Urban Design in Capitalist Society

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J King
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social System ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
System Degeneration ◽  
Fundamental Transformation ◽  
The Aesthetic

Urban design is concerned with the purposive production of urban meaning, through the coordinating design of conjunctures or relationships between spatial elements. It is argued that, in capitalist society, this production of meaning has typically supported shifts in capital accumulation, social reproduction, and legitimation in ways crucial to the reinforcing of dominant interests. Its effect has been to help counteract instability, system ‘degeneration’ (from the standpoint of such interests), and any fundamental transformation of the social system, This effect is termed ‘counteraction 1’. From considerations of urban design as production of values and as a body of practice, it is concluded that an urban design practice that is counteractive to dominant interests is, however, possible (‘counteraction 2’), Such a practice will be characterised by three ‘rules’, relating to the aesthetic program, the discursive penetration of the social context of urban design, and the breaking down of the present autonomisation and obfuscation of design as a domain of social interaction or discourse.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Mode Of Production

This book investigates two questions, how did finance become hegemonic in the capitalist system; and what are the social consequences of the rise of finance? We do not dwell on other topics, such as the evolution of the mode of production or the development of class conflict over the longer run. Our theme is not the genesis, history, dynamics, or contradictions of capitalism but, instead, we address the rise of financialization beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. Therefore, we investigate the transnationalization of the circuits and processes of capital accumulation that originated the expansion and financialization of the mechanisms of production, social reproduction, and hegemony, including the ideology, the functioning of the states, and the political decision making. We do not discuss the prevailing neoliberalism as an ideology, although we pay attention to the creation and diffusion of ideas, since we sketch an overview of the process of global restructuring of production and finance leading to the prevalence of the shadow economy....

The “laborless fuel”: Landscape, energy transitions and natural gas in the postwar U.S.

2021 ◽  
pp. 251484862098712
Author(s):  
Carlo Sica
Keyword(s):  
Natural Gas ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Business Owners ◽  
Energy Landscapes ◽  
Technological Systems ◽  
Energy Transitions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Landscapes

The dire need for an energy transition to mitigate and reverse global warming is inspiring scholars to reexamine political influences on technological systems. The multi-level perspective of the socio-technical transitions framework acknowledges how technological systems are affected by the social and political landscapes where they are built. Energy landscapes literatures elaborate on the socio-technical transitions framework by explaining how the boundaries of landscapes are negotiated in the context of energy transitions. Energy scholars have found that negotiations over the form and purpose of energy landscapes frequently skew in favor of capital accumulation instead of social reproduction. Studies of landscapes in human geography and labor history have shown how the power imbalance energy scholars observed can be corrected by workers and their communities struggling against business owners and the state. Using archival data, I show how U.S. natural gas legislation in the postwar period was intended to limit coalminers’ demands for landscapes of social reproduction. This point matters because the vulnerabilities of industrial capitalism to energy worker organization could be exploited to push for a just and sustainable energy transition like the Green New Deal.

The multispatial governance of social and economic policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Bob Jessop
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics Of The Body

This chapter distinguishes Foucault’s approach from the work of Anglo-Foucauldian scholars. The latter adopted a microsocial perspective, focused on the programmes and rationalities of government that work across multiple alliances between different actors, and argued for bottom-up civil society responsibilization. Foucault was not only state-phobic but also suspicious of political action based on civil society. His theoretical interests shifted from the micro-physics of disciplinary society and its anatomo-politics of the body to the more general strategic codification of a plurality of discourses, practices, technologies of power, and institutional ensembles around a specific governmental rationality concerned with the social body (bio-power) in a consolidated capitalist society. This is reflected in the statification of government and the governmentalization of the state. This led to his analyses of sovereignty, territorial statehood, and state power and the role of civil society in this regard and to less well-substantiated claims about their articulation to the logic of capital accumulation.

