Pub Date : 2024-08-09DOI: 10.1177/13684310241270471
Katarina Pitasse Fragoso
Amartya Sen has argued that poverty means much more than lacking income: it means that a person falls short of securing a basic level of capabilities. His main justification for this claim is that we need to look at what is important in a person's life (what a person's actual functionings are, and what alternative outcomes could be achieved), rather than just at what a person has. In this article, I argue that, although Sen's conceptualisation expands our understanding of poverty, it can limit us when evaluating what is wrong with poverty. Conceptualising poverty in a diverse and unequal society rather requires a broader perspective, one capable of including an explicitly relational approach, group-based analysis, and a socio-structural lens. Otherwise, we miss the fundamental role played by systematic oppression in the context of poverty. In developing these ideas, my aim is to update the picture of poverty as capability deprivation.
{"title":"Poverty as capability deprivation: Considering the relational approach, group-based analysis, and socio-structural lens","authors":"Katarina Pitasse Fragoso","doi":"10.1177/13684310241270471","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241270471","url":null,"abstract":"Amartya Sen has argued that poverty means much more than lacking income: it means that a person falls short of securing a basic level of capabilities. His main justification for this claim is that we need to look at what is important in a person's life (what a person's actual functionings are, and what alternative outcomes could be achieved), rather than just at what a person has. In this article, I argue that, although Sen's conceptualisation expands our understanding of poverty, it can limit us when evaluating what is wrong with poverty. Conceptualising poverty in a diverse and unequal society rather requires a broader perspective, one capable of including an explicitly relational approach, group-based analysis, and a socio-structural lens. Otherwise, we miss the fundamental role played by systematic oppression in the context of poverty. In developing these ideas, my aim is to update the picture of poverty as capability deprivation.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141921705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-09DOI: 10.1177/13684310241269286
Florian Penz, Sabine Frerichs
Capitalism is a social order that evolves over time. While market exchange, private property, and the profit motive are generic features of capitalist systems, studies of contemporary capitalism aim to highlight what is specific about capitalism today. In this article, we develop the concept of monetary sabotage to pinpoint a phenomenon that has become more pronounced in recent decades, but which has not been sufficiently elaborated so far. Monetary sabotage refers to the utilization and, eventually, manipulation of the monetary infrastructure for private profit, creating instability and perpetuating inequality. Drawing on old institutionalism, with its emphasis on law, and articulating it with contemporary theories of credit and insights from the sociology of money, our analysis highlights the evolution of incorporate and intangible property as premises for financial profit-making at the expense of the public. This institutionalist approach adds new insights to the prevailing financialization literature and complements other critical perspectives.
{"title":"Property, credit, and monetary sabotage: Contemporary capitalism in institutionalist perspective","authors":"Florian Penz, Sabine Frerichs","doi":"10.1177/13684310241269286","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241269286","url":null,"abstract":"Capitalism is a social order that evolves over time. While market exchange, private property, and the profit motive are generic features of capitalist systems, studies of contemporary capitalism aim to highlight what is specific about capitalism today. In this article, we develop the concept of monetary sabotage to pinpoint a phenomenon that has become more pronounced in recent decades, but which has not been sufficiently elaborated so far. Monetary sabotage refers to the utilization and, eventually, manipulation of the monetary infrastructure for private profit, creating instability and perpetuating inequality. Drawing on old institutionalism, with its emphasis on law, and articulating it with contemporary theories of credit and insights from the sociology of money, our analysis highlights the evolution of incorporate and intangible property as premises for financial profit-making at the expense of the public. This institutionalist approach adds new insights to the prevailing financialization literature and complements other critical perspectives.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141923597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-08-08DOI: 10.1177/13684310241268312
H. Friese
The article engages with institutionalized German anti-anti-Semitism in recent debates about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To elucidate Germany's raison d’état, current silencing of political dissent and drawing on Stuart Hall's notion of “conjuncture,” the first step is to sketch the dynamics of memory politics after the Holocaust: the silence of the postwar period, the student movement's struggle against bystanders and perpetrators, subsequent debates of representation, memorialization, trauma and finally the provincialization and nascent globalized memory ( Conjunctures and the Politics of Memory). Articulating the aporias of current German (memory) politics between history and event, historical antecedents and singularity, particularity and universalism, in a second step the tensions between German raison d'état, anti-anti-Semitism and postcolonial perspectives are addressed that delimit the frameworks of negotiating anti-Semitism in the public sphere ( Conjunctures and Aporias). In this sense, the remarks contribute to the critical debate on anti-anti-Semitism.
