Economic Cycles and Social Movements

Eric Mielants is Professor of Sociology in the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University and Research Associate of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris. He has written articles and essays on racism, capitalism, social theory, political economy and contemporary migration issues which have also been published in Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Korean, Turkish and Japanese. His comparative and historical social science research deals with the origins and nature of globalization/capitalism and the mass migration of people. How the modern world economy came into existence and how it continues to function in terms of political economy as well as racial formations is part of his ongoing research agenda. He also writes about the epistemological challenges of studying the world economy in all its complexity. Katsiaryna Salavei Bardos received a PhD in Finance from the University of Connecticut. She is an Associate Professor of Finance at Fairfield University where she teaches Introduction to Finance, Financial Management and a Seminar in Real Estate at undergraduate level and Corporate Finance at graduate level. She serves as a faculty advisor to students competing in the Charted Financial Analyst Investment Research Challenge and Real Estate Club. Her research interests are real estate and corporate finance. She has published articles in top journals such as Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Journal of Financial Research and Journal of Behavioral Finance. Her research received an outstanding paper award at a national conference and at the Dolan School of Business; has been discussed in CFO magazine and a Harvard legal forum, presented at the US Securities and Exchange Commission and referenced in a US Treasury White Paper.

1. Introduction, 2. Cycles Within Structures vs. Structural Crises, 3. The Crisis of the Neoliberal Order? On the Structural Crisis of the Modern World-System, 4. Business Cycles and Militarism in Historical Capitalism, 5. The Dialectics of Political Economy, 6. Brazil: From the Vicissitudes of Systemic Rebalancing to the Crossroads of Conservatism, 7. Space, Transport, and the World-Market: Maritime Transportation, Freight Rates, and the Global Control of Foreign Trade Flows in the Capitalist World-System, 8. Polanyi’s Minskyian Monetary System, 9. An Embedded-Systems Approach to the Socio-Economic Cycles of the World System, 10. A Source for Greater Peripheral Sovereignty or a New Axis of Dependency Relations? China and Latin America in the Context of the Readjustment of Forces in the World System: The Case of China–Ecuador Relations, 11. Rethinking Core and Periphery in Historical Capitalism: ‘World-Magnates’ and the Shifting Epicenters of Wealth Accumulation, 12. Alternatives to Western Economic Models? Latin-American “Buen Vivir/Good Living” and the Opening of the Social Sciences