Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

BBC documentary that gives an overview of "two decades of profound change since the invention of the World Wide Web, weighing up the huge benefits and the unforeseen downsides."

  In contemporary Western societies, since the mid to late 20th century, there have been considerable debates around the status of the family, its perceived decline or transformation into a new historical form. Talcott Parsons’ original formulation of the nuclear family has fallen out of fashion, outmoded by contemporary social trends and criticised for teleological biases that preference one model of family and designate all other forms as deviant and dysfunctional. Ulrich Beck and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim have put forth their “‘individualization thesis”’ to explain shifts in contemporary society and the institution of the ‘family’ that elevate individuals to the forefront of discussion. The individualization thesis has been widely discussed and misunderstood. Jennifer Mason criticised the individuation thesis on the basis that it “creates a sense of individuals floating free of family ties and commitments”. However, Beck-Gernsheim has stressed that individualization: “does...

See also: - Seduction and Panopticism - Ideology and Symbolic power: Between Althusser and Bourdieu.

E.P. Thompson’s The Poverty of Theory is a critique of Louis Althusser’s structuralist interpretation of Marxism and it’s relation to discipline of history. In this critique, Thompson defended his formulation of the materialist conception of history, the importance of historical analysis and an outline for the proper use of conceptual abstractions. Thompson’s theoretical framework, that favoured the “empirical idiom”, underpinned his historical work on the English working class. His discussion of working class experience between the 1780s to the early 1830s became a crucial reference point in the class theory of the Marxian tradition and generated much contention and debate with his assertion that class is neither a “structure” or “category”, but a “historical relationship” that is not reducible to economic relations. Thompson attempted to reintroduce human agency into the study of class and redress the failings of economic reductionism that stemmed from the base-superstructure...

The modern view of human rights is the result of successive struggles within Western society. Hence, in historical terms, human rights are a ‘Western’ construct. However this does not undermine the claim of cross-cultural validity, but merely problematizes the issue of cultural rights and their relation to the universal claims of the human rights tradition. This tension and the normative variety of cultural relativism have been crucial points of contestation in human rights theory. Thus, the extent to which human rights are inherently ‘Western’ in character is of vital importance to their practical implantation across cultural divisions. To address this issue, the historical origins of human rights will be briefly sketched and their cross-cultural legitimacy will be evaluated to determine the appropriate cultural designation of human rights. The question of historical origin, Micheline Ishay argues, is complicated because selection of this point ipso facto “privileges a specific...

The Stern Review of the Economics of Climate change has identified greenhouse gas emissions as the greatest market failure in history. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a leading cause of climate change and have been targeted by government and non-governmental organizations as an area of grave policy concern. Policy proposals to ameliorate CO2 emissions have centred around two broadly based methods: “ economic instruments” and “command and control regulations”. The adoption of economic instruments to regulate the problem of CO2 emissions can entail either the introduction of market mechanisms to price emissions and allocate the right to emit limited quantities of CO2, or price-based instruments such as tax regimes and subsidies. Command and control regulations are policies that involve direct government interventions into the forms of practices surrounding CO2 Emissions, from technological standards to performance targets. The mainstream economics literature on policy instrument...

Marx's analysis of capital was an attempt to uncover the fundamental laws of motion that govern the capitalist mode of production. Marx differed from many of his contemporaries in that he conceived of capitalism as necessarily dynamic and incapable of homeostasis . This resulted from a complex array of factors, the ultimate source of which is the need to produce surplus-value. Marx claimed this amounted to the “absolute law’ of capitalist production. However, the expansionary impetus of capital is not a smooth linear process of growth and the accumulation of capital is subject to recurrent interruptions and crises. Marx argued that this tendency toward crisis arises from the competition between capitalists and the success of prior accumulation. In apparent contradiction to Marx, Keynes formulated a theory of effective demand that explained economic fluctuations and downturns in terms of insufficient aggregate demand. For Keynes, the causal factor that leads to below capacity econ...

Hyman P. Minsky’s “Financial Instability Hypothesis” has received renewed interest in light of the current malaise. Minsky attempted to formulate an endogenous theory of financial instability and in this pursuit he focused primarily on income-debt relations and the negotiation between bankers and businessman. This hypothesis is predicated upon the existence of an intricate and highly evolved financial system operating within a capitalist economy. Based upon this assumption Minsky’s hypothesis is a partial explanation of the current crisis. The scope of analysis presented in the hypothesis does not venture to explain the interconnections between the financial sector and the real economy. The increased relative importance of finance and the process of financialization that underlay the current financial crisis are completely outside of the parameters of the financial instability hypothesis. From the perspective of policy formation, explanations of the crisis in terms of both its proxi...

The ‘Volker Rule’, proposed by the Obama administration early in 2010, has generated considerable controversy. The two main features of the ‘Volker Rule’ is: 1) a ban on proprietary trading and bank involvement in hedge funds and private equity funds for their own profit independent of their customers, and 2) the introduction of measures to bar the further consolidation of the financial system. Much depends upon the exact wording of the planed legalization, but the ultimate aim is to rectify issues of moral hazard and to mitigate the systemic treat to the financial system posed by reckless financial operations. In terms of moral hazard, the proposed reforms will attempt to demarcate between speculative financial operations and commercial banking operations which are insured by the public. Therefore, according to the Administration’s position, undue risk will not be insured by the public and the costs of which will remain with those who have generated it, thereby reducing moral hazard. ...

Maurice Dobb’s commenced his “Studies in the Development of Capitalism” with the question of definition. He argued that quite apart from pedantry, questions of definition and definitional stances “ipso facto” implied the implementation of a “principle of classification” and therefore shape the scope of analysis(1).In reference to capitalism, he identified three major perspectives that applied counterpoised principles of classification and causal explanations of historical capitalism. The first popular approach outlined by Dobb, was that of Werner Sombart who attempted to ascertain the essence of capitalism through an appreciation of the “bourgeois spirit”(2). Max Weber followed a similar approach to the problem of capitalism with the proposed connection between Protestantism and the spirit of capitalism(3). The second position, linked capitalism to the separation of production and retail sale with the introduction of intermediaries. The third conception, and the position taken by Do...