Moving beyond a narrow definition of economics, this pioneering book advances our understanding of the global political economy and how we can respond critically to it. Organized Labor Theory and Strategies in Global Political Economy Edited by Jeffrey Harrod and Robert O'Brien The Political Economy of a Plural World. The Political Economy of European Employment European integration and the transnationalization of (un)employment Edited by Henk Overbeek.
The Politicization of Globalization Rewriting Global Political Economy 2 Globalization in Context: Neoliberalism and Information Technologies 3 The Uneven Effects of Globalization: New and Enduring Structural Hierarchies 8 Objectives and Limitations of the Book 13.
Series editors’ preface
What Peterson does is to demystify the common sense view that the GPE can be understood solely in terms of the production of goods and services in the 'formal' economy. The first part of the book focuses on production, the formal economic domain privileged by neoclassical and Marxist frameworks. More “adequate theorizing” means going beyond – and behind – the frameworks of rational actors and “parsimonious” theory construction that still predominate.
It both reframes how global political economy can be read from the perspective of the “losers” and how “virtual economies” work with reproductive ones to support a disturbing tendency toward chronic scarcity.
Acknowledgments
My early efforts were furthered by graduate training in political economy at American University, particularly under the tutelage of Robin Hahnel in the economics department and the remarkable faculty—and fellow graduate students—in the International Development Program. Marianne Franklin and Marianne Marchand were early enthusiasts for the book and its inclusion in the RIPE series. Throughout this project, my family kept faith in me and in the expectation that – despite the evidence – this book would also be completed.
During the years of writing I have lost two close friends whose belief in the value of my project was an important source of affirmation and encouragement.
1 Context and objectives
Second, "because information is an integral part of all human activity" the effects of the new technology are pervasive and "all processes of our individual and collective existence are directly shaped (though certainly not determined) by the new technological medium” (70) . Second, as a "work-in-progress", the book attempts both to illuminate missing but structurally significant dimensions of globalization and to demonstrate their centrality in power operations in the global political economy. In the absence of agreed or undisputed distinctions, I avoid using "third world" or "the South" in favor of more specific references to "newly industrialized countries" (NICs), "industrializing countries," or "least industrialized countries." This distinguishes them from richer, economically "more developed" countries in the "North" or "West", which are usually member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
My conceptual innovations - the RPV framing and the triad analysis - are elaborated, as well as an interpretive (semiotic) model of language.
2 Theory matters
In sum, dominant disciplinary, epistemological, and ideological commitments create a "divided terrain of globalization studies." In various ways, these commitments are detrimental to our understanding of globalization and need to be reconsidered to meet the analytical needs of this study. The best-known feminist work in economics and international relations stems from this project of asking the question "where are the women?" in the context of common topics. A similar shift in emphasis—and often epistemology32—is seen in feminist economics and IPE, particularly as WID and GAD overlap with feminist analyzes of globalization that became a focal point of scholarship in the 1990s.
The point is more to make visible – to politicize – the effects, the specific compromises imposed by particular stabilizations, conceptual orders and what becomes "common sense"; in other words, to expose the power that operates through how we identify and think, as well as how we act in empirically observable practices.
3 The productive economy
Work' is defined as work that is paid, and payment is assumed to occur within the formal economy. First, even the traditional meanings of products and production require revision in the context of today's GPE. In the global economy, Chang and Ling refer to the former as “technomuscular capitalism” and the latter as.
In general, flexibility is induced by the desire of firms to increase profitability in the context of global competitiveness. All of these are at work in the new global economy and are addressed in this text. Yet in the process of cutting labor costs, lower-level workers are more likely to be fired (although all employees face less safe conditions).
The interaction of flexibilization and informalization is particularly visible from the point of view of women's reproductive assignments, as detailed in the next chapter.). While the proportion of women in the formal labor force has increased worldwide, male participation has fallen (Standing 1999a, 588; UN 2000a, 110). More adequate analyzes require that the movement of people be placed in the context of new and specifically global dynamics.
