Download 2010 - 11th Annual Graduate Student Conference

IPE Graduate Conference – Political Economy and the Crises of Capitalism: Looking Back, Moving
Forward
March 12, 2010
DT 2203
Keynote Speaker: Randall Germain
Panel A – Capitalism, Control and Governance in South(ern) Africa
Discussants: Blair Rutherford (mentor) and William Wilson
Chair: Franklin Oduro
Contesting Geographies of Power: Sociospatiality and the Migration-Regionalization Nexus
Jessica Evans, Carleton University, Department of Political Science
In Southern Africa, regional integration has received great attention as a means of promoting economic
and political cooperation within the region, as well as preventing further economic and political
marginalization from the international community (Gibb 2007:421). While the goal of these regional
organizations has been to promote economic prosperity and development through regional cooperation
(Gibb 2007:424), to date this goal is far from realized. Vast economic asymmetries continue and a general
consensus exists that regional integration has failed to stimulate economic growth and development (Gibb
2007:422).
This paper will argue that in attempting to understand the shortcomings and dynamics of regional
integration in Southern Africa, it is necessary to denaturalize and pluralize concepts of ‘space’, and look
to the ways in which it is constructed, contested, articulated and maneuvered. It is only through the
denaturalization of space and the problematization of the ‘region’ as a reified and bounded, territorial,
political and economic compound, that one can begin to comprehend how actors that are nonbeneficiaries to a particular spatial-economic configuration contest social, political and economic
structuration through a rearticulation of sociospatiality. The movement of peoples across and within
borders is one such manner, in which this restructuring of space takes place. From diasporic and
transnational migrant networks, to cross-border traders, traffickers and ‘border smugglers’, civil society
and non-governmental migrant rights networks, these formations depict a resistance to the privileged and
disparate spatial configurations of power and capital. I will attempt to demonstrate how one might begin
to theorize the migration-regionalization nexus in Southern Africa, by examining the theoretical insight to
be gained from considering the scholarship of new regionalism theorists and critical political geography.
Regions are not simply territorial or scalar arrangements, but are the product of intersecting, conflicting
and cross-cutting scalar, territorial, networked and place-based spaces. Similarly, migrant populations
cannot be viewed simply in terms of networks. It is only through viewing space as plural, complex and
tangled that one can begin to address the regionalization-migration nexus.
The State and Global Finance: creating narratives for domestic governance
Elizabeth Cobbett, PhD student, Political Science, Carleton University
South Africa’s central bank (SARB) explained that the 2008 contraction in real gross domestic product
and the steep decline in imports had narrowed the country’s foreign deficit considerably. The economy
contracted, less foreign goods were required for production, businesses slowed down, workers were laid
off, people had less money to spend, and poverty increased. Yet, the central bank was cheered by this
news. South Africa’s persistent current account deficits have to be offset with capital inflows and so a
reduction in its balance of payments deficit is seen as a respite.
Obviously the central bank is not pleased with a slowdown of the South African economy; it is aware of
the devastation wrecked on human lives by recession. But the SARB, like all central banks, operates
within a particular logic, a master narrative of global political economy that has a framing effect on what
it thinks and does. The government and the central bank need to attract foreign investment. This implies
building financial credibility through tight monetary policies and inflation targeting.
This paper suggests revisiting this financial logic through the work of Barry Hindess. Hindess argues that
the world population is partitioned into sets of subpopulations. Territorial boundaries may have been
displaced in some respects but they remain at the heart of the global order. The logic of global capital
operates through the international monetary system’s regulatory framework of state sovereignty and
macroeconomic spaces. Borders act as organisational structures of finance. The inside/outside nature of
state sovereignty enables finance to make huge amounts of money through use of different interest rates
and currency rates. These borders also enable macroeconomic narratives that endeavour to manage
populations within these economic spaces. States tell domestic narratives of the economic nation as a
means for governing and for stabilising internal fragmentations and contestations.
‘A Degree of Control’: Corporations and the Struggle Against Apartheid in South Africa
Jeffrey Monaghan, MA student, Legal Studies, Carleton University and DT Cochrane, PhD
Candidate in Social-Political Thought, York University
The movement against South African apartheid was successful through struggle on multiple fronts. In
South Africa, organized resistance on the ground confronted the apartheid regime on a continual basis.
