1 Calling Milei's politics "populist" is complicated in that he focuses his angst-the metaphorica... more 1 Calling Milei's politics "populist" is complicated in that he focuses his angst-the metaphorical motosierra (chainsaw) on what he derides as the populist policies of the Kircher governments. Deepening the irony, Milei adopted the term "La Casta" from the leftist populists in Spain had used to fashion the political frontier of conflict and struggle not in terms of capitalists and workers but rather between "the caste" and "the people" (Borriello and Jäger 2023). Giacomo Loperfido (personal communication) explained that the leaders of Podemos took the term "La Casta" from the Italian 5 Star Movement.
Observers have celebrated the drive by multinational corporations to develop lithium-ion batterie... more Observers have celebrated the drive by multinational corporations to develop lithium-ion batteries as a positive step in mitigating climate change. Much of this hype, however, has resulted from corporate leaders propagating green growth narratives that trumpet the capacity of electric cars to initiate an energy transition. Against this backdrop, the paper describes and analyzes significant contradictions of green growth. The South Korean (hereafter, Korea) ‘chaebol’ (enormous, family-owned conglomerates) have deployed green growth myths to build global value chains that transform lithium into batteries that can electrify transportation. I will show how these growth strategies simultaneously produce domestic inequality in Korea and colonial inequities in Argentina, where a large proportion of the world's reserves of lithium lie. Since the 1990s, the chaebol have developed new strategies of accumulation based on a shift toward building global value chains and away from domestic economic growth and expanding employment. The growing electric vehicle industry represents a continuation of these corporate strategies, directing investments to flow abroad in ways that contract domestic employment. These technological innovations require lithium, prompting the chaebols to move decisively to establish control over a significant share of lithium production in Argentina. In seeking to create new pools of value within the much-hyped green transition, these activities have inflicted significant environmental degradation. Moreover, the coloniality of corporate relations with local labor dramatizes how the green transition promised by electric vehicles unevenly distributes the risks and benefits between those parts of the world producing green energy and the industrialized countries consuming it.
Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first... more Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first, Americans of all political stripes glory in the idea that the country's race relations have improved, largely due to changes collectively labeled as 'the civil rights movement.' Yet when Americans move their gaze to broader issues-often presumed to be beyond ''race''-of economics, public education, and civic life, they embrace a second, and seemingly opposed narrative of decline. There, social scientists have wedded this image of social decay into ideas of neoliberalism, which they take to be the state's steady disinvestment in public goods like education, healthcare, affordable housing and transportation. Though the rise of civil rights and neoliberalism have overlapped historically, social scientists have shown determined reluctance to make any connection between the two; and further, few have been willing to see the two processes as interwoven and collaborating in the production of the contemporary political economic landscape. This essay argues that academic neoliberal discourse has unwittingly functioned to relieve civil rights institutions of any responsibility for current racial conditions in the US by taking critical attention away from how federal agencies and local politicians have implemented racial reforms. In the current scenario, neoliberalism is to blame for undermining or retrenching the nation's commitment to racial equality, and civil rights victories are the victim. Ethnographic and historical material on race relations in Fayetteville NC, USA, is presented to argue instead that the relationship between the two turns out to be much more complex.
Commento di Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime , a cur... more Commento di Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime , a cura di Piero Zanini, traduzione di Francesca Nicola e Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.
With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded ine... more With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded inequality. Many critical scholars have celebrated how South Korean authorities have contained the virus in ways that ignore power relations. The government coordinated its pandemic response by expanding its formidable surveillance technologies for tracing, tracking, and mining every activity of ordinary citizens. State managers produced powerful images of the government, in Confucian fashion, protecting the public from a dangerous threat. I will connect these performances of power with an examination of how authorities harnessed its pandemic response to private capital. South Korea's reaction to COVID-19 does represent a positive alternative to the dominant form of oligarchic rule that prevails in Euro-American societies. The governing elite deployed state power in ways that used this conjuncture to continue previous patterns of domination that have continuously expanded surveillance, extending techniques for the extraction of vital data for commercial and political purposes. Rather than celebrate the South Korean authorities, we should analyze how COVID-19 response has deepened South Korean society's social contradictions.
