‘Did COVID-19 exist before the scientists?' Towards curriculum theory now

We live in an era that normalized absurdism and abnormality. From successive devastating economic and environmental havoc, the world is now before a pandemic with a lethal footprint throughout the planet. The pandemonium became global. This paper situates the current COVID-19 pandemic within the context of an endless multi-plethora of devastating sagas pushing humanity into an unimaginable great regression. In doing so, the paper examines, how such pandemic reflects the very colors of an intentional epistemological blindness that frames Eurocentric reasoning, which crippled the political economy of global capitalism deepening and accelerating a never-ending and non-stop crisis that started in 2008. The paper explores also the social construction of the current pandemic and argues for alternatives ways to think and to do education and curriculum theory alternatively to challenge Modern Western Eurocentric reasoning. In doing so, advances itinerant curriculum theory as a just approach, a just alter-curriculum ‘theory now', one that respects the world's pluri-epistemological diversity, and aims to walk way from utopias framed within the borders determined by coloniality towards an anti-decolonial climax, and ‘heretopia'.

International Trade Fairs and Inter-Firm Knowledge Flows: Understanding Patterns of Convergence-Divergence in the Technological Specializations of Firms

Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty caused by a shift toward protectionism and the COVID-19 pandemic among other issues, this book suggests that international trade fairs (ITFs) represent a vital source of economic dynamism that can support national and regional economies by creating opportunities for firms to access new markets, network with key actors in their industry or value chain, and tap into valuable external knowledge flows regarding new technologies and innovations. Author Rachael Gibson argues that ITFs have become crucial nodes in the global political economy, driving global economic dynamics and mediating differences between capitalist economies regarding their technological and institutional practices and conditions. In this way, ITFs represent a decisive mechanism by which distinct national patterns of technological specialization may converge or diverge. Trade fairs represent important platforms for networking, interactive learning, and knowledge exchange because they foster intense interactions among actors despite spatial boundaries. ITFs also tend to be organized according to a specific technological or industry focus, which means that they can facilitate interactions between firms from different capitalist varieties. Through the diffusion of state-of-the-art knowledge, ITFs may, thus, serve as drivers of economic globalization, challenging the continuation of distinct capitalist varieties by enabling cross-system convergence regarding the technological specializations of firms. Yet, it is clear that countries have retained competitive advantages in specific industries and that full convergence has not taken place. This book explores this puzzle. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Global inequities in access to COVID-19 health products and technologies: A political economy analysis.

This paper presents a political economy analysis of global inequities in access to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests. We adapt a conceptual model used for analysing the political economy of global extraction and health to examine the politico-economic factors affecting access to COVID-19 health products and technologies in four interconnected layers: the social, political, and historical context; politics, institutions, and policies; pathways to ill-health; and health consequences. Our analysis finds that battles over access to COVID-19 products occur in a profoundly unequal playing field, and that efforts to improve access that do not shift the fundamental power imbalances are bound to fail. Inequitable access has both direct effects on health (preventable illness and death) and indirect effects through exacerbation of poverty and inequality. We highlight how the case of COVID-19 products reflects broader patterns of structural violence, in which the political economy is structured to improve and lengthen the lives of those in the Global North while neglecting and shortening the lives of those in the Global South. We conclude that achieving equitable access to pandemic response products requires shifting longstanding power imbalances and the institutions and processes that entrench and enable them.

Realistic cosmopolitism and common debt: Pogge, Habermas and Lafont in the european cosmopolitan turn

The objective of the paper is to link the philosophical debate on cosmopolitanism developed between Jurgen Habermas, Thomas Pogge and Cristina Lafont with the current process of transformation of the European Union that is generated from the crisis of COVID 19. We analysed the tensions between the national identities and human rights;the moral legitimacy of global and continental taxes is debated;the tensions between state and supra-state sovereignty are questioned, and, finally, the discussion about the limits that define what is fair and the justice in the so-called: "New Generation of the EU".

Slow violence, over-indebtedness, and the politics of (in)visibility: Stories and creative practices in pandemic times

In this paper I share insights and thoughts on the ‘doing' of creative practice for representing and communicating lived experiences of slow violence. Reflecting on two UKRI GCRF studies I have been part of in Cambodia, and which both harnessed creative practice in their methodologies, I focus specifically on the slow violence of over-indebtedness effecting garment workers and farmers during, but also pre-dating, the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper intentionally ‘makes space' for the films and portraiture photography from these studies to be viewed and exalted – the aim being to encourage political geographers to become more attuned to, and themselves embrace, the ‘doing' of creative practice. Together they show first how the ‘doing' of creative practice can deepen and add new dimensions to growing work on embodied relations and temporalities of debt and over-indebtedness. Second, the insights offered in this paper underscore the ethical importance of care, responsibility, and trust in geographical knowledge creation and the management of research projects concerned with slow violence. The paper ultimately impresses the dual value of the ‘doing' of creative practice and its myriad politics, and being more attentive to what can be learned through creative practice itself about the political geographies of slow violence encountered in people's lives.

