New Political Economy – serie
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42 produkter
42 produkter
Ecological Imperialism, Development, and the Capitalist World-System
Cases from Africa and Asia
Inbunden, Engelska, 2022
1 986 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Two major trends are currently challenging the sustainability of human civilization: extreme inequality and the ecological crisis. This book argues that these are intrinsically linked by further exploring the complex relationships between global ecological crises, neoliberal globalization, orthodox development policies, and imperialism.Drawn from extensive theoretical, historical, policy, and empirical research, as well as fieldwork in Africa and Asia, this book examines the crucial characteristics of the capitalist world-system and how it enables and drives ecological imperialism. Neoliberal globalization has allowed for capital’s unfettered access to and exploitation of Nature across the planet, and neoliberal development policies have reinforced a contemporary form of ecological imperialism where the environments of the Global South are enclosed and exploited, and local communities are dispossessed of their land and livelihoods. Simultaneously, resources from the Global South are funneled to the Global North in the form of consumer goods and ecologically unequal exchange, while the profits from those resources are siphoned away to transnational corporations, financiers, and government elites. This work traces the historical development of free market policies, while also paying special attention to the role of Northern international financial institutions, emerging economies (the semi-periphery), and the often-hidden role of international finance in ecological imperialism.This volume will be of keen interest to scholars and students of political economy, critical development studies, environmental sociology, and political ecology.
Cooperatives, the State, and Corporate Power in African Export Agriculture
The Case of Uganda’s Coffee Sector
Häftad, Engelska, 2020
644 kr
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Agriculture is a major contributor to Africa’s GDP, the region’s biggest source of employment and its largest food producer. However, agricultural productivity remains low and buyer-driven global value chains offer few opportunities for small producers to upgrade into higher value-added activities. In recent years, the revival of Africa’s cooperatives has been celebrated by governments and international donors as a pathway towards inclusive agricultural development, and this book explores the strengths but also the issues which surround these cooperatives.The book scrutinizes the neoliberal ideal of economic prosperity arising through the operation of liberalized labor markets by illuminating the discriminatory nature of Uganda’s informal labor relations. It points to the role of cooperatives as a potential instrument of progressive change in African export agriculture, where large numbers of small producers depend on casual wage work in addition to farming. In contrast to the portrayal, advanced by some governments and rarely questioned by donors, of an unproblematic co-existence of small producers’ collective action and big capital interests, the author calls for a re-politicized debate on the Social and Solidarity Economy. As part of this, she highlights the adverse political and economic conditions faced by African cooperatives, including intense international competition in agricultural processing, inadequate access to infrastructure and services, and at times antagonistic state-cooperative relations.Supported by wide-ranging interdisciplinary evidence, including new ethnographic, survey and interview data, this book shows how cooperatives may be co-opted by both the state and corporations in a discourse that ignores structural inequalities in value chains and emphasizes poverty reduction over economic and political empowerment. It provides a critique of New Institutional Economics as a framework for understanding how institutions shape redistribution, and develops a political economy approach to explore the conditions for structural change in African export agriculture.
Discipline in the Global Economy?
International Finance and the End of Liberalism
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
262 kr
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In Discipline in the Global Economy, Jakob Vestergaard investigates the currently prevailing regulation of international finance, launched in response to the financial crises of the 1990’s. At the core of this approach is a set of standards of ‘best practice’, ranging from banking supervision to corporate governance. Vestergaard argues that although these standards are presented as ‘international’, they comprise a norm for the ‘proper’ organization and regulation of economies which is intimately related to the Anglo-American model of capitalism. With this approach to the regulation of international finance, previous deregulation policies were replaced by a comprehensive system for the global disciplining of economies. This is a remarkable, if not paradoxical, occurrence in what is allegedly the heyday of neoliberalism and ‘free market economy’. Moreover, this mode of international financial regulation has proved ineffective, if not counter-productive, in terms of its objective to enhance the stability and resilience of the international financial system. Only by abandoning ‘laissez-fairy tales’ about liberalism may we begin to understand our present predicament– and open a space for critical thinking on modes of international economic governance that are at the same time more conducive to financial stability and more in line with the ethos of liberalism.