In the most recent issue of Dialectical Anthropology, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ... more In the most recent issue of Dialectical Anthropology, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Lesley Gill raised critical historical questions about how the events of 1917 profoundly shaped the contemporary world. Gill's introduction dug underneath the current fascination with Bneoliberalism^and underscored a decidedly darker side of the so-called Keynesian compromise. An imperial US State, in its Cold War hysteria, sought to stymy the reach of Bolshevism through what Gill describes as the Bmeddling and the threat of interventiont hat made it Bnearly impossible for left-leaning governments to succeed^(Gill 2017:202). Many of the essays, however, moved too quickly from the conceptual issue of revolution to an illdefined and emotionally saturated idea of neoliberal capitalism. In academic journals and leftleaning newspapers like The Guardian, neoliberalism represents a morality play: an evil form of capital committed to deregulation and privatization that has torn the be knighted Keynesian compromise between labor and capital asunder. In its place, a rather heartless form of capitalism rapaciously searches for easy profits at the expense of society. Saygun Gökarıksel's contribution follows this familiar pattern by depicting the way the dissolution of socialist Poland gave way to neoliberal capitalism. His essay BThe ends of revolution: capitalist de-democratization and nationalist populism in the east of Europe,b egins with a fascinating story about the ways class conflict raged in Communist Poland. The story centers on two disaffected Marxists-Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski-who penned the legendary BOpen Letter to the Polish United Workers' Party^in 1964. This radical critique of Eastern bloc communist states focused on the increasing class inequities and austerity. Indeed, Wladyslaw Gomulka's authoritarian regime reacted with hostility. As the government punished such activism, new political and economic fissures would continue to open up and dog the system for two more decades. This vivid picture of the complicated twists and turns of capital, struggles against the monopoly capitalism of Western Europe, and the rise of the Solidarity Movement leads predictably to a Bcrisis of liberal democracy^and the Bde-democratization^of neoliberalism.
Corporations and the dominant political parties in the USA have produced ideologies that foster t... more Corporations and the dominant political parties in the USA have produced ideologies that foster the belief that class is not significant. Nationalist rhetoric heralds "America" as a middle-class nation that provides opportunities that transcend the class politics of "old" Europe. Anthropologists, in recent years, have contributed to these mythologies by developing an idealized view of the New Deal in ways that further mystify class relations and conflict. By criticizing the contemporary rise in economic disparities as "neoliberal," they glorify the structures that underwrote the Cold War and US imperial might. An analytical approach to class in the USA must take a more critical view of capitalism rather than wish for the good old days of the welfare state. Moreover, a conceptual understanding of class politics in the USA must take into account the role of settler colonialism-genocide and plantation agriculture-in class formation. After slavery, racism continued to play a prominent role in shaping the labor movement and organized labor. Racism and nativism interacted with anti-communism and the rise of the domestic security state following the Bolshevik Revolution. The New Deal and Keynesianism systematized repression of racism and anticommunism with reforms and economic policies that focused on effective demand and full employment.
is one of the few genuinely great historians of our century. He is also the one genuinely great h... more is one of the few genuinely great historians of our century. He is also the one genuinely great historian to come out of the Anglo-American Marxist left. I admit to my prejudice. He has been the strongest influence on my own work as a historian, and in 1979 I dedicated a book on black slave revolts to ''Eric Hobsbawm: Our Main Man.'' I have made a great many mistakes in my life, but reading and rereading Hobsbawm's powerful new book I am relieved to see that I got at least that much right. Eugene Genovese (1995: 43).
Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in pos... more Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in post-war societies that featured Keynesian economic policies and welfare provision. The allure of a mythic welfare state has boosted John Maynard Keynes’s popularity to many who embrace certain facets of socialism. Many critical social scientists have embraced Keynesianism in ways that overlook how the US used Keynesian policies to reengineer and redeploy state power. Keynes’s liberal synthesis inspired managers in the US Treasury Department to understand depression-era problems of unemployment and poverty in ways that were consonant with the expansion of corporate power. For understanding Keynesianism, as it actually existed during the Cold War, we must analyse how the US Treasury and State Departments used Keynesian principles to rebuild the social reproductive capacities necessary for capitalist accumulation both domestically and in Western Europe. I focus on how the architects of post-w...
