From the Claw to the Lion: A Critical Look at Capitalist Globalization

ABSTRACT

This article argues that capitalist globalization is largely responsible for creating or intensifying many of our most serious economic and social problems. It first describes the forces that drove core country transnational corporations to create a complex system of cross-border production networks. It then maps the resulting new international division of labor, in which Asian countries, especially China, import primary commodities from Latin American and sub-Saharan African countries to produce exports for core countries, especially the United States. In core countries, globalization has led to the destruction of higher paying jobs, financialization of economic activity, and stagnation. While the new international division of labor has boosted third world rates of growth, especially in Asia, it has also left the third world with unbalanced and inequitable economies. Moreover, contradictions in the globalization process point to the spread of core country stagnation to the third world. Capitalist globalization has increased third world dependence on core country consumption while simultaneously undermining core country purchasing power. The article ends by discussing a process and program of transformation that highlights the feasibility of an alternative to global capitalism as well as the organizational capacities and institutional arrangements that must be developed if we are to realize it.     

CAPITALISM,THE KOREA–U.S. FREE TRADE AGREEMENT,AND RESISTANCE

Free trade agreements (FTAs) have become an essential part of the corporate effort to establish a global infrastructure suitable to its contemporary accumulation dynamics. Because they establish and reinforce patterns of economic activity that are destructive of majority interests, they should be opposed. This article scrutinizes one agreement: the Korea–U.S. FTA. It examines the motivations that led to its negotiation, the content of the agreement, and the arguments U.S. government officials and institutions have made in support of its ratification. It concludes with a critical evaluation of the efforts of U.S. and Korean opponents of its ratification and a call for a new organizing strategy.     

Designing Programming and Interventions for Women in the Criminal Justice System

Women are the fastest growing segment of the criminal justice population, yet the majority of research on criminal justice populations has been focused on men. Programming and interventions that reduce women’s involvement in the criminal justice system and ameliorate the negative consequences associated with criminal justice involvement are urgently needed. The overall aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive framework for developing evidence-based, gender-specific programming and interventions to reduce criminal justice involvement and its associated consequences among women in the criminal justice system. The first section of the paper offers a conceptually guided review of the three primary factors that facilitate and complicate women’s involvement in the criminal justice system: victimization; mental disorders; and substance use. In the second section of the paper, findings from focus groups conducted with women on probation or parole identify strategies to engage this population in psychosocial interventions. The third and final section of the paper provides comprehensive recommendations for designing programming and interventions for women in the criminal justice system.     

Discussion Content and Perception of Deliberation in Western European Versus American Juries

Jury research has dealt almost exclusively with the American system wherein 6-12 laypersons decide verdicts under a unanimity or non-unanimity rule. However, most Western European countries follow the escabinado system, in which laypersons and judges together decide verdict and sentence, under a non-unanimous rule. We experimentally compared the processes and outcomes of both types of juries. Under the guise of a Student Judicial panel, seven undergraduate students in Spain comprised 10 juries, whereas five undergraduates and two fifth-year Law students comprised 10 escabinado juries. We assessed pre- and post-discussion verdict, penalty, and confidence, discussion content, and subjective reactions to the discussion and outcome. Escabinado jury deliberations were driven by the imbalance of power between trained and lay jurors. Escabinado and lay juries differed in their perception of the deliberation but not in their outcomes. Implications for the impact of cultural differences and task requirements in jury decision-making are drawn.     

Moral judgement,cognitive distortions and empathy in incarcerated delinquent and community control adolescents

Abstract

Immature moral judgements, cognitive distortions and low empathy could contribute to criminal offending and are often targeted in interventions aimed at reducing risk of recidivism. We compared 58 delinquent 13–18-year-olds, incarcerated in youth homes in Sweden (29 males, 29 females) with 58 (29 males, 29 females) community control adolescents individually matched on age, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic position. Self-report questionnaires examined moral judgement, cognitive distortions, and empathy. Delinquent adolescents exhibited less mature moral judgements and more cognitive distortions than control adolescents. However, no association between delinquency status and self-reported empathy was found. In addition, girls reported more mature moral judgements, less cognitive distortions and more empathy than boys did. Moral judgement and empathy were positively correlated and both measures were negatively correlated with cognitive distortions. Our data support the idea that moral judgement and cognitive distortions are important treatment targets for juvenile delinquents, whereas empathy may be less meaningful to address directly.     

Reentry Within the Carceral: Foucault, Race and Prisoner Reentry

Early research on prisoner reentry was largely practical and applied, oriented to policymakers responding to the myriad challenges presented by having millions of people leaving prisons and jails each year. More recently, scholars have drawn on critical theoretical frameworks to reformulate the problem as bound up with large-scale shifts in the nature of social control (Wacquant in Dialect Anthropol 34(4):605–620, 2010a), deep racial divisions (Nixon et al. in Race/Ethnicity: Multidiscip Glob Contexts 2(1):21–43, 2008), and transformations of the United States political economy (Hallett in Crit Criminol. doi:10.1007/s10612-011-9138-8, 2011). This paper continues the work of theoretical elaboration through two avenues: (1) examining the contribution that Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish can make to the conceptual development of reentry scholarship, and (2) reworking Foucauldian concepts and themes important to the study of reentry to account for their racialized characteristics.     

Understanding Change in Committee Assignments between Elections: Evidence from the Danish Case

The study of committee assignment politics is very limited in parliamentary systems. Even more limited is the study of the change in committee assignments that occurs between elections. In this article, a first attempt to rectify this, both theoretically and empirically, is presented. What might have an impact on committee reassignments and what relationship one would expect to find are discussed. Using data of all Danish committee assignments 1994–2007, the proposed relationships are tested. The results show that: (1) it varies which parties experience the more change; and (2) it is often related to internal problems, but vote share, seniority and whether an MP is involved in a ministerial reshuffle or not also have a significant influence on change of committee assignments.     

Intellectual property,indigenous knowledge,and biodiversity

ABSTRACT

This is Part 1 of an article arguing for an extended application of Karl Marx’s insight that the apparent reciprocity of free market exchange is to be understood as an ideology that obscures material processes of exploitation and accumulation. Rather than to confine this insight to the worker’s sale of his or her labor-power for wages, and basing it on the conviction that labor-power is uniquely capable of generating more value than its price, the article argues that capital accumulation also relies on asymmetric transfers of several other biophysical resources such as embodied non-human energy, land, and materials. It proposes that the very notions of “price” and “value” serve to obscure the material history and substance of traded commodities. Such a shift of perspective extends Marx’s foundational critique of mainstream economics by focusing on the unacknowledged role of ecologically unequal exchange, but requires a critical rethinking of the concept of “use-value.” It also suggests a fundamental reconceptualization of the ontology of technological progress, frequently celebrated in Marxist theory. Part 1 of the article introduces the argument on unequal exchange, the ideological function of money, some concerns of ecological Marxism, and the conundrum posed by three contradictory understandings of “use-value.”