Search results for ""author william k. carroll""

Rapidly rising carbon emissions from the intense development of Western Canada's fossil fuels continue to aggravate the global climate emergency and destabilize democratic structures. The urgency of the situation demands not only scholarly understanding, but effective action. Regime of Obstruction aims to make visible the complex connections between corporate power and the extraction and use of carbon energy. Edited by William Carroll, this rigorous collection presents research findings from the first three years of the seven-year, SSHRC-funded partnership, the Corporate Mapping Project. Anchored in sociological and political theory, this comprehensive volume provides hard data and empirical research that traces the power and influence of the fossil fuel industry through economics, politics, media, and higher education. Contributors demonstrate how corporations secure popular consent, and coopt, disorganize, or marginalize dissenting perspectives to position the fossil fuel industry as a national public good. They also investigate the difficult position of Indigenous communities who, while suffering the worst environmental and health impacts from carbon extraction, must fight for their land or participate in fossil capitalism to secure income and jobs. The volume concludes with a look at emergent forms of activism and resistance, spurred by the fact that a just energy transition is still feasible. This book provides essential context to the climate crisis and will transform discussions of energy democracy.Contributions by Laurie Adkin, Angele Alook, Clifford Atleo, Emilia Belliveau-Thompson, John Bermingham, Paul Bowles, Gwendolyn Blue, Shannon Daub, Jessica Dempsey, Emily Eaton, Chuka Ejeckam, Simon Enoch, Nick Graham, Shane Gunster, Mark Hudson, Jouke Huizer, Ian Hussey, Emma Jackson, Michael Lang, James Lawson, Marc Lee, Fiona MacPhail, Alicia Massie, Kevin McCartney, Bob Neubauer, Eric Pineault, Lise Margaux Rajewicz, James Rowe, JP Sapinsky, Karena Shaw, and Zoe Yunker.

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The contributors to this volume draw on a non-dogmatic Marxist approach to explain the systemic and conjunctural dynamics of crisis inherent in global capitalism. Their analysis asks what is historically specific to capitalism’s crises while avoiding catastrophic or defeatist claims. At the same time the volume situates left agency within actual patterns of resistance and class struggle to clarify the potential for transformative change. The cycle of resistance strengthened by the World social Forum and transnational activism is now punctuated by the experience of the Arab spring, the agency of antisystemic movements, left think tanks, the Occupy Wall street Movement, labour unions, left parties in europe such as syrizia and Podemos and peoples’ budgeting in Kerala, india. On the down side we are witnessing the waning of the Workers Party in Brazil and serious challenges for south Africa’s once powerful labour movement and still formative social justice activism. All these developments are assessed in this volume. This is the second volume in the Democratic Marxism series. it elaborates on crucial themes introduced in the first volume, Marxisms in the 21st Century: Crisis, Critique and Struggle (edited by Michelle Williams and vishwas satgar).

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Affirming Antonio Gramsci’s continuing influence, this adroitly cultivated Companion offers a comprehensive overview of Gramsci’s contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of critical social science, social and political thought, economics and emancipatory politics. Within the tradition of historical materialism, it explores the continuing impact of Gramscian perspectives in the present day.Featuring contributions from eminent scholars, the Companion engages with Gramsci’s thought in the broader context of his life, outlining his innovative theoretical and historical analyses of capitalist modernity. Key themes within Gramscian theory are examined such as historical bloc, passive revolution, integral state, and civil society, which elaborate upon the core concept of hegemony. Chapters map out the development of historical materialism and rigorously analyse contemporary issues of urgency including climate breakdown, the rise of far-right populism, and increasing geopolitical tension.Offering a state-of-the-art review of Gramscian theory, this Companion will prove beneficial to academics, researchers and students from across the social sciences and humanities, and will be essential reading for those interested in political economy and political theory, sociology, philosophy, radical and feminist economics, environmental studies, gender studies, and post-colonial and cultural studies.

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Canada is ruled by an organized minority of the 1%, a class of corporate owners, managers and bankers who amass wealth by controlling the large corporations at the core of the economy. But corporate power also reaches into civil society and politics in many ways that greatly constrain democracy.In Organizing the 1%, William K. Carroll and J.P. Sapinski provide a unique, evidence-based perspective on corporate power in Canada and illustrate the various ways it directs and shapes economic, political and cultural life.A highly accessible introduction to Marxist political economy, Carroll and Sapinski delve into the capitalist economic system at the root of corporate wealth and power and analyze the ways the capitalist class dominates over contemporary Canadian society. The authors illustrate how corporate power perpetuates inequality and injustice. They follow the development of corporate power through Canadian history, from its roots in settler-colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from their land, to the concentration of capital into giant corporations in the late nineteenth century. More recently, capitalist globalization and the consolidation of a market-driven neoliberal regime have dramatically enhanced corporate power while exacerbating social and economic inequalities. The result is our current oligarchic order, where power is concentrated in a few corporations that are controlled by the super-wealthy and organized into a cohesive corporate elite.Finally, Carroll and Sapinski offer possibilities for placing corporate power where it actually belongs: in the dustbin of history.

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The problems of, and prospects for, a social-democratic government in contemporary Canada are explored in this in-depth analysis of governance at the provincial level during the 1990s and the early 21st century. Specific attention is paid to the competitive nationalism of the Parti Québécois, the pragmatic idealism of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Manitoba, and the NDP`s embrace of Third Way neoliberalism. Through five case studies, this examination details the constraints of neoliberal globalization and the resulting effects on the governments in different provinces.

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