At the time of this writing, the world is watching incredulously as terror and deprivation ravage... more At the time of this writing, the world is watching incredulously as terror and deprivation ravage the poorest citizens of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The region’s middle class and elite fled the disaster, while federal authorities’ inaction resulted in starvation for those too poor to leave. Such callousness embodied in US civil society and state institutions has been made transparent to the world, illuminating the increasing class inequality that has evolved since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In light of this conflation of racism and class inequality, this forum focuses on the ways that multi-cultural politics mystify such power relations with romantic recollections of popular resistance to racism in the post–World War II era: decolonization, the US civil rights movement, and the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Such mythologies of ‘racial progress’ pervade contemporary scholarship on racism, often providing triumphal narratives of how, after years ...
Radical scholars often have the bothersome quality of spoiling the few delights of life with clou... more Radical scholars often have the bothersome quality of spoiling the few delights of life with clouds of despondency. Critique often meanders from the pages of the books we read and write into pointlessness that eclipses the experience of smoking a cigarette, devouring an unhealthy meal, or imbibing a glass of wine. To the end, Anthropologist Florin Faje never stopped enjoying life: not to mention cigarettes, wine, and unhealthy food. Yet, it would be a mistake to misconstrue Florin's fun-loving and compassionate spirit for either complacency or the lack of a critical view. Indeed, he passionately rejected the righteousness and moralism inherent in liberalism. He recognized that the world was far too damaged for simple social reforms while, at the same time, he never accepted living in a perpetual state of angst and unhappiness as an option. His student Maria Martelli beautifully captured his perspective in her eulogy. She described a scene where she had complained to Florin that her understanding of the dire nature of the "climate crisis" had left her unable to focus on her thesis. Florin responded, in his
Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first... more Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first, Americans of all political stripes glory in the idea that the country's race relations have improved, largely due to changes collectively labeled as 'the civil rights movement.' Yet when Americans move their gaze to broader issues-often presumed to be beyond ''race''-of economics, public education, and civic life, they embrace a second, and seemingly opposed narrative of decline. There, social scientists have wedded this image of social decay into ideas of neoliberalism, which they take to be the state's steady disinvestment in public goods like education, healthcare, affordable housing and transportation. Though the rise of civil rights and neoliberalism have overlapped historically, social scientists have shown determined reluctance to make any connection between the two; and further, few have been willing to see the two processes as interwoven and collaborating in the production of the contemporary political economic landscape. This essay argues that academic neoliberal discourse has unwittingly functioned to relieve civil rights institutions of any responsibility for current racial conditions in the US by taking critical attention away from how federal agencies and local politicians have implemented racial reforms. In the current scenario, neoliberalism is to blame for undermining or retrenching the nation's commitment to racial equality, and civil rights victories are the victim. Ethnographic and historical material on race relations in Fayetteville NC, USA, is presented to argue instead that the relationship between the two turns out to be much more complex.
Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in pos... more Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in postwar societies that featured Keynesian economic policies and welfare provision. The allure of a mythic welfare state has boosted John Maynard Keynes's popularity to many who embrace certain facets of socialism. Many critical social scientists have embraced Keynesianism in ways that overlook how the US used Keynesian policies to reengineer and redeploy state power. Keynes's liberal synthesis inspired managers in the US Treasury Department to understand depression-era problems of unemployment and poverty in ways that were consonant with the expansion of corporate power. For understanding Keynesianism, as it actually existed during the Cold War, we must analyse how the US Treasury and State Departments used Keynesian principles to rebuild the social reproductive capacities necessary for capitalist accumulation both domestically and in Western Europe. I focus on how the architects of postwar capitalism used full employment policies, labour laws and welfare provision to renovate the nexus of political practices and institutional structures in ways that formed a benevolent and caring image of 'the state' and the myth of a class compromise. Through these reforms, governmental planners and administrators used the 'state idea' to reorganize capital accumulation as if the postwar economy would represent ordinary people's best interests. In the process, these sophisticated practices of power became reified as the 'welfare state' and the 'Keynesian compromise' in ways that endow these institutions and policies with a character divorced from practices of
1 Calling Milei's politics "populist" is complicated in that he focuses his angst-the metaphorica... more 1 Calling Milei's politics "populist" is complicated in that he focuses his angst-the metaphorical motosierra (chainsaw) on what he derides as the populist policies of the Kircher governments. Deepening the irony, Milei adopted the term "La Casta" from the leftist populists in Spain had used to fashion the political frontier of conflict and struggle not in terms of capitalists and workers but rather between "the caste" and "the people" (Borriello and Jäger 2023). Giacomo Loperfido (personal communication) explained that the leaders of Podemos took the term "La Casta" from the Italian 5 Star Movement.
