Marketplaces and Morality in Papua New Guinea: Place,Personhood and Exchange

In Papua New Guinea (PNG) more rural people, and especially rural women, earn cash from selling in marketplaces than from any other source. PNG's marketplaces are critical for food security, and for the redistribution of wealth. They are also important meeting places where people gather to see friends, hear the latest news, attend court cases, play cards and be entertained. This introduction to this special issue on ‘Marketplaces and Morality in Papua New Guinea’ reviews the history of PNG marketplaces and their contemporary forms. It charts their transformation from introduced colonial spaces into dynamic Melanesian places, which, as places to buy, sell and socialise, have become pervasive institutions in the lives of both urban and rural Papua New Guineans, and places where people interact with both known and unknown others. From this, marketplaces emerge as important spaces of moral evaluation and contestation in relation to what constitutes morally acceptable exchange and what practices are acceptable in these places. The paper demonstrates that exchange in the marketplace should not be reduced to commodity transactions, and questions assumptions about the types of people marketplaces create. It argues that the country's marketplaces are productive sites to consider ideas of exchange, social relations and social personhood, and that there is a critical need to understand the concrete details of what takes place in contemporary marketplaces.     

中日邦交正常化之前的"政经分离"与"政经不可分"之争

上世纪五、六十年代,日本政府在对华关系方面曾推行过“政经分离”政策。其核心是:政治台湾,经济大陆。即只承认台湾当局,不承认中华人民共和国。对此,中国政府提出了“政治三原则”和“政经不可分原则”,与日本方面旨在搞“两个中国”的图谋进行了针锋相对的斗争。在中日复交35年后的今天,“政经之争”早已不再是中日之间争论的焦点。但对如今时而“政冷经热”、时而“政经双冷”的中日关系来说,重温这段“政经之争”的历史,无疑具有特殊的意义。     

论长江中游地区新石器时代晚期的生计经济与人口压力

长江中游地区新石器时代晚期的主要生计方式是稻作农业,因渔猎所占比重不同而又可细分为山地型与平原型。水田稻作农业具有集约化程度高,产出也较高的特点。稻田耕作系统的形成与维护需要大量劳力,从而刺激人口迅速增长,结果造成人口压力。自然环境的数次波动更加剧了这种压力。因人口压力而引发的移民、战争和社会重组等,成为推动初期社会复杂化进程的主要原因。     

专业镇经济模式的形成机制、特征与发展策略研究--以佛山市为例

专业镇是我国沿海经济发达地区特有的一种经济现象,珠江三角洲是专业镇集中地之一,不仅数量众多、类型丰富,而且规模大,其“一镇一业,一村一品”的专业化生产方式与超10亿元的经济规模引起了政府与学术界的重视。本以佛山市为例,在对佛山市专业镇进行空间分析的基础上,探讨专业镇的产生及其本质,分析佛山市专业镇形成的动力机制、类型与发展阶段,总结了佛山市专业镇的特点及存在的问题,并针对政府与企业分别提出相应的发展策略。     

黑龙江省同日本的经贸合作与老工业基地振兴

日本一直以来都是黑龙江省的重要贸易伙伴,是黑龙江省对外开放的重要国家。随着振兴东北老工业基地国策的提出,黑龙江省如何抓住“天赐良机”,进一步加强与日本的经贸合作,对于黑龙江省全省经济的发展具有重要意义。本文从分析黑龙江省与日本经贸合作的现状出发,总结两者经贸合作中特有的优势,进而提出继续扩大黑龙江省与日本经贸合作的对策措施。     

建国53年来中国宏观经济发展的若干特点--在2003年中国现代经济史年会上的讲话

建国初期到中共十一届三中全会以前,中国的宏观经济从总的时间序列上看,可划分为第一个五年计划时期、第二个五年计划时期、调整时期和"文化大革命"时期四个阶段,每个阶段都有其各自的特点.这个历史时期的经济发展战略是以优先发展重工业为主导,强调发展速度;战略推行的结果虽然成功地建立了一个比较完整的国民经济体系,但在产业结构、积累和消费的关系、增长方式、增长的波动性方面存在不少问题.与此相适应建立起来的集中计划经济体制对于集中力量搞建设是起了作用的,但从效率上讲是失败的.十一届三中全会以来中国的经济体制和经济发展模式发生了深刻的变化,但传统计划经济体制的影响依然对今后的改革与发展构成一定的障碍.     

