Two Conceptions of State: Antonio Gramsci and Michael Mann

Politics ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 159-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Moran

Gramsci revised classical Marxist accounts of the role of the state in society, culture and ideology, and stressed the autonomy of the political process from the economic base. Sociologists often labelled neoWeberian also focus on social change, the state and the political process. Michael Mann, whilst remaining discrete from Marxism has nevertheless moved away from classical Weberian sociology, engaging deeply with materialism in analysing the state. This article compares the work of Gramsci and Mann regarding the state, to examine whether a genuine synthesis is possible between Gramsci (perhaps the first ‘neo-Marxist’) and Mann, a neoWeberian.

Author(s):  
Mike Allen ◽  
Lars Benjaminsen ◽  
Eoin O’Sullivan ◽  
Nicholas Pleace

Chapter 7 draws together some of the lessons that can be learned from the experiences of three small European countries in responding to homelessness. It is clear that responses to homelessness are embedded and enmeshed in the political and administrative culture of the individual countries, particularly the role of the state, both centrally and locally, in the provision of housing, welfare, and social services. Homelessness cannot be responded to as a separate issue from this broader context, and this is particularly the case in Finland and Ireland, where the roles of the state and market are understood very differently.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78
Author(s):  
Benni Yusriza

Employing the concept of unfree labor, this article explores the role of the state in reinforcing victims’ vulnerability and shaping the political economy of trafficking practices. Based on a case study of trafficking victims in Benjina and Ambon, Maluku Province, Indonesia, I argue that Indonesian authorities’ intervention was driven not by humanitarian interest, nor by the concern for the protection of migrant workers’ rights, but rather by the intent to advance a political and economic agenda against the Thai fishing industry. Consequently, the intervention ignored the exploitative relations of production that underpinned the vulnerability of victims, despite being conducted in the name of victim-protection and improving livelihoods.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 207-214
Author(s):  
JOÃO GABRIEL DE ARAUJO OLIVEIRA ◽  
RENATO NOZAKI SUGAHARA ◽  
JOANILIO RODOLPHO TEIXEIRA

ABSTRACT This comment came to refute and correct the idea of Charles (2007) about the negatively implications in the income distribution when the government expand the consumption in favour to households. We prove that the political choice, to both cases (increasing consumption or increasing profit), impact positively the income distribution and does not affect the essential nature of the Kaldor neo-Pasinetti dynamic equilibrium results and the “Cambridge Equation”. The stability of the model is guarantee by applying the Olech’s Theorem to the case.


Author(s):  
Manfred Knoche

Abstract: This paper discusses how the capitalist media industry has been structurally transformed in the age of digital communications. It takes an approach that is grounded in the Marxian critique of the political economy of the media. It draws a distinction between media capital, media-oriented capital, media infrastructure capital and media-external capital as the forms of capital in the media industry. The article identifies four capital strategies that media capital tends to use in order to try to maximise profits: a) The substitution of “old” by “new” media technology, b) the introduction of new transmission channels for “old” media products, c) the definition of new property rights for media sectors and networks, d) the reduction of production and transaction costs. The drive to profit maximization is at the heart of the capitalist media industry’s structural transformation. This work also discusses the tendency to the universalization of the media system in the digital age and the economic contradictions arising from it. It identifies activity fields of the media industry’s structural transformation and shows how the concentration of the capitalist media markets is an essential, contradictory and inherent feature of the capitalist media system and its structural transformation. The paper identifies six causes of why capital seeks to employ capital strategies that result in the media industry’s structural transformation. They include market saturation, overaccumulation, the tendency of the profit rate to fall, capital-concentration, competition pressure, and advertising. The paper finally discusses the role of the state as an agent of capital in general and media capital in particular. It discusses the role of the state in privatisations, neoliberal deregulation, the formation of national competitive states, and various benefits that the state provides for media capital. This contribution shows that capital and capitalism are the main structural transformers of the media and communications system. For understanding these transformations, we need an approach that is grounded in Marx’s critique of the political economy.Translation from German: Christian Fuchs and Marisol Sandoval


