Poverty and precarity Books

Book SynopsisHomelessness has been recognized as a serious problem in Japan since the 1990s, but the dominant model of a "homeless person" has been that of an unemployed male labourer - a model that has largely excluded women, who experience homelessness in different forms. This study gives the homeless women of Japan a voice at last. Based on extensive fieldwork, the author paints a vivid picture of the unique experiences of homeless women living in a diverse range of environments. By introducing a gender perspective to the analytic framework and challenging the conception of the homeless individual as a rational, autonomous subject, the author invites a critical reconsideration of homeless studies and of public policy.Table of Contents Figures Tables Photos Foreword to the English-Language Edition Foreword to the Original Edition 1 Toward an ethnography of homeless women 2 Who are the homeless women? 3 Establishing welfare for homeless women 4 Gender norms and the use of welfare facilities 5 The world of women who sleep rough 6 Continuing and ending rough sleeping 7 The process of change 8 Resisting the spell of the autonomous subject Epilogue Afterword Notes References Name Index Subject Index

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Book SynopsisForgotten People deals with people living at the fringes of the Indonesian society. It describes and analyses their livelihoods and styles of making a living from an insider perspective. While Indonesia has experienced steady economic growth for more than a decade, the livelihoods and lifestyles of poor people and migrants confronted with poverty and insecurity have received less attention. This book describes and analyses diversity in livelihood strategies, risk-taking and local forms of social security (social welfare) of people living below or close to the Indonesian poverty line. It puts two categories of forgotten people at the centre. Peasants, living in remote areas in rural Java, and Madurese migrants craving for a better life in urban and rural East Kalimantan.