Observers have celebrated the drive by multinational corporations to develop lithium-ion batterie... more Observers have celebrated the drive by multinational corporations to develop lithium-ion batteries as a positive step in mitigating climate change. Much of this hype, however, has resulted from corporate leaders propagating green growth narratives that trumpet the capacity of electric cars to initiate an energy transition. Against this backdrop, the paper describes and analyzes significant contradictions of green growth. The South Korean (hereafter, Korea) ‘chaebol’ (enormous, family-owned conglomerates) have deployed green growth myths to build global value chains that transform lithium into batteries that can electrify transportation. I will show how these growth strategies simultaneously produce domestic inequality in Korea and colonial inequities in Argentina, where a large proportion of the world's reserves of lithium lie. Since the 1990s, the chaebol have developed new strategies of accumulation based on a shift toward building global value chains and away from domestic economic growth and expanding employment. The growing electric vehicle industry represents a continuation of these corporate strategies, directing investments to flow abroad in ways that contract domestic employment. These technological innovations require lithium, prompting the chaebols to move decisively to establish control over a significant share of lithium production in Argentina. In seeking to create new pools of value within the much-hyped green transition, these activities have inflicted significant environmental degradation. Moreover, the coloniality of corporate relations with local labor dramatizes how the green transition promised by electric vehicles unevenly distributes the risks and benefits between those parts of the world producing green energy and the industrialized countries consuming it.
Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first... more Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first, Americans of all political stripes glory in the idea that the country's race relations have improved, largely due to changes collectively labeled as 'the civil rights movement.' Yet when Americans move their gaze to broader issues-often presumed to be beyond ''race''-of economics, public education, and civic life, they embrace a second, and seemingly opposed narrative of decline. There, social scientists have wedded this image of social decay into ideas of neoliberalism, which they take to be the state's steady disinvestment in public goods like education, healthcare, affordable housing and transportation. Though the rise of civil rights and neoliberalism have overlapped historically, social scientists have shown determined reluctance to make any connection between the two; and further, few have been willing to see the two processes as interwoven and collaborating in the production of the contemporary political economic landscape. This essay argues that academic neoliberal discourse has unwittingly functioned to relieve civil rights institutions of any responsibility for current racial conditions in the US by taking critical attention away from how federal agencies and local politicians have implemented racial reforms. In the current scenario, neoliberalism is to blame for undermining or retrenching the nation's commitment to racial equality, and civil rights victories are the victim. Ethnographic and historical material on race relations in Fayetteville NC, USA, is presented to argue instead that the relationship between the two turns out to be much more complex.
Commento di Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime , a cur... more Commento di Jonathan Friedman, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime , a cura di Piero Zanini, traduzione di Francesca Nicola e Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348.
With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded ine... more With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded inequality. Many critical scholars have celebrated how South Korean authorities have contained the virus in ways that ignore power relations. The government coordinated its pandemic response by expanding its formidable surveillance technologies for tracing, tracking, and mining every activity of ordinary citizens. State managers produced powerful images of the government, in Confucian fashion, protecting the public from a dangerous threat. I will connect these performances of power with an examination of how authorities harnessed its pandemic response to private capital. South Korea's reaction to COVID-19 does represent a positive alternative to the dominant form of oligarchic rule that prevails in Euro-American societies. The governing elite deployed state power in ways that used this conjuncture to continue previous patterns of domination that have continuously expanded surveillance, extending techniques for the extraction of vital data for commercial and political purposes. Rather than celebrate the South Korean authorities, we should analyze how COVID-19 response has deepened South Korean society's social contradictions.
