Publication Type: Individual Presentation
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper will delve into the current economic collapse of the U. S. and global capitalist economies, the historical reasons for this situation, and Indigenous African responses to the situation that reconnect Africana communities with their ancestors and prepare contemporary descendants in Africa and the Diaspora for living sustainably in a post-capitalist and post-money world in Indigenous cultural ways that harmonize with Mother Earth and thus preserve future generations of African people.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The paper tests a “bifurcation” hypothesis that in much of Europe a relatively small number of firms have moved into a new institutional context, or “rules of the game,” that are largely common, international institutions and practices, while the large majority of firms continue to operate in a more slowly evolving set of domestic institutions or rules. Since firms operating in the newer, international “model” are typically large firms, firm size is used as a proxy. Empirically this paper focuses on the changing nature of the relationship between firms on the one hand, and banks and financial markets on the other. It finds preliminary evidence to support the bifurcation hypothesis, but also that national patterns of firm finance are still distinct. Bifurcation is theorized to have significant implications for the maintenance of coordination in coordinated market economies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: By investigating how Taiwanese business people and their families establish and negotiate their privileged transnational capitalist class status and interest in coastal Chinese economic zones, this paper concerns with the formation of a transnational capitalist class in the process of the global economy. Since the early 1990s, Taiwan has become one of the major foreign investors in China. As a result, a large number of Taiwanese business investors and managerial professionals have worked and resided in China. This paper analyzes how the daily arrangements of food, social space, maid services, language, transportation, network and factory management are the crucial sites in which Taiwanese construct and maintain their relatively economic position of advantage in China. I focus on those moments, processes and strategies that produced and negotiate the class meaning, boundary, and relation between Taiwanese business people and the Chinese within specific cross-Strait political economy. I conclude this paper with three points. First, the process of constituting a transnational Taiwanese capitalist class in China is socially situated within the contexts of cross-Strait economy and politics, and within the different social and geographical locations in China. Second, Taiwanese business people’s negative perceptions and assumptions of Chinese women and men as social and economic Others set up the cultural foundation for them to construct difference and the relations of domination between themselves and the Chinese. Finally, the process of establishing and maintaining specific patterns of transnational Taiwanese capitalist class status in China has created and reinforced boundaries, tension, and uneven power relations Taiwanese business people and their families and the Chinese.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The current profit realization crisis has motivated public figures to implore us to consume. President Bush has cited consumption as a tool for fighting terrorism and as an excuse for massive tax cuts. Yet many of the major social problems we are facing today find their origin in our consumption patterns. This contradiction is reflected in much of our media, in which advertising and political/economic rhetoric push consumption as a panacea for both individual and social ills, while simultaneously demonizing those who engage in mass consumption. Obesity, public and consumer debt, and global warming are the result of these consumption patterns that are simultaneously encouraged and demonized. In line with the emphasis on neoclassical individualism that dominates capitalist ideology; many observers see these problems as the result of personal decision making or the lack of self-control. However, the drastic increases in the rates are leading some to search for the social causes of these conditions, although few of these critics are examining the structural influences. This research focuses on the issue of obesity as an example of capitalist contradiction. There is a schism in the popular consciousness about the obesity issue, which is striking when looking at media accounts of this emerging global problem. In particular, a recent lawsuit filed against fast food companies has reflected this complex and contested understanding of obesity as individual failure versus social problem, while the systemic causes are still being pushed aside. This study will analyze the news accounts of obesity in general, with a focus on the discussions of the fast food lawsuit, to profile these diverging views and reveal the emergence of a new social problem in the public consciousness.