Classical Political Economy Sifted Through Dialectical Reason: The Hegelian rereading

This article examines the analysis of the economic system developed by Hegel in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. It shows how this analysis amounts not to a reworking and development of the theses of classical political economy, but rather to their dialectical reinterpretation. This particular logic of apprehension grounds the specificity of the Hegelian view of the economic sphere and its irreducibility to classical theses. The article explains how this particular logic of apprehension leads Hegel to bring to the foreground the insufficiencies of the market-based mode of coordination of individual destinies, as well as the necessity that this mode of coordination be surpassed both by and in the rational state. The article, then, focuses on the specificity of the articulation that Hegel conceives between civil society and the state. It shows how Hegel, surpassing the liberalism-state interventionism opposition, sketches an institutional device ensuring the advent of an ethical economy.Ethical economy ; civil society ; Hegel ; classical political economy

The Inhuman Overhang: On Differential Heterogenesis and Multi-Scalar Modeling

As a philosophical paradigm, differential heterogenesis offers us a novel descriptive vantage with which to inscribe Deleuze’s virtuality within the terrain of “differential becoming,” conjugating “pure saliences” so as to parse economies, microhistories, insurgencies, and epistemological evolutionary processes that can be conceived of independently from their representational form. Unlike Gestalt theory’s oppositional constructions, the advantage of this aperture is that it posits a dynamic context to both media and its analysis, rendering them functionally tractable and set in relation to other objects, rather than as sedentary identities. Surveying the genealogy of differential heterogenesis with particular interest in the legacy of Lautman’s dialectic, I make the case for a reading of the Deleuzean virtual that departs from an event-oriented approach, galvanizing Sarti and Citti’s dynamic a priori vis-à-vis Deleuze’s philosophy of difference. Specifically, I posit differential heterogenesis as frame with which to examine our contemporaneous epistemic shift as it relates to multi-scalar computational modeling while paying particular attention to neuro-inferential modes of inductive learning and homologous cognitive architecture. Carving a bricolage between Mark Wilson’s work on the “greediness of scales” and Deleuze’s “scales of reality”, this project threads between static ecologies and active externalism vis-à-vis endocentric frames of reference and syntactical scaffolding

Understanding “Diversity in Organizations” Paradigmatically and Methodologically

This paper is part of a larger dissertation project named: A Production of Diversity: Appearances, Ideas, Interests, Actions, Contradictions and Praxis. In this dissertation project, which is planned to be completed by the first half of 2006, I have attempted to describe, understand and analyse a process of diversity production at a large manufacturing company, which is located in Sweden and owned by a large American company (for the reason of confidentiality the name of the studied company, which is a large, technical-oriented company, has been changed and some of the information is modified, while another cannot be offered because it would expose the company. The studied manufacturing company will from now be called Diversico). My ambition with this paper is to call attention to different paradigmatical and methodological ways of understanding and studying “diversity in organizations”. A starting-point for my discussion here is an assumption that researchers, by exploring different social phenomena (including “diversity in organizations”), bring their different sets of assumptions to what the studied phenomenon is (or could be) but also at the same time make assumptions on what organizations are (or could be). In other words, researchers, by studying “diversity in organizations” (as well as other social phenomena) construct ideas of diversity by positioning this phenomenon differently, asking different questions or designing research projects differently. In that sense I try to actively engage in both showing some benefits and limits in the present literature and searching for new theoretical and methodological possibilities. In that sense, I give some empirical illustrations inspired by one of these other possibilities. More concretely, I show how my study fulfils images of diversity as actively produced and positioned significant issues, and as domination of particular sectional interests. Furthermore I give illustrations of universalization and naturalization of some aspects of diversity, as identified in the studied process of diversity production at the manufacturing company.Diversity, Critical Theory, Social-Historical Context and Domination

Spontaneous order and relational sociology:from the Scottish Enlightenment to human figurations