{"title":"Institutionalized anti-anti-Semitism in Germany and its aporias","authors":"H. Friese","doi":"10.1177/13684310241268312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241268312","url":null,"abstract":"The article engages with institutionalized German anti-anti-Semitism in recent debates about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To elucidate Germany's raison d’état, current silencing of political dissent and drawing on Stuart Hall's notion of “conjuncture,” the first step is to sketch the dynamics of memory politics after the Holocaust: the silence of the postwar period, the student movement's struggle against bystanders and perpetrators, subsequent debates of representation, memorialization, trauma and finally the provincialization and nascent globalized memory ( Conjunctures and the Politics of Memory). Articulating the aporias of current German (memory) politics between history and event, historical antecedents and singularity, particularity and universalism, in a second step the tensions between German raison d'état, anti-anti-Semitism and postcolonial perspectives are addressed that delimit the frameworks of negotiating anti-Semitism in the public sphere ( Conjunctures and Aporias). In this sense, the remarks contribute to the critical debate on anti-anti-Semitism.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141927716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-21DOI: 10.1177/13684310241265864
Gesa Lindemann
The notion of reflexive anthropology follows Bourdieu's concept of reflexive sociology. It argues that it is necessary to take a reflexive look at the “unconscious” of sociological research in order to overcome epistemological limitations. At the same time, however, Bourdieu fails to identify scientific research practice as part of a differentiated society that is structurally dependent on the cult of the individual (Durkheim). Therefore reflexive sociology needs to be complemented by a reflexive anthropology that analyzes the human person and its normative special status as an institution of a horizontally differentiated society. This leads to the question that I explore in this article: what follows from the fact that the anthropological premises of sociological research affirm the anthropological conception of modern sociation? The fact that sociology reproduces the anthropological certainties of modern society has been repeatedly criticized. Based on these arguments, I present a critical procedure that allows us to work out whether and to what extent the general conceptual presuppositions of research reproduce modern anthropocentrism. Finally, I outline a social theory that makes it possible to render the modern self-conception an object of study.
{"title":"Reflexive anthropology: On the method-guided construction of premises in social theory","authors":"Gesa Lindemann","doi":"10.1177/13684310241265864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241265864","url":null,"abstract":"The notion of reflexive anthropology follows Bourdieu's concept of reflexive sociology. It argues that it is necessary to take a reflexive look at the “unconscious” of sociological research in order to overcome epistemological limitations. At the same time, however, Bourdieu fails to identify scientific research practice as part of a differentiated society that is structurally dependent on the cult of the individual (Durkheim). Therefore reflexive sociology needs to be complemented by a reflexive anthropology that analyzes the human person and its normative special status as an institution of a horizontally differentiated society. This leads to the question that I explore in this article: what follows from the fact that the anthropological premises of sociological research affirm the anthropological conception of modern sociation? The fact that sociology reproduces the anthropological certainties of modern society has been repeatedly criticized. Based on these arguments, I present a critical procedure that allows us to work out whether and to what extent the general conceptual presuppositions of research reproduce modern anthropocentrism. Finally, I outline a social theory that makes it possible to render the modern self-conception an object of study.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141817973","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-07-21DOI: 10.1177/13684310241261782
D. Bjelić
The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of the Balkan and Greek postcolonial and de-colonial studies. The Yugoslav ethnic wars, the Greek “financial crisis,” and the European migration crisis generated a body of critical studies on regional nationalism, coloniality, and racialism and the Balkans and Greece's ambiguous relation to Europe. Cedric J. Robinson's Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition was missing from the large spectrum of postcolonial literature. This absence is surprising given that the book historicizes the simultaneous occurrence of colonialism, capitalism, racism, and modernity in the Balkan and the East Mediterranean during the late feudalism. The absence of this history from the Balkan's post and de-colonial studies deprives these studies of an abolitionist perspective; rather than opting for “provincializing Europe” empowered by this history of the native enslavements and colonization, these studies, much as Black radicalism should mobilize the region for the political culture for the abolition of “Europe.”
