Capital Accumulation Strategies Research Articles

Theorizing Wisconsin's 2011 protests: Community‐based unionism confronts accumulation by dispossession

ABSTRACTRecent waves of social‐movement protest in Wisconsin challenge conventional understandings of labor activism, as they have responded not only to rollbacks of labor rights but also to privatization of state programs and resources and budget cuts that target poor and working families. Drawing from participant‐observation, I explore the question of whether the movements that arose in Wisconsin in early 2011 represented an expansion of union‐based activism struggling within the “expanded reproduction” of capital or a broader struggle against what New Enclosures Movement scholars have conceptualized as capital's ongoing primitive accumulation strategies. I examine the implications of the answer to this question for community‐based labor movements in Wisconsin and beyond. [community‐based unionism, labor, accumulation by dispossession, social movements, social protest]

Crisis of temporalities: Global capitalism after the 2007–08 financial collapse

As global capitalism took shape, during the 1990s and early 2000s, high-speed, financialized profit making disrupted long-term strategies of capital accumulation centered upon production, employment, commodity exchange and aggregate demand. In addition, state constructions of time and temporality were besieged by the short-termist tendencies of financialized capitalism. This sharpened temporal disjunctures within the nationally constituted economy and the nationally circumscribed state. And, as upper reaches of many nation states conformed to the temporal urgency of supra-national decision-making bodies such as the IMF, national politics could not effectively process the slower rhythms of the representative assembly, the election cycle, public policy formation and mediated public debate. Against this background, the aftermath and repercussions of the 2007--08 financial collapse will be examined. Global capitalism became pervaded by a crisis of temporalities, manifestations of which can be summarized as follows. First, the temporal contradiction between financialized profit making and long-term strategies of capital accumulation remain unresolved; therefore, financial instability and recessionary spirals will be a recurring pattern. Second, in a world of financial turbulence and global recession, spatio-temporal fixities within and across particular national political economies have weakened or disintegrated. Third, the political impossibility of reconstructing Keynesian policy instruments at a national, supra-national and international level has generated a historic malaise. Unregulated financialized capitalism and neo-liberal policy regimes cannot be sustained over time, yet new political-economic arrangements characterized by spatio-temporal fixity are not in prospect.

Impressing for Success: A Gendered Analysis of a Key Social Capital Accumulation Strategy

Social capital theory assesses the career benefits that accrue to individuals from the stock of relationships they have. Such benefits can be in the form of guidance and advice, access to key projects and assignments and help with setting up business deals. However, when assessing whether such career‐enhancing resources are available equally to men and women, we find that gender impacts on the access to and accumulation of social capital. The article seeks to address two key research questions. The first is whether women are aware of the need to accumulate social capital to advance their careers and the second is whether they use impression management techniques in order to assist them in doing this. Findings are reported from a study in an international consulting firm with 19 female consultants. In respect of research question one the findings indicate that women in the sample are aware of the need to accumulate social capital to advance their careers; with particular emphasis being placed on the importance of gaining access to influential sponsors. In respect of research question two, the findings confirm that women in the sample do perceive the necessity to utilise impression management techniques to help them to accumulate social capital. This is done in a defensive way and is linked to ensuring that one is seen as ambitious, likable and available. It is argued that these are key organizational norms, and it is perceived that in order to accumulate social capital, women need to actively work to dispel the negative stereotypes that attach to them because of their gender. The article calls for greater recognition of the impact that masculine organizational cultures have on the career development of women, who not only have to perform at a high level but are also required to expend additional energy conforming to masculine organizational cultures they have had little say in creating.

Pluriactivity and Socio-economic Success of Rural Households

The past few decades have seen a transformation in Sri Lanka from a traditional agricultural based rural economy to a more diversified economy leading to more pluriactive farmers. Pluriactivity has been identified as a survival and/or capital accumulation strategy. However, available literature reveals that all the pluriactive households are not socio-economically betteroff. The objective of the research is to compare and contrast better-off and worse-off pluriactive households in a given locality. This is in terms of the nature of income generation activities carried out by them and will be discussed in line with theories of entrepreneurship. Multiple embedded case study strategy was adopted. This was in order to explore meanings attached to socio-economic behaviours as perceived by the rural households. The research was carried out in a selected village in Kurunegala district, Sri Lanka. Initially, households were divided into socio-economically better off and worse off groups based on information gathered from key informants and subsequently, two samples were drawn from each group. Multiple data collection methods such as in-depth interviews, group discussions and direct observations were used. The data were analysed qualitatively and the findings were supplemented with quantifiable evidences whenever necessary in order to increase the validity of conclusions. The study site was a typical example of a resource constrained environment and pluriactivty has been adapted by both groups in order to increase their household income. However, the better off households have diversified into more off farm income generation activities and hence their dependency on agriculture was lower than that of worse off households who were mainly dependant on agricultural activities. In addition, the better off households exhibited more entrepreneurial qualities as they extract values from the environment without regard to the resource owned by them. DOI: 10.4038/sjae.v7i0.1825 <em>Sri Lankan Journal of Agricultural Economics</em>, Vol. 7, 2005 pp.85-108