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Book SynopsisThe neoliberal policy response to the crisis in Ghana did not succeed in reversing the economic decline in both the medium and long term. In fact, quite the opposite, rather than undoing the economic decline, Frimpong argues that the policy prescriptions further weakened the country’s ability to develop. This is because the policies intentionally and unintentionally encouraged factors that destabilised the possibility of the real productive assets to earn commensurate returns to facilitate the flow of capital to the real sectors to ensure the survival of industrial enterprises. Rising profit in the financial sector incentivised financial capitalist to divert capital into financial assets at the expense of productive investment, further decelerating the pace of real capital accumulation in the country.Trade Review"Financial inclusion policy as a way of empowering the poor makes poverty a financial problem in Ghana – the financialisation of poverty. Francis Boateng Frimpong tackles this question with theoretical sophistication and vivid empirical detail. This is an original addition to our understanding of how-and-why neoliberal restructuring and its financialisation dimension work in a low middle-income country, the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 1, which is the target of halving extreme poverty. Frimpong has authoritatively produced this important political economy contribution about the impact of the exponential growth of finance on poverty alleviation in Ghana. Highly recommended." - Bülent Gökay, Professor of International Relations, Keele University "This book provides original theoretically sophisticated, historically sensitive and empirically grounded analysis. The political economy history of Ghana is narrated in a way that makes the reader understand what the country went through, and where it is headed. The author has done justice in his narration." - Abraham Adu, University of Aberdeen "The book offers a comprehensive assessment of the nature and distinctive features of financialisation in the periphery, with a focus on Ghana. This book provides academics, professionals and policy makers with the understanding of policy response towards the alleviation of the overarching poverty in Ghana. Crucially, espousing an indispensable hypothetical approach to financialisation, the uniqueness of Ghana and its common features with the core. It is a must-read for supporters of both Keynesian and Marxism." - Emmanuel Affum-Osei, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology "All aspects of this book are fascinating to read. However, the one that fascinated me the most was the in-depth analysis on baking the unbanked, specifically the use of mobile money and how it still benefits the capitalists despite promises of relieving the poor. Frimpong’s analyses throughout are a very interesting read for researchers, students, and even Marx and Keynes enthusiasts. It is a must read." - Leah Mwainyekule, University of Hull "A book on this historically specific geographical setting contributes theoretically to studies on financialisation in general, helping to determine its prominent features better. It is a good source of information for researchers who want to explore the history of the political economy of Sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular, Ghana." - Mato Magobe, The Open University of TanzaniaTable of ContentsForeword Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations About Financialisation and Poverty Alleviation in Ghana 1 Introduction  1 The Historical Background of Finance and Growth  2 Scope and Limitations of the Book  3 Structure of the Book 2 Neoliberalisation and Financialisation The Debate  1 Introduction  2 The Rise of Neoliberal Capitalism  3 Theoretical Debates and Historical Precedents of Financialisation  4 From Stagnation to Financialisation  5 French Regulation School Theory of Financialisation  6 Post-Keynesianism and Financialisation  7 Trans-nationalisation and Liberalisation of Finance  8 Financialisation and Poverty Alleviation: Banking the Unbanked  9 Conclusion 3 Finance-Growth-Nexus Theoretical and Empirical Literature  1 Introduction  2 The Rise of Finance and the Financialisation of Everything  3 The Financial Profit Conundrum – Profit in Marxist Economics  4 Real Commodity Accumulation and Fictitious Accumulation  5 Contemporary Heterodox Perspectives on Finance-led Growth Debate  5.1 Banks, Financial Markets and Economic Growth: The Dilemma  6 Economic Functions of Financial Intermediaries  6.1 Empirical Evidence on Finance and Growth  6.2 Cross-country Studies of the Finance-Growth Nexus  6.3 Contemporary Literature on Econometric Models for Ghana  7 Dynamics of Financial Development, Income Distribution, Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction in Ghana  8 Poverty and the Pandemic: The Case of Ghana  8.1 The Economics of It All  9 Conclusion 4 The Case of Ghana  1 Introduction  2 Country Profile and Overview of Recent Economic Performance  3 The Political Economy of Ghana: From State-led Accumulation to Neoliberalism  3.1 Political and Economic Developments from Independence (1957) to 1982  3.2 Political and Economic Developments 1983–2019  4 Neoliberalism in Ghana  4.1 Neoliberalism and Housing Provision in Ghana  5 Financial Sector Reforms in Ghana – A Historical Perspective  5.1 Pre-structural Adjustment Financial Reforms 1957–1982  5.2 Post-liberalised Reforms  5.3 Relaxation of Bank Entry Restrictions, and Abolishment of Secondary Reserve Requirements 2005–2006  5.4 Recapitalising Banks  6 Financialisation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Accounting for the Ghanaian Paradox  6.1 Under-financed  6.2 … Yet Financialising  6.3 Reverse of Net Capital Flows – A Subordinate/Inferior Financialisation  7 Conclusion 5 Dimensions of Capital Structure and Liquidity Management in Ghana  1 Introduction  2 Theories of Capital Structure  2.1 Capital Structure: Traditionalists’ View  2.2 Value-irrelevance Theory by Modigliani-Miller  2.3 Capital Structure: Trade-off Theory  2.4 Capital Structure: Pecking-order Theory  3 Financialisation and Capital Structure Accumulation in Ghana  4 Classification of Capital Accumulation Process in Ghana  5 Contradictions in Political-Economic Arrangements in Ghana  5.1 Financing Challenges  5.2 Government Policies  5.2.1 Corruption  5.2.2 State of Infrastructural Development  6 Conclusion 6 The Issue of Poverty  1 Introduction  2 Poverty Measurement Conundrum  3 Absolute Poverty  3.1 Poverty in Administrative Regions  4 Relative Poverty  4.1 Using Non-monetary Deprivation  5 The Paradox of Sub-Saharan Africa’s Middle Class  5.1 The Two Competing Narratives on Africa  6 Neoliberal Globalisation and Poverty  7 Conclusion 7 Financialisation and Households From Theory to the Context of Ghana  1 Introduction  2 Theory of Consumption Function: Household Debt and the Life Cycle and Permanent Income Hypotheses  3 The Political Economy of Household Finance  4 Payment Systems in Ghana: A Route towards Financialisation  4.1 Background-Mobile Money Services in Ghana  4.2 The Role of Mobile Money in Financial Inclusion in Ghana  5 Financialisation, Financial Inclusion and Mobile Money  6 Conclusion 8 Conclusion  1 Summing Up the Argument  2 The Content of Financialisation in Ghana  2.1 Banking Sector  2.2 Industrial Enterprises  2.3 Households  3 Policy Recommendations References Index

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Book SynopsisThe situation of young people in Europe has been significantly impacted by recent changes that have taken place in the job market. Young people’s life trajectories and transitions to adulthood are increasingly less linear, more segmented, and more reversible, with a rise in unemployment and the NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) phenomenon. This book aims to investigate the youth policies implemented in Europe and how they are integrated in the socio-economic contexts of the various member states and their welfare regimes, educational systems, and skills markets. A significant number of young adults neither study nor work, and live in a constant state of discouragement and inactivity, giving up on their search for job opportunities. The strategic choices implemented at the European level in response to this problem promote ALMPs (Active Labour Market Policies), including the creation of the Youth Guarantee Program, which is examined here both at the European level and, specifically, in the Italian context.Table of ContentsYouth Policies and Unemployment in Europe  Paola Giannoni Abstract Keywords Introduction 1 The Situation of Young Adults in Europe  1.1 Introduction  1.2 Changes in the Situation for Young Adults  1.3 Youth Studies: Different Analytical Perspectives  1.4 Regimes of Welfare Transition and Regimes of Youth Policies  1.5 The Youth Population in Europe: Family, Education, and Training Conditions  1.6 Conclusions 2 Youth Unemployment and Dynamics of the Labour Market  2.1 Introduction  2.2 The European Socio-economic Context  2.3 Youth Unemployment in Europe  2.4 Not in Education, Employment or Training: The NEET Phenomenon  2.5 NEETs in Europe  2.6 Conclusions 3 European Union Policies Designed to Combat Youth Unemployment  3.1 Introduction  3.2 The European Youth Strategy  3.3 EU Active Labour Market Policies  3.4 The Youth Guarantee Program in Europe  3.5 Education Policies and the Skills Market: The School-To-Work Transition  3.6 Conclusions 4 Young People and the Labour Market in Southern Europe: The Case of Italy  4.1 Introduction  4.2 The Reforms of the Labour Market in Italy  4.3 The Sub-protective Welfare State and the Youth Population  4.4 Youth Unemployment and the NEET Phenomenon at the Time of Covid-19  4.5 A Case of ALMP: The Youth Guarantee Program in Italy  4.6 Conclusions Conclusions References

