Marx in the Field

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Marx in the Field is a unique edited collection illustrating the relevance of the Marxian method to study contemporary capitalism and the global development process. Essays in the collection bring Marx to the field in three ways. They illustrate how Marxian categories can be concretely deployed for field research in the global economy; they analyse how these categories may be adapted during fieldwork; and they discuss data collection methods supporting Marxian analysis. Crucially, many of the contributions expand the scope of Marxian analysis by combining its insights with those of other intellectual traditions, including radical feminisms, critical realism and postcolonial studies. The volume defines the possibilities and challenges of fieldwork guided by Marxian analysis, including those emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The collection takes a global approach to the study of development and of contemporary capitalism. While some essays focus on themes and geographical areas of long-term concern for international development like informal or rural poverty and work across South Asia, Southern and West Africa, or South America others focus instead on actors benefitting from the development process like regional exporters, larger farmers, and traders or on unequal socio-economic outcomes across richer and emerging economies and regions including Gulf countries, North America, Southern Europe, or Post-Soviet Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Some essays explore global processes cutting across the world economy, connecting multiple regions, actors and inequalities.

While some of the contributions focus on classic Marxian tropes in the study of contemporary capitalism like class, labour and working conditions, agrarian change, or global commodity chains and prices others aim at demonstrating the relevance of the Marxian method beyond its traditional boundaries for instance, for exploring the interplays between food, nutrition and poverty; the links between social reproduction, gender and homework; the features of migration and refugees regimes, tribal chieftaincy structures or prison labour; or the dynamics structuring global surrogacy. Overall, through the analysis of an extremely varied set of concrete settings and cases, this volume illustrates the extraordinary insights we can gain by bringing Marx in the field.

Reviews

"How does one 'do' political economy Alessandra Mezzadri and collaborators get top 'Marx' for this expansive examination of how class analysis opens up rigorous questions and robust methods for empirical research. Covering an exhilarating range of approaches and themes, the volume provides an essential and eminently practical contribution to rethinking the future of political economy as a dynamic field." - Dr Marcus Taylor, Associate Professor, Department of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Canada "Drawing upon decades of experience at SOAS, University of London, in applying Marx's concepts to fieldwork-based empirical research in development studies, the contributions to Marx in the Field help us understand how the methods and categories of Marx can be practically used in a diversity of contexts in ways that let us much better reveal the underlying social processes that are at work. In light of the changes wrought to the contemporary capitalist world system by the COVID-19 pandemic, this is an especially timely and important book." - Haroon Akram-Lodhi, Professor of Economics and International Development Studies, Trent University in Peterborough, Canada "A common question that many students and scholars who encounter Marx for the first time have is whether and how his methods and concepts can be "used" in contemporary research. Marx worked on such a grand scale and across disciplinary boundaries that it can be difficult to translate his approach into the much more specialized realm of contemporary university-based social science research. Marx in the Field directly addresses this challenge, illuminating the ways that a range of scholars have put Marx's methods and concepts to use in their own research. This is not simply a textbook or research manual. The chapters present original research and analysis, covering a broad range of topics and regions primarily in the global South. However, each chapter also includes reflexive attention to how the research was conducted and how ideas and arguments were constructed. As a result, this book is also not simply a collection of empirical case studies. It is a book which can be used to guide the readers' own research in various disciplinary and geographic contexts. This makes it an important volume which will be welcomed by students, methods teachers, and practicing researchers." - Dr Ben Scully, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand "Application of Marxian methods to analyse concrete realities, across all major disciplines in social sciences/and humanities in particular, has a long and illustrious history. In this thought-provoking collection of essays, edited by Alessandra Mezzadri, the subject is revisited, exploring the richness of approaches, tools, concepts, categories and the like, in their 'field' contexts. The book, consisting of 16 chapters, from well-known 'veterans' to relatively young scholars, all with credible contributions in fieldwork-based research, conducted in various parts of the globe, offers a deep and wide-ranging engagement with a spectrum of issues, connecting the 'abstract' with 'concrete', or the 'essence' to the 'appearance', to use classic Marxian metaphors. The result is an impressive and highly readable book that pushes the boundaries of our understanding, with a focus on the current juncture, methodologically and otherwise. While some chapters address the well-known concerns in development studies, such as accumulation, poverty, informality, etc., other contributions engage with relatively new areas, e.g. relating to issues in global finance, novel processes of commodification, etc. Thus the book has a large scope, and offers many persuasive ways, almost as a critical guide, to bring 'Marx to the field'. It is essential reading in grounded political economy, cutting across disciplinary boundaries, to celebrate the richness and complexity of Marxian methods, and thus a remarkable tribute to the genius of Marx as well. The 'Moor', I imagine, would have been delighted with the offering!" - Praveen Jha is Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Author Bio

Alessandra Mezzadri is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS. She is the author of The Sweatshop Regime: Labouring Bodies, Exploitation and Garments 'Made in India'.