Conserving inequality: How private conservation and property developers ‘fix’ spatial injustice in South Africa

In 2016, South Africa launched its National Biodiversity Economy Strategy. This strategy aims to facilitate the development of a ‘wildlife economy’ as a solution to unemployment, loss of biodiversity and rural development. Central to the strategy is the role of private conservation actors, who keenly posit their commercial model as the best way to achieve these objectives. This stands in sharp contrast to recent critiques that suggest that private conservation reinforces structural inequality by denying access to land and perpetuating unjust labour conditions. Using ethnographic data from the South African Lowveld region that includes the Kruger National Park, the paper takes these points further by arguing that a rapidly growing alliance between private conservation and property developers actively conserve inequality by maintaining and even extending spatial injustice in the region. Two popular recent manifestations of this alliance in particular, share block systems that distribute ownership of access to real estate in private reserves and wildlife housing estates, have established new conservation-property linkages that entrench capitalist socioecological fixes. Not only do these initiatives lead to further engrained spatial injustice, we conclude that this conservation-property alliance at the centre of the ‘wildlife economy’ also willingly sacrifices environmental sustainability on the altar of white conservation imaginations and private profit.

A Critique of Marketism: Varieties of Exchanges in China’s Past and Present

The theory and ideology of mainstream Anglo-American “marketism” do not accord with reality. Its core idea—equating all trade with equal and mutually beneficial market exchanges, and believing that such exchanges are certain to lead to division of labor and transformative changes in labor productivity—is a one-sided, idealized construction. It erases unequal exchanges under imperialism and ignores the realities of the use of cheap informal labor in developing countries by hegemonic capital in the globalized economy. It also disregards pervasive unethical pursuits of profit among producers and widespread human weaknesses among consumers. If we proceed instead from China’s actual experiences, we can come to see and grasp the many different varieties of trade that differ from the abstractions of conventional marketism, including the “commercialization of extraction” that long characterized the principally unidirectional “trade” based on severe inequities between town and country, as well as the “growth without (labor productivity) development,” or “involutionary commercialization,” that long characterized domestic Chinese commerce that emerged under severe population pressures on the land. If we turn instead to the “take-off” period of the recent decades in Chinese economic development, we can see also the great contrast between Chinese realities and the mainstream economics construct of a “laissez faire state,” and see instead the state engaging most actively in development, and state-owned enterprises working closely together with private enterprises. Those realities are perhaps most evident in the recent dramatic development of China’s mammoth real estate economy that has been the main engine of rapid development since about 2000—most especially in its immense process of the “capitalization of land.” We can also see how the tradition of the “socialist planned economy” has operated in unison with the new capitalist market economy, by combining the twin ideals and mechanisms of “people’s livelihood” and “private profit.” What is needed is a new kind of political economy that can grasp and illuminate such changes.

Ballistics, Bertillonage, and Ballyhoo

This chapter considers some key intersections between cinema and criminal science, centering on a little-known case study: so-called suspect films—observational shorts produced initially by the New Jersey State Police and an assortment of municipal counterparts and later by private companies like RCA, Universal, and General Electric. As this case study reveals, cinema’s utility as a tool of policing was far from simple or self-evident. It had to be carefully constructed, aggressively promoted, and rendered profitable in a political economy in which the line between public service and private profit was rarely very distinct.

A new theoretical model of government backed venture capital funding

Government involvement in the venture capital (VC) market has become an important catalyst of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of young and innovative firms. There is an extensive literature describing the VC model, but the models of its government backed variants are not comprehensively discussed. The article focuses on the model of purely government backed venture capital (GVC) and hybrid venture capital (HGVC). The conclusion of this article is that, by the logic of their models, GVCs are destined to underperform than private VCs. Many articles see HGVCs as a step forward compared to GVCs, as they involve private participants. The novelty of the current article lies in bringing out the drawbacks deriving from the system of hybrid venture capital funding by creating a complex theoretical framework of the HGVC model. We show that due to the crowding in of private participants, this scheme creates a two-goal system where the private profit maximising interests conflict with the economic policy goals. The complex system of HGVC is exposed to increased moral hazard issues that might lead to higher distortions than GVC. The conclusions are especially relevant in the case of developing industries.

The cost of corruption and undue private benefit: two hidden faces of the same mirror

Purpose The purpose of this study is to formulate the cost of corruption and undue private benefit. Design/methodology/approach The design is based on cost formulas of the corruption already formulated, and the design of these formulas allows the calculation for Argentina in 2021 of the cost of the corruption. Findings The corruption cost models for bribes and cost overruns for public works are the theoretical basis for obtaining the undue private benefit. Based on the formulas developed to calculate the costs of corruption for Argentina 2021. Research limitations/implications There are no limitations in the model. Practical implications In addition to the calculation of the cost of corruption, the formula of private profit undue by corruption is developed. Social implications The social implications are certainty about the cost of corruption for Argentina in 2021. Originality/value The present work is original and its value is given by the formulation and practical demonstration of the cost of corruption for Argentina in 2021 and the undue private benefit.