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Book SynopsisIn Crisis, Inequalities and Poverty, Schettino and Clementi provide an empirical and theoretical analysis of the economic breakdown that has characterised the last two decades of capitalist development – from the Lehman collapse to the Covid-19 pandemic – with a particular focus on the impact on poverty and inequality. The book provides a materialist account of the current global crisis of overproduction and looks at the link between capitalist crisis and systemic inequity, making the case through detailed quantification that the principal engine of these structural phenomena is in fact the general law of accumulation of the capitalist mode of production.Trade Review"The Authors have written a book that is pleasant o read and represents the fruit of years of scientific research already published in important journals, especially about the analysis of inequalities." Stefano Lucarelli, in Review of Political Economy, Review of Political Economy "Schettino and Clementi’s book shows in great detail that, in the capitalist system, the accumulation of capital goes hand in hand with the accumulation of poverty. This system, based on the indiscriminate exploitation of man and nature, today reveals all its contradictions, perhaps more than ever before." Domenico Suppa, in SINAPPSI Journal, March 2023 SINAPPSI JournalTable of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments List of Figures and Tables 1 The Nature of the Crisis  1 Underconsumption, Prices and Profits  2 Excess Commodities, Excess Needs  3 Pressure to Purchase, Debt and Speculation  4 Financial Speculation and the Ratings Agencies  5 Currency Conflict 2 Dollar vs. Euro From the 2010 Attack to the final surrender of 2015  1 An Evening in Manhattan  2 The Spectre of Speculation  3 The Final Surrender: The Greek Clinamen  4 ttip, tpp and Global Conflict 3 A Flood of Liquidity From qe towards a New Despotic Management of Capitalism  1 ‘Hostile Brothers’ and Fictitious Capital  2 Quantitative Easing (qe)  3 The Effects of Quantitative Easing  4 Capitalism’s Addiction Problem  5 When It Rains, It Pours  6 Capital’s New Despotism 4 Income Distribution Concepts, Analytical Tools and Empirical Evidence  1 Income Distribution  1.1 Basic Concepts  1.2 Representing Income Distribution  2 Global Income Distribution  2.1 Income Distribution in Italy   3 Economic Inequality  3.1 Measuring Inequality  3.2 Relative vs. Absolute Inequality  3.3 Inequality in the World  4 Income Inequality in Italy  4.1 The Causes of Inequality  5 Poverty: Definition and Measurement  6 Defining Poverty  6.1 Standard of living  6.2 Uni- and Multidimensional Poverty  6.3 Relative and Absolute Poverty  7 Poverty Lines  7.1 Measuring Poverty  7.2 Poverty in the World  7.3 Poverty in Italy   8 Income Polarisation  8.1 Definition  8.2 Inequality and Income Polarisation  8.3 Measuring Income Polarisation  8.4 Income Polarisation in Practice 5 The Effects of the Crisis on Poverty and Inequality  1 More People in Poverty?  2 A Less Equal World? 6 Pandemic, Crisis, Inequality and Conflict  1 The Crisis Scenario Pre Covid 19  2 Epidemic, Misery, Inequality and Conflict 7 Afterword Socialism or Barbarism: Where Do We Go from Crisis, Inequalities and Poverty?   Haider A. Khan References Index