Around the world, solidarity efforts by student, labour, and church groups provoked a political economic
crisis that isolated the South African government. Among the targets of these efforts were transnational
corporations operating in South Africa. Yet, corporations were also significant actors in this social
movement. Central to their participation were the Sullivan Principles, which were administered by the
International Organization for Equality of Opportunity Principles (ICEOP) and bore the name of
Reverend Leon Sullivan, a well respected civil rights leader. Often cited as an example of 'corporate
social responsibility' (CSR), the Sullivan Principles articulated requirements for signatories' continued
presence in South Africa and were advocated as a means for corporations to apply economic pressure on
the apartheid regime. The principles became enmeshed within anti-apartheid discourse, and nonsignatories were frequently targetted by North American solidarity efforts. Instead of dismissing selflaudatory claims as purely capitalist propaganda, our research asks how these corporations viewed their
participation in the anti-apartheid movement. Informed by the 'capital as power' theory of Nitzan and
Bichler (2009; 2002), we examine the intra-capitalist dynamics that motivated and leveraged the actions
of ICEOP. Based on material from the ICEOP archive, our research indicates that, contrary to dismissal of
CSR as mere marketing or a mechanism to suppress or demobilize social justice movements, the
participation of the dominant corporations in the anti-apartheid movement involved a complex and
conflictual effort to control possible transformative outcomes. Our analysis speaks to the motives that
animate corporate engagement with social movements, especially during periods where their
accumulation and legitimacy are in crisis.
Panel B – Negotiating the Margins of Capitalism
Discussants: Dominique Marshall (mentor) and Justin Stefanik
Chair: Jess Dunkin
The Governmentality of Microfinance: From the individual to the global.
Vladimir Aleman Delfs, MA student, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
Microfinance as a strategy for poverty reduction has found an integral role within the dominant
development paradigm of the past twenty years. Its prominence during the current stage of ‘PostWashington Consensus’ or ‘development with a face’ strategies is elucidated through a Foucauldian
understanding of governmentality. Through this lens, the framework and obligations that borrowers adopt
through the process is more clearly seen as attempts to regulate and manage sections of society - the
landless rural and urban poor – increasingly pronounced under attempts at neoliberal development. The
emphasis on an ‘entrepreneurial’ potential reinforces liberal preferences for projects that emphasize the
individual over the group and ‘working hard’ over collective responsibility. As the most popular and
successful venture of this type, the Grameen experience in Bangladesh is most suitable for such a critical
analysis of its theoretical underpinnings along with its daily operations. This is expanded upon through an
examination of the popularity of microfinance options within the directives and policy frameworks of
international organizations, such as the World Bank and United Nations, and nongovernmental
organizations, such as CARE.
no title provided (analysis of prostitution law in Canada through industrialization )
Amanda Boyce, MA student, Legal Studies, Carleton University.
From the middle of the nineteenth century until approximately the early 1920s, Canada saw significant
social changes centered on industrialization which drew attention to its urban centres. The demographic
shifts which resulted from this change created the context for many interesting developments in Canadian
national identity, gender formation, racial tension and the legal regulation of morality; all of which were
debated on the terrain of public policy toward prostitution. Although popular history has described the
regulation of prostitution from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth as repressive, negative
and prohibitory, this neglects the concept which theorists since Foucault have discussed: “the positivity of
power.”1 In order to repress prostitution, reformers first had to define what it was and, in the course of
attempting to repress it, engaged in discourses which spoke to their beliefs about social life at a more
general level.
It is essential for the purposes of this analysis to identify and differentiate between the three “types” of
prostitution at which legislation and regulation were aimed: regular/harlots, ‘occasionals’, and the white
slaves. John McLaren claims that, in regards to sexual deviance, “Where intervention was undertaken, the
legal expedients served purely pragmatic ends.”2 However, while one might argue that legislation merely
developed in practical response to three different kinds of behaviour, it also had a hand in creating and
constructing the identity of each “type” of prostitute in the social imaginary. This differentiation was the
result of three separate discursive regimes and categories of popular narrative. Reformers claimed that, of
all the ‘traffikers [sic] in vice’, both professional and occasional prostitutes alike required the strictest
response for the police, courts and correctional system,3 and Salvation Army workers in particular did not
make distinctions in their practical rescue work between techniques for saving white slaves and willing
prostitutes.4 However, these general sentiments do not account for the complex discursive and legal
processes through which regular prostitute, occasional prostitute, and white slave became labels to be
imposed upon certain women. Instead of supplanting one another over time, these labels accumulated to
form a “repertoire of clichés”5 at the disposal of those who were concerned about the socio-moral state of
Canadian cities such as Toronto.