COVID-19 lockdown defiance, public `indiscipline', and criminalisation of vulnerable populations in Ghana

Behavioural economics has provided much source of inspiration for public policy in the COVID-19 era. Such is evidently the state of discussion in Ghana, where Ghanaians' so-called stubborn resistance to positive behavioural change is increasingly the target of public and popular criticisms. This paper argues that further to legitimising the police violence and extrajudicial sanctions meted out to `undisciplined' violators of the restrictions, the indiscipline narrative leaps too quickly from an account of the personal morality/attitudes of Ghanaians to the collective action of mass-defiance of the restrictions without taking adequate account of the range of structural constraints that made it difficult for the majority of the people to comply with the restrictions. The mass defiance of the restrictions is best understood in the context of the unequal outcomes of the broader policy processes and practices, and the historical-institutional power dynamics around them that put some people in criminogenic situations in the country. It is important that media and policy analyses of public defiance of the restrictions and social problems in the country generally move beyond the simplistic notion of indiscipline to dissect how deliberate bias against the needs of the majority operates, and is institutionalised in policy and practice in ways that undermine their commitment to rules and regulations.

China: The Bankable State

The volume on China: The Bankable State rejects neoliberal consensus and focuses on crucial contributions of the Chinese state in shaping Chinese economy. This book makes crucial theoretical contributions to the study of local political economy of China. This book engages with Chinese state responses to challenges China faces in the processes of reform, transition and development of both commercial and non-commercial banks. This book explores Chinese economic growth and development policy processes and its uniqueness in the wider world economy. The book examines Chinese financial policy praxis and offers an insightful account of its successes for the wider resurgence of alternative political economy of local development. Additionally, this book also showcases state led entrepreneurship in China. The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021.

COVID-19 and the Indian economy: The debate about a wage-led recovery

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered multiple crises-of health, economy, and livelihoods-in India. The restoration of at least a part of the incomes lost by the overwhelmingly informal workforce in the country during the lockdown period should have been a priority for the government. However, the stimulus packages announced by the government have been inadequate, especially given the magnitude of the employment and livelihood crisis. Some of the policies taken in the wake of the crisis, such as the approval to increase daily working hours to twelve, have led to a weakening of labour's position vis-a-vis capital. Rather than boosting economic growth, such measures will only worsen the deficiency in aggregate demand and prolong the recession. India's policy-makers should reconsider the faith they have put in neoclassical economic ideas, which have slowed down employment growth and left millions of people with little access to basic health or education facilities. The pandemic should be an opportunity to build in India an effective and publicly provided social security system as well as rural infrastructure and research institutions. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Editorial Comment: Feminist Methodologies at Play

Discourse concerning the Atlanta Spa Shootings, which happened around the time that this issue first started to come together in March of 2021, has renewed the urgency of thinking about performance and feminism together.1 Given that this issue's publication roughly coincides with the first anniversary of those murders, the violent events in Atlanta have loomed in the background of the editorial process. [...]although the essays in this issue address quite distinct forms of performance and paratheatrical phenomena from state surveillance to fan groups to online participatory audiences, all of the essays use feminist methodologies either explicitly or implicitly. [...]this editorial highlights some of their convergences to think through how the interventions of each author might speak to a feminist knowledge project that is critical in this historical moment. Fans watch events transpire in Wanda's magically created world, which is itself surveyed in the narrative by an extra-governmental agency (elaborated in the comic books if not so much in the television miniseries itself);these source materials give Wanda and Vision their names and provide many backstories for the roster of secondary characters. Barnette suggests that the series also provided a platform to see the ethical conundrums of real-life individuals whose positions of power grant their words authority;witness former president Donald Trump inciting the attack on the Capitol.

