Working paper published by Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

I have a new working paper (a non-refereed research paper) published with the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), a think tank in Berlin.  The paper is titled "State transformation in globalizing Asia: New geopolitics or a restructuring of social power relations?".   You can read it here. 

Critical Sociology reviews Asia/Oceania Volume

Alexius A. Pereira, a researcher in Singapore (who received his Ph.D. at LSE), has published an excellent review of my 2016 edited volume.  His review of Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania can be read here in Critical Sociology. 

Review in Journal of Asia Pacific Economy

The Journal of Asia Pacific Economy has published a review (by Oliver Turner) of my edited volume "Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania" (Routledge, 2015). You can read the entire review here.

NEW BOOK: Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania

   Please ask your local librarian to order a copy of the new volume that I have published with Routledge.   See here for a PDF of my introductory chapter: "Global capitalism and transnational class formation in Asia and Oceania." 

The book gathers together papers presented at the second biennial conference of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism which took place at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia in July of 2013.

The Savage Wars of the Capitalist Peace: The New Geoeconomics & the Rise of China

Adelaide University's Dr. Kanishka Jayasuriya gives a keynote talk "The Savage Wars of the Capitalist Peace: The New Geoeconomics & the Rise of China". In the context of political science literature on "rising powers", he examines the weaknesses of nation-state centrism and mainstream thinking on the "rise of china", and how this ignores the more nuanced shifting socio-economic relations occurring through global capitalism and how this relates to China. To discuss this he looks in particular at the 'Asian Century White Paper Report' commissioned by the Australian government of former Prime Minister Julia Gillard. I recorded this talk in June of 2013 at the "Global Capitalism in Asia and Oceania conference" at Griffith University in Brisbane. This was the 2nd conference of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism (NCSGC). For more information see:http://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com

Finance Capital and Climate Change: The Role of Climate Interested Investors

         Below is a video I recorded of Griffith University Sociologists Dr. Georgina Murray and Dr. David Peetz examining if it is possible within the logic of finance capital to have some groups or sub-class of the transnational capitalist class that can be focused toward the longer-term, whereas the great drive in financialization over recent decades has been toward increasing emphasis on short-termism (I.E. short term profits). The research here points to the contradictions of global capitalism, emphasizing the detrimental impact it is having upon our planet.

         Once the main lecture in the video begins (after the intro) at around 2 minutes and 33 seconds, you will need to turn the volume up significantly. This talk was given in June of 2013 at the "Global Capitalism in Asia and Oceania conference" at Griffith University in Brisbane. This was the 2nd conference of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism (NCSGC). For more information see:http://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com

A Review of Sociologist Robyn Magalit Rodriguez's NEW BOOK Migrants For Export

Jeb Sprague
Science & Society

Migrants for Export: How the Philippine State Brokers Labor to the World, by Robyn Magalit Rodriguez. Minneapolis, Minnesota/London: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. $67.00; paper, $19.00. Pp. 208.
 

From government-sponsored nursing classes in Manila to crushed labor strikes at garment factories in southeast Asia, a variety of mechanisms have been developed to manage, promote and coerce Filipino workers as a readily available cheap source of labor around the world. A book of interest for scholars or students of global migration or of the contemporary Filipino/ Filipina experience, Migrants for Export should also be of interest to those studying the state in globalization and in relation to the changing practices and ideologies of state elites.
 

Rodriguez starts by considering some theoretical issues behind the state and its interaction with migrants, and the historical roots of the novel processes of today’s global market and political economy. She explains how the modern Philippine state developed, first tightly bound to the United States as a colony and later as a component within a global system (yet, still closely aligned with the United States). It is in today’s era of global capitalism that Rodriguez seeks to understand, by way of the Philippines, the exploitive and contradictory nature of the state’s role in migration.

The book’s central argument is that the Philippine state has become actively involved in marketing its citizens to companies and labor-receiving governments around the world for low-wage and closely watched temporary jobs. The practices and ideologies of state elites have become rooted in this process — becoming active migration promoters and managers, such that the “orientation of Philippine officials and government agencies toward overseas employment reveals the extent to which Philippine citizens have become reduced to mere commodities to be bartered and traded globally”(27). 

Statecraft in the Global Financial Crisis: An Interview with Kanishka Jayasuriya

By: Jeb Sprague
Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies

Kanishka Jayasuriya

Kanishka Jayasuriya, Professor of Political Science at the University of Adelaide, Australia and author of two monographs – Reconstituting the Global Liberal Order: Legitimacy and Regulation (2005) and Statecraft, Welfare and the Politics of Inclusion (2006) – argues that changing forms of governance and new regulative laws are enabling the transnationalization of institutions within national states. He also interprets these changes as giving rise to a new type of institutional struggle unique to globalisation. For social scientists in general and political economists in particular, Jayasuriya’s work provides a useful lens through which to understand intra-state transformation in the global epoch. By rejecting Realist/Weberian conceptions of the state and drawing inspiration instead from materialist state theory, he understands state transformation as a reflection of ongoing processes linked to socio-economic forces that are novel to the historical present. And in the wake of the global financial crisis, he argues, we should not see the state as either disappearing or returning, for it is continuing to transform in ways peculiar to the age of globalism. The real question is for whom states will act in the future. In order to answer this, Jayasuriya suggests that we must look to transformations occurring within the national state, for it is these that are changing statecraft as we know it.

In this interview, Jayasuriya discusses some of his main concepts and theories, such as the regulatory state; meta-governance; the transition from ‘social constitutionalism’ to ‘economic constitutionalism’; and describes how each of these relate to the ongoing crisis of global capitalism. He clarifies his views on the idea of a transnational capitalist class, arguing that there must be “different fractions within it”; and goes on to discuss the connection of his theories on state-transformation with the related works of William Robinson and Martin Shaw. Finally, he discusses some of the theorists that have influenced his work – such as Nicos Poulantzas, Carl Schmitt, Franz Neumann, and Amartya Sen – and briefly describes his areas of ongoing research.