Programme full

Wednesday 15 April 2015 16:00 - 17:30
PAPER SESSION 3
The second aims to observe comparative studies' production through the lenses of historical sociology.
comparative-historical, historical-comparative dilemma/problem/quasi-problem will be discussed.
The
Anti-Political Economies: Supermarkets and Contemporary State Form
Jones, P., Mair, M.
(University of Liverpool)
The reconfiguration of state-society-market relations has been characterised by a distinctly political redrawing of lines
of demarcation and accountability. Supermarkets are enmeshed in contemporary governmental arrangements in ways
that we argue have wider significance for sociological analyses of such politics and governance arrangements. This
paper explores the ways in which relationships between state and capital are locked in to supermarket-state hybrids;
here we position supermarkets in the UK as distinctly political forms, whose spatial and labour market formation
reveals their deep entanglement with state policies.
In particular we position supermarkets as a particularly virulent form of 'anti-politics machine' (Ferguson), whose
workings are antithetical to transparent/accountable decision-making, but nonetheless that achieve some particular
ends (and not just for the supermarkets themselves). Making a case for the necessity of theoretically-sophisticated,
empirically-grounded approaches to the distribution of governance through the private sector, this paper contends that
sociological analysis of the state is required if we are to understand the significant position of supermarkets in political
and urban landscapes alike.
Realism and the Emerging Subjects of Financialisation
Mulcahy, N.
(University of Cambridge)
Viewed through the lens of 'daily life', transformations in global finance represent shifts in the way people save and
borrow in order to provide for themselves or their households and reproduce their ways of life. As commentators from
many disciplines have noted, financial restructuring (for example, stagnating real wages and the subsequent
'democratisation of credit' to high-risk households, private pensions and everyday investment) has forged a link
between finance markets and daily routine that engenders an entrepreneurial, neo-liberal subjectivity. While much
work has focused on the emergence of new market structures, less has been said of the changing nature of
subjectivity itself, apart from emphasising the individualising nature of neoliberalism: concerns are often raised about
individuals and their consumerist greed, workers disadvantaged by the decline of welfare systems, citizens conceived
as customers within the state, and private investors responsible for mitigating economic risks through their own
informed choices. However, a financial subjectivity that is not defined in relation to the categories of industrial
capitalism is lacking. I argue that realist work which focuses on finance markets as the context through which
neoliberal subjects are created will benefit from theoretical engagement with the daily life of individuals and groups as
a means of explaining causally the reproduction or disruption of financial social relations and their emergent
properties, which differ from those of industrial capitalism. This can be accomplished within the realist framework of
morphogenesis and morphostasis.
Work, Employment and Economic Life
A005, GOVAN MBEKI BUILDING
Labour’s Rearguard Battle against Capital and the Doubtful Hopes of a Corporatist Revival
Preminger, J.
(Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
The recent resurgence of unionising has reawakened academic interest in union attempts to regain or retain their
power, addressed by the revitalisation literature. A crucial question underlying this literature is whether organised
labour still has a political role to play in western democracies despite some thirty years in which efforts have been
made to weaken it and rearrange the labour market. Some researchers assert we are witnessing a corporatist revival,
noting the renewed use of neocorporatist structures and collective frameworks, but even more moderate scholars
suggest that the neoliberal locomotive may have been slowed. This paper proposes a different perspective: what
recent worker struggles reflect is the power of employers and their determination to attain complete freedom of
operation in the labour market.
139 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University