative gains of previous years in the spheres of wages, job control and welfare provision. The resistance of workers to a further intensification of their exploitation may have presented a barrier to the resolution of the crisis on the basis of capital, but it is certainly not the struggle of workers that has provoked the crisis.

Capitalist Competition and the Tendency to Overproduction: Comments on Brenner's ‘Uneven Development and the Long Downturn’

AbstractThe publication of Bob Brenner's long-awaited analysis of the development of post-war capitalism is to be welcomed. Brenner's systematic review of a mass of data on the development of the US, German and Japanese economies finally, and incontrovertibly, destroys the ‘profit squeeze’ explanation for the tendencies to stagnation and crisis which have afflicted global capitalism over the past thirty years. This once fashionable theory explained the crisis tendencies of capitalism in terms of the ability of workers to restrict profitability through their demands for higher wages and their resistance to the intensification of labour. It is manifestly the case that the struggles of workers over the past thirty years have been predominantly defensive struggles, attempting, at best, to limit the erosion of relative gains of previous years in the spheres of wages, job control and welfare provision. The resistance of workers to a further intensification of their exploitation may have presented a barrier to the resolution of the crisis on the basis of capital, but it is certainly not the struggle of workers that has provoked the crisis.

Riding the Long Wave

AbstractRobert Brenner's contribution to the history of post-war capitalism provides a stimulating basis for the opening of a debate on this subject. I will begin with some critical remarks before putting forward a number of alternative propositions on the functioning of contemporary capitalism.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Elementary Statistics for Geographers, by James E. Burt and Gerald M. Barber.Alabama Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, edited by John H. Long, compiled by Peggy Tuck Sinko.Indiana Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, edited by John H. Long, compiled by Peggy Tuck Sinko.Pennsylvania Atlas of Historical County Boundaries, edited by John H. Long, compiled by Gordon DenBoer.Remote Sensing and Image Interpretation, by T. M. Lillesand and R. W. Kiefer, 3d ed.The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism, by Michael J. Webber and David L. Rigby.

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Environmental management: new directions for the twenty‐first century Geoff A Wilson and Raymond L Bryant Work‐place: the social regulation of labor markets Jamie Peck Thresholds in feminist geography: difference, methodology, representation John Paul Jones III, Hiedi J Nast and Susan M Roberts (eds) Justice, nature and the geography of difference David Harvey The golden age illusion: rethinking postwar capitalism Michael Webber and David Rigby

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Antonio Candido: On Literature and Society, translated, edited, and introduced by Howard S. Becker. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995,198 pages. Paper, $17.95; cloth, $49.50.[A]uthors use the material of social observation and analysis as the basis of the structure of a work more than its content. The most successful works, artistically, are those in which the form exemplifies the nature of the social phenomenon that furnishes the matter of the fiction, (p. xiii)Teaching Sociology with Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography, compiled by Su Epstein. Washington DC: ASA Teaching Resources, 1996, 80 pages. Paper, $10.50 members /$14.50 nonmembers.Who Will Care for Us?: Aging and Long‐Term Care in Multicultural America, by Ronald J. Angel and Jacqueline L. Angel. New York: New York University Press, 304 pages. Cloth, $29.95.Black elderly report generally poorer health than non‐Hispanic Whites, but Mexican Americans rate their health as far worse than either of the other two groups. We suspect that this is, to at least some degree, the result of semantic differences between the English and Spanish versions of the question, (pp. 40, 42)The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism, by Michael J. Webber and David L. Rigby. New York: Guilford Press, 501 pages. Cloth, $45.00.Modernity and the State: East, West, by Claus Offe. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996, 270 pages. Paper, $18.00.

