Trade,tribute, and neutron activation: The colonial political economy of Xaltocan,Mexico

In Trade, Tribute, and Transportation, Ross Hassig argues that indigenous towns in the northern Basin of Mexico during the colonial period were largely self-sufficient. They traded with Mexico City mostly in elite goods, but for the most part they produced for their own subsistence or traded with nearby towns. Chemical characterization by instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) and portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) of ceramics and obsidian from post-conquest contexts in Xaltocan, a site in the northern Basin of Mexico, reveals that Hassig’s model is partly correct for describing Xaltocan. The town focused on trade with nearby towns and it produced some ceramics for local consumption. However, Xaltocan was hardly isolated and self-sufficient in the post-conquest period. Instead, the data suggest that the people of Xaltocan also obtained ceramics and obsidian from a greater variety of sources than under Aztec domination. Rather than being an isolated rural site, Xaltocan either increased its external connections and number of trading partners after the Spanish conquest, or it managed to obtain a greater variety of products than before through a bustling market system.     

Minding the gaps: exploring the intersection of political economy,colonial ideologies and cultural practice in early modern Ireland

SUMMARY: Examinations of the imposition of colonial ideologies actualized through the mechanism of plantation, or enforced settlement, in Ireland often highlight plantation as a stark process that was founded upon, and thus fully accommodated to, a fully-fledged version of mercantile capitalism. Yet on the ground, engagements between peoples reveal that ideologies were incompletely applied, plantation plans seldom realized and new economic formulations incompletely rendered. On close examination, seemingly incompatible economic structures (Gaelic, Old English and incoming plantation) emerge as capable of mutation and accommodation, thus forcing a reconsideration of the rigid interpretations of the rise of capitalism in the early modern Atlantic that has typified scholarship in historical archaeology. The gaps between rhetoric and reality are considered, and a case made for how a more nuanced consideration of the intersections of culturally disparate political economies can yield a deeper understanding of colonial encounters and colonial settings.     

Whose politics and which science: beyond the colonial in liberal political theory

ABSTRACT

This article examines liberal political theory’s limits and possibilities in relation to indigenous self-determination. It shows that while the liberal tradition has provided theoretical rationale to the colonial project it is also equipped to rationalise a politics of substantive indigenous inclusion. The article introduces the recourses that exist within liberal theory for non-colonial interpretations of citizenship, democracy and sovereignty. It shows how these concepts may be interpreted to contribute to a liberal theory of indigeneity as a theory emphasising independent indigenous authority on the one hand and culturally contextualised and substantive participation in the politics of the state on the other.     

Epidemiologists explain pellagra: gender,race, and political economy in the work of Edgar Sydenstricker

Between 1900 and 1940, at least 100,000 individuals in the southern United States died of pellagra, a dietary deficiency disease. Although half of these pellagra victims were African-American and more than two-thirds were women, contemporary observers paid little attention to these gender and racial differences in their analyses of disease. This article reviews the classic epidemiological studies of Joseph Goldberger and Edgar Sydenstricker, who argued that pellagra was deeply rooted in the political economy of cotton monoculture in the South. The methods that Sydenstricker brought to epidemiology from early work on political economy obscured the role of gender inequalities in pellagra, and his focus on economic underdevelopment led him to ignore the prominent role of African-Americans as pellagra's principal victims. Research methods and traditions, no less than more overt ideologies, played a role in maintaining the subordinate social position of women and African-Americans in the southern United States.     

New technologies and the political economy of geomorphology

New technologies enable high‐resolution monitoring techniques and the generation of big data and have been heralded as increasing the depth of our understanding of geomorphic phenomena. These technologies, however, also provide us with a convenient entry point into the increasingly constraining political economy of geomorphology. Building on the work of Stuart Lane and of critical physical geographers, this paper traces and examines the multiple roles that new technologies have played in constraining research questions and directing resources. Using the activity sphere framework outlined by David Harvey, the influence of new technologies can be traced around the spheres and their constraining of existing relations within academia and explanation identified.     

Local politics and foreign ventures in China's transitional economy: the political economy of Singaporean investments in China

The re-articulation of China into the global economy since December 1978 has led to a tremendous influx of foreign capital during the past two decades. Constrained by the limited domestic market and encouraged by home-country government, transnational corporations from Singapore are regionalising increasingly into the Asia Pacific region. To date, a significant amount of Singaporean investments abroad has gone to China. Based on personal interviews with parent companies in Singapore and their subsidiaries and/or affiliates in China, this paper aims to examine the political economy of Singaporean investments in China. Specifically, I argue that successful cross-border operations of Singaporean firms are embedded in dense networks of social and political relationships. These relationships provide the political leverage and strategic resources to enable the establishment of Singaporean firms in China. This establishment, however, is contingent on blending with local politics in China through which foreign firms use leverage on the partnership advantage of local governments (difang zhengfu), their enterprises, and business activities. This rise of local corporatism is a key institutional consequence of the recent rescaling of China's political economy. Case studies of ventures by Singaporean firms in China are presented to support my arguments. Taken together, these empirical materials shed light on the importance of understanding the role of politics at different spatial scales in influencing transnational corporations and their international business operations.     