冷战的结束标志着巴尔干和希腊后殖民和去殖民研究的开始。南斯拉夫种族战争、希腊 "金融危机 "和欧洲移民危机催生了大量关于地区民族主义、殖民主义和种族主义以及巴尔干和希腊与欧洲暧昧关系的批判性研究。Cedric J. Robinson 的《黑人马克思主义：黑人激进传统的形成》（Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition）在大量的后殖民文献中不见踪影。鉴于该书将封建社会晚期巴尔干半岛和东地中海地区同时出现的殖民主义、资本主义、种族主义和现代性历史化，这种缺失令人惊讶。巴尔干半岛的后殖民和非殖民化研究中缺乏这段历史，使这些研究失去了废除殖民主义的视角；这些研究，正如黑人激进主义一样，不应该选择 "欧洲省化"，而应该利用这段本土奴役和殖民的历史，动员该地区的政治文化废除 "欧洲"。
{"title":"Black Marxism, Racial Capitalism, and Greek and Balkan Coloniality Studies: Toward an Abolitionist Perspective","authors":"D. Bjelić","doi":"10.1177/13684310241261782","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241261782","url":null,"abstract":"The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of the Balkan and Greek postcolonial and de-colonial studies. The Yugoslav ethnic wars, the Greek “financial crisis,” and the European migration crisis generated a body of critical studies on regional nationalism, coloniality, and racialism and the Balkans and Greece's ambiguous relation to Europe. Cedric J. Robinson's Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition was missing from the large spectrum of postcolonial literature. This absence is surprising given that the book historicizes the simultaneous occurrence of colonialism, capitalism, racism, and modernity in the Balkan and the East Mediterranean during the late feudalism. The absence of this history from the Balkan's post and de-colonial studies deprives these studies of an abolitionist perspective; rather than opting for “provincializing Europe” empowered by this history of the native enslavements and colonization, these studies, much as Black radicalism should mobilize the region for the political culture for the abolition of “Europe.”","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141818056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-24DOI: 10.1177/13684310241249684
Stevan Veljkovic
{"title":"Book review: Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment","authors":"Stevan Veljkovic","doi":"10.1177/13684310241249684","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241249684","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141099770","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-21DOI: 10.1177/13684310241253572
Katharina Hoppe
Social theories – from classical accounts to more recent relational theories to feminist and postcolonial approaches – have characterized modernity as an age of proliferating dependency relationships, which, however, enable autonomy as a central value of this very modernity. This tension at the heart of modernity has led societies to deny these dependencies. Recently, crisis dynamics have precipitated abrupt realizations of dependencies on phenomena that are invisibilized, inferiorized and devalued in modern societies. The respective ‘other of reason’ on which autonomous subjectivity depends – including nature, reproduction and the body – increasingly makes itself felt. The underlying logic of dependency denial can be illuminated by revisiting the feminist critique of dualism that offers three ways to overcome dualist thought: dialectics, entanglement and tension. The article discusses these three options in order to develop a normative compass facilitating a critical perspective on dependency denial and its failure in light of current crises.
{"title":"Dependency denial in crisis: Revisiting feminist critiques of dualism","authors":"Katharina Hoppe","doi":"10.1177/13684310241253572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241253572","url":null,"abstract":"Social theories – from classical accounts to more recent relational theories to feminist and postcolonial approaches – have characterized modernity as an age of proliferating dependency relationships, which, however, enable autonomy as a central value of this very modernity. This tension at the heart of modernity has led societies to deny these dependencies. Recently, crisis dynamics have precipitated abrupt realizations of dependencies on phenomena that are invisibilized, inferiorized and devalued in modern societies. The respective ‘other of reason’ on which autonomous subjectivity depends – including nature, reproduction and the body – increasingly makes itself felt. The underlying logic of dependency denial can be illuminated by revisiting the feminist critique of dualism that offers three ways to overcome dualist thought: dialectics, entanglement and tension. The article discusses these three options in order to develop a normative compass facilitating a critical perspective on dependency denial and its failure in light of current crises.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141115885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-10DOI: 10.1177/13684310241252068
David Inglis
Two different ways of naming and narrating historical periods, including the present time, involve using the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘modernity’. Each terminological set opens certain intellectual vistas, while foreclosing others. This article argues that while ‘late capitalism’ is, despite its many problems, a meaningful concept to use today, ‘late modernity’ is not. Offering a genealogy of each term, the article considers how ascriptions of lateness to modernity result in some absurdity, while ascribing lateness to capitalism does not involve such marked risks. Nonetheless, more comprehensive and all-encompassing definitions of capitalism may be incompatible with ascriptions of lateness to capitalism. These various issues are considered in light of the need to name the current world-condition in a period of accelerating environmental crisis.