346 kr
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The Progressive Era was among the most volatile times for the economy and labor in American History. Daniel E. Saros explores the institutional and economic conditions of this time, revealing new insight into the regulated nature of industry and the conditions of labor. Using the steel industry as a case study, Saros demonstrates how the United States Steel Corporation enhanced the performance of the steel industry by initiating a price and wage stabilization program. In an effort to combat potential threats from the federal government, the American public, and organized labor to the market stabilization program and mechanization drive, the steel companies introduced a paternalistic welfare program, company unions, and limited hours reform. Saros also contrasts this time with free market periods, examining the impacts on rates of profit, output growth, and capital accumulation.
364 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Russell provides a groundbreaking critique of the orthodox position on the nature of New Deal reforms as well as an innovative analysis of the unraveling of those reforms. Russell argues that the success of the New Deal banking reforms in the post-war period initially produced a "pax financus" in which the competitive struggles amongst financial capital were moderated. However, the success of these reforms also produced incentives to undermine the New Deal regulatory framework via a regeneration of competitive struggles among financial capitalists. As these struggles intensified, financial innovations designed to circumvent regulatory restrictions changed the conduct of commercial banking and other financial capitalist activity. As these developments progressed, there has been a resurgence in the diversified financial conglomerates (financial holding companies) reminiscent of those that flourished just prior to the Great Depression. This exceptional work will appeal to historians, economists, and those interested in this vital period of American history.
817 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book is the only comprehensive analysis of contemporary prison labor in the United States. In it, the author makes the provocative claim that prison labor is best understood as a form of slavery, in which the labor-power of each inmate (though not their person) is owned by the Department of Corrections, and this enslavement is used to extract surplus labor from the inmates, for which no compensation is provided. Other authors have claimed that prison labor is slavery, but no previous study has made a rigorous argument based on a systematic analysis of the flows of surplus labor which take place in the various ways prison slavery is organized in the US prison system, nor has another study systematically examined ‘prison household’ production, in which inmates produce the goods and services necessary to run the prison, nor does another work discuss state welfare in prisons, and how this affects prison labor. The study is based on empirical findings gathered by the author’s direct observation of prison factories in 28 prisons across the country. This book offers new insights into the practice of prison labor, and should be read by all serious students of American society.
Political Economy of European Union Competition Policy
A Case Study of the Telecommunications Industry
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
728 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In the European Union (EU), competition policy occupies a central place amongst other EU public policies and is the first truly supranational public policy regulating market competition. One of the stated objectives of EU competition policy is to prevent excessive concentration of economic power in the hands of a few. This book investigates the political economy of EU competition policy by taking the European telecommunications industry as a case study. Baskoy argues that the EU competition policy has failed to achieve its objectives of preventing excessive market concentration in the telecommunications industry over the past quarter-century. He takes the controversial view that EU competition policy foremost promotes an industrial policy that fosters the profitability of European firms. Moreover, Baskoy argues that EU competition policy is short of adequate theoretical and conceptual capacities to comprehend the working dynamics of market competition and the market behavior of firms. This exceptional book will be of interest to scholars of Politics, Economics, Business, and International Relations and Policies.
707 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book brings to the forefront the significance of local everyday economic practices to development policymaking. Chowdhury's objective in unearthing these diverse activities is two-fold. She demonstrates why it is a misrepresentation to characterize all that is economic as "capitalism". Additionally, she contends that in those instances of rupture where local economic practices break into dominant narratives of the economy, we catch a glimpse of what James Scott has referred to as the "hidden transcripts" of alternative epistemologies. Chowdhury argues that the normative content of these other epistemological frameworks provide us with alternative ways to conceptualize economic development as something other than industrialization, urbanization and environmental degradation as experienced by the West.