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 435-451
Author(s):  
Daniel Jackson ◽  
Filippo Trevisan ◽  
Emma Pullen ◽  
Michael Silk

In this introduction to a special issue on sport communication and social justice, we offer some reflections on the state of the discipline as it relates to social justice. We bring attention to the role of sport communication scholars in the advancement of social justice goals and articulate a set of dispositions for researchers to bring to their practice, predicated on internalizing and centralizing morality, ethics, and the political. Identifying the epistemological (under)currents in the meaningful study of communication and sport, we offer a set of challenges for researchers in the contemporary critique of the communication industries based on “sensibilities” or dispositions of the research to those studied. We then introduce and frame the 13 articles that make up this double special issue of Communication & Sport. Collectively, these articles begin to demonstrate such dispositions in their interrogation of some of the most important and spectacularized acts of social justice campaigns and activism in recent decades alongside investigations of everyday forms of marginalization, resistance, and collective action that underpin social change—both progressive and regressive. We hope this special issue provides a vehicle for continued work in the area of sports communication and social justice.


2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tricia D. Olsen

ABSTRACT:How does the state influence stakeholder legitimacy? And how does this process affect an industry’s ethical challenges? Stakeholder theory adopts a forward-looking perspective and seeks to understand how managers can address stakeholders’ claims to improve the firm’s ability to create value. Yet, existing work does not adequately address the role of the state in defining the stakeholder universe nor the implications this may have for subsequent ethical challenges managers face. This article develops a political stakeholder theory (political ST) by weaving together the political economy, stakeholder theory, and legitimacy literatures. Political ST shows how state policies influence stakeholder legitimacy and, in turn, affect an industry’s ethical challenges. This article integrates the concept of agonism to address the perennial tension between markets and states and its implications for firms and their managers. Political ST is then applied to the case of microfinance, followed by a discussion of the contributions of this approach.


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Taylor

AbstractSince it was first agreed in the autumn of 1998, the English Compact has achieved international status, as a marker of – or vehicle for - a new and improved relationship between the state and the third sector. Over the twelve years or so since its first publication, it has been supplemented by local compacts across the country and has been ‘refreshed’ or renewed twice. As such it has proved remarkably durable across time and space. But the political context in which it operates has now changed. A government committed to partnership has been replaced by one with a strong ideological commitment to limiting the powers and role of the state. How will this affect its future role?


2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-234
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Schoenblum

The paper is concerned with the relationship of taxation to conceptions of the state and the community. The paper contends that public finance theorists have focused little attention on what, precisely, the state is and the role of subnational and supranational communities, even though understanding the state and these communities is essential for grasping how tax revenues are really distributed. The failure of public finance to do so is explainable by the powerful faith in the expertise of theorists and bureaucrats and abstract models for social welfare, whether or not they work or would be agreed upon and implemented via the political process.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110440
Author(s):  
Melih Yeşilbağ

This article contributes to the literature on the role of the state in land-based accumulation by presenting an explanatory framework on the case of contemporary Turkey, a case marked by an unprecedented construction boom that carries the distinct mark of the ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or Justice and Development Party). Land-based accumulation has constituted a defining aspect of the political economic setting of the AKP era. An investigation of the motivations behind this strategy reveals that it has been instrumental for the ruling party’s political agendas. Through land-based accumulation, the AKP has been able to cultivate a new generation of firms in the construction industry with connections to the party, consolidate its power among domestic capital and develop new mechanisms to finance party politics. Furthermore, symbolic and material manifestations of land-based accumulation have been abundantly used in the party’s propaganda machinery to provide ideological legitimation. Overall, the AKP’s authoritarian grip on power has been forged through the political-ideological resources provided by land-based accumulation. Contrary to the widespread narratives of weakening, passive or merely facilitating states, the case of Turkey brings to the fore an instance of boosting state agendas through land-based accumulation. My findings underline the need to combine capital-switch arguments with a Gramscian political conjunctural analysis for a fuller understanding of the role of the state in land-based accumulation, and point to the urban roots of neoliberal authoritarianism.


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