Jack Goody: The Anthropology of Unequal Society

In almost four decades Jack Goody has published a score of books seeking to explain the divergence of Africa from the Eurasian continent, and latterly to refute historical claims of western superiority to Asia. Since the millennium, he has sought to clarify his own vision of modern capitalism at a time when western hegemony is coming under pressure from globalization. Yet this achievement has not received the recognition from anthropologists that it deserves. This article, in reviewing six books published during the last decade, makes a case for reassessing Goody's project from the mid-1970s until now. It singles out two books for special attention, The Theft of History and his latest volume, Metals, Culture and Capitalism. A consistent theme of his recent work is to juxtapose his own account of the history of western capitalism with those of Marx, Weber and other writers in the classical tradition of social theory. Jack Goody remains to this day an anthropologist whose sensibility was formed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork. But he knew that, if he aspired to throw light on the human predicament as a whole, he would have to become a world historian too.     

From Corporatism to Public Utilities: Workplace Pensions in the 21st Century

For many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, workplace pensions have been an important mechanism for supplementing state‐sponsored social security. Notwithstanding significant differences between developed economies in the significance attached to workplace pensions, provision has been typically encouraged through preferential tax policies on benefits and compensation packages. If relevant for the baby‐boom generation, it is doubtful that these arrangements will be as important for future generations. As state‐sponsored social security has been discounted in terms of promised value and entitlement, traditional workplace pensions have been closing and replaced by retirement saving instruments that are neither as lucrative nor as dependable. Retrenchment in workplace pensions has prompted governments to consider and, in some cases, develop different types of retirement savings institutions. This paper charts the decline of traditional workplace pensions, the apparent inadequacy of alternatives such as money‐purchase (defined contribution) schemes, and the rise of what are referred to as ‘public utilities’: government sponsored savings institutions designed to compensate for the decline (in coverage and promised value) of workplace pensions albeit at a more modest level than that associated with traditional defined benefit schemes. Reference is made to the experience of the USA, the UK, and Australia with passing comments of related developments in Germany and continental Europe. It is argued that the rise of public utilities in this domain is indicative of the transformation of corporate capitalism over the past 25 years and the realisation that the costs of neoliberalism may be so significant that governments have to take responsibility, once again, for underwriting retirement welfare.     

Responses to Professors Elizabeth Bounds,Michael G. Cartwright and Laurie Zoloth in their comments on Testing the National Covenant

This paper discusses and critiques the structure of debt at work in Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement and the way in which it resonates with other economic and non-economic mechanisms that neoliberalism uses to create indebted subjects. The first part of this paper uses the work of Maurizio Lazzarato to understand how neoliberalism works to create indebted subjects. The second part of the paper discusses how debt structures Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement how the latter resonates with the general sense of indebtedness operative in neoliberalism. The third part of this paper discusses how recent appropriations of the satisfaction theory as an alternative to neoliberalism fail, based on the reading provided in the second part. The conclusion explores alternative theological proposals for thinking beyond the logic of debt.     

Getting the China Story Right: Insights from National Economic Censuses

Two Hong Kong-based geographers critically interrogate competing interpretations of the nature and dynamics of China's ongoing economic transformation. Based on the data gathered from China's first and second national economic censuses, they examine the pattern and process of ownership transformation in the Chinese economy, focusing on employment, capital assets, and output as well as productivity and industrial innovation. Emphasis is placed on the following critical issues: (1) after three decades of opening, China's national economy continues to be dominated by domestic enterprises (with foreign and overseas Chinese-invested enterprises limited to only a few industrial sectors and highly specific locales); (2) the bulk of capital assets and key large-scale industrial sectors remain in state ownership; and (3) spontaneous, bottom-up privatization of the labor market has occurred without a corresponding privatization of the capital market. In examining these and other issues, the authors argue that the evolving, complex "China story" can be better understood only after abandoning reliance on preconceived theoretical models derived primarily from Western experience. They support their case by first challenging the conventional neoliberal view of privatization as an independent force or predetermined condition, arguing instead that it is conditioned by prevailing social and political influences. Likewise, they posit that rapid expansion of private and individual businesses at the grassroots level has owed more to relaxed state control than to active state involvement envisioned by the thesis of state corporatism. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: E22, E23, E24, O11, P20. 8 figures, 6 tables, 87 references.     

