Trabalho produtivo e acumulação de capital: uma perspectiva sociopolítica

Esta investigação visa analisar a relação entre trabalho produtivo e acumulação de capital desde a época do mercantilismo. Parte da hipótese de que não é a forma material ou imaterial do produto do trabalho que determina se este é ou não produtivo, mas a função que ele desempenha no processo global de acumulação de capital. Concebemos o capital como uma relação de produção em que trabalhadores assalariados produzem uma mais-valia para os proprietários dos meios de produção que não se limitam a consumi-la improdutivamente, mas a reinvesti-la periodicamente no processo produtivo. Pretendemos demonstrar que com o desenvolvimento do capitalismo a esfera do trabalho produtivo se alarga para além do processo de produção material porque a ciência se transforma numa força produtiva e, por conseguinte, num instrumento de valorização do capital. Além do mais, a revolução cibernética converte uma parte crescente do trabalho intelectual em trabalho produtivo. No entanto, como a desigualdade na repartição de rendimentos não parou de aumentar desde os anos oitenta do século passado, estas transformações tecnológicas não contribuíram para a melhoria das condições de existência de todos mas apenas para o incremento do sobretrabalho que sustenta a acumulação de capital.

Remaking place and securitising space: Urban regeneration and the strategies, tactics and practices of policing in the UK

Urban regeneration programmes in the UK over the past 20 years have increasingly focused on attracting investors, middle-class shoppers and visitors by transforming places and creating new consumption spaces. Ensuring that places are safe and are seen to be safe has taken on greater salience as these flows of income are easily disrupted by changing perceptions of fear and the threat of crime. At the same time, new technologies and policing strategies and tactics have been adopted in a number of regeneration areas which seek to establish control over these new urban spaces. Policing space is increasingly about controlling human actions through design, surveillance technologies and codes of conduct and enforcement. Regeneration agencies and the police now work in partnerships to develop their strategies. At its most extreme, this can lead to the creation of zero-tolerance, or what Smith terms 'revanchist', measures aimed at particular social groups in an effort to sanitise space in the interests of capital accumulation. This paper, drawing on an examination of regeneration practices and processes in one of the UK's fastest-growing urban areas, Reading in Berkshire, assesses policing strategies and tactics in the wake of a major regeneration programme. It documents and discusses the discourses of regeneration that have developed in the town and the ways in which new urban spaces have been secured. It argues that, whilst security concerns have become embedded in institutional discourses and practices, the implementation of security measures has been mediated, in part, by the local socio-political relations in and through which they have been developed.

Testing the limits of quasi-geostrophic theory: application to observed laboratory flows outside the quasi-geostrophic regime

We compare laboratory observations of equilibrated baroclinic waves in the rotating two-layer annulus, with numerical simulations from a quasi-geostrophic model. The laboratory experiments lie well outside the quasi-geostrophic regime: the Rossby number reaches unity; the depth-to-width aspect ratio is large; and the fluid contains ageostrophic inertia–gravity waves. Despite being formally inapplicable, the quasi-geostrophic model captures the laboratory flows reasonably well. The model displays several systematic biases, which are consequences of its treatment of boundary layers and neglect of interfacial surface tension and which may be explained without invoking the dynamical effects of the moderate Rossby number, large aspect ratio or inertia–gravity waves. We conclude that quasi-geostrophic theory appears to continue to apply well outside its formal bounds.

Seeds of growth? Agricultural productivity and the transitional dynamics of the Ramsey model

A two-sector Ramsey-type model of growth is developed to investigate the relationship between agricultural productivity and economy-wide growth. The framework takes into account the peculiarities of agriculture both in production ( reliance on a fixed natural resource base) and in consumption (life-sustaining role and low income elasticity of food demand). The transitional dynamics of the model establish that when preferences respect Engel's law, the level and growth rate of agricultural productivity influence the speed of capital accumulation. A calibration exercise shows that a small difference in agricultural productivity has drastic implications for the rate and pattern of growth of the economy. Hence, low agricultural productivity can form a bottleneck limiting growth, because high food prices result in a low saving rate.