1
M. Valverde, Age of Light, Soap, and Water (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Inc., 1991) at 24.
J. McLaren, “Chasing the Social Evil: Moral Fervour and the Evolution of Canada’s Prostitution Laws, 1867-1917” (1986) 1
Canadian Journal of Law and Society 126.
3
C. Strange, Toronto’s Girl Problem (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995) at 130.
4
Valverde, supra note 2 at 102.
5
Ibid. at102.
2
Engaging with the Fringes of Finance: Pawnbroking, Payday Lending, and the Governance of
Poverty.
Matthew Palmer, MA student, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
This paper examines the genealogy of modern consumer finance through a discussion of the ‘fringe
finance’ sector. Specifically, it illustrates the ways in which the practices of pawnbroking and payday
lending, respectively, constitute their clientele in markedly different ways, thus leading to vastly different
modes of poverty governance. By discussing the position of these practices during their respective eras of
dominance – morally, economically and socially – as well as the specific ways in which their clientele
have been constituted during these periods (through both advertising and the actual process of borrowing),
the paper shows that payday lending has brought about a very contingent and peculiar understanding of
the role of credit in the lives of the ‘poor’. While under the pawnbroking regime, engagement with the
‘fringe finance’ sector carried a rather dubious reputation and was in many ways hidden from the public
eye, payday lending today has become normalized as a very public consumer practice. While previously,
clients of the fringe finance sector were explicitly understood as economically marginalized, today these
services are presented as merely a convenient alternative to mainstream financial institutions. As a result,
the relationship between ‘fringe finance’ and poverty has become increasingly confused. More broadly,
the paper seeks to problematize the relatively homogenous understanding within the governmentality
literature of the neoliberal, risk-managing financial subject by illuminating the forms of subjectivity that
exist on the margins of the sector.
Panel C – Global Conversations: Critical Responses to Crisis
Discussants: Justin Paulson (mentor) and Ryan Katz-Rosene
Chair: Tim Fowler
Sorelian myth through Gramsci and Mariátegui: Creatively engaging with crisis
Matthew Hawkins, MA Student, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
Antonio Gramsci famously advocated for a 'modern prince' – a proletarian party – to lead society into a
social transformation. The 'modern prince' was inspired by French social critic, and sometime marxist,
Georges Sorel's idea of the 'myth' expressed with practical action. Gramsci argues a sorelian myth is “a
creation of concrete phantasy which acts on a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organise its
collective will” (1971:126). From the other side of the globe, Peruvian marxist José Carlos Mariátegui, a
relatively understudied in English but dominant figure in Latin American marxism, was also inspired by
Sorel to propose the social revolution as an active and animating myth to replace a 'declining order' of
bourgeois society. Sorel's concept of the myth provided meaningful inspiration to two of the 20th century's
most important (and successful) marxists. This paper, a chapter of a larger research project, proposes a
version of the 'myth', distilled from these three writers, that provides a perfomative theoretical concept
that can be used both to analyse as well as develop transformative social movements. Central components
of the myth that are discussed are its unified definition through action, organization and creative
inspiration, its necessity to create social divisions, and its rejection of the existing historical order of
society. Reflecting on the theme of crisis, it is presented that transformative forces particularly in corecapitalist countries have yet to propose a meaningful myth and thus creatively engage with global crises.
Why Nothing Happened: Responding to the Economic Crisis in a Post-Political Society
Trevor Smith, MA student, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
The underlying project of neoliberal economics is to replace politics with markets, to move decision
making from the public sphere into the private realm. Neoliberalism can then be seen as one of the most
important driving factors behind the situation we find ourselves in today; the situation of a post-political
society. Understanding the depoliticizing and anti-political goal of neoliberalism then becomes crucial to
understanding the context of the economic crisis and why this opportunity for change failed to produce
any, both from top level international meetings and from bottom level grassroots activists.
It will be argued that neoliberalism has been rather successful in eroding politics, both in thought and in
practice, thus neoliberal capitalism as a global economy has insulated itself from any potential
system-altering changes. Despite the economic crisis demonstrating in plain view to the world that the
neoliberal formation of capitalism is a spectacular failure, the ability to mobilize for change did not, and
could not occur, due to a lack of political outlet or will. This failure of a political response is precisely due
to the active attack on politics by neoliberalism over the past 20 years, and will be analyzed on two levels,
grassroots citizen response, and world leader response.
