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Drawing from an ethnography with a feminist anti-violence collective, this book explores how we can reimagine the relationship between academia and activism to create novel opportunities for social change. The book tells two interconnected stories: the story of a collective fighting gendered violence in an ever-shifting non-profit sector context and the story of an ethnographer learning from the collective about identity and social change. Rather than offering a prescriptive account of how academics can collaborate with activists, these intertwined stories ask us to question how we draw lines between what counts as academic/activist, theory/practice, reason/emotion, and mind/body. Unfixing these lines helps us to develop our imaginative capacity for identifying and dismantling injustice and share tools to (re)build a more just world. This book is an account of the social justice tools of feminist anti-violence activists including strong emotions and alternative organising, the unsettling the gendered body, and storytelling about feminist identity. This book is also an account of how those tools were taken up to reimagine academic activism. Beyond asking us how we might ‘do good’, however, this book asks us what we might become.

This book examines whether or not the youth employment strategies practiced in the high efficiency and expanding economies of the United States and Germany can be adopted successfully in the Mediterranean countries of Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and (southern) France, countries where youth face significant obstacles to employment. A distinguishing feature in the approach taken here is the importance placed on national culture, i.e., shared values and preferences with intergenerational sustainability that can have economic consequences. Like many other books on this subject the importance of the institutions and policies that underpin “free market capitalism” are discussed but an effort has been made to place these institutions and policies within a broader cultural and historical context. In the spirit of the pioneering work of Max Weber and the more recent contributions in the rapidly expanding sub-field of cultural economics, this book attempts to identify the elements of national value orientation that can facilitate or impede the adoption of new technologies, policies or institutional forms. It is the book’s contention, its overall thesis if you will, that a failure to correctly identify these value orientations will likely result in incomplete adoption and low levels of diffusion.

This book explores the potential of digital technologies to revolutionise political and economic organizing. To do so, it introduces the new concepts of mobile power and viral hegemony, revealing a new type of domination centred on flexibility, adaptability, and managed innovation. It reveals how neoliberalism draws its strength from the (im)material labour of contemporary subjects to adapt their diverse material and digital contexts to best reflect its capitalist ideologies. Required to counter these “infectious” hegemonic discourses is a radical guerrilla democratic politics which creatively disrupts the status quo in order to concretely reimagine the social and radically reconnect those within it. Emerging is a technologically sophisticated guerrilla democracy in which people can create the conditions for large scale progressive insurrections from the bottom up, opening up previously closed spaces and topics, while fostering a new “commons sense” for reordering and rematerialising our contemporary existence.

Digital platforms have come under intense scrutiny from scholars, policy makers, regulators, and the general public for their immense and yet largely opaque influence on the social and economic sphere. This book advances value-form and social-form directions in Marxian theory, moving beyond mainstream economic reasoning that informs much of the debate. Digital monopoly platforms such as Google and Facebook are analysed in light of their profit seeking behaviour and monetary flows generated primarily through advertising and data commodification. Considering the unity of production and circulation the book argues that outputs are better understood as a collection of different types of social forms shaped by capital (pre, intermediate and final commodities) and as forms of public wealth (Copyleft Free Software, publicly financed science and research). The authors critically engage with Marxian theories that conceptualise user activities as forms of digital labour, with zero-price markets and critical legal theories, as well as with ‘internet exceptionalism’ in various forms. The role of regulation of production, especially of financial markets and monopolies is critically discussed with an empirical analysis of the development of GAFAM companies, Google’s mandatory reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission, and of digital advertising of Google and Facebook. The book discusses contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, limits of ongoing reform initiatives, and alternatives to the logic of capital and commodity production on digital platforms.

Recent developments in the organisation of work and production have facilitated the decline of wage employment in many regions of the world. However, the idea of the wage continues to dominate the political imaginations of governments, researchers and activists. This edited collection revitalises debates on the future of work by challenging the idea of wage employment as the global norm. Taking theoretical inspiration from the Global South, the authors compare lived experiences of 'ordinary work' across taken-for-granted conceptual and geographical boundaries. Their contributions open up new possibilities for how work, identity and security might be woven together differently. This collection is an invaluable resource for academics, students and readers interested in alternative and emerging forms of work around the world.

Austerity was presented as the antidote to sluggish economies, but it has had far-reaching effects on jobs and employment conditions. This book goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work and uniquely covers the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres. The book begins with an introduction to some of the major debates concerning austerity, neoliberalism, and work. Austerity is viewed as a set of interwoven policies aimed at reducing public debt and expenditure, increasing consumer taxes and purportedly stimulating economic wellbeing through corporate tax cuts and support for private business. Since the 1970s, austerity policies have been closely associated with neoliberalism, a set of policies and processes that valorize the private-market as the solution to all social and economic problems and seek to reduce or eliminate social entitlements and public provision. Drawing on a range of perspectives, the book engages with the major debates surrounding austerity and neoliberalism, providing grounded analysis of the everyday experience of work and employment.

As we face a profound environmental crisis, we often think that it can be overcome by smart systems and green innovations, but this is risky since increasingly complex technological solutions rely on less abundant materials. A best-seller in France, this English language edition introduces readers to an alternative perspective on our technological future. The book skilfully goes against the grain to argue that 'high' technology will not solve global problems and envisages a different approach to manage our resources and build a more resilient and sustainable society.

The fundamental distinction is made between the real economy and the financial. The financial economy came into existence to serve the real economy, but led by false neoclassical microeconomic theory, it has become predatory on the real economy. Rather than seeking to correct the false theorising, this book sets it aside in its entirety, focusing instead on practical realities. A Deming based systems analysis is provided of organisational systems, their individual components and their interactions with the social and ecological macro systems within which they operate. Those organisational systems serve the real economy which is recognised as having three distinct layers, each requiring a very different approach for their effective service. The social-infrastructural layer is a mandatory state responsibility, rather than being voluntary and competitive. The progressive-competitive layer, served largely by private for-profit organisations, depends on its competitive characteristics being protected and energised. The technological-revolutionary layer is best served by a collaborative involvement of both private and public organisational systems developing and applying new technologies to generate economic progression including the necessary sustainability revolution. Required actions are identified for that remaking of the real economy and escaping destruction by organised money. Appropriate measures of progression are proposed to replace the current orthodox measures such as GDP and its growth. Practitioner Notes provide examples of the practical realities of organisational systems in both the real and financial economies, demonstrating the inadequacy and falseness of neoclassical modelling and the destructiveness of its prime beneficiaries, organised money.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution and particularities of regional organizations across Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe since 1945. The authors analyze the membership dynamics and policy scopes of 76 organizations, and compare their opportunities and challenges in regional governance. They consider organizations’ competencies in eleven different policy areas, including trade, security and environment, and trace patterns in their development. For those with interests in comparative regionalism, international relations, political science and international law, this is an essential companion to some of the world’s most significant organizations.