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2 International political economy and global social change Political economy is concerned with the historically constituted frameworks or structures within which political and economic activity takes place. It stands back from the apparent fixity of the present to ask how the existing structures came into being and how they may be changing, or how they may be induced to change. In this sense, political economy is critical theory. (Cox, 1995: 32) T he field of IPE is inextricably bound up with understandings of global social transformation. Indeed, for many
6 Conclusion: an international political economy of work I n the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, we are living in an era of social transformation that has been defined by the concept of globalisation, just as it has been shaped by programmes of restructuring carried out in the name of globalisation. Yet, our era is also one in which people’s concrete experiences of transformation are diverse and contradictory. While for some, living in a GPE means holding and managing a portfolio of shares, business travel for a MNC, and increased prosperity
), Panorama, 2000; Channel 4, 2000). The effect is to bring less comfortable and optimistic images of globalisation to our armchairs. At the same time, scholars within international political economy (IPE), international relations (IR) and sociology have called for the essence of politics to be restored to our understandings of globalisation and restructuring (Marchand and Runyan, 2000; Hay and Marsh, 1999; Bauman, 1998; Beck, 2000a). This book acknowledges and develops the emergent challenge to the economic and technologically determinist representations of globalisation
. Kpessa , M. and Béland , D. ( 2012 ). ‘ Transnational actors and the politics of pension reform in sub-Saharan Africa ’. Review of International Political Economy , 19 ( 2 ): 267–91 . Larkin , B. ( 2013 ). ‘ The politics and poetics of infrastructure ’. Annual Review of Anthropology , 42 : 327–43 . Lazzarato , M
. Ghosh , F. Kern and M. Klare (eds), The Palgrave handbook of the international political economy of energy, 247–67 . London : Palgrave Macmillan . Lawhon , M. and Truelove , Y. ( 2020 ). ‘ Disambiguating the southern urban critique: Propositions, pathways and possibilities for a more global urban studies ’. Urban Studies , 75 ( 10 ): 3
5 The ‘contested’ firm: the restructuring of work and production in the international political economy no involuntary changes have ever spontaneously restructured or reorganised a mode of production; … changes in productive relationships are experienced in social and cultural life, refracted in men’s ideas and their values, and argued through in their actions, their choices and their beliefs. (Thompson, 1976/1994: 222) T he desire to comprehend, order and manage the dual dynamics of globalisation and restructuring has led to much attention being paid to the