The China Code

China is evolving—it is becoming modern and international—but its trajectory will never intersect with the West’s. Fortunes have waxed and waned over thousands of years, but Chinese civilization has remained apart. Enduring fundamentals—morality rooted in stability, anti-individualism and a micro-analytic, balance-obsessed worldview—both fuel contemporary growth and preclude China’s ascendance as a superpower capable of projecting values abroad. A unifying “Confucian Conflict” between trenchant ambition and diffused anxiety also explains the actions and attitudes of ordinary Chinese people. This “street level” article articulates an “insecure or safe” continuum of twelve quintessentially behavioral characteristics that are observed in all realms of contemporary life including diplomacy, business, consumer behavior and social structure. They are: Ritualistic Observation, Robotic Depersonalization, Hierarchical Regimentation, Anxious Self-protection, Trust Facilitation, Pragmatic Elasticity, Incremental Progression, Released Repression, Confidence Projection, Epic Ambition, Scaled Mobilization and Joyful Celebration.     

‘Medieval Working Practices’? British Agriculture and the Return of the Gangmaster

The Select Committee Report reviewed here outlines both the fact of and the dynamics structuring the return to British agriculture of the gangmaster system. Wrongly described by some observers as an aspect of a developing capitalism, by conservative historiography as benign/non-coercive, and by the present British government as the resurgence of ‘medieval working practices’, this highly exploitative form of labour contracting was condemned earlier, by the 1867 Children's Employment Commission. Then, as now, it involved the recruitment/control of casual workers, and is currently based on much the same kinds of coercive mechanisms as its nineteenth century counterpart. Rather than being a pre- or non-capitalist relic, however, the gangmaster system corresponds to the restructuring of the rural labour process by cost-cutting agribusiness enterprises and commercial farmers. As such, it is argued here, it represents the authentic face of a twenty-first century capitalist agriculture.     

VACCINES FOR ALL

In a world beset by the novel disease(COVID-19),never has global cooperation been so urgent.The world needs cooperation not only to combat the virus through medical support and assistance,but also in terms of distributing vaccines.     

‘At their perfect command'? The struggle of/(over) post‐emancipation rural labour

In a collection which refuses to recognize the presence of Marxist contributions to its subject, a number of essays in this book adhere to imperial or neoclassical economic historiographic traditions, both of which are not just problematic but also revisionist in their approach to the issue of pre‐ and post‐emancipation forms of unfree labour. Privileging empiricism, and for the most part eschewing theory, revisionism attempts to depoliticize analysis of relations such as slavery, indenture and bonded labour in colonial contexts. Symptomatic examples of this revisionist argument — as applied to rural labour in South Africa, India and the Caribbean during the latter part of the nineteenth century ‐ are examined, and the reasons for their shortcomings explored.

After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents, edited by Howard Temperley. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000. Pp.v + 300. £45. ISBN 0 7146 5022 6 (cloth).     

Interpreting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear incident: some questions for corporate criminology

The serious nuclear incident at Fukushima Daiichi, triggered by the tsunami following the Tohuku earthquake on 11th March 2011, has prompted a flurry of investigations and debates of various kinds, within Japan and beyond. In common with many other such disasters, the causation of which brings together technologies, human behavior, organizational and regulatory cultures, and physical settings in complex configurations, serious questions have been asked about whether corporate crime was involved in creating this nuclear disaster. Of course the failure was prompted by an enormously powerful natural phenomenon, but should the operating company and government bodies have been better prepared? If so, who was to blame? Do attempts to explain the disaster in terms of cultural categories amount to a ‘cop out’; serving to excuse responsible individuals for acts both of commission and omission? In this paper, we examine these questions, focusing on the inherent ambiguity of such untoward events, and the difficult political and legal conundrums to which they can lead.