PROKLA - Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialwissenschaft
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Hilfe zwischen Abschreckung und Profit.: Interessenkonflikte Sozialer Arbeit in Flüchtlingssammelunterkünften gewerblicher Träger in Berlin
Get PDFWith the recent influx of asylum seekers, also the number of refugee shelters in Berlin has risen over the past year. On the one hand, the installation of new facilities was a necessary measure to avoid homelessness. On the other hand, putting refugees into camps and group facilities has been an integral part of the restrictive asylum policy aiming at deterrence. Many of these refugee camps are run as a lucrative business by private companies . Social workers working in these camps, employed by the enterprises and paid by the state, act in an institutional context that is full of contradictions and conflicting interests. Their own aspiration to ‘help’ and serve the idea of ‘human rights’ can clash with requirements of control and restriction. Social Workers’ possibilities to reject such unwanted functionalization are limited, because of their institutional dependence, the prevailing legal regulations and their weak representation of interests, among other factors
Wertkörper: Zur Ökonomisierung des menschlichen Körpers im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Neoliberalismus
Get PDFRecent advances in the fields of genomics and biotechnology have greatly expanded the discretionary autonomy of human beings over their bodies. Biology has so become a new and alluring terrain for the enlightenment project of self-realization and selffulfilment. These developments have been co-evolving with the global expansion of neoliberal capitalism. This article states that there is a common logic at work in both areas, leading not only to the emergence of a global market in biological materials but also to a re-calibration of the biology of human life into lively capital. For this reason, the new „freedom“ of constructing the body according to one’s own preferences and desires in a dialectical inversion entails new obligations and constraints. In the end, only the technologically enhanced human body is fit for the neoliberal world of social cut-backs and can avoid being consigned to a new, this time biologically defined underclass
„Schönheit ist Macht“: Das Beispiel Lookism in Südkorea
Get PDFSouth Korea is a country where plastic surgery industry has been a roaring success. Beauty has become a dominant norm. Why? Some people try to explain this phenomenon in terms of the traditional Confucian culture of self-cultivation. However, this cannot be correct, as in Confucian culture a neat look cannot be equated with beauty. However, the rising dominance of lookism since the 1990s can be better explained through the interaction of pressures emanating from the labour market, of entertainment business, of the business strategies of medical industry and of economic policies of the government
Die richtige Wahl: Biotechnologie, Selbstüberwachung & Identität
Get PDFThis article extends the materialist critique of bio-capitalist structures and logics to not medically indicated, recreational uses of biomedical diagnostic information. The increasing biomedicalization of society changes our understanding of life, body, and self. The possibilities of intervening in the make-up of the body turns life into a controllable process, which only depends on the right choice and consumption of products. And this choice is produced by a commercial sector that has been described as bio-capitalist complex. Diagnostic tools that provide a new insight into the body have revolutionized the concept of health, making self-surveillance an integral part of everyday life. With the growing prevalence of diagnostic testing and its extension to recreational and everyday practices – from genetic testing to me- Health and wearables – bio-capitalist market structures pervade not only the understanding of the body but of the self. This article argues that the renegotiation of the body as bio-capital has extended to everyday identity practices that are not necessarily recognized as biomedical and biotechnological but follow nonetheless the logics that govern this biomedical-industrial complex
America’s T-Strategy: Die US-Hegemonie und die Korrektur der US-Außen- und Energiepolitik
Get PDFThe recent escalation of conflicts in the periphery of the European Union and the changes in transatlantic foreign policy can be understood partially as the result of a reorganization of the global energy policy. After the financial crisis of 2008, the new US administration pursued a strategy of lowering the energy costs. The necessary surpluses were created by new production technologies of oil and natural gas (fracking). Part of this successful strategy was a partial military withdrawal from conflict regions and a reduction of the direct involvement in the Greater Middle East. Starting from a highly productive heartland, the American Empire opens up world markets and secures global trade routes. The Transatlantic and Transpacific Free Trade Agreements (TTIP and TPP) are supposed to trigger a new economic stimulus with North America at its center: America’s T-Strategy. Analyzing the development of energy policies and foreign policy discussions within elite networks, the article argues that this strategy is directed mainly against the rising powers Russia and China
