The political aesthetic of the British city‐state: Class formation through the global city

Welsh, John

doi:10.1111/1467-8675.12369

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…Extended by Harvey (2002, 2010, 2015), Hudson (2012), Smith (1996, 2007) and Lapavitsas (2013a, 2013b), among others, the growing tendency towards ‘rent-seeking’ identified in the core of the world-system has been schematised in a particularly striking way by Jason Moore’s ecological exposition of the ‘inversion’ of the frontier of capitalisation in the world-system to the core states. This frontier inversion is driven by new accumulation imperatives, which have arisen as capital accumulation experiences increasingly acute world-ecological contradictions (Moore 2015, 2017, 2018; Welsh 2017a, 2019d, 2020; see also Felli 2014). This inversion has stimulated an intensification of what are actually perennial techniques of primitive accumulation through surplus appropriation across the core states (see Bin 2019; Bonefeld 2001; De Angelis 2001; Glassman 2006: 615; Harvey 2004; Perelman 2000), which were previously experienced mainly by the colonised ‘other’ of the global periphery throughout modernity (Federici 2004; Luxemburg 2003; Mies 1986), but which now have returned to the core states with a vengeance.…”

Section: Class and The Contemporary ‘Rent Offensive’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

Welsh

2020

Capital & Class

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Assuming the ‘neoliberalisation’ of academic life to be axiomatic, this article delves into the operations of its political economy with the aim of expanding critical vocabularies, analytical categories and research trajectories. In particular, it indicates where an immanent critique of neoliberal academia can be begun. While the capitalist transformations of academic life are justified by ideological claims eulogising ‘production’, ‘competition’ and ‘marketisation’, the neoliberal regime has proven decidedly ineffective at fulfilling these claims. An effective critique of neoliberal reform must, therefore, explore and interrogate the degree to which the practical effects of neoliberal reform diverge from its underpinning theoretical claims, and why this might be so. The principal question here pertains to rent and rent-seeking behaviour in the academic space, as a mode of activity inconsistent with the legitimating tenets of capitalist ideology. To the extent that rent-seeking activities can be identified in neoliberal academia – in distinction to ‘value-producing’ labour or ‘profit-making’ entrepreneurialism – a more potent critique of neoliberal reform will be forthcoming and an immanent critique of the neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation in the academic space put into motion. By positioning the neoliberal regime within a broader shift towards accumulation by ‘appropriation’ in the world-system, a strategic reason can be identified for the proliferation of rent-seeking behaviours in academic life and beyond. The article argues that these rent-seeking behaviours have materialised in a range of gatekeeping techniques across the academic space, with which many inhabitants of that space have become complicit, resulting in the increasing dispossession of surplus through the practice of tolling realised in those techniques. The article develops a Marxian critique with additional insights from world-system theory, critical social theory and critical geography. Examples of gatekeeping technique considered throughout the article include master degree programmes, journal publication structures, conference fees and Graduate Record Examinations.

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Section: Class and The Contemporary ‘Rent Offensive’mentioning

confidence: 99%

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

Welsh

2020

Capital & Class

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“…To the extent that 'external' forces have played a significant role in the reconfigurations of the British state, they are of international and pan-global provenance, rather than simply of EU institutional origin (Varoufakis 2015). In the retreat from empire and industry (Alford 1995), British elites have found a new expression of the relationship between the British state-territory and the world-system, and that expression I argue is the financialised city-state (Welsh, 2017(Welsh, ,, 2019; See also Ertürk et al, 2011). It is in relation to this expression, and the transformations both constructive of it and consequent to it, that the objective conditions for the crisis of the British state can perhaps be more felicitously understood and strategically narrativized in a way that more effectively critiques those cadres responsible for it.…”

Section: A Counter-narrative To 'Brexit'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, I shall introduce the concept of the axiomatic city-state as a critical means of narrativizing the changing political geography of Britain today (See also Welsh, 2019). This concept will allow us to develop the suspicion that the preponderance of such a global city as London within the post-imperial rump of the British state-territory is something of immense and strategic political importance (See Henderson and Ying Ho 2014).…”

Section: A Counter-narrative To 'Brexit'mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One implication pertains to class, and how to think strategically about the social contours of political subordination in the British state (See Welsh, 2019). Political analysis predicated upon the axiomatic city-state has the potential to shift our understanding of class from that of a sociological category or identity group towards an understanding of class as the 'common shared element' and isomorphic contour in the relations of subordination generated by a given mode of production.…”

Section: Conclusion: Implications For Political Practice and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

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City-State Britain: A Counter-Narrative to ‘Brexit’

Welsh

2020

Geopolitics

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The incipient crisis of the British state, which seems so apparent in 'Brexit', the move towards Scottish Independence, and the succession of minority governments, ought to be understood as a historical conjuncture. This conjuncture has entailed a profound reconfiguration of the social relations that constitute the British state-territory in the context of the world-system, making of it something as geographical as it is historical. Understanding this reconfiguration in novel, innovative, critical, productive or even sublative ways seems therefore to be a priority in the study of post-Brexit British politics and global political economy. Furthermore, as 'Brexit' has become the dominant narrativization of the objective conditions and subjective perceptions of this crisis, a convincing counter-narrative must be conceived for critical thinking and praxis. In the struggle over how to define our crisis in the British state, and drawing upon Critical Urban Theory, World-System Analysis, and poststructuralist political thought, the paper introduces the concept of the axiomatic city-state. This concept offers not merely an alternative empirical characterisation of the reconfigured British state, but a means of conceptualising broader transformations across the world-system at large. More importantly, it suggests a politically potent means for exploring critical vocabularies, strategies, and perhaps organization into the near future.

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Civitas sine suffragio : a new (old) concept for critical geopolitics

Welsh

2023

Space and Polity

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The political aesthetic of the British city‐state: Class formation through the global city

Cited by 4 publications

References 55 publications

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

Tolling academics: Rent-seeking and gatekeeping in the university space

City-State Britain: A Counter-Narrative to ‘Brexit’

Civitas sine suffragio : a new (old) concept for critical geopolitics

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