SPERI Presents...

Supporting the most vulnerable, including children and the elderly, is one of the main forms of caring labour for social reproduction. The moral and economic choices individuals and families make every day when dealing with children, as well as old age, have broad implications for the global political economy of care. These decisions unfold within a context where populations in wealthy economies are ageing, while birth rates are rising in many postcolonial societies. This demographic divergence contributes to the (re)production and entrenchment of gendered and racialised hierarchies. Yet, children and the elderly are not only passive subjects or caring. They often become active carers and central agents of social reproduction labour. Today’s episode will centre on this more agential role of vulnerable populations by exploring the contribution of grandparents’ caring role to the formal labour economy. Concepts discussed: social reproduction, care labour, urban/rural divide. Hosted by: Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London. Speakers: Dr Yingzi Shen recently completed her PhD at the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield. Her PhD research looked at the intergenerational cooperation in childcare in rural-to-urban migrant families in China and how it is affected by rural migrants' limited access to welfare and social inequalities. Her research interests lie broadly in the nexus between care and migration, as well as ageing, family studies, and rural-urban inequalities. Reading list: Chan, K. W., Cai, F., Wan, G., & Wang, M. (2019) Urbanization with Chinese characteristics: the Hukou system and migration. London: Routledge. Liang, J., Huang, W., & He, Y. (2024) Report on the cost of shengyu in China 2024. Yuwa Population Research. Available at: https://www.yuwa.org.cn/article/reports?id=2.Lin, Q. and Mao, J. (2022) ‘“A new job after retirement”: Negotiating grandparenting and intergenerational relationships in urban China’, China perspectives, (1), pp. 47–56. doi: 10.4000/chinaperspectives.13520Liu, J. (2023) ‘Filial piety, love or money? Foundation of old-age support in urban China’, Journal of Ageing Studies, 64, pp. 101104–101104. doi: 10.1016/j.jaging.2023.101104.Liu, J. Y. (2017) ‘Intimacy and Intergenerational Relations in Rural China’, Sociology (Oxford), 51(5), pp. 1034–1049. doi:10.1177/0038038516639505.National Health and Family Planning Commission. (2018) Report on the development of China’s migration population 2018. Beijing: China Population Publishing House.Shen, Y. (2025) Caring through intergenerational support: Childcare practices in rural-to-urban migrant families in China. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.Tronto, J. C. (1993) Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for An Ethic of Care. Georgetown: Taylor & Francis Group. Tronto, J. C. (2013) Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice. New York, NY: New York University Press.World Health Organisation. ‘Ageing and health in China’. Available at: https://www.who.int/china/health-topics/ageing.This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Across factory floors, family kitchens, neighbourhoods, and informal markets, the international economy is lived and negotiated in ordinary places. This episode introduces the theoretical concepts behind Ground Level, SPERI’s podcast series on Everyday Political Economy.Ground Level’s host, Dr Frank Maracchione, speaks with Professor Juanita Elias about why everyday life matters for studying and understanding global political economy. Together, they trace the emergence of everyday political economy, highlighting feminist and social reproduction approaches that have reshaped the field, before turning to the relationship between the everyday and the international. The episode sets the conceptual foundations for the series and asks a simple but powerful question: What does the global economy look like when we start from everyday life?Concepts discussed: commodification, social reproduction, agency, violence, and resistance.Speakers: Juanita Elias is Professor of International Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Juanita has held significant leadership roles within Politics and International Studies. She has been editor of Review of International Political Economy, until recently, and is one of the editors of the innovative IPE teaching and learning website I-PEEL, international political economy of everyday life. She currently serves as chair of the British International Studies Association (BISA). Dr Frank Maracchione, host of the Ground Level series, is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS University of London. Frank is a political economist studying Global China, specialising in how local sociocultural norms shape global political and economic processes. Reading list: Brassett, J., Elias, J., Rethel, L., & Richardson, B. (Eds.). (2015–2026). I-PEEL: International Political Economy of Everyday Life. https://i-peel.org/Davies, M. (2006). Everyday life in the global political economy. In M. de Goede (Ed.), International political economy and poststructural politics (pp. 173–190). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230800892_12 Elias, J., & Rai, S. M. (2019). Feminist everyday political economy: Space, time, and violence. Review of International Studies, 45(2), 201–220. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210518000323Elias, J., & Rethel, L. (Eds.). (2016). The everyday political economy of Southeast Asia. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316402092Elias, J., & Roberts, A. (2016). Feminist global political economies of the everyday: From bananas to bingo. Globalizations, 13(6), 787–800. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2016.1155797Hobson, J. M., & Seabrooke, L. (Eds.). (2007). Everyday politics of the world economy. Cambridge University Press. Maracchione, F. (2025). Decentring narratives of (de)globalization and crisis: Uzbekistan’s ‘everyday’ political economy amidst Russia’s war in Ukraine. Globalizations, 1–21. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2025.2533666 Rai, S. M. (2024). Depletion: The human costs of caring. Oxford University Press.Scheper-Hughes, N. (1992). Death without weeping: The violence of everyday life in Brazil. University of California Press.This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

