Suchergebnisse

In this piece I comment on Nancy's Folbre's David Gordon Memorial Lecture for the 2012 Allied Social Science Associations meetings, focusing on the strengths of how she combines Marxian sensibilities with neoclasscial analytical tools, the advantages of her proposed definition of political economy, and extending her call for developing a macroeconomic approach to human capital.JEL codes: B50; E11; E24

IN THIS ARTICLE THE AUTHORS PROVIDE A CASE STUDY OF THE PENETRATION OF CAPITAL IN CORN CULTIVATION WITH THE SPREAD OF THE USE OF HYBRID CORN, THE FLAGSHIP OF THE SUCCESSFUL INNOVATIONS OF TWENTIETHCENTURY AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH. GENETICISTS, HISTORIANS, SOCIOLOGISTS, AND ECONOMISTS HAVE CITED IT AS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF THE ENORMOUS YIELD INCREASES DERIVED FROM BASIC RESEARCH MOTIVATED ONLY BY THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE. MOREOVER, ECONOMISTS HAVE MADE EXTRAVAGANT CLAIMS ABOUT THE REAPING OF SOCIAL-AND ONLY SOCIALBENEFITS FROM THIS INNOVATION.

While regulation theory literature has made important contributions to the much-debated domain of globalisation by focusing on various aspects of post-Fordism, it has not yet fully engaged with the implications that can be drawn from critical approaches in international political economy. Recent studies have explored the transnational bases of new patterns and agents of change beyond states, firms and institutions traditionally involved in regulatory practices. Hybrid is often used as a default attribute reflecting lack of clear understanding of the breadth of this new type of influence and the opacity of the means involved. Drawing on the insights of philology and mythology, the paper argues that the notion of hybrid is relevant in elucidating the ontological ambiguity between imaginary and real aspects of globalisation. Furthermore, it specifies the categories involved in the analysis of emerging forms of hybrid regulation. Recent scholarship on globalisation tends to focus on the private-public nexus of the subjects involved in new forms of institutional arrangements and authority. Here, subjects, objects and space are analysed as joint issues. By focusing particularly on transformations affecting the role of the state, forms of competition, and their rescaling on a transnational basis, the concept of global hybrid is seen as complementary to the emancipation of regulation approaches from early emphasis on national levels of compromises.

This article explores Greek alternative media, records their hybridity and analyses them under the prism of political economy. Drawing theoretically on researchers who emphasize the elusiveness and heterogeneity of alternative media and examining them on account of their ownership structures, production practices and media content, I propose their conceptualization as a vibrant organism in a constant dialectic relationship with mainstream media. These 'alternative hybrid media' may borrow people, ideas and practices from mainstream media, but they do not compromise their values for the pursuit of profit or political power. This article focuses on Efimerida ton Syntakton, the country's first national cooperative newspaper, which emerged out of a collective of laid-off journalists and constitutes a representative example of the hybridity that characterizes the Greek alternative media ecosystem. Based on interviews with journalists and secondary data, this article aims to point to the defining characteristics of 'alternative hybrid media' and generate a deeper insight into the complex area of alternative media.

Russian political–economic development since the early 1990s has been described as one of initial liberalization and subsequent re-etatization a decade later. Our paper critically builds upon this view, systematically adding patrimonialism as third dimension and conceptualizing Russia's trajectory as varying with respect to ideal–typical liberalism, statism and patrimonialism. We argue that Russian patrimonialism hindered the rise of the economically facilitating state capacity and undermined both liberalization in the 1990s and re-etatization in the 2000s.Furthermore, we add a comparative BRICs perspective that clarifies the peculiarity of Russia's development based on statistical data from the World Bank, the OECD and Heritage Foundation. The data confirm the de-liberalization of Russia and show an increase of patrimonialism. Another finding is that Russia was the only BRIC country that de-liberalized and increased its level of patrimonialism in the period under consideration.