Platform Capitalism’s Hidden Abode: Producing Data Assets in the Gig Economy

In this article, we argue that the governance of gig work under conditions of financialised platform capitalism is characterised by a process that we call “dual value production”: the monetary value produced by the service provided is augmented by the use and speculative value of the data produced before, during, and after service provision. App-governed gig workers hence function as pivotal conduits in software systems that produce digital data as a particular asset class. We reflect on the production of data assets and the unequal distribution of opportunities for their valorisation, after which we survey a number of strategies seeking data-centric worker empowerment. These strategies, we argue, are crucial attempts to push back against platform capitalism’s domination, bankrolled by what we term “meta-platforms”. Ultimately, it is the massive wealth and synergetic capacities of meta-platforms that constitute the most formidable obstacle to worker power and social justice in increasingly data-driven societies.     

Into the arms of dolls: Japan’s declining fertility rates,the 1990s financial crisis and the (maternal) comforts of the posthuman

Abstract

Japan’s 1990s financial crisis proved psychically traumatic for many men, their trauma exacerbated by decades of falling fertility rates and related sociospatial attenuation. The crisis disrupted a range of heteronormative practices that had stabilized post-war gendered identities, especially marriage and stay-at-home motherhood. Some men consequently began seeking comfort in the company of youthful-looking, large-format, hyper-feminized commodity-dolls of which there are two psychical kinds: ‘infantile’ dolls used largely by precariously positioned young men for comfort and play; and expensive ‘Oedipal’ silicone sex dolls associated with Japanese salarymen whose jobs had become less secure. Both have worked emotionally for two reasons: dolls are evocative of the maternal – the basis of intersubjective (be) longing/Eros; and the dolls are owned, ownership allowing pleasure and control more securely to intertwine. Following the oil crisis and the de-industrialization that followed, men in racially and economically privileged terrain across the US and Europe turned to similar kinds of commodity dolls for comfort, if for differently sexed and racialized reasons. Japanese men’s doll markets therefore speak to certain particular and general conditions of masculinity and geopolitical economic trauma.     

Spatial differences of reindustrialization in a post-socialist economy: manufacturing in the Hungarian counties

Over the past two and a half decades, the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, including Hungary, have become an integral part of the global economy. Following the change of regime, the rate of foreign direct investment increased, modern industries emerged and exports became significant. However, this process was halted by the global economic crisis in many advanced and transition economies, and the concept of ‘reindustrialization’ emerged as one of the economic policy responses to the new challenges generated by the crisis. In our paper, we study whether reindustrialization is present following the lowest point of the crisis in one of the post-socialist countries of the EU, in Hungary. If so, in which regions and industries, and under what conditions? Our research indicates that reindustrialization can be generally observed only in a few rural regions after 2009, limited to only one or two industries, while, for instance, in the capital and in its agglomerations and in urban regions with large research universities, deindustrialization is more likely to take place.     

Lithic Production and Consumption Patterns from the Great Platform at Late Postclassic (A.D. 1350–1525) Tzintzuntzan,Mexico

Late Postclassic period (a.d. 1350–1525) Tarascan economic activities often included higher degrees of political involvement and territorial control compared with other ancient Mesoamerican societies. Here I examine Tarascan obsidian economies through an analysis of lithic production and consumption patterns from structures excavated on and near the Great Platform at the imperial capital of Tzintzuntzan. Four spatially distinct patterns are evident. Great Platform residents used high-quality obsidian blades as ceremonial items or burial offerings and scrapers for craft production. Lower elite residents of Structure F, outside the Great Platform, produced their own blade tools and consumed a higher percentage of green obsidian than residents of the Great Platform. Excavations at Yacata 3 recovered bifacial arrowheads and obsidian bloodletters associated with disturbed offerings. The spatial distributions of lapidary preforms and highly polished fragments combined with accounts from the Relación de Michoacán (a.d. 1541) suggest that lower elites produced obsidian jewelry near the Great Platform.