Monthly Archives: October 2014

Why after three decades of economic reforms in Latin America labor laws remained rigidly protective and remarkably diverse?

Posted on October 29, 2014 by

Continuity Despite Change: The Politics of Labor Regulation in Latin America shows that after three decades of economic reforms labor laws have changed far less than many expected and remained both rigidly protective and remarkably diverse. Why? In this very … Continue reading →

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Global South – Global North intersection in one striking photo

Posted on October 27, 2014 by

African migrants and refugees, caught for several hours on the border fence between Spain’s North African enclave of Melilla and Morocco, look down on white-clad golfers. (See details here). This striking and surreal photo reminded me Ulrich Beck’s observation: “No … Continue reading →

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Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education: the modes of material and symbolic violence undermine public pedagogy and democracy

Posted on October 25, 2014 by

This important and accessible book is about how policies and modes of material and symbolic violence radically reshape the mission and practice of higher education and its institutions, short-changing a young generation suffering from – and coping with – precarity. … Continue reading →

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Noam Chomsky on neoliberal semantics: “working class” vs. “middle class”

Posted on October 24, 2014 by

“The business classes are very class-conscious—they’re constantly fighting a bitter class war to improve their power and diminish opposition. Occasionally this is recognized. We don’t use the term “working class” here [ in the U.S] because it’s a taboo term. … Continue reading →

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‘Performativity thesis’: Accounting’s mediating role in bringing theoretical statements from economics into life

Posted on October 23, 2014 by

An interesting “The ‘performativity thesis’ and its critics: Towards a relational ontology of management accounting” by Ed Vosselman, explores accounting’s mediating role in bringing theoretical statements from economics into life. The paper addresses the so-called performativity thesis that claims that economic … Continue reading →

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Jerry ‪Seinfeld‬ on ‪consumerism‬, ‪advertising‬ and ‪culture‬ of ‪consumption‬ :-)

Posted on October 19, 2014 by

Jerry Seinfeld: “I love advertising because I love lying… I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.” (4 min … Continue reading →

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Political economy of Ebola — one picture and two articles

Posted on October 18, 2014 by

— “Drug companies’ refusal to invest in research [of Ebola] and the conditions on the ground created by neoliberal policies that exacerbate and even encourage outbreaks goes unmentioned. […] Ebola is a problem that is not being solved because there is almost … Continue reading →

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Gendering the Recession: Media, Culture and the Reemergence of Gender Tropes

Posted on October 17, 2014 by

Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity is an interesting book which provides analyses of a recession-era media culture characterized by the reemergence and refashioning of familiar gender tropes, including crisis masculinity, coping women, and postfeminist self-renewal. … Continue reading →

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Mark Granovetter didn’t win (yet) the ‪‎Nobel Prize. Here is his rejection letter, from 1969

Posted on October 13, 2014 by

A prominent economic sociologist Mark Granovetter didn’t win (yet) the ‪Nobel Prize in economic sciences‬. Let’s take a look at his rejection letter. You may think I’m talking about the Nobel… I’m not. And that makes this even more interesting! This is … Continue reading →

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From Mark Twain’s observation on October stock market to Randy Martin’s on financialization of daily life

Posted on October 12, 2014 by

We are in mid-October, stock exchange indexes are falling and economic journalists are shouting and wondering: is the next October stock market crash approaching? That’s a good occasion to recall a good old Mark Twain’s observation: “October: This is one of the peculiarly … Continue reading →

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Thomas Piketty: “There is no such thing as economic science. There are social sciences, economic processes involved social control.”

Posted on October 10, 2014 by

Pofessor Thomas Piketty: “[In order to promote economic justice] the first important thing to do is democratization of economic knowledge. Too often bad economic policy  and economic policies in the interests of the wealthy come from the fact that we, … Continue reading →

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Why have historians ceded authority to economists as reliable and competent policy advisors?

Posted on October 9, 2014 by

Since the 18th century historians have advised policy-makers. Then, about fifty years ago, economists have taken their place. Why did it happen and what can be learned from this occurrence? During the last 15 years, economic sociologists, historians and sociologists … Continue reading →

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Futures and ethnographies of ‪neoliberalism‬

Posted on October 8, 2014 by

The special issue of Cultural Anthropology “Futures of ‪Neoliberalism‬” (open access) offers theoretically-astute and fine-grained ethnographic analyses of the effects of profound changes across the Globe in various fields: workers’ wageless and disrupted life in ‪‎Brazil‬, governance of young right-extremists in … Continue reading →

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Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders!

Posted on October 7, 2014 by

Read more on this destructive and erroneous idea of “Shareholder Value”: — The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality, by Katharina Pistor (Princeton University Press, 2019) — The Shareholder Value Myth: How Putting Shareholders First Harms … Continue reading →

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Between slavery and capitalism: former slaves and slaveholders construct a new model of racial labor market after the Civil War

Posted on October 2, 2014 by

At the center of the upheavals brought by emancipation in the American South was the economic and social transition from slavery to modern capitalism. In this new book Between Slavery and Capitalism: The Legacy of Emancipation in the American South, Martin … Continue reading →

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