If viewed from a long-term and large-scale perspective, human interdependencies today can be seen as approaching species integration on a worldwide level. However, emergent worldwide processes of integration and differentiation tend to be reduced to static conceptthings such as “governmentality”, “globalization”, “cosmopolitanization”, “mobilities”, and“networks”, helping to obscure the mundane processes of institution formation, in particular the tenacious endurance of the nation-state. This paper argues that the pathological realism of neoliberal globalization today can be more adequately approached by engaging with the historical precursors of the so-called “relational turn” in contemporary sociology. The earlier relational sociology of the Scottish enlightenment, particularly Adam Ferguson (1767), Adam Smith (1776) and David Hume (1739) developed ideas of spontaneous order and such related concepts as “the invisible hand” and “unintended consequences” in an attempt to understand and control the rapid transformation of Scotland, a relatively under-developed economy on the edge of Europe. The Scottish spontaneous order tradition is compared to Elias’s idea of “figuration” as an unplanned but patterned process of increasingly complex and opaque social interdependencies and functional democratization. This process appears to have reached definite limits. Humanity is ensnared in a compelling global double-bind process of armed states that continue to threaten, endanger and fear each other, and a pervasive elite belief in the spontaneous efficiency and self-correcting mechanisms of the global “magic market”.<br/

Classical Political Economy Sifted Through Dialectical Reason: The Hegelian rereading

This article examines the analysis of the economic system developed by Hegel in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right. It shows how this analysis amounts not to a reworking and development of the theses of classical political economy, but rather to their dialectical reinterpretation. This particular logic of apprehension grounds the specificity of the Hegelian view of the economic sphere and its irreducibility to classical theses. The article explains how this particular logic of apprehension leads Hegel to bring to the foreground the insufficiencies of the market-based mode of coordination of individual destinies, as well as the necessity that this mode of coordination be surpassed both by and in the rational state. The article, then, focuses on the specificity of the articulation that Hegel conceives between civil society and the state. It shows how Hegel, surpassing the liberalism-state interventionism opposition, sketches an institutional device ensuring the advent of an ethical economy

Diversities in Diversity: Exploring Moroccan Migrants’ Livelihood in Genoa

It is a largely accepted idea that complexity and recent global phenomena have generated a multi-layered diversification process in Western societies. Migration phenomena are largely responsible for this process both in receiving European societies as well as in original sending countries. Migration has been and continues to be a ubiquitous human experience. Yet, while this fact has aided the understanding of the world as something other than a mosaic of distinct cultural spaces with clearly demarcated borders, it has not decreased the incomprehension, fear and suspicion with which non–European migrants are often greeted within the industrialised cities of Europe. This article deals with one aspect of this process that seems to be quite underestimated in media, public opinion and academia. It is the idea that “ethnicity” can be approached, explored and investigated as a heterogeneous and multi-faced form of diversity itself. This is what can be defined as “diversities within diversity”. Departing from the presentation of an empirical research in Genoa it will be possible to analyse these phenomena at two different levels: namely, in terms of methods and methodology. By focusing on the idea of livelihood and employing an approach based on “Tracing” techniques, different ways of acting and being Moroccan migrants in Genoa will be revealed, presented and discussed. This method newly integrates both quantitative and qualitative information. It will allow us to analyse the experience of livelihood in a way that will reveal the simultaneous existence of many underlying different invisible and unconscious social constructions as well as visible concrete and conscious expressions of everyday life. Disclosing how the same people in the same local context produce different “adaptive” strategies and lifestyles will lead to outline a potential conceptual methodological framework of reference based on an open/close principle. In this case ideas of openness and closeness will be assumed in a dialectical double-faced process. It is not only a matter of how systems can be defined open or closed by themselves, but also how the encounter and interplay of many different systems – generation of diversity - establish the conditions and limits within which different individuals can reproduce their culture as social actors- production of diversities. After having discussed the methodological implications of this approach it will be possible to draw some final theoretical considerations. If we believe that new ways of investigating social phenomena are a determinant in the way we describe, analyze, explain and understand their complexity, we should recognize that not only theory might generate and define what we call social reality but also vice-versa. Approaching the world out there in new ways might result in rethinking and adjusting the conceptual taxonomies that drive social scholars in their search for gaining and catching social reality. This principle becomes crucial if we want social sciences to be heuristically oriented, in other words if we want to develop the capacity to hand back positive analytical readings and comparisons of social phenomena as well as useful recommendations for policy makers.Migration, Italy, Morocco, Methodology, Tracing, Open/close Model