Bodies in Transit: Speculation and the Biopolitical Imaginary

This essay explores the Bodies in Transit archive, an artifact of mid-nineteenth-century public health administration in New York City. The ledgers, which tracked the transit of every corpse that moved through the island of Manhattan between 1859 and 1894 and categorized entrants by their cause of death, nationality, and occupation, present a unique lens through which I explore the intersections of speculation, biopolitics, and urban space. I first establish a conceptual framework of "speculation" by dissecting its etymological genealogy, the roots of which share a preoccupation with vision and sight. I note that in practice, the ing and rationalizing tendencies of speculation operate by envisioning, calculating, and coercing specific outcomes into realization. I apply this framework to Bodies in Transit to historicize the ways in which biopolitics, the means through which the state forms, represents, and manages populations, are indexed to speculative economic practices. I read Bodies in Transit through the framework of speculation to articulate a field of meaning that illuminates the complex material and epistemic conditions surrounding its implementation and utility. As I argue, the ledgers were a response to the acceleration of real estate speculation in Manhattan, a trend that incentivized property owners to disinter burial grounds to relocate corpses to rural areas, and thereby connected the speculative logics of real estate to those of public health, spatial order, and surveillance. By thinking across and through the layered meanings of "speculation," this essay illuminates how the state's economy of knowledge is intimately related to biopolitical practices of surveillance and representations of financial value in the modern city.

Socialist Political Economy with Chinese Characteristics and Research on the Chinese and Foreign Economies

In 2021, responding to changes in the world political and economic situation and basing itself on Marxist political economy, the New Marxian Economics Synthesis School led by Professor Enfu Cheng carried forward its traditions and forged ahead into the future. The school conducted active, in-depth research on how to uphold the integrity of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics and enrich it with new elements, putting forward a series of theoretical innovations in areas that include the ten essentials of socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics, its sources of innovation and logical starting point, the orientation of its practice, and so forth. Based on these theoretical innovations, many of the scholars who make up the school engaged in lively discussion on a range of focal issues of today's Chinese economy, including common prosperity, the new "dual circulation" development pattern, artificial intelligence and the digital economy, the modernization of national governance and so on. In addition, they made searching criticisms of the financialization of the contemporary capitalist economy and of the new developments seen in liberalism and hegemonism since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. In sum, they recorded a long series of fruitful theoretical achievements.

Reimagining University-Community Engagement

This article is based on a keynote address to the second Higher Education Conference in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the environmental and inequality crises confronting South Africa and the world. After an examination of the societal context of universities, the article discusses critical issues in relation to university-community engagement. It attempts to address these issues by firstly providing an overview of the long-standing debates in our country concerning the academy's responsibilities and accountability to various constituencies beyond the universities gates and the imperative to rethink scholarship to engage communities meaningfully. Secondly, it will provide an appreciation of the overarching political economy of higher education and the corporatisation of universities before drawing conclusions about the processes that impede or allow the university to be responsive to community engagement. The article will provide a few historical and contemporaneous examples of the work of university-based researchers with various communities. The research of those who have an orientation toward working class communities and aim to democratise knowledge production will be highlighted. It will be argued that the latter's "praxis epistemology" (Amini 2017) assists us in reimagining university-community relations.

Federalism and pandemic policies: variety as the spice of life.

In the ordinary course of life, choices vary with age and other factors because one's opportunities vary with one's circumstances. Thus, investments in and expenditures on healthcare (and most other things) vary with age and a variety of other factors, including whether one lives in a rural area, suburb, or central city, health risks, risk aversion, and beliefs about the nature of a good life. Because assessment of the effects of illnesses vary with the same factors, the conclusions reached about best private and governmental health policies also tend to vary. This implies that conformity to "ideal" pandemic policies is more likely to be generated by a federal or polycentric system of policy making than a unitary system, especially ones that are constrained by a generality principle.

Capital, Capitalism and Health

The Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to increased scholarly attention to an important ‘human need': good health. This article is about the relation between workers' health and capitalist production, as Marx examines it in his magnum opus. While Marx's main focus in Capital Volume 1 is on the production of surplus value by workers and its appropriation by capitalists, he does provide insights into how capitalism ruins the health of workers themselves, although these insights are scattered. In this article, I systematically re-articulate and analyse Marx's thoughts about workers' health in relation to some of the key-categories of his political economy: the value of labour power relative to wages;employment precarity;long working day;hidden abode of production;capitalists' despotic control over workers;and the capitalist transformation of nature. I briefly relate Marx's ideas about workers' health from Capital Volume 1 to some contemporary research on the social dimensions of health. I also show that Marx's explicit ideas about workers' health, which are my main focus, point to a broader approach to the topic that is only implicit in his thinking. I draw out some practical implications of this approach.