In the most recent issue of Dialectical Anthropology, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the ... more In the most recent issue of Dialectical Anthropology, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, Lesley Gill raised critical historical questions about how the events of 1917 profoundly shaped the contemporary world. Gill's introduction dug underneath the current fascination with Bneoliberalism^and underscored a decidedly darker side of the so-called Keynesian compromise. An imperial US State, in its Cold War hysteria, sought to stymy the reach of Bolshevism through what Gill describes as the Bmeddling and the threat of interventiont hat made it Bnearly impossible for left-leaning governments to succeed^(Gill 2017:202). Many of the essays, however, moved too quickly from the conceptual issue of revolution to an illdefined and emotionally saturated idea of neoliberal capitalism. In academic journals and leftleaning newspapers like The Guardian, neoliberalism represents a morality play: an evil form of capital committed to deregulation and privatization that has torn the be knighted Keynesian compromise between labor and capital asunder. In its place, a rather heartless form of capitalism rapaciously searches for easy profits at the expense of society. Saygun Gökarıksel's contribution follows this familiar pattern by depicting the way the dissolution of socialist Poland gave way to neoliberal capitalism. His essay BThe ends of revolution: capitalist de-democratization and nationalist populism in the east of Europe,b egins with a fascinating story about the ways class conflict raged in Communist Poland. The story centers on two disaffected Marxists-Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski-who penned the legendary BOpen Letter to the Polish United Workers' Party^in 1964. This radical critique of Eastern bloc communist states focused on the increasing class inequities and austerity. Indeed, Wladyslaw Gomulka's authoritarian regime reacted with hostility. As the government punished such activism, new political and economic fissures would continue to open up and dog the system for two more decades. This vivid picture of the complicated twists and turns of capital, struggles against the monopoly capitalism of Western Europe, and the rise of the Solidarity Movement leads predictably to a Bcrisis of liberal democracy^and the Bde-democratization^of neoliberalism.
Corporations and the dominant political parties in the USA have produced ideologies that foster t... more Corporations and the dominant political parties in the USA have produced ideologies that foster the belief that class is not significant. Nationalist rhetoric heralds "America" as a middle-class nation that provides opportunities that transcend the class politics of "old" Europe. Anthropologists, in recent years, have contributed to these mythologies by developing an idealized view of the New Deal in ways that further mystify class relations and conflict. By criticizing the contemporary rise in economic disparities as "neoliberal," they glorify the structures that underwrote the Cold War and US imperial might. An analytical approach to class in the USA must take a more critical view of capitalism rather than wish for the good old days of the welfare state. Moreover, a conceptual understanding of class politics in the USA must take into account the role of settler colonialism-genocide and plantation agriculture-in class formation. After slavery, racism continued to play a prominent role in shaping the labor movement and organized labor. Racism and nativism interacted with anti-communism and the rise of the domestic security state following the Bolshevik Revolution. The New Deal and Keynesianism systematized repression of racism and anticommunism with reforms and economic policies that focused on effective demand and full employment.
is one of the few genuinely great historians of our century. He is also the one genuinely great h... more is one of the few genuinely great historians of our century. He is also the one genuinely great historian to come out of the Anglo-American Marxist left. I admit to my prejudice. He has been the strongest influence on my own work as a historian, and in 1979 I dedicated a book on black slave revolts to ''Eric Hobsbawm: Our Main Man.'' I have made a great many mistakes in my life, but reading and rereading Hobsbawm's powerful new book I am relieved to see that I got at least that much right. Eugene Genovese (1995: 43).
Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in pos... more Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in post-war societies that featured Keynesian economic policies and welfare provision. The allure of a mythic welfare state has boosted John Maynard Keynes’s popularity to many who embrace certain facets of socialism. Many critical social scientists have embraced Keynesianism in ways that overlook how the US used Keynesian policies to reengineer and redeploy state power. Keynes’s liberal synthesis inspired managers in the US Treasury Department to understand depression-era problems of unemployment and poverty in ways that were consonant with the expansion of corporate power. For understanding Keynesianism, as it actually existed during the Cold War, we must analyse how the US Treasury and State Departments used Keynesian principles to rebuild the social reproductive capacities necessary for capitalist accumulation both domestically and in Western Europe. I focus on how the architects of post-w...
