Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of The Cfa Franc, Francis Perez

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is organized into three essays. The second essay provides a historical overview of the CFA franc and explores why the CFA franc has survived for so long. It argues that a historical and dialectical materialist analysis of the CFA’s history can best explain both its extraordinary longevity and the periodic major reforms to its functioning. The third essay assesses whether the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) has an independent monetary policy by examining the relationships between BCEAO’s foreign reserves and base money, and between BCEAO and the European Central Banks’s policy rates. The fourth essay evaluates …

Work, Workers, And Reproducing Social Control: Racial Post-Fordism And Alternative Systems, Hannah Rebecca Archambault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation interrogates the composition of workers, work, and class, as processes in contemporary capitalism and in other existing or future systems. The first section develops a theoretical framework to understand work and workers which draws on Autonomist Marxist, Black radical, and Marxist feminist literatures. This includes considering new forms and organizations of work that arise from current capitalist economic relations, racialized work, and reproductive work. With this framework I build a theory of racial post-Fordism as the current system of economic relations. In the next section, I apply this theory of racial post-Fordism to work and workers in the …

Three Essays On The Political Economy Of Global Inaction On Climate Change, Tyler A. Hansen

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation contributes three essays exploring the political economy of global inaction on climate change. Chapter 1 asks whether climate stabilization means the end of capitalism. Two influential perspectives within environmental political economy—the “degrowth” perspective from ecological economics and the “revolution” perspective from ecological Marxism—answer in the affirmative. If they are right, climate policy programs within capitalism, like the Green New Deal, are non-solutions. I evaluate their arguments, concluding that while environmental sustainability in general likely requires moving beyond capitalism, climate stabilization in particular does not. Given the urgency of the climate crisis, I conclude the chapter by outlining a …

Care Work In Chile’S Segregated Cities, Manuel Garcia

Doctoral Dissertations

This project combines diverse theoretical and methodological tools to examine the relationship between space and care work in Chile. The chapters are stand-alone articles that come together to tell a single story. The social production of urban space has marginalized thousands of female caregivers from the labor market as Chile’s care system unravels. I argue that community caregiving could simultaneously improve the conditions of caregivers and dependents. Chapter 1 examines the role of residential segregation in reproducing Chile’s meager female labor market participation rates. I use spatial and econometric analysis to show that the social forces that segregate Santiago create …

Essays On Exchange Rate Shocks And The Political Economy Of Local Fiscal Policy In Brazil, Raphael Rocha Gouvea

Doctoral Dissertations

Do exchange rate shocks have distributional consequences? Does employment respond to exchange rate shocks? Do political parties matter when it comes to governing cities? Each chapter of this dissertation attempts to answer one of these questions in the Brazilian context. In the first chapter, titled Large devaluations and inflation inequality: evidence from Brazil, I show that prices of tradable goods/lower-priced varieties increase significantly more than the prices of nontradables/higher-priced varieties. These relative price changes may lead to inflation inequality when household consumption baskets are different across the distribution of income. Using Cravino and Levchenko (2017)'s methodology, we show that …

Managing The Agricultural Biotechnology Revolution: Responses To Transgenic Seeds In Developing Countries, Alper Yagci

Doctoral Dissertations

There has been heated debate over transgenic or genetically modified (GM) crops in agriculture. Advocates and critics argue over possible economic, environmental, public health implications of this technology. This study examines varying policy approaches to regulating GM crop cultivation in four developing countries where the technology has large potential application. Why have some countries banned GM crop cultivation in their territory while others encouraged it? In countries where GM crops were allowed, why have varying systems of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection been constructed? To investigate these questions I comparatively examine the policy experience (1995-2015) of Argentina, Brazil, Turkey relying …

Place, Nature, And Political Economy: The Submerged Politics Of Alternative Agri-Food Movements, Matthew Aaron Lepori

Doctoral Dissertations

I aim to speak to those studying environmentalism, food politics, and contemporary political theory, as well as provide a new way to consider the question of political economic order. I investigate three “alternative” political discourses in the United States, study their effect upon the political economic vision of the American alternative agri-food movement, and relate these effects to the stability of the American political economy. Scholars working in several disciplines attribute this stability—achieved despite economic crises and growing inequality—to the hegemony of neoliberalism. I suggest a different route: the status quo is also maintained when discourses (anterior and ulterior to …

Digital Capitalism Today: It Industry-Led Public Private Partnerships In A Northeastern School, Paige Mustain

Masters Theses

There has been considerable zeal regarding the democratizing promises of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This belief has resulted in the proliferation of ICT development initiatives in education through public private partnerships. However, there are critical scholars who caution against an overly celebratory perspective of ICTs and expose the ways in which they may be contributing to the exacerbation of existing inequalities. This thesis was inspired by Dan Schiller’s book, Digital Capitalism (1999) with the purpose of examining how digital capitalism is evident today.

'Digital capitalism' refers to the relationship between politics, economics, and technology that explains the shift in …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Organic Farming And Rural Transformations In The European Union: A Political Economy Approach, Charalampos Konstantinidis

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the impact of organic farming for achieving the environmental and social objectives of sustainability in Europe over the past 20 years. Organic farming is considered the poster child of rural development in Europe, often seen as a model of the integration of small-scale production with environmental considerations. Since this model runs counter to the logic of developing capitalist structures in agriculture, I revisit the Marxian predictions regarding the "agrarian question". Furthermore, I trace the discursive changes in support of small-scale production in the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and assess whether small farms have improved their situation …

Post-Marxism After Althusser: A Critique Of The Alternatives, Ceren Ozselcuk

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

This dissertation provides a particular Marxian class analytical political economy critique of post-Marxism. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which different positions within post-Marxism continue to essentialize the conceptualizations of class and capitalist economy. What distinguishes this dissertation from other dominant critiques of post-Marxism is the anti-essentialist epistemological and ontological position it adopts. By adopting an anti-essentialist epistemological position the dissertation is able to demonstrate the discontinuities and continuities between post-Marxism and the Marxian tradition. The dissertation does this by reading the heterogeneous and disparate post-Marxian approaches as so many different ways to "resolve" the central tension of the Althusserian …