The Transformation of the US's Hegemonic Paradigm: From Embedded Liberalism to Disembedded Financial Liberalism 1

Amerika'nın Íkinci Dünya Savaşı'ndan bu yana dünya çapında hakim bir güç olarak ortaya çıkışı, bazı tarihsel tecrübeler ışıǧında incelenmesi gereken bir konudur. Íkinci Dünya Savaşı'nın ardından ABD dünyanın çöken uluslararası para ve finans sistemini yeniden kurmuş, böylelikle lider pozisyonda olacaǧı uluslararası kapitalist sistemi oluşturmuştur. Gömülü liberalizm, ekonomik, politik ve kurumsal bir örgütlenme stratejisi olarak ABD hegemonyasını saǧlamlaştırarak istikrarlı bir hale getirmiş, uluslararası sistemde ABD'nin başrol oynadıǧı bir küresel ekonominin somutlaşmasının koşullarını yaratmıştır. 1970'lerin ortalarından itibaren ise-neoliberal politikalara geçişin doǧal bir sonucu olarak, dünya ekonomisinin finans kapital ile karakterize bir birikim rejimine entegrasyonunun ardından, parçalanmış finansal liberalizmin ABD hegemonyasının devamlılıǧını saǧlayacak yeni bir strateji olarak etkisini göstermeye başladıǧı anlaşılmıştır. Çalışma, ABD hegemonyasının ortaya çıkışından günümüze kadar uzanan zaman diliminde, ABD'nin hegemonik stratejisinde meydana gelen deǧişimi açıklama sorunsalından hareket etmiştir. Bu sorunsal baǧlamında, ABD hegemonik stratejisinin gömülü liberalizmden parçalanmış finansal liberalizme kayışı ve bu kayışı belirleyen temel dinamikler tarihsel perspektif ekseninde irdelenmiştir.Alternate :The emergence of the United States (US) as the worldwide dominant power is an affair that needs to be investigated in light of some historical experiences. Afterward the Second World War, the US reestablished the world's deteriorating international monetary and financial system. Embedded liberalism reinforced and stabilized the US hegemony (as the form of economic, political, and institutional organization) by generating the requirements for consolidating the global economy in which the US takes a leading role. From the mid-1970s, after integrating the world economy into an accumulation regime characterized by finance capital-as, a natural consequence of the transition to neoliberal policies-it was understood that fragmented financial liberalism began to show its effect as a new strategy that would ensure the continuity of the US hegemony. The study has departed from the problematic of elucidating the change in the hegemonic strategy of the US from its birth to the present day. In this problematic context, the shift of the US hegemonic strategy from embedded liberalism to disembedded financial liberalism and the central dynamics determining this shift is examined in the axis of historical perspective.

COVID-19 IN AFRICA: AN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL INTERPRETATION (2019-2022)

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of challenges to the globalized world. Globally, it has decimated over six million lives. Since 2019, it has shook the world in many respects, especially, it disrupted economies and societies and halted the majority of human endeavor. Commentaries and reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the media showed an alarming situation that could be damning in low and middle income countries. Economic pundits and global public health experts also anticipated doom and gloom for African countries. However, in terms of mortality, the Americas, Europe and Asia have suffered more losses. Irrespective of these loses in Europe, Africa's case needs better appreciation within our contemporary historical discourse. The burgeoning challenge of the COVID disease and mortalities arising thereby, among other things, necessitated the introduction of policies based on the WHO's historical understanding of how the world has dealt with pandemics in the past. Some of the strategies that were deployed to fight the pandemic included hand washing under running water with soap, the use of alcohol based hand sanitizers, the wearing of nose masks, social distancing, self-isolation as well as partial and complete lockdowns of states and communities. The major economic disruption really came about as a result of many lockdown policies that were implemented by several countries in Africa without proper reference to their own societal contexts. These issues notwithstanding, it is important to emphasize that the extent of the impact on different communities differed to a large extent, even though there were similar levels of the nature of the infection and the general economic outlook among the global community. This current contribution on the COVID-19 discourse used political economy and economic shock as bases to highlight the extent of the impact of the disease by highlighting examples from respective countries in Africa, namely, Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa. In particular, the impact of policies like lock-down on some of these African countries are highlighted for further discussions in future empirical research. The study relied on contemporary historical evidence from multidisciplinary sources on health, economics, policy, and other related studies on epidemiology, public health, health education and promotion, reports and sources from the World Health Organization (WHO). Specifically, the authors have used published research in Lancet, the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, BMJ Global Health, Frontiers in Public Health and the Pan African Medical Journal. The others were African Development Review, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Africa Spectrum and International Journal of Financial Research including several other empirical researches. In attempting a social and economic interpretation based on contemporary historical sense, the findings of this present study suggest that African political actors or leaders should make persistent or steady efforts to strengthen the economies of their states to lessen economic shocks and social costs that come about as a result of pandemics such as the COVID-19. It also identified the fact that within the globalized space, application of policies from other countries including international organizations should not be devoid of context. © 2022, Centar za istrazivanje moderne i savremene historije Tuzla. All rights reserved.

