Marx as an a-Ricardian: value,money and price at the beginning of Capital

The fundamental distinction between Ricardo and Marx is once more examined, chiefly with reference to the current spread, among some leftwing economists, of a neo-Ricardian school. So a crucial point seems to be the particular meaning, which is quite a-Ricardian, of the first section of the Capital. Anyhow, this section is often misunderstood, because of its difficulty, and its philosophical form.     

New frontiers: an enriched perspective on extraction frontiers in Indonesia

Changes in the nature, scale, and speed of natural resource extraction, especially in the last two decades, have resulted in many new resource extraction areas emerging across the world. By zooming in on Indonesia, this article shows that the underlying causes and consequences of current trends are more complex than portrayed by the rancher-squatter model of frontiers that is still frequently used to explain these developments. We argue that a broadened frontier notion is necessary to address the multifaceted nature of the processes underway in contemporary Indonesian extraction areas, as well as beyond. We propose a perspective that pays explicit attention to four new developments that can be described by using the hybridization of space, time, actors, and rules, and are characterized by the fact that these processes create new perimeters in all four mentioned areas. In so doing, we challenge, broaden, and renew the meaning of frontiers.     

A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political, and Business Perspectives

It has been suggested that Africa is experiencing a ‘NewScramble’ thanks primarily to its oil and gas wealth,with the United States and the People’s Republic of Chinaactively competing for access to Africa’s resources. Thisarticle aims to scrutinize the claim that Africa is facing aNew Scramble, analysing the nature of the economic and politicalchanges at work, the importance of Africa’s oil, and thepolitical and economic forces behind the new oil rush. The articlestarts with an overview of the phenomenon labelled by some asthe ‘New Scramble’. The main body of the articleevaluates the existence of a New Scramble from three subjectperspectives: history, international relations, and businessstudies. Finally, by analysing the likely impact on the economiesof oil-producing states, it considers whether we should dismayor rejoice over the ‘New Scramble for Africa’. Itconcludes that the existence of a New Scramble or a US–Chineserace for Africa should be treated with some caution and thatthe use of terms such as ‘scramble’ and ‘race’is perhaps misleading, while the economic impact of oil investmentsis likely to be bleak.     

Human Dignity as a Form of Life: Notes on Its Foundations and Meaning in Institutional Morality

In normative terms, human dignity usually implies two consequences: (a) human beings cannot be treated in some particular ways due to their condition as humans; and (b) some forms of life do not correspond to the ideal life of our community. This study consists in discussing the meaning of this idea of human dignity in contrast to the concept of humiliation in the context of institutional, i.e. political and legal, rights. Two concepts of human dignity will be discussed. The first absolute/necessary and formal/transcendental concept implies the proposition “because human beings have dignity, the following cluster of rights is valid”. Conversely, the second contingent and material concept corresponds to the thought “for being able to live in dignity, we must respect the following rights”. This paper claims that human dignity should be understood as the right to be protected from humiliation. Humiliation is the situation of incapacity or absence of self-determination.

     

How people organise cultural attitudes: cultural belief systems and the populist radical right

Political scientists generally agree that all individuals structure their cultural attitudes in the same unidimensional fashion. However, various populist radical right parties remarkably combine moral progressiveness with conservatism regarding immigration-related issues. This suggests that the structuring of cultural attitudes among the electorate may also be more complex than typically assumed. Applying Correlational Class Analysis to representative survey data, the study uncovers three cultural belief systems. For individuals adhering to an integrated one, all cultural attitudes are interdependent, as typically assumed. However, two alternative belief systems are also uncovered: intermediate and partitioned. In the latter, positions on one cultural attitude (e.g. ethnocentrism) are barely related to positions on others (e.g. rejecting Islam or opposing homosexuality). The existence of multiple cultural belief systems challenges the widely held assumption that all people organise their cultural attitudes similarly. Both political party agendas and individuals’ education level and religion appear key to understanding variation in belief systems.     

