Cultural Political Economy of Variegated Capitalism: State Theory

  • Date: September 25th, Friday, 2020 10:00-12:00
  • Online seminar via Zoom

SNUAC’s Center for Asian Urban Societies has programmed a seminar on the basics of <Cultural Political Economy of Variegated Capitalism> on every other Friday starting from August 14th.

In this seminar, we plan to overview the components of cultural political economy:  (1) critical realism, (2) the strategic-relational approach, (3) critique of political economy, (4) the régulation approach and governance theory, (5) state theory, (6) critical discourse analysis and critical semiotic analysis, (7) conjunctural analysis, (8) the variegation approach.

The seminar will proceed with the lectures (mostly explanations of the background) by the host and presentations and discussion by participants. While this will start out in the form of a reading club, we are hoping that it will grow into a research network in the future. We ask all graduate students and researchers who are interested in the critique of political economy, critical cultural political economy and critical cultural studies to join us.

※ Inquiries : Kihoon Choi (geozealot@gmail.com)

Jihoon Park

Researcher at Sogang University Institute of Social Sciences. Visiting researcher at SNUAC. Earned a Ph.D. with “A Cultural Political Economy of South Korea’s Development Model in Variegated Capitalism” under the guidance of Bob Jessop and Ngai-Ling Sum at Lancaster University.

※ Please sign up through this Google Form if you wish to participate.
https://forms.gle/t25SP74xDGSnn6J19

This seminar was held on September 25th as the fourth meeting of the eight to be held, on the critique of the political economy. The host of the seminar, Jihoon Park (SNUAC visiting researcher) introduced Marx’s major writings and explained the (1) so-called ‘plan debate’, (2) methods of political economics, (3) the concept of social structure, (4) and which stance cultural-political economists mostly accept in terms of the theory of value.
According to Dr. Park, cultural-political economics acknowledges the incompleteness of Das Kapital in terms of the plan debate and is friendly toward books like Harvey’s The Limits to Capital or Michael Lebowitz’s Beyond Capital. Also, he also claimed that recent cultural-political economists are attempting studies on overseas trade and the global market, in consideration of Marx’s plan of “6 volumes” as supposedly put forth by Marx in the late 1850s. In relation to Marx’s ‘plan’, Dr. Park integrated the ‘1857 Introduction’ (the introduction to Grundrisse),  the ‘1867 Introduction’ (the introduction to the first German edition of Das Kapital), and the ‘1873 Epilogue’ (the epilogue to the second German edition of Das Kapital) among others to clarify not only the rhetorical methods but also the method of investigation, or its procedure. Furthermore, regarding the concept of social structure, Dr. Park mentioned in which context Bob Jessop accepts Niklas Luhman’s theory of systems.
To conclude, Dr. Park sought to explain the interpretation of Diane Elson, a British feminist economist and sociologist. According to Dr. Park, Elson understands Marx’s theory of value not as the labour theory of value regarding labour for value (=price), but the value theory of labour. Such an interpretation is being accepted by not only Bob Jessop but also geologist David Harvey and anthropologist Terrence Turner.
During the four meetings held so far, Dr. Park attempted to connect critical realism, the strategic-relational approach, and the critique of the political economy. The remaining four meetings will deal with state theory, critical discourse analysis, and the variegation approach, at a more specific level.