Klimapolitik verstärkt globale und soziale Ungleichheiten
Get PDFRecent international climate policy is dominated by a neoliberal ideology based on a win-win-story of endless economic growth without environmental destruction. Policy makers and economic leaders have accepted the scientific argument of planetary boundaries. Since the mid-1990s, the answer to climate change is the promotion of technological innovations and market-based mitigation instruments. Eventhough this answer did not lead to the expected reduction of carbon emissions, it dominated the post-Kyoto summits of 2015. This article explores the main narratives of the climate debate in order to understand this contradiction and its persistence
Der Gott der Waren: Die ökonomische Theorie und ihr Geld
Get PDFCapitalism is essentially a money economy: money makes the world go round. But there’s a big ambiguity in which sense money is relevant. The confusion about money based on the comprehension of what capitalism is – irrespective of if the position is critical or a&rmative. The article provide a survey of the main theories, the paradigms of political economy and their conceptualization of money: Classic/Neoclassic, Keynesian and Marxian Theory. It also discusses three relevant problem areas in money theory: inflation and the distinction of money and credit, which is important to understand the modern banking system with central bank and corporate bank
Märkte der guten Hoffnung: Leihmutterschaft, Arbeit und körperliche Kommodifizierung in Russland
Get PDFSurrogacy has often been discussed as the ultimate form of commodification processes,that position surrogate mothers as the weakest links in global reproduction chains. The article explores the perspectives of these women in post-Soviet Russia, investigating how they conceptualise their „work“ and what role the metaphor of gift-giving plays in this context. Giving insight into their diverse backgrounds, experiences and attitudes, the text provides the opportunity to ask for ways of conceptualising the complex power relations pervading commercialised intimacies
Die Camera Obscura der Identität: Zur Reichweite des Critical-Whiteness-Ansatzes
Get PDFThe article discusses the recent adoption of „Whiteness Studies" in the German context. Renamed as „Critical Whiteness", the concept has gained popularity particularly in the political field (and partly in academia), where it soon led to vibrant controversies. The paper takes these debates as a starting point to argue that the moralization of politics in relation to the use of this concept in the German context is partly a result of the concept itself, which is caught between a race relations approach and a constructivist one. This becomes particularly apparent when it tries to explain post-racism with arguments from symbolic interactionism. To frame racism in terms of „white supremacy“ is particularly problematic in a context, in which racism has since WW2 been articulated and organized around immigration, concerning people, who, with the current US terminology would be labelled as „white“. Furthermore, the paper engages critically with different elements and concepts employed by the approach, such as „awareness“, „privileges“and „standpoint theory“. It concludes with a discussion of the political subjectivation inherent in the concept in terms of the affective relations it seems to presuppose
Die Eiserne Seidenstraße: Chinas Politik der Hochgeschwindigkeitsbahnen und ihre Auswirkungen auf seine Nachbarländer
Get PDFIn May 2014, the Thai military staged a coup d’état and ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. This coup, which marks the climax of the split between the Redshirt and Yellowshirt political camps, is difficult to explain solely in terms of inner Thai power relations. Instead the article argues that the Chinese mega infrastructure project one belt one road needs to be taken into account. This project is another major step in the rise of China – a process, which has often been seen as part of a hegemonic shift towards a new accumulation cycle with China as new center. Against this background, the present upheaval in Thailand is interpreted in a historical perspective and as one example for the kind of conflicts, which accompany the historic shift towards China as a new power center. However, the article also argues that the turn towards an autocratic form of governance can not be attributed to direct Chinese influence. Rather, it is the result of the fierce rivalry between two capitalist fractions and domestic factors