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11. Introduction: Gender in the Global South: A Complex and Contradictory Agenda

Author:
Natália Maria Félix de Souza
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Contexto Internacional
Institution:
Institute of International Relations, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
Abstract:
The publication of the last of three parts of Contexto Internacional’s special issue ‘Gender in the Global South’ is the opportunity to both celebrate and lament the accomplishments of feminist scholarship in the so-called global South. Reflecting from the Brazilian experience and scenario, it is remarkable how much the women, gender and sexuality agenda has grown in the field of international relations: from a marginal perspective at the turn of the century (Nogueira and Messari 2005), it has now become a major locus of resistance and contestation, which can be attested to by looking at the power plays at the Brazilian international relations association’s annual meetings, the multiplication of feminist collectives inside public and private universities, not to mention the growing number of gender-sensitive research articles published by the main national journals – including this triple special issue. From where I look, there is no doubt that feminism has come to shake the conventions of the area and produce a much more plural and interesting picture of international relations – one which encompasses more voices, stories, subjectivities and narratives. From this standpoint, there is much to celebrate and hope for.
Topic:
International Relations, Gender Issues, Socialism/Marxism, Realism, International Relations Theory, Feminism, and Liberalism
Political Geography:
Latin America and Global Focus

12. FROM SELF-FULFILMENT TO SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present

Author:
Ewa Mazierska
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Book
Institution:
Berghahn Books
Abstract:
Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DušanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.
Topic:
Cold War, Mass Media, Socialism/Marxism, Film, and Neoliberalism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe

13. Populism and Social Cohesion in Latin America: Two Sides of the same coin

Author:
Anuschka Álvarez von Gustedt and Susanne Gratius
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Fundación Alternativas
Abstract:
Are populism and social cohesion two sides of the same coin, or antagonistic concepts? In deeply divided Latin American societies, populism and discourses from the left have repeatedly promised inclusion and welfare programs under a strong leader who gives voice to the poor and marginalized. At first glance, however, results are ambiguous. The recent wave of left-wing populism in Latin America --from Hugo Chávez in 1999 to Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2019 - show a mixed record of social inclusion or –in a term we will use here - social cohesion. Bolivia under Evo Morales (2006-2019), for example, improved all social indicators compared to former governments, while the severe political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela illustrates how populism and its welfare policies may lead to potentially disastrous consequences. The paper is organized as follows: In the first section, we provide a short overview of current political and academic debates on populism and social cohesion, as well as their relationship. The objective here is to identify a minimal definition of both concepts. In the second part, we develop a series of indicators to compare the social record of five Latin American case-studies where leftist leaders with state-centric discourses promised justice and welfare for the poor. From this comparative perspective, the third part of the document explores the causes that led to the rise of leftist populism between 1999 and 2018 in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela, as well as the social discourse and track record of populist governments. This analysis is based on indicators developed from the broad literature on social cohesion.
Topic:
Socialism/Marxism, Populism, and Humanitarian Intervention
Political Geography:
Argentina, Latin America, Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, and Bolivia

14. The Rules of Reproduction of Capitalism: A Historicist Critique

Author:
Samuel Knafo and Benno Teschke
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
Abstract:
Marxism has often been associated with two different legacies. The first rests on a strong exposition and critique of the logic of capitalism, which has been grounded in a systematic analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism as a system. The second legacy refers to a strong historicist perspective grounded in a conception of social relations and an emphasis on the centrality of power and social conflict to analyse history. In this article, we challenge the prominence of structural accounts of capitalism, which are inspired by the first of these legacies and argue for the need to radicalize the agent-centered and historicist contribution of Marx that derive from the second. Our claim is that Marxists operating within a structural framework systematically fall into economistic readings of capitalism, which hinder the practice of historicisation Marxism was supposed to buttress. To make this argument, we show how this tension between these legacies has played out within Political Marxism (PM). We argue that both orientations – encapsulated in the simultaneous programmatic emphasis on historically specific social conflicts and determinate rules of reproduction that are logically deduced from definitive social property relations – co-existed already uneasily in Robert Brenner’s original contributions to the Transition Debate. We proceed by critically exploring the increasing reliance on a structural conception of the ‘rules of reproduction’ in later works of PM’s early proponents and by some of its contemporary followers. This, we argue, has led to the reification of capitalism and a growing divide between theoretical premises and historical explanation. In response, we seek to return to the early historicist innovation of PM and to recover and develop its commitment to a more contextualised and open-ended interpretation of social conflicts. Through this internal critique and re-formulation of PM, we wish to open a broader debate within Marxism on the need for a more agency-based account of capitalism, which builds more explicitly on the concept of social relations.
Topic:
Economics, Socialism/Marxism, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Eastern Europe, Germany, and Western Europe

15. ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL VOL. XXV, NO. 2

Author:
Ifdal Elsaket, Suhad Daher-Nashif, Nisa Ari, Tamer ElGindi, Manfred Sing, Nader Atassi, Sophia Azeb, Deen Sharp, Nicholas Simcik Arese, Charles Anderson, Kristi N. Barnwell, and Charles Wilkins
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Arab Studies Journal
Institution:
Arab Studies Institute
Abstract:
In this issue, we are proud to feature a series of groundbreaking interventions. Ifdal Elsaket explores anti-Blackness in Egypt through the genre of “jungle flms.” She lays bare the racial and imperial fantasies that informed these flms’ popularity. Elsaket exposes a process of racialization through which Egyptians positioned themselves as superior and modern, at a time when Egypt’s claims to Sudan took on a greater urgency and Blackness marked otherness. Tis deeply engrained vision of Africa as a place of inferiority would continue to infect flm and visual culture long afer decolonization. Suhad Daher-Nashif interrogates the national-civic service which has successfully targeted young Palestinian women who are citizens in Israel. Her ethnographic study carefully details the complex web of considerations, interests, and strategies that shape the national-civic service as a “trapped escape.” Women’s participation in the service reveals the mutually constitutive nature of Israeli colonial and Palestinian social structures. By showing how women use a colonial apparatus to escape patriarchal norms DaherNashif rethinks Palestinian experience in Israel as well as the imposition of and resistance to gender norms more broadly. Nisa Ari explores the interaction between local and foreign artistic communities in early twentieth century Palestine. She focuses on the work of Palestinian artist Nicoal Saig (1863-1942) who copied photographs that the American Colony Photo Department (ACPD) produced. Te relationship between Saig and the ACPD, Ari shows, reveals a multidirectional artistic exchange between local and foreign. She uncovers a world in which a diverse group of artistic agents employed diferent practices, produced and sold religious representations and object, and formed a vibrant economic market in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Palestine. Tamer ElGindi tackles the World Bank’s assessment of the massive uprisings that rocked Egypt and Tunisia as “puzzles,” given both countries’ achievements in poverty rates, access to education, child and maternal mortality, and infrastructure services. Trough a close reading of various inequality measures from the developmentalist era of Gamal Abdel Nasser to the subsequent neoliberal eras of Anwar al-Sadat and Husni Mubarak, ElGindi shows that macroeconomic improvements never “trickled down.” Energy and food subsidy systems in particular benefted the wealthiest instead of targeting the needy. He urges for a comprehensive understanding and measurement (of the monetary and the non-monetary) as a prerequisite to understanding and ameliorating inequality. Manfred Sing revisits the wave of Arab social criticism that marked intellectual life afer the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Trough a careful rereading of fve intellectuals Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm, Yasin al-Hafz, Mustafa Hijazi, Nawal El Saadawi, and Hisham Sharabi, Sing traces the normative shif in Marxist thought away from a critique of capitalist society and towards theorizing the absence or failure of revolutionary mass movements. Following neither the admirers of Arab criticism nor their countercritics, Sing maps a social criticism that was timely, provocative, polemic, disenchanted, and marred by heuristic fallacies. Tis issue also features the usual robust array of book reviews.
Topic:
Race, History, Arts, Socialism/Marxism, Women, Inequality, Film, and Intellectual History
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, North Africa, and Egypt

