In the most complete, accurate and accessible presentation of Karl Marx’s theory of capitalism to date, Johan Fornäs presents a guide for anyone who wants to understand how today’s crisis-ridden society has emerged and is able to sustain and intensify its own deep inner contradictions. Capitalism clearly explains these contradictions, which are so relevant again today in the wake of the financial crisis. This clear and engaging guide explains capitalism for absolute beginners. Fornäs situates Marx’s ideas in context, remaining faithful to the concepts and structure of his work. This complete introduction to Marx’s economy critique covers all three volumes of Capital. It explores all the main aspects of Marx’s work – including his economic theory, his philosophical sophistication and his political critique – introducing the reader to Marx’s typical blend of sharp arguments, ruthless social reportage and utopian visions. This book will be of interest to students throughout the social sciences and humanities, including those studying sociology, social theory, economics, business studies, history, cultural studies, and politics.
Investment management is an introduction to investment analysis. The title focuses on investment in financial assets such as shares and bonds, and explains fundamental and technical analysis.
The emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse, the uncertain path of Russia towards a market economy, and the integration of ten Central and Eastern European countries into the European Union (EU) have occupied the minds and agendas of many policy-makers, business leaders and scholars from around the world at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Twenty years ago these developments were unimaginable. The impact of these changes is so vast that the importance of understanding the forces that unleashed this process, how these changes became possible, and what the lessons are for other developing countries, cannot be overestimated. This book is the first effort to analyze the economics and politics of agricultural reforms by comparing the reform processes, their causes and their effects across this vast region. The authors draw on a vast set of studies and new data, which compare reforms and economic impacts in more than 25 countries, to come up with a series of conclusions and implications on the role of economic reforms in growth, and the importance of initial conditions and political constraints in explaining the choices that were made and their effects. The book analyzes some of the most successful sets of agricultural policies in history that have lifted people out of poverty, raising productivity and incomes by staggering amounts. At the same time the book explains the reasons behind dramatic failures in policy processes and reforms that caused hunger, poverty and which had devastating effects on economic growth and development for millions of other people.
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of the recent achievements of the hacker movement. This book is the first to examine a different kind of political activism that consists in the development of technology from below.
In the most complete, accurate and accessible presentation of Karl Marx’s theory of capitalism to date, Johan Fornäs presents a guide for anyone who wants to understand how today’s crisis-ridden society has emerged and is able to sustain and intensify its own deep inner contradictions. Capitalism clearly explains these contradictions, which are so relevant again today in the wake of the financial crisis. This clear and engaging guide explains capitalism for absolute beginners. Fornäs situates Marx’s ideas in context, remaining faithful to the concepts and structure of his work. This complete introduction to Marx’s economy critique covers all three volumes of Capital. It explores all the main aspects of Marx’s work – including his economic theory, his philosophical sophistication and his political critique – introducing the reader to Marx’s typical blend of sharp arguments, ruthless social reportage and utopian visions. This book will be of interest to students throughout the social sciences and humanities, including those studying sociology, social theory, economics, business studies, history, cultural studies, and politics.
A study of the increasingly precarious relationship between humans and nature, this book seeks to go beyond work already contributed to the environmental movement. It does so by highlighting the importance of experiencing, rather than merely theorizing nature, while realizing that such experience is becoming increasingly rare, thus reinforcing the estrangement from nature that is a source of its ongoing human-caused destruction. In his original approach to environmental philosophy, the author argues for the reinstatement of nature's value outside of its exploitative usefulness for human ends. Such a perspective emphasizes the extent to which the environmental problem is a concrete reality requiring urgent action, based on a multi-sensuous appreciation of humans' dependence on nonhuman lifeforms. Designed as an accompaniment to undergraduate and postgraduate research, The Denial of Nature draws on empirically informed literature from the social sciences to examine what life is really like for humans and nature in the era of global capitalism. The book contends that capitalist society exploits nature - both in the form of human capital and natural capital - more relentlessly than any other and offers an environmental philosophy which actively opposes current developments. Through discussions of the work of Teresa Brennan, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas, and through a radical critique of the nature deficit in Jürgen Habermas' theory of capitalist modernity, The Denial of Nature relies on insights from Critical Realism to bring together several, seldom-linked philosophies and suggest a new approach to the heavily-discussed question of environmental ethics. Arne Johan Vetlesen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway and the author of twenty books among them Perception, Empathy and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance (1994), Closenes: An Ethics (with H. Jodalen; 1997), Evil and Human Agency (2005) and A Philosophy of Pain (2010). .
The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of the recent achievements of the hacker movement. This book is the first to examine a different kind of political activism that consists in the development of technology from below.
