Wall Street plunges further, further and further

The American Senate has blocked the proposed bail out and financial markets across the world will feel the effects of this decision. The Dow Jones yesterday dropped with almost 8 percent and the rest of the world is most likely to follow soon. What a lot of people don't you know, except from the fact that this crises will go on for a little (?) longer, is how this will affect "mainstreet". The following discussion between a market analyst (pro Bail Out) and a radio show host specialised on US financial markets (anti Bail Out) gives you a good overview of what is happening and what is at stake. A credit crisis is looming, so it seems.

Click here for the discussion

Jailhouse rock

I want to quickly mention a report that came out in the New York Times, which reads:

"For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars... Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails... Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars... One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34...."

When reading such figures, many things come into mind. First, one wonders why the US is trying so hard to pursue even more 'criminals' outside its borders. Second, the prison business (food, housing among other things) must be a million (billion?) Dollar producing-machine. Third, the US is losing economic power from this potentially massive labour force, which they rather see inside than outside.

Sure you could argue that these people also work, through mechanisms of privatisation, in mines or in manufacturing assembly lines. But as US unions and entrepreneurs are well aware, China is increasingly becoming the only economically viable production hub. Privatised prisons are thus forced to exploit labour to a maximum in order to compete with the cheap labour from China. Moreover, the more people are in prison, the less 'brain' there is to compete economically with the rest of the world. The US industry relies on its technological know-how and superiour flows of information. However, what happens when more and more people are forced into prisons?

Well, besides the fact that society slows in its developments, you create enormous (income, racial, gender, etc) inequalities. In especially the latter, but also the former, one could thus expect social uproar or other forms of class struggles that emerge from the ashes of a self-fulfilling social division in US society.

Bottom line, having one on every hundred citizens is not good for social cohesion, political stability, economic development or external/ foreign relations. Finally, a question that comes into mind:

"are US citizens really that criminal in nature or is there something more fundamentally wrong in its society"?

* courtesy of NYT

Research abstract

Today not a movie, but my updated research abstract! Please dont be shy and comment when you dissagree or when you think that something is not clear (enough). I intend to provide this (probably with some ammendments) to compete for a scholarship at my uni.

Thanks a lot for any comments!

Introduction

My interest in analysing China’s post-modernity (through a progressive political-economic framework) is the logical consequence of the position I fulfilled as an urban planner in Changzhou (Jiangsu province). During my employment for the Chinese and German government I became aware of the intrinsic relation between China’s changing landscape and its paradoxical political-economic apparatus. This area of study has however been largely neglected by both economic sociologists and anthropological political-economists. I believe that an in-depth and progressive study on the functioning of capitalism and the effects it has on China’s modernisation project could allow for a greater understanding of its impact on the country’s urban society.

Background

China’s contemporary development towards a stage of modernity is in this research considered to be taking place under a dynamic, yet contradictory synthesis of a deceased communist ideology and a political apparatus which increasingly relies on a capitalist logic. A paradoxical situation, described as an ‘authoritarian state capitalism’, which compels the country to increasingly transition into spaces of modernity and post-modernity. These historical stages, which are understood to be temporal transitions within the expansive rationale of capitalism, have provided an environment for both an increasing commodification of the natural word and a cognitive instrumentalisation of human perceptions and aesthetics.

Hypothesis

The discussion on the country’s long and still ongoing twentieth century, characterised by its questioning of how to modernise, will serve as the key to an unlocking of the hypothesis that China’s integration in the world economy (and its concomitant embrace of the capitalist logic for the purpose of political stability) fundamentally alters the landscape of China into layers of a reproductive post-modernity. The validity and nature of this presupposition will be tested empirically on the basis of the increasing influence of European architecture on China’s urban landscape. The simulacrum of ‘Europeanness’ into an ever growing number of Chinese cities marks the growing estrangement of inhabitants from their local habitat and underpins the growing influence of capitalist Reason into the consciousness of China’s population.

Epistemology

The epistemological approach of this research finds its origin in the historical transcendence of the dialectic which is central to the Hegelian-Marxist interpretation of capitalism and its instrumental reasoning. This historical narrative finds its support in a robust theoretical framework, which from the very onset of this research will conceptualise both the dialectics of capitalism and its role in the path to modernisation and post-modernity. Evidently, this causes the necessity to revaluate Marxism along lines which would enable it to come to terms with China’s internal contradictions in a world which is said to be increasingly ‘globalised’. The intended makeover, which will find its support in the works of progressive and philosophical Marxian theory, is not a rejection of Marxism, but rather a recognition and acceptance of its validity over the deterministic economic base that is increasingly intertwined with its super-structure.

David Harvey

People that are into Marxism, have the highest appreciation for him. People that consider themselves post-modernists or post structuralists disfavour him for his critique in " The Condition of Modernity". Finally, economic liberals fear him for his critical analysis of our present neo liberal political economic climate. I am talking of course about David Harvey.

For especially those unfamiliar with him, but also those that did indeed hear of him, I reckon it is well worth spending a couple of minutes listening to his account in "A brief history of Neo Liberalism".

Opinion or comment? Drop them in the comment box!

Part I


Part II


Part III


Part IV


Part V