16. ARAB STUDIES JOURNAL VOL. XXIV, NO. 1

Author:
Sherene Seikaly
Publication Date:
05-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Arab Studies Journal
Institution:
Arab Studies Institute
Abstract:
The Arab world and the broader Middle East offer profound lessons on the inextricability of knowledge and power. In the midst of civil war, foreign intervention, and ongoing occupation, those of us who study the Middle East or call it home confront two realities at once. On the one hand are the conditions of everyday life that range from the constrained to the unbearable. On the other are the increasingly confined possibilities of producing knowledge on these conditions. To grasp these two realities, we have only to glance at the kind of fire, sometimes live, scholars and students have come under in the last few months alone. In January, the Turkish Higher Education Council condemned a petition that scholars in solidarity with the Kurdish region signed as “terrorist propaganda.” University rectors immediately began taking punitive measures: launching investigations against and suspending scholars who were signatories. This is in addition to the prosecutions and criminal investigations scholars are facing for expressing their opinion on social media.
Topic:
Communism, Human Rights, Socialism/Marxism, Intellectual History, Transitional Justice, Feminism, Justice, Reconciliation, Leftist Politics, and The Press
Political Geography:
Middle East, North Africa, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia

17. China and Socialist Countries: Role Change and Role Continuity

Author:
Nele Noesselt
Publication Date:
08-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyses changes in China's relations with socialist countries. It uses Chinese academic publications to add an insideâ?out perspective to the interpretation of Chinese foreign policy and outlines key socioâ?cognitive determinants of China's foreign behaviour. The paper starts with an overview of role theory, integrating Chinese scholars' writings on images of ego and alter to identify the main patterns and frames of China's selfproclaimed national role(s). It argues that China's actor identity comprises various, partly contradictory role conceptions. National roles derived from China's internal structures and its historical past lead to continuity in Chinese foreign policy, while the 'new' roles resultant from China's rise to global powerhood require it to adapt its foreign policy principles. The paper then examines four bilateral relationships – between China and Cuba, North Korea, the Soviet Union/Russia, and Vietnam – and discusses their development over time in light of China's reformulation of its 'socialist' role conception.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Socialism/Marxism
Political Geography:
China and Asia

18. Capitalist Dynamics: Fictional Expectations and the Openness of the Future.

Author:
Jens Beckert
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Capitalism is an economic and social order oriented toward the future. In this paper, I describe the unfolding of the temporal order of capitalism and relate it to the restless dynamism of capitalism we have observed since the Industrial Revolution. Since the future is open, actors are confronted with the uncertainty of the outcomes of their decisions. What can expectations be under conditions of uncertainty? To answer this question, I introduce the notion of fictional expectations which can be used to describe decisions made under conditions of an open and uncertain future. In the paper’s penultimate section, I apply the concept of fictional expectations to the analysis of four crucial processes of capitalism: money and credit, investments, innovation, and consumption. The main thrust of the paper is that in order to understand economic action in capitalism, actors’ perceptions of the future need to take center stage. Not only “history matters,” but also the “future matters.”
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Socialism/Marxism, Social Movement, and Capitalism
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. Estimating Income / Expenditure Differences across Populations: New Fun with Old Engel's Law

Author:
Lant Pritchett and Marla Spivack
Publication Date:
08-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
How much larger are the consumption possibilities of an urban US household with per capita expenditures of 1,000 US dollars per month than a rural Indonesian household with per capita expenditures of 1,000,000 Indonesian Rupiah per month? Consumers in different markets face widely different consumption possibilities and prices and hence the conversion of incomes or expenditures to truly comparable units of purchasing power is extremely difficult. We propose a simple supplement to existing purchasing power adjusted currency conversions.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Political Economy, Political Theory, Social Stratification, and Socialism/Marxism
Political Geography:
United States and Southeast Asia

20. Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation: Evidence from Latin America

Author:
Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu
Publication Date:
10-2013
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Does it matter that working-class citizens are numerically underrepresented in political offices throughout the world? For decades, the conventional wisdom in comparative politics has been that it does not, that lawmakers from different classes think and behave roughly the same in office. In this paper, we argue that this conclusion is misguided. Past research relied on inappropriate measures of officeholders' class backgrounds, attitudes, and choices. Using data on 18 Latin American legislatures, we show that lawmakers from different classes bring different economic attitudes to the legislative process. And using data on one least-likely case, we show that pre-voting decisions like sponsoring legislation often differ dramatically along social class lines, even when political parties control higher-visibility decisions like roll-call votes. The unequal numerical or descriptive representation of social classes in the world's legislatures has important consequences for the substantive representation of different class interests.
Topic:
Economics, Political Economy, Social Stratification, and Socialism/Marxism
Political Geography:
Latin America