At the time of this writing, the world is watching incredulously as terror and deprivation ravage... more At the time of this writing, the world is watching incredulously as terror and deprivation ravage the poorest citizens of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The region’s middle class and elite fled the disaster, while federal authorities’ inaction resulted in starvation for those too poor to leave. Such callousness embodied in US civil society and state institutions has been made transparent to the world, illuminating the increasing class inequality that has evolved since the passage of the Civil Rights Act. In light of this conflation of racism and class inequality, this forum focuses on the ways that multi-cultural politics mystify such power relations with romantic recollections of popular resistance to racism in the post–World War II era: decolonization, the US civil rights movement, and the fall of apartheid in South Africa. Such mythologies of ‘racial progress’ pervade contemporary scholarship on racism, often providing triumphal narratives of how, after years ...
Radical scholars often have the bothersome quality of spoiling the few delights of life with clou... more Radical scholars often have the bothersome quality of spoiling the few delights of life with clouds of despondency. Critique often meanders from the pages of the books we read and write into pointlessness that eclipses the experience of smoking a cigarette, devouring an unhealthy meal, or imbibing a glass of wine. To the end, Anthropologist Florin Faje never stopped enjoying life: not to mention cigarettes, wine, and unhealthy food. Yet, it would be a mistake to misconstrue Florin's fun-loving and compassionate spirit for either complacency or the lack of a critical view. Indeed, he passionately rejected the righteousness and moralism inherent in liberalism. He recognized that the world was far too damaged for simple social reforms while, at the same time, he never accepted living in a perpetual state of angst and unhappiness as an option. His student Maria Martelli beautifully captured his perspective in her eulogy. She described a scene where she had complained to Florin that her understanding of the dire nature of the "climate crisis" had left her unable to focus on her thesis. Florin responded, in his
Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first... more Two contradicting ideas dominate political discussions of race in the United States. In the first, Americans of all political stripes glory in the idea that the country's race relations have improved, largely due to changes collectively labeled as 'the civil rights movement.' Yet when Americans move their gaze to broader issues-often presumed to be beyond ''race''-of economics, public education, and civic life, they embrace a second, and seemingly opposed narrative of decline. There, social scientists have wedded this image of social decay into ideas of neoliberalism, which they take to be the state's steady disinvestment in public goods like education, healthcare, affordable housing and transportation. Though the rise of civil rights and neoliberalism have overlapped historically, social scientists have shown determined reluctance to make any connection between the two; and further, few have been willing to see the two processes as interwoven and collaborating in the production of the contemporary political economic landscape. This essay argues that academic neoliberal discourse has unwittingly functioned to relieve civil rights institutions of any responsibility for current racial conditions in the US by taking critical attention away from how federal agencies and local politicians have implemented racial reforms. In the current scenario, neoliberalism is to blame for undermining or retrenching the nation's commitment to racial equality, and civil rights victories are the victim. Ethnographic and historical material on race relations in Fayetteville NC, USA, is presented to argue instead that the relationship between the two turns out to be much more complex.
Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in pos... more Many anthropologists interpret neoliberalism as a radical break from and dangerous rupture in postwar societies that featured Keynesian economic policies and welfare provision. The allure of a mythic welfare state has boosted John Maynard Keynes's popularity to many who embrace certain facets of socialism. Many critical social scientists have embraced Keynesianism in ways that overlook how the US used Keynesian policies to reengineer and redeploy state power. Keynes's liberal synthesis inspired managers in the US Treasury Department to understand depression-era problems of unemployment and poverty in ways that were consonant with the expansion of corporate power. For understanding Keynesianism, as it actually existed during the Cold War, we must analyse how the US Treasury and State Departments used Keynesian principles to rebuild the social reproductive capacities necessary for capitalist accumulation both domestically and in Western Europe. I focus on how the architects of postwar capitalism used full employment policies, labour laws and welfare provision to renovate the nexus of political practices and institutional structures in ways that formed a benevolent and caring image of 'the state' and the myth of a class compromise. Through these reforms, governmental planners and administrators used the 'state idea' to reorganize capital accumulation as if the postwar economy would represent ordinary people's best interests. In the process, these sophisticated practices of power became reified as the 'welfare state' and the 'Keynesian compromise' in ways that endow these institutions and policies with a character divorced from practices of
With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded ine... more With COVID-19, powerful political and economic forces have magnified their power and expanded inequality. Many critical scholars have celebrated how South Korean authorities have contained the virus in ways that ignore power relations. The government coordinated its pandemic response by expanding its formidable surveillance technologies for tracing, tracking, and mining every activity of ordinary citizens. State managers produced powerful images of the government, in Confucian fashion, protecting the public from a dangerous threat. I will connect these performances of power with an examination of how authorities harnessed its pandemic response to private capital. South Korea’s reaction to COVID-19 does not represent a positive alternative to the dominant form of oligarchic rule that prevails in Euro-American societies. The governing elite deployed state power in ways that used this conjuncture to continue previous patterns of domination that have continuously expanded surveillance, extending techniques for the extraction of vital data for commercial and political purposes. Rather than celebrate the South Korean authorities, we should analyze how COVID-19 response has deepened South Korean society's social contradictions.
Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, edited b... more Comment on JONATHAN FRIEDMAN, Politicamente corretto. Il conformismo morale come regime, edited by Piero Zanini, translation by Francesca Nicola and Piero Zanini, Milano, Meltemi, 2018, pp. 348. Jonathan Friedman has written powerfully about the political and economic transformation of Euro-American societies since the 1970s (Friedman 1995; Friedman and Friedman 2008) 1 . Friedman rejects the view that finance capital represents a particular stage of capitalism. Instead, he sees presentday decentralizing of capital accumulation as the recurrent rise of finance and withdrawal of capital from production. He is in the excellent company of Fernand Braudel and Giovanni Arrighi -as well as John Maynard Keynes -in underlining the conflict between long-term, fixed capital and the speculative nature of finance capital . As hegemonic centers of capitalist accumulation rise, so do the costs of doing business, which encourage the export of capital and the increasing importance of credit and finance to feebly, and fleetingly, step into the breach. The powerful industrialized nations that settled World War II, and rebuilt the global economy through the establishment of the Bretton Woods multilateral system, are presently experiencing economic decline, the unraveling of social institutions, and the rise of political instability that has accompanied growing disparities in wealth. 1 1. This study was supported by research funds from Dong-A University.
Over the past decade, neoliberalism has become a dominant keyword in anthropology. Many scholars ... more Over the past decade, neoliberalism has become a dominant keyword in anthropology. Many scholars embrace neoliberalism uncritically as if it represented a new social epoch or stage in capitalist history. Careful study of how many scholars deploy the term shows that it often operates as a political symbol that signals a dangerous turning point, rupture, or “crisis.” This narrative of crisis turns on a sacred understanding of Keynesianism as the grand “compromise” between labor and capital that produced the “phenomenal growth” of the postwar “boom.” Against such a charitable and reified understanding of Keynesianism, these critiques contrast neoliberalism as a particularly sinister form of capitalism that sets out to “assault” organized labor, public social goods, and ultimately democracy. In this fashion, scholars use an idealized reckoning of the past to stigmatize neoliberalism vis-a-vis other forms of capitalism. Seeing postwar labor politics as a compromise euphemizes the harsh anti-labor tactics and imperial policies that emerged from the U.S. led Bretton Woods System. In silencing this part of history, anthropologists shy away from the political and economic struggles between various forms of capital, not to mention labor that has produced the contemporary patterns of capitalism. More critical understandings of Keynesian political economy could sharpen our understanding of how contemporary capitalism as it grew from militarization and the U.S. imperialism of the Cold War.
This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation ... more This interdisciplinary, international conference will advance the debate about the periodisation of global economic processes after 1945. For this, we will bring together researchers from the social sciences and the humanities whose recent work goes beyond the predominant notion of a radical, world-historical rupture driven by crises in industrially advanced nations in the 1970s. Instead, contributors to this conference highlight the analytical gains from research and theories with emphasis on historical trajectories in the Global South, on a broader period in world history, and on analytical models of change that consider radical rupture as much as continuities and consolidations.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
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of how authorities harnessed its pandemic response to private capital. South Korea’s reaction to COVID-19 does not represent a positive alternative to the dominant form of oligarchic rule that prevails in Euro-American societies. The governing elite deployed state power in ways that used this conjuncture to continue previous patterns of domination
that have continuously expanded surveillance, extending techniques for the extraction of vital data for commercial and political purposes. Rather than celebrate the South Korean authorities, we should analyze how COVID-19 response has deepened South Korean society's social contradictions.