These studies indicate the existence of class, gender and ethnic biases in the adaptation process" (Beneria. To conclude this chapter, I draw attention to the scope of "work" included by changes in the productive economy become
4 The reproductive economy
The formal economy and its labor markets reflect and propagate gendered divisions of labor in the family, stereotypes of men's and women's work, and women's economic dependence on men's earning capacity. Taking the reproductive economy seriously is a step towards a more complete analysis. It also alerts us to the politics of consumption and its changing role in the global economy.
What do existing theories offer for the analysis of informalization and its expansion in the global economy. The focus here is on "households as an institution of the world economy" (the title of Wallerstein and Smith 1992a) and how households aggregate various forms of income and resources in the context of that economy and its global division of labour. But deregulation is also implicated in the growth of more mundane and embodied informal activities that are also problematic.
Unsurprisingly, domestic workers in private households are often immigrants.43 This regime of labor intimacy exposes class, racial/ethnic, and national divisions in the reproductive economy (eg, Mattingly 2001). The point here is that poverty alone does not explain women's participation in the sex industry. It is women who expand their work – in the formal productive economy, but also in the household and in informal activities.
Firstly, reproductive and informal labor in the reproductive economy is a condition of - and not coincidentally - the so-called. Third, these gendered, racialized ties are particularly visible in relation to reduced public welfare in the context of global restructuring and the dynamics of the virtual economy.
5 The virtual economy
Because financial markets now "drive" the global economy, our analyzes of them must be improved, and this involves taking the subjective aspects seriously. We also need semiotic models to analyze "the operationalization of all exchanges under the law of the code" (Baudrillard 1975, 121). In Mad Money, Strange examines technological innovations and then observes “the sheer size of these [financial] .
In an important sense, efforts to "map" the ever-changing financial terrain are always outpaced by innovation. Theorists are now challenged to understand financial markets as a “strategic, dominant network of the new economy” (Castells 2000, 156). As "the mainstay of the world economy" (Drucker's financial trading has become the most profitable and expansive sector.
Decentralization of production, as evidenced by informalization, flexibility, homework and "the global assembly line". More specifically, in post-industrial society "the information mode of production is more than just a method of production in which information is applied to production: it is one in which the production of knowledge/information itself has become the dominant sector of the economy. " (Hoogvelt 2001, 111). First, what characterizes the electronic revolution is the application of knowledge to the knowledge generation and information processing/communication devices, in a cumulative feedback loop between innovation and the uses of innovation.
But for most of the planet, participation in communications media is that of relatively passive consumers: all of us hear/watch/read/absorb/react to what "the media" selectively chooses to broadcast. This is especially visible in advertising and television media, which is the key to the "naturalization" (depoliticization) of the consumer economy.
6 The power of value
Economic theory also assumed that markets for goods and markets for money functioned according to similar principles and that trade in goods and services – the real economy – determined the flow of capital in financial markets. The rhetoric of the new strategy is paternalistic and colonizing; it represents the particular model of Western “success” as the inevitable and superior model – the model that stands at the top – and to which everyone should aspire. The added complication is that this mass of virtual money now functions “as the flywheel of the global economy, rather than the 'real economy' – the flow of goods and services” (Drucker.
Regarding the first issue, women and gender-sensitive analyzes are absent – or at best marginalized – in decision-making processes and analytical assessments of the financial order. As the deepening of international financial markets disconnects them from the "real economy," the "real value" of money is mystified: it does not function in conventional terms (standard of measurement, store of value, or medium of exchange). The new constitutionalism enfranchises corporate capital while limiting traditional forms of democratic accountability, as reflected in the “policies of conditionality of the [IMF and World Bank].
These points suggest who the players are and their uneven power in the global economy of credit money. Castells notes that this is "one of the most complex matters in the economics of the new economy" and a matter of intense and contentious debate. Being able to "see" power in operation requires more focus on network alliances and the processes that enable them to reproduce these hierarchies.
In this light, economic theory can no longer avoid recognizing - and analyzing - the cultural codes that assign value. In addition to recurring financial crises, recent corporate scandals and their effects on the economy threaten the stability – the self-evidentness – of the underlying code.
Notes