Intervention Theatre: performance,authenticity and expert knowledge in politicians’ travel to post-/conflict spaces

ABSTRACT

This article explores the role of official travel activities by politicians to post-/conflict spaces in German foreign policymaking. Starting from the observation that official travel justifications stress the value of authentic insights and unfiltered information, while journeys in practice are meticulously planned and staged, it asks what kind of knowing is possible, how actors make sense of the staged nature of field trips, and how multiple performances create and/or undermine notions of authenticity and first-hand expertise. The article shows that official on-site visits are composed of multiple conscious performances by all actors involved, but that these performances do not undermine the notions of authenticity and expertise. On the contrary, knowledge authenticity—or truth claims on the basis of authentic insights—and related expert authority are produced through travel-as-performance. The emphasis policymakers put on on-site presence and (the performance of) localized knowledge contradicts intervention literature’s generalized finding of a prioritization of technocratic over localized knowledge. The article draws on politics and performance scholarship and authenticity theories in tourism studies to make sense of a wealth of empirical material on the claims, practice and functions of German MPs’ journeys to post-/conflict spaces as part of broader political struggles over policy knowledge.     

Consequences of Forced Residential Relocation: Early Impacts of Urban Renewal Strategies on Forced Relocatees’ Housing Opportunities and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Policymakers have actively pursued urban renewal and dispersal programs to deconcentrate poverty in urban neighborhoods. Relocation strategies lead to new housing opportunities and may encourage employment opportunities for relocated residents if resourceful contacts and job information become more easily available after the move. This study provides an innovative evaluation of the early impacts of involuntary relocation programs in the Netherlands on the housing careers, earnings and employment rates of forced relocatees. It establishes a quasi-experimental design by employing unique longitudinal individual-level population registry data from Statistics Netherlands: forced relocatees are tracked and matched to a control group consisting of similar residents that were not forced to move. A difference-in-difference design shows that forced relocatees are living in less deprived neighborhoods after the move. However, we find no conclusive evidence that this upgrade in housing leads to more socioeconomic opportunities for the forced relocatees.     

Stealing into the wild: conservation science,plant breeding and the makings of new seed enclosures

Faced with pressing climatic changes, scientific and industrial interests are vying to develop crops that can survive drought, floods and shifting pest regimes. Increasingly, they look for solutions in an unlikely place: the gene pools of wild plants. Crop wild relatives (CWR) – species closely related to crops, including their ancestors – offer breeders the allure of retracing the domestication bottleneck, infusing genomes of modern crops with ‘lost’ genetic variety. Yet wild relatives also confront threats from climate change, urbanization and expansion of industrial agri-food. Thus, CWR, seen as both salvational and threatened, have become an international conservation and food-security priority. It is my contention that, in their common project to harness wild-relative potential, conservation and breeding science are co-evolving to extend seed commodity relations into new spheres. I examine enclosures along two fronts: first within ‘systematic CWR conservation’, where ‘in situ’ approaches, typically regarded as empowering and sustainable alternatives to ‘ex situ’, instead may support a complementary system of value extraction; second, in breeding and biotechnology research, which produces new value for CWR while profoundly shaping upstream conservation priorities. An important finding is that although today’s ‘ex situ-centric’ complementarity favors dispossession, an ‘in situ-centric’ approach could foster democratic renewal of biocultural diversity.     

Persistent Harassment: Targets and Perpetrators Among Young Adults

In Portugal, stalking has recently been recognized as a crime. This study used an online survey to ask 3,367 college students about their experiences of persistent harassment and targets’ and perpetrators’ perceptions of fear and conduct legitimacy. Targets (34.5%) typically mentioned that they had experienced a frightening experience but considered it to have been wrong but not very serious. Perpetrators (8.9%) mostly perceived that their targets had not experienced fear and judged their own conduct to have been normal. Ordinal logistic regressions indicated that intimate partner stalking, targets’ fear, and threatening and violent behaviors predicted less conduct legitimization for both targets and perpetrators.