SPERI Presents...

The Long Depression spanned the 1870s into the 1890s, characterised by a prolonged squeeze on capitalist profits, deflation, protectionism and class conflict. How were the harms of this period distributed between classes? What does this early crisis of capitalism tell us about the relationship between crisis and capitalism more generally? How can it help us understand the contributions and limitations of marginalism and neoclassical economics?Matthew Watson is Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the Long Depression, how it was experienced differently by elites and non-elites, its debatable status as a crisis, and its place in the thought of marginalists and early political economists.Crisis Point is a limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present.Recommended reading for this episode:1) Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (2000)2) Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire: 1875–1914 (1987)Works referenced in this episode:Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics (1890)François Quesnay, Tableau Economique (1758)W. Stanley Jevons, Commercial Crises and Sun-Spots (1878)Albert Musson, The Great Depression in Britain, 1873–1896: a Reappraisal (1959)Quentin Skinner, Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas (1969)This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

The 2008 financial crisis is the most totemic political-economic event in living memory. What were the causes of the crash? How does it relate to previous crises in capitalism, like 1970s stagflation? Many believed that 2008 signalled the end of neoliberalism. How did neoliberalism endure in its immediate aftermath? Does China's alternative economic model represent a serious challenge to neoliberalism almost two-decades on? How should we make sense of the post-2008 multipolarity in global politics? Scott Lavery is Lecturer in Political and International Studies at University of Glasgow. His first book is British Capitalism After the Crisis (Springer, 2019). He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the short and long-term causes of the 2008 financial crisis, what the crisis has meant for neoliberalism, the fundamental conditions of British capitalism, and how we can use political economy to analyse contemporary crises. Crisis Point is a limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present.Recommended reading for this episode:1) Colin Crouch, The Strange Non-death of Neo-liberalism (Polity, 2011)2) Adam Tooze, Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World (Penguin, 2018)3) Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire (Verso, 2013) (chapter 12)Works referenced in this episode: Helen Thompson on inflationary pressureNicholas Crafts and Terence C. Mills on productivity slumpThis episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

What does the 1997 East Asian Financial Crisis tell us about capitalism and crisis more generally? Should we include it alongside the 1930s, 1970s and 2008 as a major crisis in the history of capitalism? Or does it simply an early symptom of the conditions that eventually gave rise to 2008? Jomo Kwame Sundaram is a Malaysian economist holding such positions including Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor at the International Islamic University in Malaysia. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis including the role of the IMF in causing it; its experience in Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea respectively; and how we should understand it in relation to the 2008 financial crisis.Crisis Point is a limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present.Recommended reading for this episode:1) Jomo Kwame Sundaram (ed.) Tigers in Trouble: Financial Governance, Liberalisation and Crises in Southeast Asia (Hong Kong University Press, 1998)2) George W. Noble & John Ravenhill (eds.), The Asian Financial Crisis and the Architecture of Global Finance (Cambridge University Press, 2012)3) Frank Veneroso & Robert Wade, The Asian Crisis: The High Debt Model Versus the Wall Street-Treasury-IMF Complex, New Left Review, I/228 (1998)Works referenced in this episode:Robert Wade on East Asia, including the Republic of KoreaThis episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

The 1970s crisis of stagflation is often represented as a crisis of capitalism inciting transformation from post-war social democracy to neoliberalism, but was that really how the crisis was experienced at the time? Was capitalism itself at risk, or was this just a crisis in capitalism and of British politics? Is social democracy the right way to understand the post-war period? Were the unions as powerful as we're told? Did Thatcherism decisively solve the problem of inflation as is claimed? Given the prevalence of historical analogy, what can the 1970s (and, indeed, the 1930s) tell us about our current crisis-ridden conjuncture?Colin Hay was a founding co-Director for SPERI in 2012 and remains in that position today. He is also a Professor of Political Sciences in the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po in Paris. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss the international factors underpinning the1970s crisis of stagflation, misunderstandings about trade unions and inflation during the Winter of Discontent, ironic legacies of Keynesianism, Thatcherism as a political project, neoliberalisation as a process, and constructivist approaches to crisis.Crisis Point is a limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present.Recommended reading for this episode:1) Colin Hay, Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the `Winter of Discontent', Sociology (1996)2) Leo Panitch, The Impasse of Social Democratic Politics, Socialist Register (1986)Works referenced in this episode:Colin Hay's doctoral thesis: 'Re-stating crisis : strategic moments in the structural transformation of the state in post-war Britain' (1995)Ben Bernanke's doctoral thesis: 'Long-term commitments, dynamic optimization, and the business cycle' (1979)This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

