Class relations and capitalist development: Subsumption in the Colombian coffee industry, 1928–92

The concept of subsumption had a short life within Marxist analysis of family farming because analysts using the concept failed to appreciate the centrality of class relations in Marx's analysis of capitalist development. I argue that the concept of subsumption is best understood as a theorisation of the subtle cultural and historical processes through which labour is incorporated into capitalist development projects. I reinforce this theoretical discussion with an analysis of capitalist development in the Colombian coffee industry. This case demonstrates that capitalist development is as much project as process, as much the reformation of cultural identity as the restructuring of relations of production.     

Moderating strict liability crimes in common law tradition countries

Strict Liability crimes require no proof of a mental element. Proving the forbidden act suffices for conviction. This is discomforting under the common law tradition, since defendants who intended no wrong or were even unaware of their misdeed may be guilty. New Zealand, Australia, and Canada have responded by dividing non‐mens‐rea crimes into those where liability is absolute and those where, although conviction requires proof of no mental element, a defense negating mental guilt can be proven by accuseds. Canada has furthermore abolished the former category and severely restricted the latter. Australia and New Zealand maintain a tri‐part classification of mens rea, absolute liability, and strict liability. Some Indian jurisdictions have reached a similar result by different means. Meanwhile, even the few American courts exploring similar solutions remain unaware of the ninety years of jurisprudence developing these concepts elsewhere.     

A Framework for Integrating External Information into New Product Development: Lessons from the Medical Technology Industry

Only the best manufacturers will remain competitive in today's challenging environment. Any manager involved with developing new products knows the excitement, complexity, and risk of this unpredictable undertaking. Based upon findings from four world class manufacturers of medical imaging technology in Japan and the United States, this article presents a new organizing framework for integrating external information into the NPD process. The findings are particularly timely in an era when manufacturers are vulnerable to intense global competition. The article concludes with several implications for managers involved in the new product development process.     

Women's work,artisanal discourse,and community: a response to Sheila Blackburn

This article is a comment on Sheila Blackburn's response to the author's original essay, ‘Gender Constructions and Gender Relations in Cotton and Chain-making in England: a contested and varied terrain’, which appeared in Women's History Review (6[3], 1997). As the author repeats in this response, the apparently dominant artisanal discourse of the male chainmakers of nineteenth-century Walsall, supporting the exclusion of female labor from the trade, was undermined by conditions existing in Cradley Heath, where the community depended on that labor. Foregrounding this division regarding gender understandings, it is argued, provides a vantage point from which to gain a fuller and more accurate picture of the ways in which those understandings, as well as gender and community relations, were negotiated in one industry towards the end of the nineteenth century