[lbo-talk] eminent domain

Michael Hoover hooverm at scc-fl.edu
Mon Mar 6 13:42:04 PST 2006



>>> dhenwood at panix.com 03/05/06 12:23 PM >>>
Good piece, so apologies for focusing on something I have a problem with:
>Today, the globalization of capital is creating an international
>working class-albeit, one that is stratified in complex ways and is
>characterized by both an active and a reserve army of labor. The
>development of an international middle-strata for example, has
>helped to make capital more mobile. The lifestyle of this element is
>observable in almost every city in the world-wearing, drinking, and
>driving the same brands as they watch the same movies and listen to
>the same music.

I see this claim a lot, but is it really true? Florence looked very different to me from New York; New York looks very different from Gloucester, Mass.; Manhattan looks very different from Brooklyn. Visiting Sydney in 2001, we heard some Asian-flavored techno like I've never heard in the northern hemisphere. Are things really homogenizing to this degree? Doug <<<<<>>>>>

thanks for kind word, re. passage that troubles you, i think that you "over-read" point i was trying to make, which was not that cities are all becoming/looking the same, however, reading above exercpt today, i would try to be clearer and more precise: there exists interconnected networks of finance and specialized producer services, cities with different national and cultural backgrounds exhibit similar features, one of which is globalized' professional-managerial-investor stratum (for lack of better term)...

identifiable number of places are simultaneously more cosmopolitan and more heterogeneous, high-end folks existing alongside shrinking number of middle income earners and 'traditional' working class, polarization combining with spread of casual labor and informal economy functioning outside of state regulation, labor unions, and employee benefits...

simplified binary history in which 'old' and 'new' urban political economies are said to follow sequential order misses circumstances in which two exist side by side in complex and contradictory ways... mh



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