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      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        March 2025

        Tadeusz Kowalik and Poland’s return from socialism to capitalism

        Full circle

        by Gavin Rae

        Tadeusz Kowalik lived through ten decades and three economic and political systems in Poland. He combined his academic study of economic ideas with his socialist ideals of building a fairer and more just society. This book covers the intellectual and political work of Kowalik, within the context of modern Polish history. Kowalik was part of a Polish School of critical left-wing political economists, that included Michal Kalecki and Oskar Lange. Kowalik contributed to the body of work produced by this group, which included his interpretation of their work. Kowalik participated in some of the most momentous events in post-war Polish history, helping to organise a group of intellectuals to advise the shipyard workers at the Gdansk shipyards in 1980. He became a vehement opponent of Poland's neoliberal form of capitalism and left a body of work that illuminates our understanding of capitalism and socialism today.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        March 2024

        Markets and power in digital capitalism

        by Philipp Staab

        Today's global capitalism runs through digital networks. Its leaders are internet giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon and Tencent. Their technologies are ubiquitous: we carry high-performance computers around in our pockets, manage our lives in the cloud and display them on social media. They have also literally privatised the market, transforming capitalism in the process. Philipp Staab takes us on a virtual tour of modern digital capitalism. He shows how digital surveillance and evaluation practices have proliferated throughout the economy, exacerbating social inequality in the process. What is specific to digital capitalism, Staab argues, is the emergence of 'proprietary markets'. In the past the focus was on producing things and selling them at a profit. Today the meta-platforms extract their profits by owning the market itself.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2024

        The political ecology of colonial capitalism

        Race, nature, and accumulation

        by Bikrum Gill

        This book situates the post financial crisis phenomenon of the "global land grab" within the longue duree of the capitalist world system. It does so by advancing a theoretical and historical framework, called the political ecology of colonial capitalism, that clarifies the key role played by the co-production of race and nature in provisioning the "ecological surplus" that has historically secured the emergence and reproduction of capitalist development. The key premise of this book is that the global land grab constitutes another such attempted moment of re-securing the cheap food premise through racialized frontier appropriation. The argument advanced here is that, within the neoliberal crisis conjuncture, the hegemonic resolution of capital's escalating social-ecological contradictions necessitates, through the practice of "global primitive accumulation," the racialized construction of frontiers of unused nature in emergent zones of appropriation.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        July 2024

        False profits of ethical capital

        Finance, labour and the politics of risk

        by Claire Parfitt

        False profits of ethical capital is a thought-provoking approach to understanding stakeholder capitalism. Rather than focusing on the inadequacies of corporate responsibility, sustainable investment and consumer politics, this book grapples with the technical and rhetorical functions of ethical capital for profit and accumulation. It provides a unique and eclectic analysis of the political dynamics between finance, capital and labour, offering a refreshing perspective on struggles interlocking social, ecological and economic crises, and suggesting new ways of thinking about sustainability politics.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        September 2023

        Clickbait capitalism

        by Amin Samman, Earl Gammon

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2005

        A Theory of Moral Capital: the Core Theme of Ethical Economics

        by Wang Xiaoxi

        This book is an original work of the author’s 20-year academic quintessence with unique perspectives and logical arguments. There are both philosophical analyses and exploration of practical applications in this book. Guided by Marxist historical materialism, the author shows the function and effect of morality by analyzing and defining moral domain. He also explains the fact that economic development requires moral support by analyzing the inseparable logical connection between economics and morality. Moreover, the author researches moral capital and its route to achieving value multiplication in economic activities, and structures an application and evaluation index system for moral capital in enterprises. He also discusses the basic strategy for enterprises to accumulate and manage their moral capital.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        Globalized urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan

        Young men and the digital economy

        by Hannah Schilling

        Digital technologies promise efficiency and comfort, but the smoothness of platform services relies on the hidden social labour of those who keep the gig economy running. This book presents a comparative ethnography of young men making a living through digital technologies: selling mobile airtime in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, and app-based delivery riders in Berlin, Germany. These case studies explore the significance of symbolic capital in urban youth's social existence and organisation of livelihood in the digital economy, and the technological mechanisms producing a new form of urban precarity. Globalized urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan puts forward an original comparative approach to develop a global urban sociology for the digital era. It provides an innovative analytical toolbox that decentres discussions of precarity from the standard of a normal employment contract. With its focus on symbolic capital, the ethnography shows the consequences of the proliferating gig economy for status struggles among urban youth, and carefully embeds the densification of software and services into the socio-material relations on which these new urban infrastructures are built.

      • Trusted Partner
        September 2013

        The Great Banner of Socialism and the Socialist Road with Chinese Characteristics

        by Hailiang GU, Yongkuan LUO

        This book combines history, theory and reality, based on historical process of the Socialist Road with Chinese Characteristics; it regards the development history of sinicized Marxist after the reform and opening-up as a main clue; it gives an explanation to the establishment and development of the Chinese characteristic socialism theory system, also its monolithic structure, scientific intension and essential features. This book discusses ideological line and stage of development of the Chinese characteristic socialism theory system; it also analyzes the meaning of theory system in the development history of sinicized Marxist and contemporary development of socialism. This book also gives a comprehensive overview on “the Trend of China” and “the Beijing Consensus”, it gives a definition and an expatiation to development path in Chinese style, establishing an understanding on the development path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        November 2020

        Communists constructing capitalism

        State, market, and the Party in China’s financial reform

        by Julian Gruin

        Why has China's 'transition' to a market economy not catalysed corresponding political transformation? In an era of deepening synergy between authoritarian politics and capitalist economics, this book offers a novel perspective on this central dilemma of contemporary Chinese development, shedding light on how the Chinese Communist Party achieved rapid economic growth while preserving political stability. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and over sixty interviews with policymakers, bankers and former party and state officials, the book delves into the role of China's state-owned banking system since 1989, showing how political control over capital has been central to the country's experience of capitalist development. It challenges existing state-market paradigms of political economy and reveals the Eurocentric assumptions underpinning liberal perspectives towards Chinese authoritarian resilience.