Despite many world leaders such as Gordon Brown, Kevin Rudd, and Hu Jintao calling for a drastic
reordering of the global economy, the results of international meetings produced no sweeping changes.
Even though the three leaders mentioned above had interesting ideas for a reworking of the global
economic system, there was no means for change. The neoliberal capitalist economy is global, and lacks a
corresponding global political sphere. An international political system is rendered futile to bring about
change to a global economic system that operates above its head.
The grassroots citizen response was much more disappointing for its lack of imagination and motivation
for change. The general response from both the right and the left was a surprising call for the deepening of
neoliberalism which came in the form of opposition to government intervention in the economy which
was needed in order to bail out and nationalize banks, as well as to bring about the stimulus plans. What
this grassroots hostility to politics and political action displayed was that neoliberalism has again been
successful in not only eliminating and preventing political space from existing but in making politics a
dirty word in the minds of the people.
Despite this rather critical/pessimistic assessment, suggestions on new ways to bring about change will be
proposed.
Resolving Crises of Accumulation: political risk and the production of ‘global’ territoriality
Aaron Henry, MA student, Institute of Political Economy, Carleton University
Throughout the late 1980’s to present a series of institutions such as export credit agencies, the
Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) and organization such as the World Economic Forum
(WEF) began to deploy different projects of calculating political risk and providing political risk
insurance with the intent of “pushing the project of globalization forward” (WEF, Global Risk, 2009).
Through calculating political risk these institutions were able to inform transnational corporations (TNCs)
of the probability that they would encounter civil disobedience, nationalization, obstruction of contract
and political violence, in the host states in which they operated. These projects of calculating political risk
gradually discursively produced the object of the ‘emerging market’ as a space within the global economy
that was socially and politically insecure and existed outside the territory of the economic grid of the
nation-state; and, therein, could be subject to globally competitive spatial-temporal fixes (i.e labour laws,
tax regimes, and environmental policies).
In this paper, I argue that we must approach the calculation of political risk and the process of
constituting the emerging market, as technologies of power that have become key in attenuating and
absorbing the structural crises within the processes of capital accumulation. I will interrogate how the
calculation of political risk has intersected with, what Giovanni Arrighi referred to as, the process of
refinancialization(1994). Refinancialization is a process whereby capital is produced through selling off
the industrial infrastructure of society so as to produce an abundance of surplus capital that can be
employed in new spatial-temporal fixes of accumulation. I argue that the calculation of political risk has
been deployed to remap the economic space of developing states into global economic space on which
surplus capital, produced through refinancialization, can be absorbed by new spatial-temporal regimes of
capital accumulation. By using Export Development Canada as a case-study, I will illuminate how over
the last two decades the calculation of political risk has been key in producing new ‘global’ spaces of
accumulation to resolve the internal crises of a neoliberal period of capital typified by an overabundance
of surplus capital.
Governing Transition, Bargaining Nature: eco-governance in post communist settings.
Alda Kokallaj, PhD Candidate, Political Science/Political Economy
An overview of political science literature on governance indicates that governance is underpinned by
democratic principles and is mainly concerned with the activities of people within a territory or of
population(s). The starting point of this paper is that the current crises of capitalism has reminded us
(once again) of the need for rethinking our theoretical constructs. In this paper I tackle the issue of
environmental governance within the framework of post-communist transition in a two-layered argument.
First, I argue that our conceptual challenge is to come to terms with theorizing ‘governance’ not as an
anthropocentric realm, but as the realm where ‘nature’ is seen as constitutive. Such conceptualization of
governance is tightly interwoven with the notion of ecological democracy. By engaging with these two
concepts I aim to unpack their significance within the postcommunist settings. The second layer of the
argument draws on two energy projects in the postcommunist context: a Thermo Power Plant and an Oil
Pipeline. Almost twenty years from the collapse of the soviet style communism, an event that was
celebrated as “the end of history” with the “triumph” of capitalism and liberal democracy, the civil society
reaction/resistance to these energy projects reminds us of the shortcomings of conventional approaches to
sustainable development and (eco)governance, where market liberalization and economic growth get
prioritized while ecological concerns are postponed only to be considered when the market economy is
fully operational. The significance of these cases is particularly important in the context of the recent
crises in the way in which they point at the need to rethink democracy even in settings where its liberal
offspring was considered to have triumphed. Also, they warn against employing our conceptual tools in a
universalistic manner without considering intersubjectivities, particularities, and motives that urge lay
people to demand partaking in (eco)governance.