States and State Power: A Strategic-Relational Approach

State theorists have usually attempted to theorize the state but this is a misleading focus that risks treating the state as a simple instrument or machine, a reified apparatus that is primarily a source of constraint on political action, or a more or less rational subject that exercises power. Such positions have been criticized from many alternative theoretical positions as well as proven unhelpful in empirical analyses.

Economic Imaginaries and Economic Transformation

In a lecture prepared for the Institute for Advanced Studies, Bob Jessop, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, will face the anthropological concept of culture in the study of economic development and consider its usefulness. Bob Jessop advocates a different approach to culture and development, taken from the “cultural political economy.” It emphasizes the role…

Differential Accumulation: Explanans, Explanandum, or Both? Critical Realist Reflections on Power and Capital

The Second Annual Forum on Capital as Power THE CAPITALIST MODE OF POWER: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE October 20–21, 2011 York University, Toronto *** CHAIR: Joseph Baines (York University) 1. Differential Accumulation: Explanans, Explanandum, or Both? Critical Realist Reflections on Power and Capital Bob Jessop, Keynote Speaker, Lancaster University 2. Money and the Public Purpose: The…