Category Archives: Books

B&B: Markets and the Decline of Democracy // Materiality of Finance // Myth of Agricultural Revolution // Data and the Future of Work // Books on Globalization // Academic Managerialism

Posted on April 11, 2021 by Oleg Komlik

This time especially worth reading and sharing pieces: > “Free Markets and the Decline of Democracy” is an insightful lecture given in 2018 by the late John Weeks, an progressive heterodox economist and avid critic of capitalism. Being a rigorous … Continue reading →

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Thorstein Veblen on Business Interests in Education and Media

Posted on April 9, 2021 by Oleg Komlik

Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) is a superb political economy book in which this original economist, talented sociologist and influential intellectual analyzed the growing corporate domination of culture, society and the economy in the US at the dawn … Continue reading →

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Great academic opportunities: 10 calls for papers, 10 jobs, 6 postdocs, 3 summer schools, 3 PhD fellowships, 3 awards

Posted on March 31, 2021 by Oleg Komlik

Dear ES/PE community member, find below a list of great academic opportunities:  10 calls for papers for conferences and special issues, 10 job openings, 6 post-doc positions, 3 PhD fellowships, 3 summer schools, and 3 awards in economic sociology, political … Continue reading →

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How Capitalism Survives: Social Theory and Structural Change

Posted on February 26, 2021 by Oleg Komlik

by Francesco Boldizzoni* For as long as neoliberalism – the face that capitalism has assumed since the 1980s – has been showing signs of aging, there has been a tendency to view every crisis as a harbinger of impending epochal … Continue reading →

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‘American Bonds’ by Sarah Quinn — The Best Book in Economic Sociology and Political Economy for 2020

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

The ES/PE global academic community is pleased to announce the granting of the Best Book in Economic Sociology and Political Economy Award for 2020 to Sarah Quinn‘s superb, enlightening, thoroughly researched and engagingly written American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped a … Continue reading →

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B&B: Tax flight myth // Covid-19 and a crisis of neoliberalism // Models, morals and Wall Street // Caste systems persist // Smart City or corporate siege // New Labour’s unions reform

Posted on November 27, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

> If taxes rise, the rich will leave! No, they won’t. Contrary to popular opinion, although the rich have the resources and capacity to flee high-tax places, their actual migration is surprisingly limited — a video lecture by Cristobal Young, … Continue reading →

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Towards a New Political Economy of India: the Formation of Rural Middle Classes

Posted on November 23, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

by Maryam Aslany* For observers of the developing world, the ‘middle class’ has become a key category of economic analysis and forecasting. The discussion suffers, however, from a major oversight, since it assumes that the middle class is exclusively urban. … Continue reading →

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Foucault: Neoliberalism Redefined Homo Economicus

Posted on November 18, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

Michel Foucault, a lecture at the Collège de France, March 1979: “The characteristic feature of the classical conception of homo economicus is the partner of exchange and the theory of utility based on a problematic of needs. In neo-liberalism — … Continue reading →

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Human Need vs. Capitalist Greed: a Gastronomic Rebuttal of Mainstream Economics

Posted on November 10, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

by Michael Symons* “A tap of my magic wand… and all you see is money!” With this, the conjurer distracts attention from healthy bodies, happy households, wise governments, and nature. Even the actual market of bread, apples and beer disappears … Continue reading →

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Forms of Capital and Moral Legitimation of Capitalism

Posted on September 27, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

by Ivan Light* The class system routinely provides people with resources they need to enact their inherited status. These resources are Pierre Bourdieu’s four forms of capital: financial, human, cultural, and social. A coal miner’s son will not need and … Continue reading →

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The Future of Work

Posted on September 20, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

“I can’t remember — do I work at home or do I live at work?“ See below insightful books on various aspects of the phenomenon reflected in the cartoon. The point is, although they were written in the pre-COVID-19 world, … Continue reading →

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B&B: Laissez-faire & monetary technophilia // Psychoanalysis as a capitalist drug // Sociology and economics // Hobsbawm on May Day // Big Tech uses the Covid-19 crisis // Artists’ strikes

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

> “As ugly as the public provision of money can sometimes be, its digital privatization is all too likely to be vastly worse” — Frank Pasquale reviews three recent books examining the laissez-faire ideology of monetary technophilia: David Golumbia’s The … Continue reading →

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Rest in Power, David Graeber – the Activist-scholar who Lived the Coupling of Theory and Praxis

Posted on September 4, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

A prominent social scientist and committed public intellectual David Graeber has died. This is devastating news and an enormous loss… Graeber was an original thinker, distinguished researcher, incredible writer, and vigorous speaker. He genuinely embodied the amalgam of scholarship and … Continue reading →

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We Make our Careers in Networks

Posted on August 31, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

I recently came across an engaging and illuminating article “On the Acrimoniousness of Intellectual Disputes” written by a prominent American sociologist Randall Collins. Not just researchers and academics will find this paper relevant and thought-provoking because it tackles the inner … Continue reading →

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Great academic opportunities: 18 PhD fellowships, 12 calls for papers, 6 jobs, 2 winter schools, a post-doc, an award

Posted on August 20, 2020 by Oleg Komlik

Dear ES/PE community member, see below a list of great academic opportunities: 18 PhD fellowships, 12 calls for papers for online/off-line conferences and special issues, 6 job openings, 2 winter schools, a post-doc position, and an award in various areas … Continue reading →

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