Major Recessions in Sweden 1850–2000: from pre-capitalist to modern types of crises

This article uses historical national accounts to compare major recessions in Sweden from 1850 to 2000. A major recession is defined as an event when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in one year is below the level two years earlier. The sharpest declines in GDP coincided with the World Wars, crop failures and contractionary economic policies. One important distinction to be made is between pre-capitalist and modern types of crises. While the former were crises of underproduction, brought about by declines in agriculture and consumption, the latter were overproduction crises usually generated by declines in investment and industrial production. The article shows that in Sweden the transition from the one type to the other was a prolonged process.     

A Forgotten Instrument of Global Capitalism?International Concessions, 1870–1930

From the mid-1800s through the 1930s, concessions were an institutional foundation of modern capitalism about which we have little systematic, comparative knowledge. Concessions - contracts given by governments in less-developed states to foreign investors - supplied elements that were lacking in the host country, including a congenial legal order and an attractive investment environment. Cash-poor governments eager to modernise often added special privileges and monopoly rights to concessions in order to attract capital. In Africa and Asia, all the colonial powers granted concessions to promote the building of infrastructure and development of commercial agriculture without burdening the Treasury. After providing a global survey of concessions with special attention to Russia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and French West Africa, the author concludes that concessions, by their nature, entailed contradictions that made them a ‘third best’ option for political elites eager to incorporate peripheral regions into the world economy.     

宋代经学著作雕版印刷述论

经学是整个封建社会神圣不可侵犯的统治学说。时至宋世,作为儒家经典合称的“十三经”完全确立。并与进入黄金时代的雕版印刷事业紧紧相连。宋代统治阶级的意愿、士人的经学研究状况以及普遍的社会风气作为三大社会因素。共同给予当时经学著作的雕版印刷以直接而重大的影响。而官刻本、家刻本和坊刻本则作为雕版印刷版本鼎足而立的三大系统,在经学著作的长期刊印过程中,不仅形成了自己的一些特点,而且大大推进着雕版印刷事业的发展。在整个宋代文化史上,经学著作的雕版印刷对于传播经学知识、普及经学思想所作出的贡献是不可磨灭的。     

Unravelling the “Thin Blue Line”: Policing as an Engine of Inequality

This paper argues that policing be understood as a creative social force that reproduces important dimensions of earlier iterations of the colour line. The paper advances this argument by integrating findings from two distinct research projects: the first on the household financial losses that follow arrest by immigration officials in Tucson, AZ; and the second focusing on the everyday costs of policing and carceral supervision absorbed by residents of Philadelphia, PA. Together, data from these sites illuminate how exposure to policing exhausts emotional and material resources from expansive family and community networks of care and support. To theorise the connection between financial dispossession and the dispossession of future opportunity, we draw on a heuristic reading of the “thin blue line” symbol. We conclude by suggesting a need for closer attention to how contemporary state interventions drive patterns of dispossession and vulnerability that accumulate across various scales, sites, rhythms, and collectivities.     

太平天国印书的三种稀世刻本浅析

现存于南京太平天国历史博物馆的太平天国三种原刻本印书,对于太平天国政治、经济、思想、文化、军事等方面的研究具有重要价值。     

CLASS OR COMMUNITY? MARX,THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE,AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY

This article explores the relationship between class and community through a discussion of peasant struggles and the commune during the Russian Revolution. Doing so, we show how Marx's class‐oriented reflections on community can help us to understand the role that the peasantry plays (or should play) in processes of social transformation. This enables us, first, to understand the relevance of communal forms for Marx, who believed that communitarian ways of life were crucial for overcoming a value‐based society. It is, in fact, a mistake to divide Marx's intellectual trajectory into two periods: a categorical Marx, who authored Capital and critically analyzed the classical theory of value, and a phenomenological, empirical Marx, who in the last years of his life abandoned writing Capital and focused instead on studying the Russian peasantry. Second, it enables us to discuss new externalist visions, such as postcolonial and decolonial theories, which postulate that the subordination of contemporary peasant communities is rooted in epistemology, culture, and local power relations. These theories are related to the old social‐democratic canon, which conceives of social classes as preconstituted entities and of capital as a parasitic externality that is incommensurable with social dynamics. The experience of the Russian peasantry calls into question all externalist and ontological perspectives.