Henri Lefebvre: State, Space, World: Selected Essays (2009)

30 July 2012, dusan

“One of the most influential Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, Henri Lefebvre pioneered the study of the modern state in an age of accelerating global economic integration and fragmentation. Shortly after the 1974 publication of his landmark book The Production of Space, Lefebvre embarked on one of the most ambitious projects of his career: a consideration of the history and geographies of the modern state through a monumental study that linked several disciplines, including political science, sociology, geography, and history.

State, Space, World collects a series of Lefebvre’s key writings on the state from this period. Making available in English for the first time the as-yet-unexplored political aspect of Lefebvre’s work, it contains essays on philosophy, political theory, state formation, spatial planning, and globalization, as well as provocative reflections on the possibilities and limits of grassroots democracy under advanced capitalism.

State, Space, World is an essential complement to The Production of Space, The Urban Revolution, and The Critique of Everyday Life. Lefebvre’s original and prescient analyses that emerge in this volume are urgently relevant to contemporary debates on globalization and neoliberal capitalism.”

Edited by Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden
Translated by Gerald Moore, Neil Brenner, and Stuart Elden
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 081665316X, 9780816653164
330 pages

Publisher

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Vincent Mosco: The Political Economy of Communication, 2nd ed (1996/2009)

11 January 2012, dusan

The Political Economy of Communication provides a thorough coverage of an important area of communication studies: the political economy approach to media.

This highly successful text has been thoroughly updated, restructured and rewritten in this new edition, clearly demonstrating how power operates across all media, from newspapers to Facebook, and how media power intersects with globalization, social class, race, gender and surveillance.

– Provides a summary of the field of political economy, looking at its history and major schools of thought
– Highlights the work of key figures and differences that established the divide between economics and political economy
– Explains the necessity of media students to understand the general political economy tradition and the way in which it informs the political economy of communication
– Addresses the interdisciplinary nature of the field, with its links to economics, geography and sociology, and cultural and policy studies

This book offers a unique overview of the field of political economy of communication and will be of use to upper level undergraduate and graduate students of media and communication.

Publisher Sage Publications, 2009
ISBN 1412947006, 9781412947008
268 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2013-5-31)

Gérard Duménil, Dominique Lévy: The Crisis of Neoliberalism (2011)

12 September 2011, dusan

This book examines “the great contraction” of 2007–2010 within the context of the neoliberal globalization that began in the early 1980s. This new phase of capitalism greatly enriched the top 5 percent of Americans, including capitalists and financial managers, but at a significant cost to the country as a whole. Declining domestic investment in manufacturing, unsustainable household debt, rising dependence on imports and financing, and the growth of a fragile and unwieldy global financial structure threaten the strength of the dollar. Unless these trends are reversed, the authors predict, the U.S. economy will face sharp decline.

Summarizing a large amount of troubling data, the authors show that manufacturing has declined from 40 percent of GDP to under 10 percent in thirty years. Since consumption drives the American economy and since manufactured goods comprise the largest share of consumer purchases, clearly we will not be able to sustain the accumulating trade deficits.

Rather than blame individuals, such as Greenspan or Bernanke, the authors focus on larger forces. Repairing the breach in our economy will require limits on free trade and the free international movement of capital; policies aimed at improving education, research, and infrastructure; reindustrialization; and the taxation of higher incomes.

Publisher Harvard University Press, 2011
ISBN 0674049888, 9780674049888
400 pages

Interview with Gérard Duménil: Part 1, Part 2 (The Real News Network)

authors (incl. additional material)
publisher
google books

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