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Book SynopsisAgricultural workers have long been underrepresented in labour history. This volume aims to change this by bringing together a collection of studies on the largest group of the global work force. The contributions cover the period from the early modern to the present – a period when the emergence and consolidation of capitalism has transformed rural areas all over the globe. Three questions have guided the approach and the structure of this volume. First, how and why have peasant families managed to survive under conditions of advancing commercialisation and industrialisation? Second, why have coercive labour relations been so persistent in the agricultural sector and third, what was the role of states in the recruitment of agricultural workers? Contributors are: Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk, Josef Ehmer, Katherine Jellison, Juan Carmona, James Simpson, Sophie Elpers, Debojyoti Das, Lozaan Khumbah, Karl Heinz Arenz, Leida Fernandez-Prieto, Rachel Kurian, Rafael Marquese, Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza, Rogério Naques Faleiros, Alessandro Stanziani, Alexander Keese, Dina Bolokan, and Janina Puder.Table of ContentsList of Figures, Tables and Maps Notes on Contributors Introduction   Rolf Bauer and Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk section 1 The Agrarian Question and the Resilience of the Peasant Family Farms 1 Peasant Households under Pressure Women’s Work and the Cultivation System on Java, 1830–1870   Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk 2 Peasant Life Courses and Social Mobility in Serfdom The Baltic Provinces of the Russian Empire in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries   Josef Ehmer 3 Escape from New York Gender and the Rural Safety Valve, 1856–1884   Katherine Jellison 4 Landlords and Sharecroppers in Wine Producing Regions Beaujolais, Catalonia and Tuscany, 1800–1940   Juan Carmona and James Simpson 5 Co-producers of Architects The Role of Farm Women in the Reconstruction of Farmhouses in the Netherlands after the Second World War   Sophie Elpers 6 Hoeing the Land and Shifting the Cultivator Labour, Land and Environment in the Eastern Himalayas   Debojyoti Das 7 Agrarian Change in the Hills of Northeast India The Unlikely Story of Shifting Agriculture   A. Lozaanba Khumbah section 2 Coerced Labour Relations in the Global Countryside 8 Cassava, Cacao and Catechesis Agriculture and Extractivism in the Jesuit Missions on the Amazon in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries   Karl Heinz Arenz 9 A Laboratory of Colonial Agricultural Modernity Environment, Sugar and Slavery in Cuba   Leida Fernandez-Prieto 10 Dynamics of the Plantationocene Finance Capital and the Labour Regime on British Colonial Plantations in Nineteenth-Century South Asia   Rachel Kurian 11 The Mistress of the Coffee Markets of the World Slavery in Brazil and the Kangany System in Ceylon, c. 1815–1878   Rafael Marquese 12 A Contract with Many Facets Sharecropping and Credit Interlinkages in Southwestern Brazilian Plantations, 1840–1940   Bruno Gabriel Witzel de Souza and Rogério Naques Faleiros section 3 State Intervention and Agricultural Labour Mobility 13 Vulnerability beyond Revolutions Rural Workers, Former Slaves and Indentured Migrants in the French Empire   Alessandro Stanziani 14 Between Community Development Effort and Hidden Colonial Forced Labour The Long History of “Communal Labour” in Gold Coast/Ghana, 1927–2010   Alexander Keese 15 Agricultural Labour Regimes of Im_Mobilisation On the Legacies of Internal and External Colonisation within Europe   Dina Bolokan 16 Cheap Labour, (Un)Organised Workers The Oppressive Exploitation of Labour Migrants in the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry   Janina Puder Index

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Book SynopsisHow do corporations use their instrumental and structural power within markets and states to advance their policy agendas? Capitalism and Class Power examines corporate power through chapters on the U.S. military industrial complex, the rise of billionaire wealth in the U.S., the role of a transnational investment bloc in U.S.–Saudi relations, the rise of global disinformation firms, Canadian imperialism in the English-speaking Caribbean, the power of an EU corporate bloc in Caribbean trade agreements, the relationship between capitalism and poverty in rich capitalist countries, and the relationship between “neoliberalism” and capitalism. Professor Cox concludes the volume with reflections on the importance of corporate power research to achieving systemic change. Contributors are: Melissa Boissiere, Aram Eisenschitz, Jamie A. Gough, Adam D. Hernandez, Tamanisha J. John, Mazaher Koruzhde, Rob Piper and Bryant William Sculos. Ronald W. Cox is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Florida International University. He has published six books on corporate power in the global economy and is editor of the open access online journal Class, Race and Corporate Power.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors 1 Introduction   Ronald W. Cox 2 Class Power and the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States   Ronald W. Cox 3 The Billionaire Dimension of Class Power within Economic Sectors   Rob Piper 4 The Transnational Investment Bloc in the U.S. and Persian Gulf   Mazaher Koruzhde and Ronald W. Cox 5 Fake News and Social Media Neoliberalism and the Case of Bell Pottinger   Adam D. Hernandez 6 Canadian Imperialism in Caribbean Structural Adjustment, 1980–2000   Tamanisha J. John 7 Corporate Power and the Transition from Lomé to the cariforum-eu epa   Melissa Boissiere 8 The Necessity of Poverty in the High-Income Countries   Jamie A. Gough and Aram Eisenschitz 9 The Limits of the Concept of Neoliberalism   Bryant William Sculos 10 Corporate Power and Praxis in Critical Scholarship   Ronald W. Cox Index

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