Viability of paid subscription in Uganda: An analysis of chimpreports' paywall

Digital media platforms in Uganda experimented with subscription-based models as an alternative to the traditional advertising model and as a recovery plan from the effects of COVID-19. Drawing from the theory of the political economy of the media, this study focusses on the critical success factors for subscription-based models in digital media platforms, audience consumption habits vis-a-vis payment for content, the effect of paywalls on the company financials and finally, establish the barriers to subscription uptake in Uganda. Media started charging users subscription fees for content in the 1990s (Chyi, 2005). Technological advances changed audience consumption habits from consuming hardcopy newspapers to accessing content on the go through their smartphones, tablets, and computers (Berger, Matt, Steininger, & Hess, 2015). Whilst some consumers pay for content, several audience surveys in East Africa indicated a lack of consistency among the paying audiences (KARF, 2019). Most consumers never purchased subscription and were avert to paywalls. The study used a mixed-method approach to find that the increase in internet penetration in Uganda and smartphone usage were the most significant enablers of paidcontent consumption in Uganda. The quality of content, poor packaging, and unfair prices by publishers were the biggest barriers to consumption of paid news content. © 2022 by Alex Taremwa.

The economic impact of COVID-19 on the print media industry in Zimbabwe

This chapter interrogates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on print newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. COVID-19 affected the global economy due to various lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments in attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This severely affected media houses, especially newspaper companies that depended on sales as their potential customers stayed home. The pandemic came against the backdrop of constant changes affecting the print media industry. Digitalisation and the resultant fragmentation of the audiences affect the way audiences consume media products. Against this milieu, this chapter investigates how these changes affected or shielded media houses from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two leading newspaper companies in Zimbabwe, Alpha Media Holdings and Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Ltd are used as case studies. The chapter deploys both the critical tradition to the study of media economics (political economy of the media) and the theory of the firm to argue that the traditional economic model of depending on casual sales for survival is outdated. The chapter documents the adverse effects of the pandemic on journalism practice highlighting how the impact was more pronounced in the privately owned newspaper companies than in government-controlled ones. © 2022 by Bhekinkosi Jakobe Ncube.

‘Creabimus!' Creatively re-thinking the corporation and the social contract

This article rethinks the corporation and ‘the social contract with business' for the post-pandemic era. It uses a double historical orientation centred on the turbulence of the 1930s in Europe and America to insist on the company's relationship with government, and to explore transformations in the social contract now needed to socialise and ecologise global business. One part of this history looks forward, from Adolf Berle's modern corporation to the neoliberal corporation and regulatory governance. The article criticises a transformation of regulatory priorities in this era, closely analysing the shift to procedural mandates and questioning the corporate law tactic of ‘enlightening' companies. The second part looks backwards to industrial modernism and Walter Rathenau in Germany in the interwar era, and also earlier (the late 1890s), to salvage a different understanding of the company and social contract, built around more constructivist visions of law, government and social consciousness. This part of the article is insistent about the metaphysical aspects of law and about developing law's equalising powers around corporate impactfulness and injustice. It promotes ‘thought' about collectivism (John Keynes) and the legal and regulatory recalibration that is needed to confront certain amassing challenges of the present. The article makes institutional transformation about shifting onto a different historical axis, whereby we might re-learn collectivist ambitions around the company that co-evolves with law and government, live to the public interest. It proposes a new social contract with business and a new regulatory modus involving law's ‘Creabimus' and ‘regulating dangerously' for situations of widely adverse corporate impactfulness.

Renewable Energy and Governance Resilience in the Gulf

The six Gulf monarchies—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates (UAE)—are more politically stable than their peers in the Middle East and North Africa. Explanations for governance resilience range from repression to neopatrimonial and instrumental legitimacy, hydrocarbon-based rentierism, and permissive regional and international environments. This paper considers, in view of the proliferation and uptake of renewable energy in the Gulf, how governance resilience may be affected as a result of changes in state-society relations during the energy transition away from a fossil-fuel-based energy system. It offers a qualitative analysis of the impact of renewable energy deployment in the Gulf, supported by a rich array of secondary literature and data. It also offers a deep, if brief, dive to highlight intra-regional nuances. The authors conclude that in the short term, renewable energy deployment has a very modest impact given its limited share of power generation. In the longer term, even assuming that stated ambitions for renewable energy are fulfilled, no negative impact on monarchial resilience is expected thanks to gains in legitimacy and revenue streams, as well as purposeful alignment with an external environment supportive of renewable power in developing countries.