Come Downtown & Play

Abstract

The newly anointed American cities of the late capitalist moment appear preoccupied with the reconstitution of urban space. More accurately, select parcels of urban America have been reconfigured into multifaceted sport, leisure and tourism environments designed for the purpose of encouraging consumption‐oriented capital accumulation. Within this paper, the focus is a critical exploration of the ways in which tangible and intangible forms of heritage have been employed, utilized and exploited within these urban transformations. Through focus on a city emblematic of the processes that have molded downtown cores under US capitalism – Memphis – the paper points to the role of heritage in the reconfiguration of the Memphian ‘tourist bubble’. In particular, discussion centers on the often problematic selection of histories and historical elements, forms and practices within the interests of capital space and thus raises a host of localized questions about whose collective memory is being performed in the present, whose aesthetics really count and who benefits. Conclusions address how such urban space is imbued with power relations, that is, how increasingly leisure‐oriented spaces can be seen as important sites of social struggle in which dominant power relations can be constructed, contested and reproduced.     

Glastonbury: managing the mystification of festivity

The realm of music festivity has grown into a global circuit that responds to the demand for emotive experiential products and taps into postmodern themes that celebrate a lifestyle attitude of extended youth. This paper investigates the phenomenon of festival culture through a case study of Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts. It highlights how modern music festivals have become sites of mediated brand management where commodified hyper-experiences are considered as new forms of contested cultural capital. Through a critical conceptual matrix that combines the work of Bourdieu, Pine and Gilmore, and Jensen the authors critically explore the interplay between the experiential dimension, mystical and fantasy narratives and the political contestation of festivity. Focusing on Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts 2010 the study presents an innovative interpretation of festivity through multi and social media. The authors argue that, while promoted as an ethical festival that celebrates its anti-commercial countercultural cool, Glastonbury reflects a modern cathedral of consumption where experiences are the mediated and managerially puppeteered capital of the field. However, festivity is moving beyond management as it is increasingly dependant on the co-creative social media activity of consumers to perpetuate the fantasy and capital of festivity.     

New Paths to Capitalist Agricultural Production in Africa: Experiences of Ghanaian Pineapple Producer–Exporters

With the global restructuring of agri‐food markets since the 1980s, an impressive amount of scholarship has examined its impacts in African countries. However, little has been written on the emergence of local medium and large‐scale commercial farmers selling to export companies or controlling their own export marketing arrangements. This article examines Ghanaian commercial farmers producing and exporting fresh pineapples to European markets. This group of pineapple producer–exporters represents a path to capitalist agricultural production that can be conceptualized as capitalism from outside: where capital flows into the countryside, rather than accumulation occurring from above or below within the agrarian economy. The emergence of this form of agrarian capitalism is stimulated by opportunities in new high‐value agricultural export markets, but its stabilization depends on country‐specific characteristics such as rural social structures, property rights and state support. The article documents the conditions of emergence of this new group of Ghanaian capitalist farmers, the period of destabilization caused by increasing international competition that resulted in a small number of large‐scale agribusiness firms surviving, and the challenges that these agribusiness firms faced in stabilizing their capitalist agricultural production.     

The Chilean Agrarian Transformation: The Pre-Agrarian Reform Period (1955–1965)

Today Chilean agriculture has recovered from years of diminishing returns. The same arduous work carried out by a declining workforce has suddenly attained higher productivity and, therefore, achieved economic growth. This article suggests that Chile has undergone a series of fundamental changes in the last quarter of the twentieth century, which have intensified its capitalist development. It analyses the agrarian structure of the hacienda system during the period immediately before the agrarian reform, looking particularly at the transition to modern capitalism, agricultural growth and the land question. It argues that before the implementation of the agrarian reform, the country had not finished its transition to modern capitalism due to the persistence of the antiquated hacienda system. It further suggests that the land reform process – implemented and consolidated from 1964 to 1980 – permitted the culmination of the long-postponed transition to modern capitalism and gave rise to the ascendancy of an agro-industrial bourgeoisie and an export-oriented agriculture integrated into the world economy.     

对毛泽东关于发展资本主义问题的再认识

经济落后国家在建设社会主义过程中,利用资本主义所创造的一切积极成果,发展社会主义社会的生产力．是马克思主义的一条重要原则。毛泽东在领导我国革命的实践中,从理论上全面阐述过资本主义问题。他在新民主主义经济理论中关于资本主义的论述极具特色;在社会主义改造完成后仍提出过“消灭了资本主义,又搞资本主义”的思想。当前,对毛泽东关于资本主义的论述进行探讨,仍具有重大的现实意义。     

A South African Variety of Capitalism?

This paper explores the South African political economy through the lens of a variety of capitalism (VoC) approach. It argues that attempts were made in the early post-apartheid period to forge a more social-democratic and co-ordinated variety of capitalism, but that this floundered as the government adopted neoliberal macroeconomic policies against the wishes of organised labour, and as black economic empowerment policies further undermined an already racially-fraught business sector. Organised labour was able to push for, and maintain, protective labour market policies – but this came at the cost of growing policy inconsistency notably with regard to trade liberalisation which, in the presence of growing labour-market protection, has exacerbated South Africa's unemployment crisis. Unemployment remains intractable (and with it inequality) and corruption/patrimonialism appears to be a growing problem.     

Financial Returnees as New Agents in East Asia: The Case of Korean Private Equity Funds

Although the standing of Anglo-American capitalism has been badly damaged by the global economic crisis, the return of the state in emerging markets is by no means assured. Over the past decade, financial processes originating in Anglo-American markets, such as derivatives, hedge funds and mergers and acquisitions (M&A), have made quiet headway in emerging markets. One of the transmission channels is financial returnees, defined as elites returning to domestic finance from either global finance abroad or from foreign financial institutions in their home countries. Many financial returnees pursue business agendas that parallel the Anglo-American model, while portraying themselves as local for domestic constituencies. These actions are now especially visible in the rise of private equity funds in emerging markets. This article defines the concept of a financial returnee and charts the impact of these individuals in importing the Anglo-American private equity model to Asia with Korea as the primary case study. Once foreign-controlled, the private equity industry in Korea is now domestically-run and financial returnees have been integral in this sector's short but important history.     

How red is China's red capitalism? Continuity and change in China's financial services sector during the global crisis

Chinese capitalism cannot be captured by theoretical frameworks and concepts such as the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approach. Despite its integration into the world economy and the financial crises, the country has kept a stable Leninist basis of formal institutions. The case of financial services shows: (i) a resilience of the sector to the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ of 2008 and (ii) the use of the crisis as an opportunity. Examining the control of Chinese financial services shows that private interests and the regulatory authorities are intimately linked to the state apparatus and that there is no radical break in sight with China's unique blend of party state-led capitalism.     

Host-country effects in coordinated,liberal and hybrid market economies: US subsidiaries in Switzerland,Germany and the UK

The paper addresses two as yet unexplored issues regarding the uptake of host-country employment relations practices, contributing to a better understanding of findings for hybrid host-market economies such as Switzerland. Host-country effects are differentiated by practices that belong to either industrial relations or education and training, as per the varieties of capitalism approach. There follows an investigation of the extent to which foreign subsidiaries' overall uptake of host-country employment relations practices is determined by the subsidiary incorporation type and size for practices related to industrial relations and education and training. Analyses of US subsidiaries in Switzerland, and, in contrast, those in Germany and the UK, on the whole support the propositions that distinguish between industrial relations and education and training-related host-country effects.