Beyond ‘geo-economics’: advanced unevenness and the anatomy of German austerity

This article aims to shed new light on Germany’s domineering role in the eurocrisis. I argue that the realist-inspired depiction of Germany as a ‘geo-economic power’, locked into zero-sum competition with its European partners, is built around an empty core: unable to theorise how anarchy shapes the calculus of states where security competition has receded, it cannot explain why German state managers have insisted on an austerity response to the crisis despite its significant risks and costs even for Germany itself. To unlock this puzzle, this article outlines a version of uneven and combined development (UCD) that is better able to capture the international pressures and opportunities faced by policy elites in advanced capitalist states that no longer encounter one another as direct security rivals. Applied to Germany, this lens reveals a twofold unevenness in the historical structures and growth cycles of capitalist economies that shape its contradictory choice for austerity. In the long run, the reorientation of the export-dependent German economy from Europe towards Asian and Latin American late industrialisers renders the structural adjustment of the eurozone an opportunity—from the cost-saving view of German manufacturers producing in the European home market for export abroad, as well as for German state officials keen to sustain a crumbling class compromise centred on Germany’s world market success. In the short term, however, its exposed position between the divergent post-crisis trajectories of the US and Europe accelerates pressures for austerity beyond what German state and corporate elites would otherwise consider feasible

Morality and progress:IR narratives on international revisionism and the status quo

Scholars debate the ambitions and policies of today’s ‘rising powers’ and the extent to which they are revising or upholding the international status quo. While elements of the relevant literature provide valuable insight, this article argues that the concepts of revisionism and the status quo within mainstream International Relations (IR) have always constituted deeply rooted, autobiographical narratives of a traditionally Western-dominated discipline. As ‘ordering narratives’ of morality and progress, they constrain and organize debate so that revisionism is typically conceived not merely as disruption, but as disruption from the non-West amidst a fundamentally moral Western order that represents civilizational progress. This often makes them inherently problematic and unreliable descriptors of the actors and behaviours they are designed to explain. After exploring the formations and development of these concepts throughout the IR tradition, the analysis is directed towards narratives around the contemporary ‘rise’ of China. Both scholarly and wider political narratives typically tell the story of revisionist challenges China presents to a US/Western-led status quo, promoting unduly binary divisions between the West and non-West, and tensions and suspicions in the international realm. The aim must be to develop a new language and logic that recognize the contingent, autobiographical nature of ‘revisionist’ and ‘status quo’ actors and behaviours

Prevalence and changes in chronic diseases among South Korean farmers: 1998 to 2005

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Epidemiologic studies have suggested a unique pattern of disease among farmers in Western countries, but limited information is available about the magnitude of disease prevalence and their changes over time in Asian farmers. The aim of this study was to compare the prevalence and changes in chronic diseases among farmers with those of other occupational groups in South Korea.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Using data from three consecutive cross-sectional national surveys: the Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 1998 (n = 39,060), 2001 (n = 37,769), and 2005 (n = 34,145), we calculated age and gender-standardized prevalence of chronic diseases by the direct method and compared the prevalence changes from 1998 to 2005.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Female farmers had significantly higher chronic disease prevalence than other occupational groups in all three surveys. Arthritis was the most prevalent chronic disease among farmers for both men and women. Compared with other populations, farmers demonstrated a higher prevalence of arthritis and intervertebral disc disorders. Farmers showed higher prevalence changes for intervertebral disc disorders than other occupational workers.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings support that South Korean farmers have a distinct pattern of diseases prevalence from other populations. More detailed studies investigating the risk of musculoskeletal diseases and intensive intervention efforts to reduce the prevalence these diseases, particularly among female farmers, are required.</p

Causation, complexity, and the concert: the pragmatics of causal explanation in international relations

A causal explanation provides information about the causal history of whatever is being explained. However, most causal histories extend back almost infinitely and can be described in almost infinite detail. Causal explanations therefore involve choices about which elements of causal histories to pick out. These choices are pragmatic: they reflect our explanatory interests. When adjudicating between competing causal explanations, we must therefore consider not only questions of epistemic adequacy (whether we have good grounds for identifying certain factors as causes) but also questions of pragmatic adequacy (whether the aspects of the causal history picked out are salient to our explanatory interests). Recognizing that causal explanations differ pragmatically as well as epistemically is crucial for identifying what is at stake in competing explanations of the relative peacefulness of the nineteenth-century Concert system. It is also crucial for understanding how explanations of past events can inform policy prescription

Accounting for International War: The State of the Discipline

In studies of war it is important to observe that the processes leading to so frequent an event as conflict are not necessarily those that lead to so infrequent an event as war. Also, many models fail to recognize that a phenomenon irregularly distributed in time and space, such as war, cannot be explained on the basis of relatively invariant phenomena. Much research on periodicity in the occurrence of war has yielded little result, suggesting that the direction should now be to focus on such variables as diffusion and contagion. Structural variables, such as bipolarity, show contradictory results with some clear inter-century differences. Bipolarity, some results suggest, might have different effects on different social entities. A considerable number of studies analysing dyadic variables show a clear connection between equal capabilities among contending nations and escalation of conflict into war. Finally, research into national attributes often points to strength and geographical location as important variables. In general, the article concludes, there is room for modest optimism, as research into the question of war is no longer moving in non-cumulative circles. Systematic research is producing results and there is even a discernible tendency of convergence, in spite of a great diversity in theoretical orientations.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69148/2/10.1177_002234338101800101.pd