Lyric and Its ›Worlds‹

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rüdiger Zymner
Keyword(s):  
Social System ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Cognitive System ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
As If

AbstractThe article gives a metatheoretical definition of ›lyric‹. The definition pinpoints that lyric is either scriptural and visual or vocal and something that you can hear; it can be fictional or non-fictional, and it belongs to the social system, which modern ›westerners‹ call ›literature‹, but it can also be part of cultural practices, which are outside of any social system of ›literature‹. One can differentiate analytically with regard to the graphic type as well as to the vocal type of ›lyric‹ between the ›material How‹ and the ›semantical What‹. The ›How‹-side and the ›What‹-side provide each and together special signals for the hearer or for the seer or reader, which attract and bind his or her attention and which inform the hearer or the seer and the reader basically that language itself (which is understood as a cognitive system or tool) is something with which you can develop or create meaning; in doing this the signals of lyric constitute aesthetic evidence (the reader, seer or hearer will be ›convinced‹ or ›made sure‹ or emotionally satisfied in a way by the aesthetic qualities of the lyric: non-propositional, as if looking through the ›veils of poetry‹. In the next step the article discusses some types of lyrical ›worlds‹ and lyrical ›world-making‹ with regard to this definition. Finally, the article presents a couple of theses.

Reading Capital, Reading Historical Capitalisms

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Samir Amin
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Mode Of Production

Marx's Capital presents a rigorous scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production and capitalist society, and how they differ from earlier forms. Volume 1 delves into the heart of the problem. It directly clarifies the meaning of the generalization of commodity exchanges between private property owners (and this characteristic is unique to the modern world of capitalism, even if commodity exchanges had existed earlier), specifically the emergence and dominance of value and abstract social labor.… Volume 2 demonstrates why and how capital accumulation functions, more specifically, why and how accumulation successfully integrates the exploitation of labor in its reproduction and overcomes the effects of the social contradiction that it represents.… Volume 3 of Capital is different. Here Marx moves from the analysis of capitalism in its fundamental aspects (its "ideal average") to that of the historical reality of capitalism.… To move from the reading of Capital (and particularly of volumes 1 and 2) to that of historical capitalisms at successive moments of their deployment has its own requirements, even beyond reading all of Marx and Engels.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

scholarly journals The broken promises of the social investment market

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 980-1004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Harvie ◽  
Robert Ogman
Keyword(s):  
Crisis Management ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social

The United Kingdom is pioneering a new model for the delivery of public services, based around the device of a social investment market. At the heart of this social investment market is an innovative new financial instrument, the social impact bond (SIB). In this paper we argue that the SIB promises (partial) solutions to four aspects of the present multifaceted crisis: the crisis of social reproduction; the crisis of capital accumulation; the fiscal crisis of the state; and the crisis of political legitimacy. In this sense, we conceive the social investment market as a crisis management strategy. We draw on evidence from the world’s first SIB, the Peterborough SIB, launched in 2010, as well as from other SIBs, in order to assess the extent to which the social investment market delivers on its four promises. In doing so, we argue that the crisis of neoliberalism and the social investment market are not only in historical correspondence, but in a relation of causality to one another. In developing this argument, this paper contributes to contemporary theories of neoliberalism by investigating how concrete state developments and societal restructuring is being advanced around the idea of linking marketization with progressive social change. It also supports critical practitioners by offering a theoretical lens to identify the contradictions of this increasingly popular policy approach.

scholarly journals Equity and the Social Reproduction of Capital

Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gearey
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Equity Capital ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
The Way

Abstract This essay draws on Marxist thinking to argue that equity is essential to the social reproduction of finance capital. Equitable doctrines can be seen as assemblages that define and reproduce the way in which money, people and property relate to each other. Assemblages of equity/capital are ideological complexes – ways of being, thinking and acting that effectively legitimize a particular mode of production. The role that equity plays in the functioning of a regime of profit making is effectively concealed from the student of the subject. Feminist scholars have perhaps been the most successful in drawing attention to the “hidden” patriarchal logic of the subject. However, unless feminist insights are linked to an understanding of the social reproduction of capital, we cannot appreciate how modes of capital accumulation operate under cover of the legitimizing effects of equitable doctrines.

