Critical Global Studies – serie

The reinvigorated debate on imperialism in the last two decades focuses on the means by which Euro-American capital is currently spread around the globe and the different ways it pillages the wealth of the developing countries. The Economic Partnership Agreements being foisted on the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries by the European Union, however, has been under the radar of the debate on imperialism. This book draws on the experiences of the Caribbean Forum-EU EPA to fill that void by bringing into focus the economic partnership agreement as a conduit of European imperialism. Critical Global Studies, vol. 1

With the crisis of the global capitalist economy the topic of global culture is regaining its importance and needs to be revisited from both theoretical and practical standpoints. How do we make sense of this rapid flow of global consumer culture across national borders? What is the role of corporations, governments, ONG and social movements in shaping the terms of these flows? How do these flows of money, people, culture, goods and services work in practice? How do these flows affect the lives of the majority of regular people consuming and producing in the global marketplace? Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume examines the way cultures and individuals oppose, resist and re-center globalization.Contributors are: Gwen I. Alexis, Andrea Borghini, Cory Blad, Jack Bratich, Enrico Campo, Rekha Datta, Ricardo A. Dello Buono, Peter Kivisto, Vincenzo Mele, Mihaela Moscaliuc, Nancy Naples, Ino Rossi,Victoria Reyes, Saliba Sarsar, Manal Stephan, Karen Schmelzkopf, and Marina Vujnovic.

Does the growing economic might of regional superpowers like Brazil mean that dependency theory of the 1960s was all wrong? The answer to this and many other enigmas of development is found in Sub-Imperialism Revisited, a theoretically rigorous study by the brilliant Mexican analyst Adrián Sotelo Valencia. In analysing the 21st Century conditions of Latin America, Sotelo systematically explores the concept of "sub-imperialism" as advanced in the pioneering work of Ruy Mauro Marini. Himself a former student of Marini, Sotelo elucidates the explanatory power of a fully Marxist conception of imperialism and underdevelopment while providing considerable insight into opposing conceptions of dependency. This timely book ultimately enables readers to appreciate why radical dependency theory remains more relevant today than ever.

Listen to the podcast about Cory Blad's chapter in this book 'Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era'.This book seeks to explore welfare responses by questioning and going beyond the assumptions found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) broad typologies of welfare capitalism. Specifically, the project seeks to reflect how the state engages, and creates general institutionalized responses to, market mechanisms and how such responses have created path dependencies in how states approach problems of inequality. Moreover, if the neoliberal era is defined as the dissemination and extension of market values to all forms of state institutions and social action, the need arises to critically investigate not only the embeddedness of such values and modes of thought in different contexts and institutional forms, but responses and modes of resistance arising from practice that might point to new forms of resilience.

The Marxist Theory of Dependency (TMD) managed to articulate the insertion of peripheral societies into the international market with the capital accumulation processes of each country. It has become an essential theory for the understanding of our societies. Since Ruy Mauro Marini laid out its foundations, many transformations have occurred in global capitalism and in our societies, leaving us the challenge of updating it against a more complex context.The real test of theory is its adequacy as an instrument of understanding contemporary reality. The TMD has been enriched and renewed from this work of Carlos Eduardo Martins. It considers capitalism from the perspective of anti-capitalism, dependence from the standpoint of emancipation and reality through a vision for its revolutionary transformation.Emir Sader - CLACSO General Secretary (2006-2012)This book is a revised edition of a work first published in 2011 as Globalização, dependência e neoliberalismo na América Latina by Boitempo Editorial, São Paulo, Brazil.La teoría marxista de la dependencia (TMD) logró articular la inserción de las sociedades periféricas en el mercado internacional con los procesos de acumulación de capital de cada país. Se ha convertido en una teoría esencial para la comprensión de nuestras sociedades. Desde que Ruy Mauro Marini expuso sus fundamentos, muchas transformaciones ocurrieron en el capitalismo global y en nuestras sociedades, poniendo el desafío de actualización en condiciones más complejasLa prueba real de la teoría es su adecuación como instrumento de comprensión de la realidad contemporánea. La TMD sale enriquecida y renovada de esta obra de Carlos Eduardo Martins dedicada a pensar el capitalismo bajo la perspectiva del anticapitalismo, la dependencia en la óptica de la emancipación y la realidad en la perspectiva de su transformación revolucionaria.Emir Sader - Secretario General CLACSO (2006-2012)