Addressing the influential analysis of law and literature, this book offers a new perspective on their relationship. The law and literature movement that has gained global prominence in the course of last decades of the twentieth and the first decades of the twenty-first centuries has provided the research and teaching of law with a considerable body of new and valuable knowledge and understanding. Most of the knowledge and insights generated by the movement concern either a thematic overlap between legal and literary discourses – suggesting they deal with the same moral concerns – or a rhetorical, semiotic or general linguistic comparability or ‘sameness’ between them – imputing to both the same or very similar narrative structures. The Literary Exception and the Rule of Law recognises the wealth of knowledge generated by this approach to the relationship between law and literature, and acknowledges its debt to this genre of scholarship. It nevertheless also proposes, on the basis of a number of revealing phenomenological inquiries, a different approach to law and literary studies: one that emphasises the irreducible difference between law and literature. It does so with the firm believe that a regard for the very different and indeed opposite discursive trajectories of legal and literary language allows for a more profound understanding of the unique and indeed separate roles that the discourses of law and literature generally play in the sustenance of relatively stable legal cultures. This important rethinking of the relationship between law and literature will appeal to scholars and students of legal theory, jurisprudence, philosophy, politics and literary theory.
That the recent turn in European Constitutional Review has effectively brought about a revolution in European law has been observed before. At issue are two major developments in European judicial review. On the one hand, the European Court of Human Rights has been collapsing traditional boundaries between constitutional law and private law with a series of decisions that effectively recognized the "horizontal" effect of Convention rights in the private sphere. On the other hand, the European Court of Justice has also given horizontal effect to fundamental liberties embodied in the Treaty on the Function of the European Union in a number of recent cases in a way that puts "established" boundaries between Member State and Union competences in question. This book takes issue with these developments by bringing to the fore a key issue that the horizontality effect debate has hitherto largely overlooked, namely, the question of sovereignty. It shows with detailed references to especially the American debate on state action and the German debate on Drittwirkung that horizontal effect cannot be understood consistently without coming to grips with the conceptions of state sovereignty that inform different approaches to horizontal effect.
This text introduces readers to the relationship between economics and ethics and to the application of economic ethics in the evaluation of the market. The insights it provides help to develop the reasoning and analytical skills needed to criticize economic analysis as well as to apply ethical concepts to moral issues in economic policy.
Marx and Engels were right when they observed in the Communist Manifesto that free markets had in a short time created greater prosperity and more technological innovation than all previous generations combined. A century and a half later, all the evidence shows that capitalism has lifted millions and millions from hunger and poverty. Today's story about global capitalism, shared by right-wing and left-wing populists, but also by large sections of the political and economic establishment, does not deny that prosperity has been created, but it says it ended up in far too few hands. This in turn has made it popular to talk about the global economy as a geopolitical zero-sum game, where we have to fight to control new innovations, introduce trade barriers and renationalize value chains. While, more broadly, capitalism is accused of fueling glaring inequality, populist revolts, climate change and China's global conquest. In this incisive and passionate investigation, Johan Norberg instead states the case for capitalism and the vital role played by the free market in today's uncertain world. Ultimately, he argues that that a move away from global capitalism would not only squeeze the growth out of the economy but also deepen an already large social exclusion for the vulnerable - for the world's poor, it would be a killing blow.
Karl Marx's classic definitions of class and society under capitalism are still widely used today. Ideas such as class, revolution, production and oppression are employed across a broad range of academic subjects, reaching beyond politics, economics and sociology.Yet these concepts, within a specifically Marxist framework, are not always easy to understand. This book is an ideal student introduction that explains, in clear and concise chapters, the precise meaning and implications of each of Marx's key concepts. Furthermore, the contributors show how these ideas continue to be relevant, and how they relate to modern society.The contributors include leading academics in the field of politicial science. Outlining clearly what each concept means, they move on to situate it within cutting-edge contemporary political theory.Concepts include historical materialism, capitalism, class, the state, imperialism, the division of labour, oppression, production and reproduction, revolution, working class internationalism, equality and democracy.
Iron is of fundamental importance for the growth, development and well being of almost all living organisms. Multiple biological systems have been developed for the uptake, utilisation, storage and homeostasis of iron in microbes, plants and mammals. e.g. Both iron deficiency and iron overload are found extensively in man: the intimate links between iron and oxidative stress are associated with a wide range of pathologies; iron has a well established role in infections by a wide range of microorganisms and parasites; there is a close link between iron requirements and cellular division with implications for cancers and other metals such as copper and zinc are closely linked with iron metabolism. The first edition of this book was published in 1991. Since then the extensive impact of molecular cell biology on the field of iron biochemistry has opened new horizons in our understanding of the transport and storage of iron and of its homeostasis. The explosive use of molecular biological techniques applied to cellular biology of iron metabolism has resulted in a rapid expansion in the literature which has led to the need for this second edition. This second edition also: Introduces many illustrations and colour photos to make the basic concepts far clearer Includes new chapters on iron and cell division and interactions of iron with other metals - particularly copper and zinc Provides additional anecdotes Incorporates an extensive and up-to-date bibliography
This book concerns the implications and interrelations of key concepts of culture, defending an updated communicative notion of culture as meaning-making against a series of current challenges. The first part of the book distinguishes four main concepts of culture, presenting their histories, uses, limitations and mutual contradictions, which else often tend to be neglected. The second part scrutinizes neomaterialist and posthumanist critics’ antihermeneutic efforts to escape the spirals of interpretation and meaning. Learning from such contestations, the third part summarizes the arguments and in five theses reconstructs a contemporary and comprehensive agenda for cultural studies, based on creative imagination and communicative mediation in the dynamic interface between meaning and materiality. This thus provides a survey of fundamental concepts and theories of culture for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences, while simultaneously also serving as an introductory guide to the contemporary debate in this field.
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