Appropriating Nature in Crisis-ridden Greece: Deepening Neoliberal Capitalism,Part 2

This is the second paper in a two-paper series in which we present how the ongoing crisis in Greece has been used to accelerate the neoliberal restructuring of Greece with serious implications for the appropriation of nature. In this paper we focus specifically on particular aspects of the austerity programs that relate to natural resources and natural conditions. We examine changes to the business environment and ongoing privatization schemes to show how the Greek austerity programs benefited private capital with significant concessions of natural resources. By discussing relevant specific cases, we concretely show how austerity programs have had far-reaching adverse consequences for the living conditions of working people and their access to natural resources.     

论当代资本主义的两难困局:从“滞胀”危机到“次贷”危机

当代资本主义在坚守资本主义根本制度的前提下进行了多次自我调整.凯恩斯主义挽救了资本主义,也给资本主义带来滞胀危机;新自由主义克服了滞胀危机,却加剧了贫富两极分化,引发了社会危机和次贷危机.当代资本主义两难困局表明,资本主义的自我调整不可能医治资本主义的病症,社会根本制度的变革是解决问题的唯一路径;调整不是在强化正统资本主义的元素,而是在为新社会因素的产生发挥着催生作用.     

Learning from the Katrina Crisis: A Global and International Perspective with Implications for Future Crisis Management

The study of crisis and emergency management—or mismanagement—during Hurricane Katrina will continue to proliferate in the near future. This article presents a global and international perspective on Katrina as a case of "grand failure" in crisis and emergency management, with lessons and implications for future crisis management. Benefiting from empirical data collected from international interviews, the essay presents a theoretical analysis of emergency governance and crisis management, discusses a detailed global perspective on Katrina crisis management as "management and leadership crisis," offers a number of key lessons learned from Katrina, and draws policy and administrative recommendations for future crisis and emergency management through a theory of "surprise management" that is adaptive, collaborative, and citizen engaging and draws on chaos and complexity theories to cope with hyper-uncertainties and unknowns.     

Local Capitalism and Civic Engagement: The Potential of Locally Facing Firms

The twin forces of globalization and devolution have created administrative circumstances that strain the problem‐solving capacity of local governments and increase the importance of nongovernmental processes and institutions. The literature suggests that locally owned firms are more likely to engender higher levels of civic engagement critical to buttressing that problem‐solving capacity. This research adds an additional dimension, investigating to whom those firms sell and through which supply channels. Using survey results from hundreds of local firms across five study sites, this research demonstrates that locally facing firms—that is, firms that intentionally interface with community members and other local businesses—are associated with greater levels of civic and political engagement compared with locally owned firms that sell their products to customers elsewhere. Findings suggest that local governments should look beyond the local/nonlocal ownership binary to consider how private firms can be partners in serving and supporting their communities.     

Class, Capital and Crisis: A Return to Fundamentals

The financial crisis that currently threatens the stability of global capitalism is the latest in a long line of similar episodes stretching back some 200 years. While many orthodox economists explain the crisis in terms of the failure of the proper operation of the market mechanism, radical accounts see crisis as an aspect of the constitution of capital and of the process of the accumulation of capital itself. This article explores the extent to which Marx's understanding of accumulation and crisis can provide the basis for a general theory of capitalist crisis. It concludes that the growing and chronic separation between financial (fictitious) accumulation and productive accumulation is the key to understanding the latest crisis of capital expressed as a global credit crunch. Furthermore, Marx opens the door to the development of an overtly 'political' theory of crisis stressing the 'capitalist use of crisis' as a means for the violent reassertion of the fundamental class relation.     

Critical Pedagogy and Class Struggle in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization: Notes from History's Underside1

Within the North American progressive education tradition, critical pedagogy has been a widely discussed project of educational reform that challenges students to become politically literate so that they might better understand and transform how power and privilege works on a daily basis in contemporary social contexts. As a project of social transformation, critical pedagogy is touted as an important protagonist in the struggle for social and economic justice, yet it has rarely ever challenged the fundamental basis of capitalist social relations. Among the many and varied proponents of critical pedagogy in the USA, Marxist analysis has been virtually absent; in fact, over the last decade, its conceptual orientation has been more closely aligned with postmodernism and poststructuralism. This paper argues that unless class analysis and class struggle play a central role in critical pedagogy, it is fated to go the way of most liberal reform movements of the past, melding into calls for fairer resource distribution and allocation, and support for racial diversity, without fundamentally challenging the social universe of capital in which such calls are made.     

Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation: A Case of 'Militant Particularism'?

This article seeks to help redress the relative lack of discussion of the movement against neoliberal globalisation and the relative lack of empirical work about this movement. Firstly it argues that this movement is not opposed to globalisation per se but instead is developing a new internationalism in the course of challenging the neoliberal nature of contemporary globalisation. Secondly it argues that this challenge is producing a universalising dynamic which is moving the movement beyond being a series of isolated militant particularist struggles. The article uses interviews with leading participants within the movement to help clarify these arguments.     

Cultivating Youth Engagement: Race & the Behavioral Effects of Critical Pedagogy

Political Behavior - Political scientists attribute gaps in participation between whites and people of color to unequal access to political resources, political efficacy, and weak affiliations to...     

Correction: Cultivating Youth Engagement: Race & the Behavioral Effects of Critical Pedagogy

Political Behavior - The original version of this article unfortunately contains the following errors. In the heading “Political Participation and Civic Education”, the text...     

Critical Pedagogy in the Neoliberal University: Reflections on the 2015 York University Strike through a Marcusean Lens

Abstract

In this article, we see the month-long graduate student and contract faculty strike at York University (Toronto, 2015) through a lens informed by Herbert Marcuse’s thought. In the context of widespread student protests across North America against neoliberal austerity, we draw on our picket line experiences to argue that Marcuse’s work provides insights into how students and faculty can engage in critical praxis within the neoliberal university. We argue that CUPE 3903, the union of TAs and contract faculty at York, is a kind of counter-institution that Marcuse argued was necessary for liberation. Marcuse strategically urged students to take advantage of gaps or cracks in a disintegrating system. Our analysis revolves around the complex experience of the graduate student picket lines – a “gap” – as a site of rupture for the liberation of aesthetic experience, “organized spontaneity,” open, democratic organization, as well as conflict.