474 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book examines one of the most high-profile municipal privatizations—the privatization of New York City’s Central Park. The fiscal crisis of the 1970s established the political and cultural opening for privatizations, which were justified on the basis of increasing efficiency. However, as Cooke demonstrates, these justifications were deliberately blind to the social and economic implication of privatization. This fascinating account moves beyond the hackneyed pro- versus anti-privatization debate by reconceptualizing the park’s privatization as an ensemble of contradictory class effects. It also highlights the immense theoretical and policy space for radically reconsidering and rethinking privatization processes in both the municipal and global contexts.
Worker Identity, Agency and Economic Development
Women's Empowerment in the Indian Informal Economy
Inbunden, Engelska, 2010
2 271 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
More than nine out of every ten working women in India are employed in the informal economy, unprotected by labour laws and excluded from basic forms of social security. They work as daily labourers in the fields, small producers and industrial outworkers in their own homes and as vendors on the streets. These workers typically receive very low wages and experience extreme forms of social, economic and political marginalisation. This book examines what types of interventions can improve the well-being of women working in the Indian informal economy. Using the case study of the Self Employed Women’s Association, Worker Identity, Agency and Economic Development argues that work-life reform for informal women workers has moral and social dimensions, as well as economic. Drawing on the work of social philosopher Axel Honneth, the book argues that worker agency is critical to the process of work-life reform in the informal economy. Using empirical data collected amongst SEWA members the study shows that there is a positive and developmental relationship between a worker’s identity, or psychological integrity, and her actual capacity to engage in the political economy for constructive change. The study shows that membership based organisations can promote the social foundations of recognition and respect that are critical to identity and agency, as well as provide worker’s with real opportunities to develop alternative non-exploitative economic institutions that deliver improved wages and social security. But in organizing informal workers for collective action the existing distribution of power and wealth, as well as gender privilege are challenged. The result is social conflict and sometimes violence. Conflict of this nature is endemic to the development process, but is often overlooked in development literature and policy design.The book will be of interest to development scholars and practitioners, as well as those interested in the dynamics of women’s empowerment and socio-economic change for informal economy workers.
2 203 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The ideas of neoliberalism perpetuate a disembedded and dichotomised view of economy-ecology relations. The renewed interest in climate change and sustainability attests to the lack of progress achieved by the ‘sustainable development’ regime and to the need for more appropriate frameworks for guiding social organisation toward ecological sustainability. This book is born of the need for a critique of current approaches to environmental policy and governance and the search for alternative sustainability frameworks.Utilising a conceptual approach based on the Polanyian concept of ‘embeddedness’, this book argues that the links between economic theory, neo-liberalism, and the current regime of sustainable development, have rendered ‘sustainability’ a discursive frame in the service of economic rather than ecological goals. In rejecting the integrity of ‘environmental neo-liberalism’, Paton argues there are some clear points of divergence between liberalism and neo-liberalism. She subsequently examines separately the impact on liberalism of efforts to integrate environmental concerns in order to determine if therein lies the potential for an effective reformist politics of ‘ecological sustainability’.
707 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book deals with the rapid changes in contemporary molecular biology, particularly genome sciences, and the manner in which they can be understood through the lens of political economy. Specifically, the work investigates the case of the United States-led Genome Project (HGP), in order to show that even large-scale basic science is closely bound up in the progression of capitalist social relations. The work has, in part, been motivated by the lack of rigorous analysis of the HGP. Most the existing literature tends to present either a chronological review of events surrounding the HGP or describe it thematically. In contrast, this book contributes to a needed discussion concerning the 'why and how' of the HGP emergence. It elucidates the features within capitalist social relations which have simultaneously enable the HGP and ensure its amenability to systemic demands. The work's most compelling elements are both historical and analytical. Historically, it places the HGP within the context of wider political, economic and social issues. Related to this, it puts forward an analytical, explanatory understanding of the project's emergence, making it a valuable tool for both political economists, science & society theorists, and even bioethicists.