For many the Great Depression represents the first and most devastating crisis in capitalism's history. How did it come about about? How did it change both the lives of ordinary people and capital accumulation? Was the Great Depression to be a model for future capitalist crises occurring in cycles, or a singular event producing a unique configuration of consequences?Gareth Dale is Reader in Political Economy at Brunel, University of London. He joins Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley to discuss how the ideas of Karl Polanyi can help us understand the 1930s Great Depression in the longer history of crisis and capitalism.Crisis Point is a limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present.Recommended reading:1) Karl Polanyi (1944), The Great Transformation2) Gareth Dale (2010) Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market3) Eric Helleiner (2014) Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar OrderThis episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Why is crisis a core feature of capitalism? What role does crisis play in the history of capitalism? How useful is crisis as a concept for understanding contemporary political-economic upheavals, for both scholars and activists? Are we in the midst of a crisis or new era of polycrisis or permacrisis? How can we understand our location within it?Chris Saltmarsh is a postgraduate researcher at University of Sheffield. Dillon Wamsley is a postdoctoral researcher the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI). They are producers and co-hosts of Crisis Point, a SPERI Presents... limited series introducing the political economy of capitalist crises, providing historical and theoretical rigour to discourses around crisis in the present. In this first episode, they discuss how the concept of crisis is variously understood in political economy literatures, begin to develop a working theory of crisis, and introduce key questions that will be applied to historic and contemporary crisis events throughout the series.Recommended reading for this episode:1) Andrew Gamble, Crisis Without End? The Unravelling of Western Prosperity (2014), Chapter 2, pp. 28-47.2) Stuart Hall and Doreen Massey, Interpreting the Crisis, Soundings (2010)3) Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, Capitalist Crises and the Crisis this Time, Socialist Register (2011)4) Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks (1971), pp. 399-401Works referenced in this episode:1) Adam Tooze, Defining polycrisis – From crisis pictures to the crisis matrix (2022)2) Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (2010)This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Chris Saltmarsh and Dillon Wamsley. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

What are the human costs of caring labour? Where does this labour take place, who takes it on and how can we best study it?Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies SOAS, University of London. Dr Jayanthi Lingham is a Research Associate at the Centre for Care. They join Dr Remi Edwards to discuss Rai's recent book Depletion: The Human Costs of Caring.Works referenced:Lingham & Johnston 2024Budlender, 2010Butler & Hoskyns, 2017Cooper, 2014Dowling, 2021Elson, 1979Federici, 1975Fraser, 2016Hirway & Jose, 2011Katz, 2001Mezzadri, 2022Rai, Hoskyns & Thomas, 2014Rai & True, 2020Stevano et al, 2019Bhattacharya, 2017Waring, 1988'New Thinking in Political Economy' is a monthly podcast showcasing cutting-edge political economy research that helps us to understand the world around us.This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Remi Edwards and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast.

According to pioneering political economist Adam Smith, the liberalisation of trade was supposed to progressively grow social wealth for all nations and eliminate the need for social evils such as slave labour. Why, then, with production organised at a transnational scale and capital so mobile, do giant multinational companies continue to hoard profits while development stagnates for so many? And why does slavery and forced labour persist in global supply chains?Dr Maha Rafi Atal is Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in Political Economy at University of Glasgow. She joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss her recently co-authored article Adam Smith: His continuing relevance for contemporary management thought (2024). They consider what we can learn from Adam Smith to explain contemporary political economy challenges associated with global corporations including failures of corporate responsibility and regulation, extreme concentrations of power and wealth, and the difficulties of labour organising across borders.Publications discussed also include Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776) and Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759).Find out more about the Adam Smith 300 project at the University of Glasgow, including its' exhibition of his student's lecture notes discussed in the episode.'New Thinking in Political Economy' is a monthly podcast showcasing cutting-edge political economy research that helps us to understand the world around us.This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Remi Edwards and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information. 

Despite decades of public knowledge about climate change and well-established international governance institutions designed to facilitate global energy transition, emissions continue to rise as climate breakdown intensifies. Why is climate modeling so important and what are technocrats getting wrong? What are the assumptions underlying these models of future climate scenarios and how do they misinform policy makers about the true costs of the climate (in)action? How can a constructivist approach to international political economy (IPE) help us understand the contestation the occurs within and between institutions on questions of climate mitigation?Professor Ben Clift is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and Dr Caroline Kuzemko is a Reader in International Political Economy also at the University of Warwick. They join Dr Remi Edwards to discuss their recent paper The social construction of sustainable futures: how models and scenarios limit climate mitigation possibilities (2024).'New Thinking in Political Economy' is a monthly podcast showcasing cutting-edge political economy research that helps us to understand the world around us.Acronyms used in this podcast:IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeUNFCCC - United Nations Framework Convention on Climate ChangeCOP - Conference of the PartiesIAM - Integrated assessment modelsOECD - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and DevelopmentIMF - International Monetary FundThis episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Remi Edwards, Chris Saltmarsh, Frank Maracchione, Emma Mahoney, Dillon Wamsley and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Remi Edwards and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.