In Migration, Reproduction and Society, Alejandro I. Canales offers a theoretical model for understanding the dilemmas presented by migration in the transformation of contemporary society. Aging and changing demographics in advanced societies make economic and social reproduction dependent upon the contributions made by immigration. However, these same demographic processes are conducive to ethnic transformations. The political dilemma facing advanced societies is that immigration is required to ensure their reproduction, but this entails becoming multicultural societies where the political hegemony of ethnic and demographic majorities becomes radically subverted. This paves the way to a pervasive political conflict already evident in the current immigration crisis in Europe just as in the revival of racism and xenophobia in the United States.En Migration, Reproduction and Society, Alejandro I. Canales propone un modelo teórico para el entendimiento del dilema político y social concerniente al papel de las migraciones en la transformación de la sociedad contemporánea. El envejecimiento y decline demográfico en las sociedades avanzadas hacen que la dinámica económica y la reproducción social de la población dependan directamente de los aportes que hace la inmigración. Sin embargo, estos mismos procesos demográficos propician una transformación étnica de sus actuales equilibrios sociales y demográficos. El dilema político que enfrentan las sociedades avanzadas es que para asegurar su reproducción debe necesariamente abrirse a la inmigración, pero ello conlleva la posibilidad de constituirse en sociedades multiculturales en donde la hegemonía política de las actuales mayorías étnicas y demográficas se trastocaría radicalmente. Es la base de un conflicto político cuyos indicios ya se advierten en la actual crisis migratoria en Europa, así como en el renacer del racismo y xenofobia en los Estados Unidos.

This work by the distinguished Mexican theorist Adrián Sotelo Valencia explores new dimensions of super-exploitation in a context of the structural crisis of capitalism and imperialism. Steeped in a new generation of radical dependency theory and informed by the legacy of his own mentor, the famous Brazilian Marxist Ruy Mauro Marini, Sotelo rigorously examines prevailing theoretical debates regarding the expansion of super-exploitation in advanced capitalism. Building upon a Marinist framework, he goes beyond Marini to identify new forms of super-exploitation that shape the growing precarity of work. Sotelo demonstrates the inextricable link between reliance upon fictitious capital and the intensification of super-exploitation. Poignant contrasts are drawn between US capitalism and Mexico that reveal the nefarious new forms of imperialist dependency.

The book makes accessible a selection of speeches and television appearances by Fidel Castro during the first two years of the Cuban Revolution. Readers can trace the evolution of this legendary leader’s radical political thought and analyze his extraordinary capacity for overcoming adverse political and ideological circumstances in a constant movement towards a socialist ideal. The work is organized chronologically with introductory presentations prepared by Cuban experts José Bell, Tania Caram and Delia Luisa López and includes a glossary and bibliography. The methodology of this work is original and includes material from 1959 not previously published elsewhere.

Ecuador’s “Good Living”: Crises, Discourse, and Law by Gallegos Anda, presents a critical approach towards the concept of Buen Vivir that was included in Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution. Due to its apparent legal novelty, this normative formula received much praise from multiple civil society and academic circles by forging what some argued to be a new development paradigm based on Andean epistemologies. Gallegos Anda theorizes this important phenomenon through an inductive analysis of context and power relations. Through a masterful navigation through epistemological fields, the author offers a critical theory of Buen Vivir that focuses on changing citizenship regimes, a retreating state, politicised ethnic cleavages, discursive democracy and the emergence of an empty signifier. Gallegos-Anda is the first to situate Buen Vivir in a theoretical context grounded in international human rights law.

In Cuba Was Different, Even Sandvik Underlid explores the views of Cuban authorities, official press, and Party members as they reflect back on the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism. In so doing, he contributes to a better understanding as to why the Cuban system – often associated with Fidel Castro’s leadership – did not itself collapse. Despite the loss of its most important allies, key ideological referents, and even most of its foreign trade, Cuba did not embrace capitalism.The author critically examines and analyzes the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe as reported in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma, both as they unfolded and subsequently through the lens of additional interviews with individual Party members. This focus on Cuba’s Communist Party provides new perspectives on how these events were seen from Cuba and on the notable resilience of many party members.

In Against Inequality, the authors offer a theoretical and political proposal for social emancipation, seen as an opportunity to build conditions of equality in contexts of freedom, not only for ethical but essentially political foundations. To achieve this, the authors confront inequality in two ways: as a social phenomenon (and, therefore, historically situated and structured) and through critical reflection on the concepts, categories, indicators and frameworks of its understanding. In this sense, they propose a critical reflection of the ways in which it has been thought theoretically and politically at various times, with special reference to the way in which it has been conceived in modern, capitalist society.