Structuralism and Individualism in Economic Analysis
The "Contractionary Devaluation Debate" in Development Economics
Häftad, Engelska, 2012
335 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book argues that the debates about the appropriate economic policies to follow in the developing world within the field of development economics are at heart debates about the appropriate ontology to ascribe to agents within the developing world.
703 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Why have Africans not gained a more dominant position in urban manufacturing in Kenya? This question is explored through an analysis of the institutions, both formal and informal, that have affected patterns of capital accumulation in Kenya by the African and Asian (Indian) communities. Using a new institutional economics approach, this book explores the history of economic activity through the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods, including the transformative period of British rule. During the colonial period, Asians were brought in to build the railways and subsequently focused on urban-based activities. Africans, meanwhile, found it difficult to move out of agriculture. Thus, the ethnic-sectoral division of activities was entrenched by the formal laws and powers of the British. Following independence, the network and financial capital that Asians had built up allowed them to survive early attempts at the Africanization of industry. Africans, now supported by the formal institutions of the state, still found it difficult to engage in manufacturing because they lacked the informal networks that support trade and credit. The analysis is supported by the results of a contemporary survey of 120 manufacturing firms in Nairobi’s metal sector that highlight the division between smaller African firms and larger Asian ones.
693 kr
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How can unions move from a defensive strategy to one of class transformation? Mulder demonstrates how the current union strategies of class blindness lead to weak and often unintended results. Unions, she argues, do not use their collective power for class transformation and union commentators/critics do not theorize about unions as possible agents for such class transformations. Using the case study of the Broadway musicians’ union, Mulder shows how unions can facilitate a class transformation that increases workers’ control over their working conditions and enables them to make the changes needed to improve their lives. This innovative and needed study will be of interest to labor economists, scholars of class and labor, and those interested in the plight of unions and the potential they still hold for social and economic transformations.
488 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Miracle for Whom? offers a fresh and insightful perspective to the debate on rising income inequality in Chile, and on the broader question of how free trade affects the demand for workers in developing countries.
Political Economy from Below
Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914
Häftad, Engelska, 2013
707 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Communitarian anarchism is a generic form of socialism that denies the need for a state or any other authority over the individual from above, and which requires absolute belief that the individual cannot exist outside of a community of others. This book suggests that the communitarian anarchists of the nineteenth century developed and articulated a distinct tradition of economic thought. The period of this study begins with the first major writing of the French communitarian anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in 1840 and ends with the temporary burial of anarchist theorizing at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. However, he tradition of communitarian anarchist economic thought did not end in 1914. The economic thought explored in this book provides a fresh perception of the fragmentation evident in many societies today, especially where there is a substantial "informal economy."
Late Neoclassical Economics
The restoration of theoretical humanism in contemporary economic theory
Inbunden, Engelska, 2016
1 491 kr
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Several contemporary economic theories revolve around different concepts: market failures, institutions, transaction costs, information asymmetries, motivational diversity, cognitive limitations, strategic behaviors and evolutionary stability. In recent years, many economists have argued that the increase in circulation and mobilization of these new and heterogeneous concepts and their associated methodologies (e.g., experiments, evolutionary modelling, simulations) signify the death of neoclassical economics. Late Neoclassical Economics: The Restoration of Theoretical Humanism in Contemporary Economic Theory draws on the work of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and the Amherst School, to construct the concept of a self-transparent and self-conscious human subject (Homo economicus) as the theoretical humanist core of the neoclassical tradition. Instead of identifying the emergent heterogeneity as a break from neoclassicism, this book offers a careful genealogy of many of the new concepts and approaches - including evolutionary game theory, experimental economics and behavioural economics - and reads their elaboration as part of the restoration of the theoretical humanist core of the tradition. ‘Late neoclassical economics’ is therefore characterized as a collection of diverse approaches which have emerged in response to the drift towards structuralism.This book is suitable for those who study political economy, history of economic thought and philosophy of economics. The arguments put forward in this text will also resonate with anyone who is interested in the fate of the neoclassical tradition and the future of economic theory.