On the Interrelation of Production and Reproduction

Theoria ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (156) ◽  
pp. 52-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Smetona
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Implications ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Analytic Framework ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Social

Contemporary social and political theorists generally recognise that Marx and Engels’ critical analysis of capitalist society centres on the production of value through the production of things. However, what is often unrecognised in considerations of Marx and Engels is how their analysis is based on the interrelation of production and reproduction. Nevertheless, the implications of this interrelation for feminist critique are explored in the writings of Marx and Engels only tangentially. These implications are developed from Marx’s analysis by Leopoldina Fortunati and Silvia Federici into a singular synthesis of the Marxist and feminist modes of critique. This development deserves greater recognition, and this essay will seek to articulate how the social implications of this interrelation (1) are expressed to a limited extent in the classical texts of Marxism and (2) are developed by Fortunati and Federici into the analytic framework of social reproduction as the core of Marxist-feminist revolutionary struggle.

The economic shift and beyond: Care as a contested terrain in contemporary capitalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Aulenbacher ◽  
Fabienne Décieux ◽  
Birgit Riegraf
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Market Society ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Double Movement ◽  
Contested Terrain ◽  
Fundamental Transformation

This article argues that we are witnessing a fundamental transformation of capitalism. Under the auspices of an economic shift, social reproduction and constituent care and care work are undergoing a process of reorganization. The first part draws on Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the relation between market and society and on contemporary revisions of his approach. Referring to core arguments from his perspective on the market society it identifies processes of commodification, marketization and quasi-marketization, which we can understand as an economic shift driving the development in the field of care and care work. The second part refers to empirical studies in Austria and Germany and reflects in terms of a Polanyian double movement on how far care and care work – in the case of elder and child care and, more precisely, home care agencies, residential care communities and the social investment state – have become a contested terrain. The third part, the conclusion, points out how tendencies like the economic shift touch care and care work.

scholarly journals Documentaries, 21st Century: Time to Sum Up

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-46
Author(s):  
Vitaly F Poznin
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Social System ◽  
The State ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Film Directors ◽  
The Aesthetic

During the last fifteen years in the Russian documentaries dominated creative trend characterized by passionless, objectivist fixing of reality, mainly the negative sides of it. Today, the so-called actual cinema is under crisis, and that determines the relevance of the study summing up some of the processes that have taken place in the Russian documentary cinema in the late 20th-early 21st century. The author examines the causes of uprise and development of the objectivist, naturalistic approach to the fixing of reality and showing the negative aspects of it in Russian documentaries. The primary reason for this phenomenon is connected with the changes in the social system of the country, which has led to the loss of ethical and aesthetic guidelines. The critical perception of reality in a number of contemporary documentaries is the antithesis to the Soviet documentaries with its trend to show predominantly positive aspects of life. As for the rejection of contemporary realities, it can be explained by the desire of film directors to distance themselves from the glamorous approach in the interpretation of reality customary a contemporary TV. And finally, there was the purely practical reason, namely poor theatre and TV distribution that forced the filmmakers to focus on the festival jury and film critics supporting this orientation. Another problem of contemporary Russian documentary lies in the fact of the elimination of the state documentary studios that has led to a general fall of professionalism in this field. The availability of digital video which appeared at this time and easiness of shooting and editing technology allowed to create documentaries by those who could not tell an interesting documentary story. The result of this process is a decline of spectators interest towards documentaries. It can be predicted that the development of new forms of financing documentaries and promoting them to the viewer, will significantly change the aesthetic content of Russian documentary films and return the interest of the audience to this kind of cinema.

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