scholarly journals From the post-industrial prophecy to the de-industrial nightmare: Stagnation, the manufacturing fetish and the limits of capitalist wealth

2021 ◽  
pp. 102452942110443
Author(s):  
Alexis Moraitis
Keyword(s):  
Economic Security ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economic Stagnation ◽  
Global North ◽  
Physical Output ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Social Wealth ◽  
North And South

The post-2008 era saw a return of the manufacturing fetish, the idea that manufacturing constitutes the flywheel of growth without which no nation can thrive. Across the Global North and South, voices are calling to reverse deindustrialization and revive manufacturing. While today deindustrialization is met with anxiety, in the 1930s economists predicted deindustrialization but interpreted it as a liberating process leading to a post-industrial age based on material abundance and widespread economic security. Far from delivering this vision, deindustrialization actually produces a precarious economic order driven by labour precarity, economic stagnation and lost development opportunities for the Global South. What can be termed the Baumolian and Kaldorian frameworks, attribute this precarious reality to services’ inability to replace manufacturing as a growth engine given their technologically stagnant nature. However, this article argues that, by focusing on the technical aspects of service economies, such views overlook the social limits of the capitalist economy and its historically specific conception of wealth, value. As capitalism matures, productivity becomes an increasingly inadequate form of augmenting social wealth as it results in great increases in physical output but counterintuitively undermines the expansion of value. Capitalism is underpinned by a secular movement towards declining dynamism, as it increasingly struggles to maintain its former economic vigour. Stagnation and heightened labour precarity are not merely the product of tertiarization but symptoms of capitalism’s declining trajectory.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

The Social and Political Dimensions of Co-operative Enterprises

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor A. Pestoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Post Industrial

The role of co-operatives as providers of goods and services, as in the industrial age, more recently became overshadowed by their potential as providers of social services. In the post-industrial or service society, co-operatives are found in a growing number of countries. Co-operative enterprises have a unique capacity to mobilize social capital and provide relational goods that neither public nor private for-profit providers demonstrate. This brings co-operative enterprises full-circle in terms of their historical political role as democratic pioneers, since they can now also contribute to reducing the growing democratic deficit. This chapter explores the political and social dimensions of co-operative enterprises that pursue multiple goals. It also introduces a dynamic model of co-operative development that can be fruitfully employed for analysing the social and political dilemmas faced by co-operative enterprises.

scholarly journals The gendered effects of entrepreneurialism in contrasting contexts

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malin Tillmar ◽  
Helene Ahl ◽  
Karin Berglund ◽  
Katarina Pettersson
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Rural ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
North And South

Purpose Contrasting Sweden and Tanzania, this paper aims to explore the experiences of women entrepreneurs affected by entrepreneurialism. This study discusses the impact on their position in society and on their ability to take feminist action. Design/methodology/approach This paper analysed interviews conducted in the two countries over 15 years, using a holistic perspective on context, including its gendered dimensions. Findings The results amount to a critique of entrepreneurialism. Women in Sweden did not experience much gain from entrepreneurship, while in Tanzania results were mixed. Entrepreneurialism seems unable to improve the situation for women in the relatively well-functioning economies in the global north, where it was designed. Research limitations/implications In mainstream entrepreneurship studies, there is a focus on the institutional context. From the analysis, it is apparent that equal attention must be given to the social and spatial contexts, as they may have severe material and economic consequences for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. The paper raises questions for further studies on the gendering of markets in different contexts, as well as questions on the urban-rural dimension. Practical implications In Sweden, marketisation of welfare services led to more women-owned businesses, but the position of women did not improve. The results strongly convey the need for a careful analysis of the pre-existing context, before initiating reforms. Originality/value The paper adds to the understanding of context in entrepreneurship studies: Africa is largely an underexplored continent and contrasting North and South is an underexplored methodological approach. This paper further extends and develops the model of gendered contexts developed by Welter et al. (2014).

scholarly journals Introduction to the symposium: seed as a commons—exploring innovative concepts and practices of governing seed and varieties

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach ◽  
Anja Christinck
Keyword(s):  
Food Systems ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Global Commons ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Cultural Commons ◽  
Initial Starting ◽  
North And South

Abstract This Symposium explores how the theory of commons can be used to study, conceptualize and transform governance models for seed and plant varieties to counter ongoing trends towards agrobiodiversity loss and concentration of economic and political power in farming and food systems. Contributions to the Symposium present case studies from a range of geographical and socio-cultural contexts from the Global North and South. They show how seed and varieties relate to various known commons categories, including natural resource commons, knowledge and cultural commons, and global commons. Elements of these categories need to be integrated to gain a deeper understanding of Seed Commons, including the specific challenges that arise from the fact that seed, although a biological asset, is at least partly shaped by human selection driven by values, knowledge and needs of users. Collective responsibility, sharing of knowledge and seed, protection from private enclosure, and distributed, polycentric governance are key features of Seed Commons. The notion of ‘commoning’ focuses on the social practices and processes that create and sustain commons. Conceptualizing Seed Commons in their complexity offers initial starting points for policies and legal frameworks conducive to releasing the transformative power of Seed Commons for advancing sustainable farming and food systems.

