Suchergebnisse

The destruction of Beirut's port and large areas of the inner city following the August 2020 explosion occurred amid (and has exacerbated) an unprecedented national economic and social crisis portending another potential phase of urban "reconstruction" and a national political revolution. Critical scholars have highlighted the shortcomings of urban planning and governance in the city after the Lebanese civil war, particularly in terms of housing, infrastructure, and social inequalities, especially between the urban core and periphery. Beirut's post-war reconstruction(s), guided by blended-scale governance (i.e., public/private, confessional/political, national/local) and a real estate-oriented growth model have neither managed to completely restore nor efface the city's erstwhile status as an entrepôt of regional and international economic, cultural, and political importance but have instigated processes of rapid urbanisation and uneven development. These processes, historical trajectories, political and socio-economic dialectics, and shifts in urban political economy render Beirut relevant to the nascent empirical category of "relational cities," i.e., cities whose geographical-historical profiles position them as urban nodes connecting regional-global-national systems of flows under globalised capitalism. This article positions Beirut in the context of the debate on relational urbanisation for empirical exploration, and also points to the evental possibilities for alternative geographies that flow from the October 2019 protests.

The period since the global financial crisis has seen financial derivatives not only grow quantitatively in financial markets but also expand socially as a calculative logic, giving increasing precision to the concept of capital and hence class relations. The logic of derivatives involves deconstructing 'things' into a spectrum of tradable risks. The article identifies the ways in which this logic is spreading into an increasing range of social, economic and political policy domains. It posits how, through the logic of derivatives, a range of sociological issues can be seen and re-thought through the eyes of financial calculus.

AbstractThe issue of the relation between financial derivatives, money and crisis remains one of on-going debate within Marxism. This paper takes issue with a recent contribution to this debate by Tony Norfield. We contend that the relationship between financial derivatives and the concept of 'money' needs to be framed in the context of a changing understanding of liquidity, and that issues of crisis and renewed accumulation are better understood though this path than via debates about speculative versus real investment and productive versus unproductive capital. Indeed these latter taxonomies are being superseded by current developments within finance, and Marxian analysis needs to be attuned to these current developments.

In this article in the symposium on Costa Lapavitsas Social Foundation of Money, Market, & Credit, the author asserts that money does matter in capitalist society, & frames the thematic question of how money in capitalism differs from non-capitalist money. The development of fiat money in the form of derivatives is explored as a means for trading risk or hedging. Analysis of the social relations mediated by money explores the Marxist limitation of a theory of power & trust, & Lapavitsas reconciliation of that limitation by theorizing the dominance of fiat money. A shift to the global level is argued to distinguish the differences between gold & fiat money, & the resultant break between money & capital, & supports the conclusion that derivatives are distinctly capitalist money that embody the process of competition & accumulation. References.

This book provides a historically and conceptually grounded analysis of the transformation of finance and business in several countries in Central Europé and the Baltic States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Fall of the Berlin Wall began a new, and unexpected period of European political and economic history. For some, this event proved the historical victory of liberal democratic capitalism over socialism. But three decades on, we now know that democratic market economies do not emerge spontaneously, and are indeed fragile in their own ways. History is not ended, but taken a new and interesting turn. The essays in this book seek to foreground the continuities and ruptures that the experience of these transition countries has revealed. It will be of interest to economic historians, sociologists, political science scholars, financial economists, policy makers, and of course to those who have lived through the period. Eight authors were involved in the book, but most of the material was written by Mikael Olsson (researcher at Uppsala University), Mikael Lönnborg (professor at Södertörns University) and Michael Rafferty (professor in the School of Management at RMIT University in Melbourne). All three are also editors of this book