How important is winter tourism to certain regions in Austria? How skiing resorts are being affected by climate change? Can regions survive without it? What comes next if it melts away?Valentina Ausserladscheider is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economic Sociology at University of Vienna. She joins Josh White to talk about her article 'Decoupling climate change: winter tourism and the maintenance of regional growth' (2024) published in New Political Economy journal. They discuss regional economies based around winter tourism, including the role of agriculture; the politics of managing economic change in the context of climate change, including the role of regional government; ownership models of skiing resorts including public, private and foreign; potential futures for post-skiing tourism in the region; and, most importantly, how they make artificial snow.'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 Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Josh White with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is the climate transition really happening? If so, what does it look like in reality? Has its promises been broken? Who profits and who loses? Should the environmental movement actually resist climate transition, and how?Dr Nicholas Beuret is Lecturer at Essex Business School, University of Essex. He joins Josh White to talk about his book Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition (2025), published with Verso. They discuss the realities of the climate crisis for people in the UK today; the relationship between climate and the cost-of-living crisis; how 'the installation economy' is a far cry from the green jobs we were promised; the new spheres of accumulation forged in climate transition; and the need for a militant environmental movement and worker organising to disrupt its injustices.'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, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Josh White and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Who makes money out of football: broadcasters, clubs, players, or investment banks? Why are clubs selling their own assets to themselves? How do fans and players take collective action to resist the further financialisation of the sport? How important are local and foreign fans to the Premier League's boom? Is it inevitable that the Premier League will go bust?Dr James Jackson is a Hallsworth Research Fellow in Politics at University of Manchester. He joins Dr Remi Edwards and Josh White to discuss his article 'A league made in the economy's image: destabilised stability and the English Premier League's Minsky moment' (2025) co-authored with Dr James Silverwood and published in British Politics journal. They discuss the basis of football's financialisation in Thatcherism, the enduring importance of fans in making and disrupting the 'product' of Premier League football, and what might cause the Premier League's bubble to burst.Works cited in this episode include:David Webber, ‘Playing on the break’: Karl Polanyi and the double-movement ‘Against Modern Football’ (2015)Edwards & Jackson, The political economy of everyday life (2022)Cox & Philippou, Measuring the resilience of English Premier league clubs to economic recessions (2022)Kennedy & Kennedy, Towards a Marxist political economy of football supporters (2010)'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, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Remi Edwards, Josh White and Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

How important is exploitation in the organisation of global supply chains? How do they drive geopolitical conflict and ecological destruction while depressing wages? How does the capitalist state drive and uphold capitalist accumulation? What does US-China rivalry mean for value chains?Benjamin Selwyn is Professor of International Relations and International Development at University of Sussex. He joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss his new book Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics (Oxford University Press, 2025), co-authored with Christin Bernhold. They consider the limitations of mainstream 'global value chains' literature; how critical approaches draw stronger connections between geopolitics, labour exploitation and environmental destruction; the role of the state in reproducing the domination of labour by capital; and visions for an alternative plant-based food system organised according to need, not profit.'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, 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.

Does China’s unique party-state capitalist political economy model hold the key for global climate transition? Can the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) translate its success in expanding green energy technology to the destruction of the fossil fuel industry? What does China’s idea of ecological civilisation offer that Western notions of green capitalism do not? How should activists in the West respond to the rise of China amid the climate crisis?Chris Saltmarsh is a postgraduate researcher at University of Sheffield and the executive producer of SPERI Presents… He joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss his paper ‘The Chinese Road to Decarbonisation: Chinese Party-State Capitalism in the Political Economy of Fossil Energy Phase-Out’ recently published in Review of International Political Economy. They discuss the relationship between green energy build-out and fossil energy phase-out; the basis of China’s development in socialist revolution; whether China’s unique political economy affords it greater potentiality to phase-out fossil fuels; and both the practical challenges and theoretical implications of achieving such an undertaking.Publications discussed also include Cheek’s Xi Jinping’s Counter-Reformation: The Reassertion of Ideological Governance in Historical Perspective, Ban and Hasselbalch’s Green economic planning for rapid decarbonisation, Gabor and Braun’s Green macrofinancial regimes, Huber’s Theorizing the subterranean mode of production, and Malm’s Fossil Capital.'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.

What is labour governance and why is it failing? How effective is civil society activism at improving labour conditions in global value chains? What does the Indian tea industry tell us about the consequences of colonialism and globalisation for racialised workers? What role did the collapse of the USSR play in creating our contemporary situation?Dr Natalie Langford is Lecturer in Sustainability at University of Sheffield. She joins Dr Remi Edwards to discuss her paper 'The limits of labor governance in global value chains: exclusions, ‘edge’ populations and civil society activism in unstable labor regimes' recently published in Review of International Political Economy. They consider how workers in the Indian tea industry experience extreme precarity and starvation deaths; the role of local trade unions, NGOs, governments and corporations in improving labour conditions in global supply chains; and challenges arising from the racialisation of workers through colonialism and globalisation.Publications discussed also include Bair and Werner's Commodity Chains and the Uneven Development of Global Capitalism (2011) and Bhattacharyya's Rethinking Racial Capitalism (2017).'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.