{"title":"Better late than modern? Between ‘late capitalism’ and ‘late modernity’","authors":"David Inglis","doi":"10.1177/13684310241252068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241252068","url":null,"abstract":"Two different ways of naming and narrating historical periods, including the present time, involve using the terms ‘capitalism’ and ‘modernity’. Each terminological set opens certain intellectual vistas, while foreclosing others. This article argues that while ‘late capitalism’ is, despite its many problems, a meaningful concept to use today, ‘late modernity’ is not. Offering a genealogy of each term, the article considers how ascriptions of lateness to modernity result in some absurdity, while ascribing lateness to capitalism does not involve such marked risks. Nonetheless, more comprehensive and all-encompassing definitions of capitalism may be incompatible with ascriptions of lateness to capitalism. These various issues are considered in light of the need to name the current world-condition in a period of accelerating environmental crisis.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140992601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1177/13684310241252065
Geoffrey F. Hughes
{"title":"Book review: The Digital Double Bind: Change and Stasis in the Middle East","authors":"Geoffrey F. Hughes","doi":"10.1177/13684310241252065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241252065","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141011087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-03DOI: 10.1177/13684310241247548
F. H. Pitts
This article explores the contribution of Wertkritik, a contemporary tendency in German critical Marxist thought, to the theorisation of capitalism, and in particular its relationship with geopolitical conflict and war. Against traditional Marxist and liberal determinism, Wertkritik emphasises how the rationally organised ‘forces of production’ do not motivate the historical development of capitalism, but rather the forces of destruction. This article suggests that Wertkritik illuminates contemporary capitalist development insofar as it lays bare how the apparent ‘post-neoliberal’ turn to state-driven industrial policy is motivated less by a drive to unleash the productive forces in pursuit of a more dynamic or green economy and more by the management of the unfolding destructive forces represented in the new forms of conflict and competition arising between warring military and economic powers. The explanation this offers of the cultural dynamics shaping a context of authoritarian convergence provides vital materials towards a critical theory of a capitalism conditioned by increasing geopolitical tensions. Offering the concept of a ‘world civil war’ as an alternative to the rationalisations inherent in prevailing notions of a ‘new’ or ‘second’ cold war, this theorisation also offers pointers for an emancipatory praxis attuned to the current context.
{"title":"New cold war or ‘world civil war’? Wertkritik and the critical theory of capitalism in an age of conflict","authors":"F. H. Pitts","doi":"10.1177/13684310241247548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241247548","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the contribution of Wertkritik, a contemporary tendency in German critical Marxist thought, to the theorisation of capitalism, and in particular its relationship with geopolitical conflict and war. Against traditional Marxist and liberal determinism, Wertkritik emphasises how the rationally organised ‘forces of production’ do not motivate the historical development of capitalism, but rather the forces of destruction. This article suggests that Wertkritik illuminates contemporary capitalist development insofar as it lays bare how the apparent ‘post-neoliberal’ turn to state-driven industrial policy is motivated less by a drive to unleash the productive forces in pursuit of a more dynamic or green economy and more by the management of the unfolding destructive forces represented in the new forms of conflict and competition arising between warring military and economic powers. The explanation this offers of the cultural dynamics shaping a context of authoritarian convergence provides vital materials towards a critical theory of a capitalism conditioned by increasing geopolitical tensions. Offering the concept of a ‘world civil war’ as an alternative to the rationalisations inherent in prevailing notions of a ‘new’ or ‘second’ cold war, this theorisation also offers pointers for an emancipatory praxis attuned to the current context.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141016554","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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