Development Education in the Age of COVID-19 and Climate Change

2022 ◽  
pp. 472-492
Author(s):  
Stephen McCloskey
Keyword(s):  
Social Needs ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Development Education ◽  
South Central ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Global North ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
North And South

Development education (DE) is a radical learning pedagogy that combines analysis, discussion, and action to engage the learner in active citizenship toward positive social change. This chapter discusses the contribution that DE and other related ‘educations' can make to mitigating the climate crisis and addressing the growing levels of poverty and inequality in the global North and South. Central to this discussion is the neoliberal economic model that has driven ‘development' since the 1970s and placed the needs of the market above the social needs of citizens. This has become particularly apparent during the coronavirus pandemic which has overwhelmed the health services of countries across the world. The chapter argues for a more sustainable form of development based on de-growth and a Green New Deal.

Japanese Gentrification from a Local Community Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 618-637
Author(s):  
Meriç Kırmızı
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Present Situation ◽  
Neighborhood Change ◽  
Urban Change ◽  
Global North ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The City ◽  
North And South ◽  
City Centres

Japanese urban change after the 1990s, studied mostly under the name of reurbanization or “return to the city centres,” was little understood abroad. To locate Japan in the literature on gentrification, the Horie neighborhood in Osaka's Nishi Ward was studied as an example of post–bubble neighborhood change. The aim of this study was to account for Horie's present situation after Tachibana Street's revitalization from the perspectives of different social groups. The research, based on a three–year long qualitative field study, found that the attitudes of these various social groups to revitalization were connected to the type and intensity of their relationships with the area. Furthermore, Horie's lack of irresolvable social tensions over revitalization indicated a major difference between Japanese post–industrial urban change and other gentrification models of the Global North and South. The study concludes by suggesting we should think out of the revitalization construct to protect the local neighborhood culture.

Introduction: new economies North and South – sharing the transition to a just and sustainable future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter North ◽  
Molly Scott Cato
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Social Entrepreneurship ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Economy ◽  
Solidarity Economy ◽  
Sustainable Future ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

This chapter sets the scene for the edited collection which follows it, recounting the findings of an international conversation on the social and solidarity economies between participants from Europe and Latin America. It discusses problems and possibilities for learning and policy transference between different places, acknowledging the power relations involved between global north and south, centre and periphery. It introduces a four part conceptualisation of the social and solidarity economy sector between Social Enterprise and Social Entrepreneurship; the inclusive Social Economy; the Solidarity Economy, working on conceptions of how we want to live in a climate constrained world, and the Antagonistic Economy, challenging pathological aspects of contemporary neoliberalism.

scholarly journals Mama! I hear your silence: Grief and COVID-19 on the Global North and South disparity

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 142-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Mfoafo-M’Carthy
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Intimate Link ◽  
Mother’S Voice ◽  
North And South

In this conversation with Mama, I use my mother’s voice as a reflexive mirror to explore the social work silences that the COVID-19 pandemic expresses so eloquently in my own life and work. I seek to highlight the intimate link between Mama’s silence and social work silence.

scholarly journals Fashion in Bolivia’s cultural economy

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Maclean
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Economy ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Fashion Industry ◽  
Informal Markets ◽  
La Paz ◽  
Industrial Cities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores the development of Chola Paceña fashions in La Paz, Bolivia. It traces the social and political lineage of the distinctive pollera dress, and its role in traditions that continue to underpin Aymaran social networks and economies, while it is simultaneously becoming a symbol of their consumer power. Bolivian gross domestic product (GDP) has tripled since 2006, and this wealth has accumulated in the vast urban informal markets which are dominated by people of indigenous and mestizo descent. It is predictable that such a rise in consumption power should enable a burgeoning fashion industry. However, the femininities represented by the designs, the models and the designers place in sharp relief gendered and racialized constructions of value, and how the relationship between tradition, culture and economy has been configured in scholarly work on creative labour, which has been predominantly based on the experience of post-industrial cities in the global North.

scholarly journals Intercountry adoption and the social production of abandonment

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 271-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riitta Högbacka
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
South African ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Intercountry Adoption ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Birth Mothers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South ◽  
Adoption System

Although the objective of intercountry adoption is to provide parentless children with families, it also has other unintended consequences. Postcolonial theorists have shown that the intercountry adoption system is shaped by unequal power relations between the Global North and South. Drawing on interviews with South African adoption social workers and birth mothers, this article shifts attention from Global North perspectives to those of the Global South. By focusing on the circumstances of how children become available for adoption, some of the ways in which the adoption system participates in creating the pool of ‘abandoned’ children are explicated.

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