Seminar: Economy, Polity and Inequality: reflecting on Marx’s Labour Theory of Value by way of Polanyi

Professor Mark Harvey, Director, CRESI, University of Essex

15th March 2012
At 16:00 in Room 6.345 and afterwards in the Sociology Common Room.

This presentation will develop an argument for a renewal of historical materialism by examining Marx’s conception of economy, as enshrined in the Labour Theory of Value. Developing a neo-Polanyian framework, which problematises what we mean by economy, the paper will argue that we need a much more radically historical and spatial understanding than is permitted by the closed circuit, commodity-capital, vision of the economy as presented in Capital. It will do so by playing a neo-Polanyian conception of ‘economies of labour’ against the Labour Theory of Value, and hence suggesting an alternative view of economy as open, multi-modal, and an outcome of complex causal interactions between economic, political, cultural and environmental dynamics. In so doing it retains, and indeed expands, a concern to understand the generation of systemic inequality in society to include rights over public as well as private, commodity, resources.

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Seminar: ‘So the President’s your husband now?’: Social Safety Nets, gender and racism in the Andes

Professor Maxine Molineux from Institute for the Study of the Americas, at the School of Advanced Study, University of London

10 March 2011

At 16:00 in Room 6.345 and afterwards in the Sociology Common Room.

Maxine Molyneux is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas, at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she teaches and supervises Doctoral students on Latin American Development policy and practice, gender, politics, social policy, memory and migration.

She has written extensively in the fields of political sociology, gender and development, human rights and social policy, and has authored books on Latin America, Ethiopia and South Yemen. She has acted as senior adviser, consultant and researcher to UNRISD, and has undertaken funded research for the UK’s Department for International Development, the ILO, and other development policy agencies. Her current research is on social protection, rights, and citizenship and the link between economic and social policy in Latin America.

Maxine Molyneux is on the Editorial Boards of Economy and Society, the Journal of Latin American Studies, and Development and Change. She is the editor of the ISA/Palgrave ‘Studies of the Americas’ Series and the ISA in-house book series.

Seminar: Gender Equality and Work-Family Reconciliation – Balancing Market Income and Non-market Production?

Michael Bittman, School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England, Australia

27 January 2011

At 16:00 in Room 6.345 and afterwards in the Sociology Common Room.

Abstract: Generally social welfare since World War II has been approached as a question of income security and state or market provision of caring services. This presentation argues this is a limited perspective on welfare because it ignores the parts of the economy where goods and services are produced but no money changes hands. The presentation draws on more than a decade of research using time-use surveys to study trends in care that is provided through non-market economy. In the middle of last century the traditional sexual division of labour – male breadwinner/ female homemaker – tacitly acknowledged the importance of the non-market economy while simultaneously treating it as distinct from ‘work’.

Miriam Glucksmann wins €810k to study “Consumption Work and Societal Divisions of Labour”

Prof. Miriam Glucksmann has secured a €810k grant from the highly competitive and prestigious European Research Council Advanced Investigator scheme.

The project, “Consumption Work and Societal Divisions of Labour” aims to radically revise the foundational concept of ‘the division of labour’ by situating traditional understandings of the technical allocation of tasks within an expanded theoretical framework.

Seminar: Formations, connections and divisions of labour………and consumption work

Miriam Glucksmann from Department of Sociology, University of Essex

Date: Thursday 4th March 2010.

At 16:00 in Room 6.345 (Department of Sociology, Colchester Campus).

This informal talk will introduce and raise for discussion the main arguments from Miriam’s recent article (Sociology 43, 5 October 2009 – abstract below) on the  ’division of labour’. Including the work of consumers is central to this reconceptualisation and I’ll expand further on this in the context of my forthcoming research.

Seminar: The Establishment of a Workfare Scheme after the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis in South Korea: Contestations over Rights

Eunna Lee from Sociology (Essex)/ School of Public Policy (UCL)

Date: Thursday 4th February 2010.

At 16:00 in Room 6.345 (Department of Sociology).

Eunna Lee has an MA in The Theory and Practice of Human Rights and has recently submitted her PhD entitled ‘Human Rights and Poverty in South Korea after the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997’ in the Department of Sociology

Research on migrant re-integration services published

Dr Darren Thiel and colleagues’ work on migrants’ experiences of the UK Border Agencies’ Assisted Voluntary Return programmes has been published in a series of Home Office Research Papers.

Seminar: Work after globalisation

Professor Guy Standing from University of Bath, UK, and Monash University, Australia

Thursday 19th November

At 16:00 in Room 6.345.

Guy Standing is Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath and Associate Director of the Work and Employment Rights Research Centre, Monash University, Melbourne. He is also a founder member and co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), a non-governmental organisation that promotes a citizenship income for all.

His latest book Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (2009) “explains that

Miriam Glucksmann on BBCR4 ‘Thinking Allowed’

More than 30 years ago Miriam Glucksmann left her academic job to take up a job on an assembly line at a motor mechanics factory in London. A new updated edition of the influential book, Women On The Line, that resulted from Miriam’s experiences has just been published. Listen to Miriam talking about the book on Radio 4′s Thinking Allowed.

Seminar – Researching women’s work: reflections on ‘Women on the Line’

CRESI’s  7th May 2009 seminar will be given by Professor Miriam Glucksmann (Sociology, University of Essex). Seminars are held in Room 6.345, are open to all staff and students and are followed by a reception in the Sociology Common Room (6.341).