Alternatives to Commodification

This chapter discusses alternatives to commodification. The opposite of commodification is de-commodification. De-commodification imposes limits on the commodity character of goods and services traded on markets, but it does not provide for an alternative. Following an understanding of commodification as subjugation of use value to market/exchange value, the chapter argues that an alternative must seek to “free” use value and reinstate it as the primary goal of production. Or put differently, an alternative to commodification must focus on the satisfaction of human needs rather than the expansion of private profit. Three elements are crucial for the promotion of (collective and ecological) use value: democratization, sustainability, and solidarity. The chapter discusses each one in a separate section. It then brings the three elements together into an alternative vision that is called use-value society.

Philanthrocapitalism and the Separation of Powers

This article discusses the rise of an approach to philanthropic giving known as philanthrocapitalism. I relate it to a new paradigm in management theory that has claimed that private profit making naturally aligns with improved public welfare. I show how growing belief in the inherent “compatibility” of corporate missions and public benefits has led to new laws and contributed to major shifts in how giving practices are structured and legitimated. The original point made in this article is that the philanthrocapitalist turn is more than simply an organizational change in the structure of different philanthropic institutions. Rather, the belief that profit-making and public welfare are naturally aligned also has significant, undertheorized implications for different principles in European-American legal traditions. The ascendancy of the philanthrocapitalist approach represents a subtle but profound displacement of belief in the need for democratic checks and balances on the use of public funds for private enrichment. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 17 is October 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Analisis Daya Saing dan Dampak Kebijakan Pemerintah terhadap Komoditas Kelapa Sawit Rakyat

Various policies are undertaken to support the increase of production and export volume of palm oil products. This study aims to analyze the competitiveness and impact of government policies on palm oil commodities in West Pasaman Regency. The research was conducted by survey method on 30 samples taken intentionally through multistage purposive sampling. The data is analyzed using Policy Analysis Matrix and sensitivity analysis. The results showed that the commodity of palm oil in Pasaman Barat Regency is competitive based on competitive advantage and comparative advantage both in the form of Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) and Crude Palm Oil (CPO). This is evidenced by the value of Privat Cost Ratio on FFB of 0.72 and CPO of 0,86; Domestic Resource Cost Ratio on FFB of 0.66 and CPO of 0,96; the value of private profit on FFB of 87 million rupiah and CPO of 35 billion rupiah; and social profit on FFB of 122 million rupiah and CPO of 11 billion rupiah. The impact of government policy indicated that government policies are disincentive to output, protective to tradable input, and indicated a subsidy to domestic factors. This is showed by Nominal Protection Coefficient Output on FFB of 0.82 and CPO of 0.89; Nominal Protection Coefficient Input on FFB of 0.50 and CPO of 1.00; Effective Protection Coefficient on FFB of 0.93 and CPO of 0.80; Protection Coefficient on FFB of 0.71 and CPO of 3.21; and Subsidy Ratio to Produce on FFB of -0.09 and CPO of 0.09.

Panopticon, Inc.: Jeremy Bentham, contract management, and (neo)liberal penality

This essay revisits Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, perhaps the foundational figure of the study of the prison, to recover a dimension of the project wholly omitted in Michel Foucault’s canonical reading in Discipline and Punish. Nowhere does Foucault mention Bentham’s insistence that the prison be run by a private contractor. With Bentham's penal theory characteristically derived from his account of human psychology, the contract and private profit are essential to the functioning of the Panopticon, because they align the jailer's duty with their self-interest. Bentham built profit and market imperatives into the fabric of the Panopticon, always envisioned as a place of economic production. The contract-Panopticon and its political economy are vital antecedents to the neoliberal penality theorized by Loïc Wacquant and Bernard E. Harcourt, even as they problematize the statism inherited from Foucault and the chronological implications of the prefix “neo.” Bentham was only the theorist of a marketization of governance pervasive in his own time and ever since, raising the question of whether punishment has ever been a purely state function.

Ground Realities

This chapter investigates the widespread and unchecked environmental abuse in India. Nearly a third of India’s land area has been degraded through deforestation, over-cultivation, soil erosion, and depletion of wetlands. Reckless industrialization, mining, and urbanization, as well as deeply flawed agricultural policies and skewed land distribution have reaped a bitter harvest of dislocation and deprivation. This dispossession adds to India’s historically unequal land holdings. Along with the poisoning of life-giving water and air, land alienation and destruction create a hierarchy of citizens suffering unequal access to the fundamental ingredients of social life. The destruction of the elements by the entanglement of the state and big business, and the priority given to private profit over public good, have contributed to the systematic evisceration of democracy-defining social equality. The chapter raises the important question of whether people can be said to have the same right to vote and enjoy equal social dignity if they don’t have the same right to breathe or have equal access to water.