New Financial Elites, or Financial Dualism in Historical perspective? An Extended Reply to Folkman, Froud, Johal and Williams

This paper challenges the recent suggestion that a new financial elite has evolved which is able to capture substantial profit shares for itself. Specifically, it questions the assumption that new groups of financial intermediaries have increased in significance primarily because there is evidence that various types of financial speculators have played a similarly extensive role at several junctures of economic development. The paper then develops the alternative hypothesis that, rather than being a recent development, the rise of these financial intermediaries is a cyclical phenomenon which is linked to specific regimes of capital accumulation. The hypothesis is underpinned by historical data from the US National Income and Product Accounts for the period from 1930 to 2000, which suggest that the activities of `mainstream' financial intermediaries have been accompanied by the frequently countercyclical activities of a `speculative' sector of security and commodity brokers. Based on the combination of this qualitative and quantitative evidence, the paper concludes that the rise of a speculative financial sector is a potentially recurrent phenomenon which is linked to periods of economic restructuring and turmoil.

Current Account ‘Core-Periphery Dualism’ in the EMU. CEPS Working Document No. 406/March 2015

Current account dispersion within EU member states has been increasing since the 1990s. Interestingly, the persistent deficits in many peripheral countries have not been accompanied by a significant growth process that is able to stimulate a long-run rebalancing, as neoclassical theory predicts. To shed light on the issue this paper investigates the determinants of eurozone current account imbalances, focusing on the role played by financial integration. The analysis considers two samples of 22 OECD and 15 EU countries; three time horizons corresponding to various steps in European integration; different control variables; and several panel econometric methods. The results suggest that within the OECD and EU groups, financial integration helped to explain CA deterioration in the peripheral countries, especially in the post-EMU period. The business cycle seems to have played a growing role over time, whereas the role of competiveness seems to have diminished.

The revolt against dualism: an inquiry concerning the existence of ideas.

Mode of access: Internet.

On labour market dualism in the Lewis model: A comment

In a special issue of this journal commemorating the 50th anniversary of W. Arthur Lewis's (The Manchester School, Vol. 28 (1954), No. 2, pp. 139-191) seminal paper, the Lewis model is treated as a model of labour market dualism (Fields, The Manchester School, Vol. 72 (2004), No. 6, pp. 724-735). This interpretation is flawed for a number of reasons. First, it overemphasizes the role ascribed by Lewis to intersectoral earnings differentials in his original model. Second, it fails to acknowledge that a major shortcoming of the model was its inability to account for the widening intersectoral earnings differential observed across a wide range of developing economies. For Lewis himself this was one of the 'major theoretical puzzles of the period' (1979, p. 150). Third, it ignores Lewis's subsequent revision of the model (Lewis, The Manchester School, Vol. 47 (1979), No. 3, pp. 211-229) that, ironically, incorporates a dual labour market to resolve this puzzle. However, for Lewis the critical issue was dualism within the modern sector, not, as Fields understands it, labour market dualism between the modern and traditional sectors. Fields's appreciation of the contribution of the Lewis model to understanding the process of wage determination in developing economies is therefore misplaced.

Deleuze's secret dualism? competing accounts of the relationship between the virtual and the actual

There are competing accounts of the precise way in which the virtual and the actual are related in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. As his philosophy gains a more
widespread readership, especially in a diverse range of disciplines, it is important to review differing interpretations put forward as to the precise meanings of Deleuze’s key concepts. Much interdisciplinary work that incorporates Deleuze’s philosophy does so by using the concept of the virtual, usually by offering different accounts of this very important concept. To confound this many readers of Deleuze present differing ‘standard’ definitions, as we will see. As such there is a lack of clarity within the wider academic community and within Deleuze scholarship that stems from a divergence of opinion at best, or an unfortunate misreading at worst. In light of the current landscape this paper will both investigate this lack of consensus, and more importantly, provide a more precise reading of the relationship between the virtual and the actual as presented by Deleuze in Difference and Repetition (1994). Through a close reading of the fourth and fifth chapters we will be able to account for the movement of virtual Ideas to their actualised form, as well as to describe the precise relationship between actualisation and the process of individuation. Ultimately we will find that intensity holds the key to uncovering the precise relationship between the virtual and the actual as the domain though which objects are both actualised and individuated.

Re-thinking home economics : from modern to postmodern accounts of pedagogical bodies

Two perceptions of the marginality of home economics are widespread across educational and other contexts. One is that home economics and those who engage in its pedagogy are inevitably marginalised within patriarchal relations in education and culture. This is because home economics is characterised as women's knowledge, for the private domain of the home. The other perception is that only orthodox epistemological frameworks of inquiry should be used to interrogate this state of affairs. These perceptions have prompted leading theorists in the field to call for non-essentialist approaches to research in order to re-think the thinking that has produced this cul-de-sac positioning of home economics as a body of knowledge and a site of teacher practice. This thesis takes up the challenge of working to locate a space outside the frame of modernist research theory and methods, recognising that this shift in epistemology is necessary to unsettle the idea that home economics is inevitably marginalised. The purpose of the study is to reconfigure how we have come to think about home economics teachers and the profession of home economics as a site of cultural practice, in order to think it otherwise (Lather, 1991). This is done by exploring how the culture of home economics is being contested from within. To do so, the thesis uses a 'posthumanist' approach, which rejects the conception of the individual as a unitary and fixed entity, but instead as a subject in process, shaped by desires and language which are not necessarily consciously determined. This posthumanist project focuses attention on pedagogical body subjects as the 'unsaid' of home economics research. It works to transcend the modernist dualism of mind/body, and other binaries central to modernist work, including private/public, male/female,paid/unpaid, and valued/unvalued. In so doing, it refuses the simple margin/centre geometry so characteristic of current perceptions of home economics itself. Three studies make up this work. Studies one and two serve to document the disciplined body of home economics knowledge, the governance of which works towards normalisation of the 'proper' home economics teacher. The analysis of these accounts of home economics teachers by home economics teachers, reveals that home economics teachers are 'skilled' yet they 'suffer' for their profession. Further,home economics knowledge is seen to be complicit in reinforcing the traditional roles of masculinity and femininity, thereby reinforcing heterosexual normativity which is central to patriarchal society. The third study looks to four 'atypical'subjects who defy the category of 'proper' and 'normal' home economics teacher. These 'atypical' bodies are 'skilled' but fiercely reject the label of 'suffering'. The discussion of the studies is a feminist poststructural account, using Russo's (1994) notion of the grotesque body, which is emergent from Bakhtin's (1968) theory of the carnivalesque. It draws on the 'shreds' of home economics pedagogy,scrutinising them for their subversive, transformative potential. In this analysis, the giving and taking of pleasure and fun in the home economics classroom presents moments of surprise and of carnival. Foucault's notion of the construction of the ethical individual shows these 'atypical' bodies to be 'immoderate' yet striving hard to be 'continent' body subjects. This research captures moments of transgression which suggest that transformative moments are already embodied in the pedagogical practices of home economics teachers, and these can be 'seen' when re-looking through postmodemist lenses. Hence, the cultural practices ofhome economics as inevitably marginalised are being contested from within. Until now, home economics as a lived culture has failed to recognise possibilities for reconstructing its own field beyond the confines of modernity. This research is an example of how to think about home economics teachers and the profession as a reconfigured cultural practice. Future research about home economics as a body of knowledge and a site of teacher practice need not retell a simple story of oppression. Using postmodemist epistemologies is one way to provide opportunities for new ways of looking.