Book Reviews

Orfield, Myron Metropolitics: A Regional Agenda for Community and StabilityClark, William A. V. and Dieleman, Frans M. Households and Housing: Choice and Outcomes in the Housing MarketYinger, John Closed Doors, Opportunities Lost: The Continuing Costs of Housing DiscriminationGolledge, Reginald G. and Stimson, Robert J. Spatial Behavior: A Geographic PerspectiveBaker, Terry and Fitz Gerald, John and Honohan, Patrick (eds.) Economic Implications for Ireland of EMUClarke, Graham P. Microsimulation for Urban and Regional Policy AnalysisWebber, Michael J. and Rigby, David L. The Golden Age Illusion: Rethinking Postwar Capitalism

Post-War Strategic Capitalism in Norway: A Theoretical and Analytical Framework

This essay provides an institutional approach to the analysis of the Norwegian state's effort to promote industrial development between 1950 and 1980. It explores the extent to which national financial systems influence the ability of governments to intervene in industrial policy. It also explores the extent to which both the governance structures and investment strategies of Norwegian firms have been influenced by government policy. It demonstrates that the financial system is indeed a critical factor in the effective implementation of industrial policy in the period in question.

The golden age illusion: rethinking postwar capitalism

Reassessing common interpretations of postwar economic history and geography, this book focuses on the evolution of the global economy from the 1950s to the present. It is a thorough integration of theoretical and empirical work, drawing data from around the world, with detailed studies of two advance industrialized nations--Japan and the United States; two semi-peripheral economies--Australia and Canada; and three newly industrializing countries--Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan. The authors build on standard models of economic change to incorporate new developments in regional dynamics: they use nonlinear, nonequilibrium, and evolutionary arguments to frame discussions of profit rates, technological change, and interregional capital flows. In assessing traditional explanations of postwar economic growth and crisis, the work highlights the geographic form of postwar growth, globalization. It clearly illustrates the failure of traditional theories to adequately account for the emergence of selected newly industrializing countries. The authors conclude with a new interpretation of the global slowdown--one that emphasizes the endogenous nature of capitalist crises and demonstrates how the newly industrializing economies expanded as a result of that slowdown.

BRINGING GENDER AND RACE IN:

When passed, the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act established two distinct views of employment discrimination and two different enforcement structures—one aimed at sex and the other at race discrimination. To explain this bifurcated approach to employment discrimination, it is necessary to examine not only social class but also gender and race relations. Sex and race discrimination bills addressed some of the problems of postwar capitalism in the United States. At the same time, however, the bifurcated discrimination policy enforced women's dependence on men in families. But it did this differently for white men than it did for men of color.

Reincorporation and the American State in South Korea: The Textile Industry in the 1950s

The development of South Korea's cotton manufacturing industry during the First Republic (1948–1960) is examined as a way to better understand the process of “reincorporation” of a peripheral state into the postwar capitalist world system. An examination of the character of cotton manufacturing in South Korea, and the role played by the United States in reincorporating the former Japanese colony into an American-dominated world system, suggests the process was largely one of “constrained bureaucratic expansion.” The study illustrates how the earlier process of incorporation under Japanese hegemony shaped subsequent reincorporation under American suzerainty. Additionally, the analysis underscores the importance of geopolitical factors, and the interaction of the local situation with the world system in shaping the process of reincorporation.

Growth and Crisis in Post-War Capitalism

Growth and Crisis in Post-War Capitalism

BOOK REVIEWS

BOOK REVIEWS

Growth and crisis in post-war capitalism

Growth and crisis in post-war capitalism

The Mediterranean city in transition: social change and urban development

Postwar capitalist development has involved a transition from polarization toward diffuse urbanization and flexibility. The timing and form of this transition and its effects on spatial structures have varied, as is especially evident in the case of Mediterranean Europe. Focusing upon Greater Athens between 1948 and 1981 - the crucial period of the transition - Lila Leontidou explores the role of social classes in urban development. The emergence of new processes in cities such as Athens, Salonica, Rome, Naples, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona and Lisbon is different in both timing and manner from that of northern European cities, but, as Dr Leontidou argues, this should not be attributed to poverty or inexplicable cultural peculiarities. Instead interaction between popular spontaneity, economic forces and State control has played a major role.