Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society

Contemporary Capitalism and Civil Society PDF

Author: Toshio Yamada

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-15

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 981130517X

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This book is devoted to analyzing contemporary capitalism both in Japan and in the world economy by using the theoretical framework of the French régulation theory and by revisiting the theory of civil society in postwar Japan. The Japanese theory of civil society proposed unique thinking about “freedom and equality” and “human rights” in the postwar era but could not help to come up with effective concepts for an economic analysis of that capitalism of the period. On the other hand, the régulation theory born in the 1970s is well known by its definition of postwar capitalism as Fordism, based on the elaboration of a new conceptual framework, but it soon proved unable to directly explain Japan’s experience by that central concept of Fordism. Inspired by consideration of Japanese civil society and also by the regulationist framework, the author has forged new analytical concepts such as “companyism” to understand Japanese capitalism including the recent “lost decades”, and he elaborates more carefully the concepts of “growth regime” and “institutional change” to grasp the dynamics of the world economy including today’s neoliberal trend. The original benefits of the book consist in 1) reviving a Japanese theory of civil society in the postwar period, 2) applying the régulation theory to the analysis of contemporary Japan, and 3) offering theoretical reflections on the conception of the world economy. Consequently, the author pays special attention to the relationship between the political and the economic as well as regulationist tools and the theory of civil society’s perspective. The principal message of the book is that capitalism or the market economy must be supported by a sound civil society.

Industry and Work in Contemporary Capitalism

Industry and Work in Contemporary Capitalism PDF

Author: Victoria Goddard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-01-30

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1317745213

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Throughout history and in every geographical location, the rise and fall of industry, which impact the fate of large populations, are tied to the development and cultural entanglement of particular models that are articulated with political power. Models are understood as knowledge devices – expert, theoretical, practical and commonsense – that are embedded in cultural and social environments and designed through struggles at various scales. This book results from the collaboration of an interdisciplinary team bringing together specialists in anthropology, geography, sociology, economics, political science, mathematics and engineering around the theme of ‘Models and their Effects on Development Paths’. Based on empirical research conducted on the heavy industries, Industry and Work in Contemporary Capitalism addresses how models that inform the organization of work and production and are created by powerful actors may diverge from, overlap with, or contradict the models articulated by less powerful actors on the ground, and how they are connected across material and cultural spaces. Careful observation of industrial work and production as they unfold in and across specific localities and affects people’s livelihoods is complemented by analysis of how models circulate, through which channels of power, which institutional entities, which political connections. This volume explores an extensive theoretical terrain and a number of empirical cases that show, from different perspectives, how ideas about the economy, about work and industry, materialize in specific practices and interventions that affect people’s livelihoods.

Contemporary Capitalism

Contemporary Capitalism PDF

Author: J. Rogers Hollingsworth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 516

ISBN-13: 9780521658065

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This book argues that there is no single best institutional arrangement for organizing modern societies. Therefore, the market should not be considered the ideal and universal arrangement for coordinating economic activity. Instead, the editors argue, the economic institutions of capitalism exhibit a large variety of objectives and tools that complement each other and can not work in isolation. The various chapters of the book ask what logics and functions institutions follow and why they emerge, mature and persist in the forms they do.

Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism

Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism PDF

Author: Iman Kumar Mitra

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-29

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9811010374

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This volume looks at how accumulation in postcolonial capitalism blurs the boundaries of space, institutions, forms, financial regimes, labour processes, and economic segments on one hand, and creates zones and corridors on the other. It draws our attention to the peculiar but structurally necessary coexistence of both primitive and virtual modes of accumulation in the postcolony. From these two major inquiries it develops a new understanding of postcolonial capitalism. The case studies in this volume discuss the production of urban spaces of capital extraction, institutionalization of postcolonial finance capital, gendering of work forms, establishment of new forms of labour, formation of and changes in caste and racial identities and networks, and securitization—and thereby confirm that no study of contemporary capitalism is complete without thoroughly addressing the postcolonial condition. By challenging the established dualities between citizenship-based civil society and welfare-based political society, exploring critically the question of colonial and postcolonial difference, and foregrounding the material processes of accumulation against the culturalism of postcolonial studies, this volume redefines postcolonial studies in South Asia and beyond. It is invaluable reading for students and scholars of South Asian studies, sociology, cultural and critical anthropology, critical and praxis studies, and political science.

Capitalism and Modernity

Capitalism and Modernity PDF

Author: Derek Sayer

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-11-01

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1134979126

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First Published in 2004. The nature of modernity, and its connection with capitalism, are questions at the forefront of contemporary sociological debate. Derek Sayer re-examines the answers given by Karl Marx and Max Weber, authors of two of the most profound sociological critiques of modernity. His reassessment of Marx and Weber on capitalism and modernity provides a new reading which reveals the remarkable consonances between their sociologies of the modern condition. Going beyond the well-known stereotypes of ‘the Marx-Weber debate’, Professor Sayer shows that both Marx and Weber produced a challenging critique of the nature of power and subjectivity in modern society, a critique which retains all its intellectual force and moral relevance today. A major work of original scholarship, Capitalism and Modernity is clearly and accessibly written. It is an authoritative and provocative commentary on a debate central to modern sociology and politics and will be a key text in social theory for students of sociology, politics and philosophy.

Civil Society

Civil Society PDF

Author: Robert Fine

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-03-05

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1135218617

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This volume examines the idea of civil society in its historical and contemporary dimensions. It provides a comprehensive and critical mapping of the idea, the burden of expectation that it has carried, and the intellectual and political dimensions that surround it.

Capitalism in Transformation

Capitalism in Transformation PDF

Author: Roland Atzmüller

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 1788974247

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Presenting a profound and far-reaching analysis of economic, ecological, social, cultural and political developments of contemporary capitalism, this book draws on the work of Karl Polanyi, and re-reads it for our times. The renowned authors offer key insights to current changes in the relations between the economy, politics and society, and their ecological and social effects.

Pioneers of Capitalism

Pioneers of Capitalism PDF

Author: Maarten Prak

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-06-11

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 069124233X

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How medieval Dutch society laid the foundations for modern capitalism The Netherlands was one of the pioneers of capitalism in the Middle Ages, giving rise to the spectacular Dutch Golden Age while ushering in an era of unprecedented, long-term economic growth. Pioneers of Capitalism examines the formal and informal institutions in the Netherlands that made this economic miracle possible, providing a groundbreaking new history of the emergence and early development of capitalism. Drawing on the latest quantitative theories in economic research, Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden show how Dutch cities, corporations, guilds, commons, and other private and semipublic organizations provided safeguards for market transactions in the state’s absence. Informal institutions developed in the Netherlands long before the state created public safeguards for economic activity. Prak and van Zanden argue that, in the Netherlands itself, capitalism emerged within a robust civil society that constrained and counterbalanced its centrifugal forces, but that an unrestrained capitalism ruled in the overseas territories. Rather than collapsing under unrestricted greed, the Dutch economy flourished, but prosperity at home came at the price of slavery and other dire consequences for people outside Europe. Pioneers of Capitalism offers a panoramic account of the early history of capitalism, revealing how a small region of medieval Europe transformed itself into a powerhouse of sustained economic growth, and changed the world in the process.