Governing relations between people and things: Citizenship, territory, and the political economy of petroleum in Ecuador

Ecuador is the fifth largest producer of petroleum in Latin America. Petroleum has brought prosperity to many Ecuadorians, effectively becoming the nation's most important natural resource. It also has inspired intense political mobilizations. While the best known of these are led by Amazonian indigenous peoples, petroleum has also generated other important but not as well-recognized mobilizations. This paper focuses on the political mobilization of Amazonian agricultural settlers and petroleum workers in relation to petroleum. While these actors do not share common livelihood or cultural struggles, the discourses that frame their mobilizations in relation to petroleum have common elements. Their dissatisfaction with the political economy of petroleum in the 1990s and 2000s, for example, generated high profile protests and civil unrest that centered not on stopping production, but on demanding a more ‘responsible management’ of petroleum by the state. The paper brings together political economy, mechanisms of subject formation, and the material qualities of petroleum to explore how petroleum production in Ecuador has shaped common views on citizenship among these actors that center on petroleum as a site of regulation of social life.     

Reconstructing an urban and regional political economy: on the state,politics, scale,and explanation

This paper begins from the premise that a number of now fashionable institutionally focused accounts of urban and regional political economy often begin at a point that is analytically flawed (or at least partial) in that the institutional ensembles themselves—whether analyzed as an urban `regime', regional `thickness' or a local `regulatory mode'—are automatically assumed to be a pre-given part of the explanation. However, the authors contend that for a deeper analysis of urban and regional political economy to be advanced, these institutions themselves need to be explained. In order to proceed with such an explanation three key factors require more serious consideration. These are: (1) the need to outline one's chosen research object of enquiry, and all that this entails in terms of research methodology, theory selection, and an uncovering of the `constitutive properties' of causation; (2) a greater readiness to analytically interrogate the relational interplay between economic development, political governance and scale; and (3) an obligation to pay due respect to the politics of representation and active processes of state restructuring and political strategizing through and around which economic development is itself constituted. In order to explore these themes, the authors draw, variously, on a methodological (re-) reading of the regulation approach, recent theoretical innovations on the `politics of scale', Jessop's state-theoretical writings and his recently developed neo-Gramscian methodology for analyzing urban economic governance, alongside Jenson's political sociological approach towards the `politics of representation'. Where appropriate, they explore, briefly, ways in which these theoretical themes may be deployed in empirical research, by considering certain restructurings in and of the political economy of Britain during recent decades.     

The good, the bad and the confusing: the political economy of social care expansion in South Korea

Recent social policy reforms in South Korea indicate a progressive shift by a conservative government to modify the familialistic male breadwinner model that informs its welfare regime. The Korean government has demonstrated support for women through an increase in the provision, regulation and coordination of childcare and workplace support programmes for working parents. At the same time, labour market reforms have also created more pressures on women to seek and maintain paid work outside the home. Conflicting social and economic policy objectives have resulted in a confusing mix of policies, advancing and impeding gender equality at the same time. This contribution examines the recent family–work reconciliation policy reforms in Korea and discusses why these reforms may be good politics but a bad deal for women.     

#MeToo,white feminism and taking everyday politics seriously in the global political economy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines social media movements, specifically #MeToo, in relation to the politics of feminism and white privilege in the contemporary global political economy. Analysis of social media movements is located as a key part of the intricate web of practices that enable certain types of gendered identity and socioeconomic privilege to intersect, in powerful ways and to potent effect. The paper argues that, while scholarship on the global political economy has not often taken seriously popular culture sources in and across world politics, and needs to do better in this regard, investigating the politics of popular culture, race and socioeconomic privilege in contemporary world politics is important. This is because such analysis foregrounds everyday, cultural practices of knowledge formation, building space for emphasising relations of power but also highlighting the possibilities of and for resistance, agency and avenues for creative thinking and doing in world politics.     

The political economy of dive tourism: precarity at the periphery in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism's socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency – especially among ethnic minorities – resulting from Malaysia's state-led rentier economy.