Shifting Tides in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean Tuna Fishery: The Political Economy of Regulation and Industry Responses

The Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) tuna fishery is the largest and most valuable in the world. Although the International Law of the Sea granted Pacific island countries the right to exploit and manage this valuable fishery, they have been unable to prevent resource decline or to capture economic development potential from their intersections with the global tuna industry. Variants of neoliberalism identify Pacific island countries' weak institutions to explain these failings. We argue that this explanation is insufficient. As an alternative, we offer a political economy analysis of the co-evolution of fisheries regulation and the strategies of the Japanese and Taiwanese fleets (and their governments) in the region. This framing illustrates the relational, multi-scalar processes within and among states and firms that shape patterns in the sector. Our findings indicate that the combination of competitive capital accumulation strategies and inter-state power relations must be addressed to explain challenges in the WCPO tuna sector.

Conflicting Temporalities

The information and communication technology (ICT) driven, real-time tendencies of global capitalism are predominant, but they are not universal. Fast, short-term profits undermine long-term strategies of capital accumulation. In this respect, the structures and activities of global capitalism are riven by temporal contradictions. Such is evident between and within different fractions of capital. Fast and long-term imperatives also conflict within transnational corporations and business administration. On a global scale, the clash between different cultural traditions of corporate capitalism reflects opposing temporal logics of profit maximization. How then do these temporal contradictions play out empirically? My response to this question explores the general idea that spatio-temporal fixes enable the cohesion and reproduction of capitalist systems. To this end, I will point out that under global capitalism spatio-temporal fixes cannot be guaranteed. There are no built-in congruities interlinking state, nation, economy and society. Global networks of finance, production and corporate governance may weaken the conjunctures between nation, state, economy and society and exacerbate temporal disjunctures within them. From these observations, I will argue that state-centred constructions of time and temporality are weakening against the general, real-time tendencies of global capitalism. This sharpens temporal conflicts within the nationally constituted economy and the nationally circumscribed state. As upper reaches of the nation state conform to the temporal urgency of institutionalized supranational decision making, the marginalized national polity is answerable to the slower temporal rhythms of representative assembly, the election cycle, public policy formation and civil society. Against this background, worldwide coalitions opposed to ruling global interests are also riven by conflicting temporalities. Such conflicts reflect the temporal contradictions of global capitalism and the associated temporal conflicts within states, nations and economies.

Operational risk and insurance: a ruin-probabilistic reserving approach

A new methodology for financial and insurance operational risk capital estimation is proposed. It is based on using the finite time probability of (non-)ruin as an operational risk measure, within a general risk model. It allows for inhomogeneous operational loss frequency (dependent inter-arrival times) and dependent loss severities which may have any joint discrete or continuous distribution. Under the proposed methodology, operational risk capital assessment is viewed not as a one off exercise, performed at some moment of time, but as dynamic reserving, following a certain risk capital accumulation function. The latter describes the accumulation of risk capital with time and may be any nondecreasing, mpositive real function hHtL. Under these reasonably general assumptions, the probability of mnon-ruin is explicitly expressed using closed form expressions, derived by Ignatov and Kaishev (2000, 2004, 2007) and Ignatov, Kaishev and Krachunov (2001) and by setting it to a high enough preassigned mvalue, say 0.99, it is possible to obtain not just a value for the capital charge but a (dynamic) risk capital accumulation strategy, hHtL. In view of its generality, the proposed methodology is capable of accommodating any (heavy tailed) mdistributions, such as the Generalized Pareto Distribution, the Lognormal distribution the g-and-h mdistribution and the GB2 distribution. Applying this methodology on numerical examples, we demonstrate that dependence in the loss severities may have a dramatic effect on the estimated risk capital. In addition, we show also that one and the same high enough survival probability may be achieved by mdifferent risk capital accumulation strategies one of which may possibly be preferable to accumulating capital just linearly, as has been assumed by Embrechts et al. (2004). The proposed methodology takes into account also the effect of insurance on operational losses, in which case it is proposed to take the probability of joint survival of the financial institution and the insurance provider as a joint operational risk measure. The risk capital allocation strategy is then obtained in such a way that the probability of joint survival is equal to a preassigned high enough value, say 99.9 %

From fordism to flexible production - the production of space in a context of changes in capital strategies of accumulation

O presente trabalho tem como tema a intricada rede de relações entre o espaço da indústria e as estratégias de produção e reprodução do capital, em um contexto de transformação dessas estratégias, privilegiando o estudo da indústria automobilística instalada no Brasil. Essa transformação das estratégias de acumulação do capital foi aqui analisada como sendo a passagem do chamado fordismo para a produção flexível. Buscou-se, então, detectar quais são as principais mudanças (políticas, sociais, econômicas e espaciais) que ocorrem nessa passagem, e como ela altera os fatores de localização industrial no território