758 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The ideas of neoliberalism perpetuate a disembedded and dichotomised view of economy-ecology relations. The renewed interest in climate change and sustainability attests to the lack of progress achieved by the ‘sustainable development’ regime and to the need for more appropriate frameworks for guiding social organisation toward ecological sustainability. This book is born of the need for a critique of current approaches to environmental policy and governance and the search for alternative sustainability frameworks.Utilising a conceptual approach based on the Polanyian concept of ‘embeddedness’, this book argues that the links between economic theory, neo-liberalism, and the current regime of sustainable development, have rendered ‘sustainability’ a discursive frame in the service of economic rather than ecological goals. In rejecting the integrity of ‘environmental neo-liberalism’, Paton argues there are some clear points of divergence between liberalism and neo-liberalism. She subsequently examines separately the impact on liberalism of efforts to integrate environmental concerns in order to determine if therein lies the potential for an effective reformist politics of ‘ecological sustainability’.
1 379 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Integrating a focus on gender with Marx’s surplus-based notion of class, this book offers a one-of-a-kind analysis of family farms in the United States. The analysis shows how gender and class struggles developed during important moments in the history of these family farms shaped the trajectory of U.S. agricultural development. It also generates surprising insights about the family farm we thought we knew, as well as the food and agricultural system today. Elizabeth A. Ramey theorizes the family farm as a complex hybrid of mostly feudal and ancient class structures. This class-based definition of the family farm yields unique insights into three broad aspects of U.S. agricultural history. First, the analysis highlights the crucial, yet under-recognized role of farm women and children’s unpaid labor in subsidizing the family farm. Second, it allows for a new, class-based perspective on the roots of the twentieth century "miracle of productivity" in U.S. agriculture, and finally, the book demonstrates how the unique set of contradictions and circumstances facing family farmers during the early twentieth century, including class exploitation, was connected to concern for their ability to serve the needs of U.S. industrial capitalist development. The argument presented here highlights the significant costs associated with the intensification of exploitation in the transition to industrial agriculture in the U.S. When viewed through the lens of class, the hallowed family farm becomes an example of one of the most exploitative institutions in the U.S. economy. This book is suitable for students who study economic history, agricultural studies, and labor economics.
364 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book concentrates upon the historic associations of the marketplace in the work of Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and demonstrates how what markets were imagined to entail for society was critical to each author's understanding of the central social problems of their time.
Political Economy from Below
Economic Thought in Communitarian Anarchism, 1840-1914
Inbunden, Engelska, 2004
2 192 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Communitarian anarchism is a generic form of socialism that denies the need for a state or any other authority over the individual from above, and which requires absolute belief that the individual cannot exist outside of a community of others. This book suggests that the communitarian anarchists of the nineteenth century developed and articulated a distinct tradition of economic thought. The period of this study begins with the first major writing of the French communitarian anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, in 1840 and ends with the temporary burial of anarchist theorizing at the beginning of the First World War in 1914. However, he tradition of communitarian anarchist economic thought did not end in 1914. The economic thought explored in this book provides a fresh perception of the fragmentation evident in many societies today, especially where there is a substantial "informal economy."
Structuralism and Individualism in Economic Analysis
The "Contractionary Devaluation Debate" in Development Economics
Inbunden, Engelska, 2004
581 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book argues that the debates about the appropriate economic policies to follow in the developing world within the field of development economics are at heart debates about the appropriate ontology to ascribe to agents within the developing world.
2 192 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book brings to the forefront the significance of local everyday economic practices to development policymaking. Chowdhury's objective in unearthing these diverse activities is two-fold. She demonstrates why it is a misrepresentation to characterize all that is economic as "capitalism". Additionally, she contends that in those instances of rupture where local economic practices break into dominant narratives of the economy, we catch a glimpse of what James Scott has referred to as the "hidden transcripts" of alternative epistemologies. Chowdhury argues that the normative content of these other epistemological frameworks provide us with alternative ways to conceptualize economic development as something other than industrialization, urbanization and environmental degradation as experienced by the West.