      • Trusted Partner
        Sociology & anthropology
        February 2017

        Environment, labour and capitalism at sea

        'Working the ground' in Scotland

        by Penny McCall Howard. Series edited by Alexander Smith

        This book explores how fishers make the sea productive through their labour, using technologies ranging from wooden boats to digital GPS plotters to create familiar places in a seemingly hostile environment. It shows how their lives are affected by capitalist forces in the markets they sell to, forces that shape even the relations between fishers on the same boat. Fishers frequently have to make impossible choices between safe seamanship and staying afloat economically, and the book describes the human impact of the high rate of deaths in the fishing industry. The book makes a unique contribution to understanding human-environment relations, examining the places fishers create and name at sea, as well as technologies and navigation practices. It combines phenomenology and political economy to offer new approaches for analyses of human-environment relations and technologies. It contributes to the social studies of fisheries through an analysis of how deeply fishing practices and social relations are shaped by political economy. It will be read in universities by social scientists and anthropologists and also by those with an interest in maritime Scotland.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        March 2023

        Water struggles as resistance to neoliberal capitalism

        A time of reproductive unrest

        by Madelaine Moore

        This book provides an important intervention into social reproduction theory and the politics of water. Presenting an incorporated comparison, it analyses the conjuncture following the 2007 financial crisis through the lens of water expropriation and resistance. This brings into view the way that transnational capital has made use of and been facilitated by the strategic selectivities of both the Irish and the Australian state, as well as the particular class formations that emerged in resistance to such water grabs. What is revealed is a crisis-ridden system that is marked by increasing reproductive unrest - class understood through the lens of social reproduction theory. As an important analysis of two significant water struggles, the book makes a compelling argument for integrating the study of social movements within critical political economy.

      • Trusted Partner
        Historical fiction
        2021

        Bat-Ami by Oleksiy Nikitin

        by Oleksii Nikitin

        Ilya Goldinov, Ukrainian Jew boxing champion, had won the second place in the Soviet All-Union championship when World War II started. After Germany invaded Ukraine, he joins the guerrillas in the forests behind the front line. Only by a lucky coincidence does he survive and he joins the regular army as a soldier before being sent by the secret service on a life-threatening mission to occupied Kyiv. This family saga, full of inconceivable twists and turns, is told in such a thrilling, detailed and touching way that it captivates its readers after only a few pages. Bat-Ami is not a documentary novel, but its story is inspired in part by the author‘s family recollections and is based on the documentary files relating to 1941-42 secret service operations from the archives of the Ukrainian Secret Service released only in 2011, as well as from other Ukrainian archives, in particular the Museum of the Dynamo Kyiv Sports Club and Yad Vashem organisation. The fight of Ukrainian patriots for independence of Ukraine from Russia, the USSR, and liberation from German occupiers captures your attention and can become the vital lesson for present-day Ukraine.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        February 2025

        The political economy of Turkey’s integration to Europe

        Uneven development and hegemony

        by Elif Uzgören

        This book examines Turkey's integration with Europe within structural dynamics of globalisation from a critical political economy perspective. Critical approaches have been sidelined within European Studies. Turkish enlargement is not an exemption. The analyses are based on original data generated by 109 interviews conducted in 2010, 2017 and 2023 with five categories of actors: representatives of capital and labour, political parties, state officials, and struggles around ecology, patriarchy and migration. It argues that the pro-membership was hegemonic in the 2000s which was contested by two rival class strategies, Ha-vet and neo-mercantilism. In the 2010s, pro-membership is no longer hegemonic within rising critical tone of social forces supporting rival class strategies. Unevenness of Turkey's trajectory of integration to Europe is likely to be consolidated through market integration and management of migration through transactional approach.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2021

        Human capital and empire

        by Andrew Mackillop

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2021

        Karl Polanyi and twenty-first-century capitalism

        by Radhika Desai, Kari Polanyi Levitt

        As far right movements, social disintegration and international conflict emerge from the decay of the neoliberal order, Karl Polanyi's warnings against the unbridled domination of markets, is ever more relevant. The essays in Karl Polanyi for the 21st Century extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. They will interest Polanyi scholars and all interested in socialism and our future after neoliberalism. One asks whether, following Keynes and Hayek, Polanyi's ideas will shape the twenty-first century. Some clarify, for the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Others resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society, and socialism as freedom in a complex society. And yes others explore how Polanyi sheds light on income inequality, world systems theory, comparative political economy.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2024

        Off white

        Central and Eastern Europe and the global history of race

        by Catherine Baker, Bogdan C. Iacob, Anikó Imre, James Mark

        This volume foregrounds racial difference as a key to an alternative history of the Central and Eastern European region, which revolves around the role of whiteness as the unacknowledged foundation of semi-peripheral nation-states and national identities, and of the region's current status as a global stronghold of unapologetic white, Christian nationalisms. Contributions address the pivotal role of whiteness in international diplomacy, geographical exploration, media cultures, music, intellectual discourses, academic theories, everyday language and banal nationalism's many avenues of expressions. The book offers new paradigms for understanding the relationships among racial capitalism, populism, economic peripherality and race.

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