Accumulation And Dispossession

The contemporary regime of globalisation and neoliberalism is creating a far-reaching impact on different scales across the world. On the urban scale it has resulted in a huge transformation of the city space, land use and reorganisation of the urban governance. This book is a provocative examination of the contemporary urban scenario in several countries, offering South Asian, North American and European perspectives. Written by some of the most eminent theorists and social scientists of our time, the chapters cover critical empirical analyses of the contemporary transformation processes of s.

People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism and what difference does it make that neo-conservatives rather than neo-liberals are now in power? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. Closely argued but clearly written, 'The New Imperialism' builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a 'new imperialism' are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see. This new paperback edition contains an Afterword written to coincide with the result of the 2004 American presidental election.

In Dispossession without Development, Michael Levien seeks to uncover the structural underpinnings of India's so-called "land wars." He examines how land dispossession changed with India's shift from state-led development to neoliberalism and the consequences of these changes for dispossessed farmers in contemporary India.

Set in the resource frontier of northeastern Turkey, Bulldozer Capitalism studies the rise and decline of an anti-dam/anti-displacement campaign and the political responses to other extractive projects that it helped to shape in its aftermath. The book shows that people can accommodate their own dispossession and displacement if they are directed to negotiate, invest in, and speculate on the destruction of their built environment and nature, and their material and immaterial bonds, wealth, and activities.

The book argues that an increasing corporatisation of agriculture in India that is enabled by its neoliberal State, in the name of ‘development’, is contributing towards deepening of inequality in the rural India. It says that Contract Farming (CF) acts as a conduit that enables the coming together of myriad production relations (mercantile, finance, productive) to sell agri-commodities to the capitalist peasant. It is an accumulation strategy that brings together various factions of domestic and foreign capital together. It shows that CF as an accumulation strategy is enabled by an active interventionist state and this neoliberal Indian state mediates the relation between the agri-capital and Indian peasantry. The book further analyzes contract farming as a part of the totality of the capitalist mode of production in context of developing countries with a large agrarian base--- asking three fundamental questions – what is CF, how and why is it done and what are the implications of it.

When journalists, developers, surf tourists, and conservation NGOs cast Papua New Guineans as living in a prior nature and prior culture, they devalue their knowledge and practice, facilitating their dispossession. Paige West's searing study reveals how a range of actors produce and reinforce inequalities in today's globalized world. She shows how racist rhetorics of representation underlie all uneven patterns of development and seeks a more robust understanding of the ideological work that capital requires for constant regeneration.

This book explores the renewal of forms of capital accumulation and the institutions that shape it. It focuses on three main sources of accumulation: the extraction of profit through labor and the commodification of nature, financial speculation and the ways in which profit is converted into wealth. It thus offers a new understanding of the economic and political logics of capital accumulation within capitalism in the 21st century. It shows the recomposition of the sources of profit, from the traditional mechanisms of labor exploitation to the contemporary logics of speculation and dispossession. Bringing together the work of scholars who study the social fabric of capitalist accumulation, Accumulating Capital Today goes beyond disciplinary frontiers to describe how capital is accumulating in a world threatened by social and environmental collapse. This book heralds the emergence of "accumulation studies" and will be of interest to researchers in sociology, anthropology, politics, political economy, geography and economics.

A study of class and inequality from an anthropological perspective, bringing together an international team of researchers.