Human Capital-Based Strategy for Regional Economic Development

Regional policy makers have always wrestled in vain to come up with regional economic development policies that are coherent and uniform and can be defended on economic grounds. However, most policies are either ad hoc or based on political considerations. The relevant literature dealing with regional economic development strategies is fragmented. It also does not provide any guidance to formulate an overall long-term strategy based on an integrated analytical foundation. It incorporates elements like entrepreneurship, human capital, workplace training, capital accumulation, R&amp;D effort, innovations, technology, and technological cycles. This article proposes a human capital accumulation strategy for regional economic development that not only integrates the above diverse elements of the literature into a cohesive analytical framework but also provides the rationale for it to be part of a long-term policy for economic development on efficiency grounds.

Globalization, Post-Fordism and the Contemporary Context of Development

This article examines the claims that we are living in a new, global, post-Fordist era. The claims of both globalization and post-Fordism are examined, as well as some of the implications for development. Both theses are questioned, and in particular it is argued that in some respects the two arguments contradict rather than complement each other. An alternative approach is put forward, focusing on the contemporary context for development in the global economy, critically using the notion of global commodity chains. It is argued that we are currently witnessing a variety of strategies of capital accumulation in the world economy, and insofar as generalizations can be made, we have witnessed the end of the Third World as a homogeneous block. While some formerly peripheral countries are now a constituent part of the world economy, others are marginal to its needs. These countries are not so much exploited as simply left out.

Perspectivas de los asalariados en función del crecimiento económico

The wage level is affected by the pace of economic growth and employment. But employment in turn, is being affected by structural changes in the underdeveloped Mexican economy that are externally induced not only by the demands of the international financial institutions, but also by new strategies of capital accumulation worldwide the so-called "globalization", which impose new strategies for more efficient production, but displacer labor. The state should support its own technological developments in university research centers, but establishing support mechanisms and engagement with business, so that the new technology is used in Mexico. This will result in increased jobs, improve training to ensure the historical development of national technology; and therefore, will tend to improve wages.

Elders IXL Ltd: Finance Capital and the Geography of Corporate Restructuring

Despite widespread agreement that the economies of nation-states have become more closely integrated globally, there has been little concrete analysis of how this has occurred. In this paper a large Australian-based firm which has emerged rapidly as a transnational agribusiness and brewing conglomerate in the 1980s is examined. The fractions of capital now reorganised as Elders IXL Ltd have adopted over time various capital accumulation strategies, forging, in each period, distinctive linkages with the global economy. To cope with restructuring crises during the 1970s, Elders has rapidly built a new global geography of production, trade, and investment, accompanied by extensive rationalisation and divestment in its Australian operations. The role of international finance capital has become increasingly important, and domestic restructuring can be understood only in terms of the new global strategies.

Economic infrastructure and the development of state autonomy: A case study of U.S. maritime policy

This paper interprets the development of the U.S. maritime industry as reflecting changes in the economic substructure of American capitalism. The analysis seeks to explain how the changing interests of the state, as well as the changing balance of power between capitalists, workers and the state stimulated changes in the maritime industry. Three time periods are used: the Revolution until 1867; 1868 to 1897; and 1898‐on. These three periods represent distinct periods of policy change and strategies of capital accumulation for the state and for capitalists. A combination of Marxian and Weberian theories of political economy are used to explain these capital‐state relations.

Du Pont-State Relations

This paper examines the historical relations between the Du Pont Company and the U.S. federal government. Relations between the Du Pont Company and various segments of the state apparatus were varied and complex. I indicate how these historically contingent relations were affected by the strategies of capital accumulation adopted by the firm, the immediate organizational interests of the State, and the nature of class conflict in the society as a whole. These factors represent a combination of principles derived from neo-Marxian and neoWeberian theories of political economy. Corporations and governments are the most powerful organizations in advanced capitalist societies. Decisions regarding the most crucial issues that confront society as a whole are largely made within the context of these spheres of influence. Despite the importance of corporate and governmental organizations, relatively few theoretically-informed analyses regarding the specific content of relations between them exist in the literature. Most analyses of corporate-state relations begin at the institutional level of analysis and generalize to the level of the organization. As a result, these analyses tend to rely on rather sweeping, impressionistic, and often anecdotal evidence. What is required is a more detailed understanding of how specific relations are created, modified, and sustained over time. In this paper, I examine the historical interplay of relations between the E.I. du Pont de Nemours Company and the U.S. federal government.' The purpose of this paper is to identify the most historically significant aspects of these relations. First, I give a brief overview of the position of the Du Pont Company in the U.S. economy as a whole. Next, I describe the key factors which have influenced the development of Du Pont-state relationships. I then present a narrative summary of the history of these relations. Finally, I discuss these findings in light of more general theories of political economy.