583 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Russell provides a groundbreaking critique of the orthodox position on the nature of New Deal reforms as well as an innovative analysis of the unraveling of those reforms. Russell argues that the success of the New Deal banking reforms in the post-war period initially produced a "pax financus" in which the competitive struggles amongst financial capital were moderated. However, the success of these reforms also produced incentives to undermine the New Deal regulatory framework via a regeneration of competitive struggles among financial capitalists. As these struggles intensified, financial innovations designed to circumvent regulatory restrictions changed the conduct of commercial banking and other financial capitalist activity. As these developments progressed, there has been a resurgence in the diversified financial conglomerates (financial holding companies) reminiscent of those that flourished just prior to the Great Depression. This exceptional work will appeal to historians, economists, and those interested in this vital period of American history.
1 568 kr
Tillfälligt slut
This book is the only comprehensive analysis of contemporary prison labor in the United States. In it, the author makes the provocative claim that prison labor is best understood as a form of slavery, in which the labor-power of each inmate (though not their person) is owned by the Department of Corrections, and this enslavement is used to extract surplus labor from the inmates, for which no compensation is provided. Other authors have claimed that prison labor is slavery, but no previous study has made a rigorous argument based on a systematic analysis of the flows of surplus labor which take place in the various ways prison slavery is organized in the US prison system, nor has another study systematically examined ‘prison household’ production, in which inmates produce the goods and services necessary to run the prison, nor does another work discuss state welfare in prisons, and how this affects prison labor. The study is based on empirical findings gathered by the author’s direct observation of prison factories in 28 prisons across the country. This book offers new insights into the practice of prison labor, and should be read by all serious students of American society.
Political Economy of European Union Competition Policy
A Case Study of the Telecommunications Industry
Inbunden, Engelska, 2008
601 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In the European Union (EU), competition policy occupies a central place amongst other EU public policies and is the first truly supranational public policy regulating market competition. One of the stated objectives of EU competition policy is to prevent excessive concentration of economic power in the hands of a few. This book investigates the political economy of EU competition policy by taking the European telecommunications industry as a case study. Baskoy argues that the EU competition policy has failed to achieve its objectives of preventing excessive market concentration in the telecommunications industry over the past quarter-century. He takes the controversial view that EU competition policy foremost promotes an industrial policy that fosters the profitability of European firms. Moreover, Baskoy argues that EU competition policy is short of adequate theoretical and conceptual capacities to comprehend the working dynamics of market competition and the market behavior of firms. This exceptional book will be of interest to scholars of Politics, Economics, Business, and International Relations and Policies.
1 657 kr
Tillfälligt slut
This book deals with the rapid changes in contemporary molecular biology, particularly genome sciences, and the manner in which they can be understood through the lens of political economy. Specifically, the work investigates the case of the United States-led Genome Project (HGP), in order to show that even large-scale basic science is closely bound up in the progression of capitalist social relations. The work has, in part, been motivated by the lack of rigorous analysis of the HGP. Most the existing literature tends to present either a chronological review of events surrounding the HGP or describe it thematically. In contrast, this book contributes to a needed discussion concerning the 'why and how' of the HGP emergence. It elucidates the features within capitalist social relations which have simultaneously enable the HGP and ensure its amenability to systemic demands. The work's most compelling elements are both historical and analytical. Historically, it places the HGP within the context of wider political, economic and social issues. Related to this, it puts forward an analytical, explanatory understanding of the project's emergence, making it a valuable tool for both political economists, science & society theorists, and even bioethicists.
1 350 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Miracle for Whom? offers a fresh and insightful perspective to the debate on rising income inequality in Chile, and on the broader question of how free trade affects the demand for workers in developing countries.
601 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book concentrates upon the historic associations of the marketplace in the work of Aristotle, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and demonstrates how what markets were imagined to entail for society was critical to each author's understanding of the central social problems of their time.