This dissertation seeks to clarify the moral and political shape of economic exchange with an intellectual history of capitalism at its eighteenth-century inception. It seeks to avoid the familiar polarities of Marxist and capitalist economic ideologies by framing the ethical questions of economic exchange in historical terms: Why does the modern economic order seem to create moral contradictions and undermine political institutions? In response to this question, the thesis recovers the contributions of the Scottish historian and moral philosopher, Adam Ferguson (1723- 1816). Because modern economy had not yet taken on its modern abstraction and was still a thinkable reality, Ferguson’s treatment on history, action, and political institutions provide a fertile starting point for envisaging a distinctly moral configuration of the economic sphere. He prepares ground for a critical assessment of the political and economic relationship by criticizing the ideal of progress and emphasizing the need for dignified human exertion. His claim is that the liberalized marketplace undermines political institutions—especially law—to the extent that is leaves a people enslaved both to their own dependencies, as well as to other nations for whom commercial luxury is not a vice. My argument carries Ferguson’s claim forward by asserting that the Market itself now tyrannizes and enslaves in much the way Ferguson imagined a military despot would tyrannize unprepared societies of the eighteenth-century. Eighteenth-century theology is, in many respects, a period of relative theological austerity; so it is therefore unsurprising that a morally confused political instrument (capitalism) would emerge in an age largely devoid of theological imagination or conscience. Jesus Christ is no longer the origin, end, or meaning of history; co-creation is no longer the principal object of human action or labour; and the means of Christ’s rule through the political order are rejected in favour of luxuries and conveniences of modern commerce. The marketplace now embodies all the fears eighteenth-century theorists reserved for despots, tyrannizing western societies and threatening the resolve of already fractured political institutions.

<p>  </p> <p>Between the ratification of the Constitution and the outbreak of the Civil War, the American Congress regularly engaged in the delicate process of crafting trade legislation that balanced the revenue needs of the federal government with demands for protection of domestic industries. Both in the halls of Congress and throughout newspapers, pamphlets, and the private correspondence of economic actors, discussions of trade and tariffs stimulated political conflict and influenced what goods Americans possessed, produced, and consumed. This project explores how and why residents and representatives of the trans-Appalachian West engaged in the highly contentious tariff politics of the early American republic. I argue that trade policy elicited sustained controversy because of conflicting understandings of markets and the market process forged in response to the economic transformations of the nineteenth century. Throughout this period of market integration and commercial and industrial diversification, free trade advocates and protectionists developed and promoted competing assessments of what happened when supposedly “self-regulating” markets supplanted the authority of governmental institutions in guiding economic development. Merchants, farmers, and manufacturers in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Tennessee engaged in the politics of trade policy in a manner that reflected their distinct economic geography. In contrast to the more rigid embrace of protectionism among northern industrialists and free trade from those invested in southern cotton slavery, westerners fluctuated in their views on trade legislation. Because the success or failure of tariff laws consistently hinged on a small number of votes, the mixed support for free trade and protection from representatives of the western interest in Congress played a determinative role in shaping trade policy. Ultimately, western views on trade and tariffs illuminate a hybrid set of ideas that joined an economically liberal view of markets with demands for the exercise of legitimate governance in supporting regional development. The disruptive, yet innovative, growth of the first half of the nineteenth century encouraged Americans to look both to markets and nations for freedom from poverty and shelter from the process of “creative destruction.” These ideas emerged again in response to the monopolistic capitalism of the so-called “Gilded Age,” but they are rooted in debates over the power granted to Congress in trade policy that unfolded during the earliest years of nationhood.  </p>

This dissertation examines how the modern dinosaur—fully mounted, freestanding assemblages of vertebrate fossils such as we are accustomed to seeing at the natural history museum—came into being during the late 19th and early 20th century, focusing especially on the United States. But it is not just, or even primarily a history of vertebrate paleontology. Rather, I use dinosaurs as an opportunity to explore how science was embedded in broader changes that were happening at the time. In particular, I am interested in tracing how the culture of modern capitalism—the ideals, norms, and practices that governed matters of value and exchange—manifested itself in the way fossils were collected, studied, and put on display. During the second half of the 19th century, America experienced an extended period of remarkable economic growth. By the eve of WWI, it had emerged as the world’s largest producer of goods and services. At the same time, paleontologists were unearthing the fossil remains of marvelous creatures the likes of which no one had ever dreamed in the American west. The discovery of dinosaurs like Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Triceratops prompted the nation’s wealthy elite to begin cultivating an intense interest in vertebrate paleontology. In part, this is because dinosaurs meshed well with a conventional narrative that celebrated American exceptionalism. Dinosaurs from the United States were widely heralded as having been larger, fiercer, and more abundant than their European counterparts. Not only that, but their origins in the deep past meant that dinosaurs were associated with evolutionary theory, including the conventional notion that struggle was at the root of progress. Finally, it did not hurt that America’s best fossils hailed from places like Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. This is precisely where most of the raw materials consumed by factories could also be found. As they coalesced into a coherent social class, American capitalists began to patronize a number of elite cultural institutions. Just as Gilded Age entrepreneurs invested considerable resources in the acquisition of artworks, so too did they invest in natural history. However, whereas the acquisition of artworks functioned as a display of refined aesthetic sensibilities, the collection of natural history specimens primarily represented another form of social distinction, one that combined epistemic virtues like objectivity with older notions of good stewardship and civic munificence. Capitalists who had grown rich off of the exploitation of America’s natural resources turned to dinosaur paleontology as a form of cultural resource extraction. / History of Science

My dissertation argues that paper money created a new regime of value in early America, inscribed on the money itself and expressed in the political ordering of society. The radical ideas about money and value that inspired the colonial currencies originated in Commonwealth England. Those ideas spread to the North American colonies after the Restoration, where they conveyed changing notions about membership in the political community. Paper money, its proponents believed, constituted not only the “sinews” of trade and key to limitless wealth but also the “blood” that nourished the body politic. Ironically, the expansion of paper money in early America after 1710 both reflected and helped kindle broader material and cultural changes throughout the wider English Atlantic world that strained the bonds of the provincial political community. Ultimately, however, it was not these changes, but British attempts to control paper money in the mid-eighteenth century, that became corrosive to the imperial order. Disagreements over the prerogative to create money and value, I contend, occupied a key role in the crisis leading to the American Revolution. / 2020-02-14T00:00:00Z

This dissertation focuses on the relationship between cotton, slavery and finance. At its core is a consideration of the Atlantic credit networks that supported the cultivation of cotton across the antebellum South. Planters relied on credit to finance their operating costs from year to year. The credit they received from British merchant banking houses made slavery a tenable labor regime in the antebellum South and enabled the plantation complex to function. This in turn contributed to the expansion of the American economy. The evolution of banking practices and credit mechanisms prompted by the burgeoning trade in cotton and the banking infrastructure developed to support this activity stimulated British industrialization and economic growth. The links between slavery and the development of an Anglo-American financial world are traced here through an examination of cotton sales, consignments and advances made to Southern planters. This dissertation highlights how cotton and the long reach of international finance in turn shaped banking practices across the Atlantic world. / History

<p>This dissertation examines the rise of the country’s largest beef processor, IBP, Inc., during the late-twentieth century and its effect on laborers, farmers, business, and the communities in which it operated. Though scholars have cited IBP’s technological advances as the reason for the company’s success, I argue that IBP’s unique public relations approach that manufactured the consent of local communities to pay comparatively low wages, provide tax breaks, and in the instance of cattle producers defend IBP’s right to “free enterprise,” provided it with a competitive advantage. From 1960 through the 1980s, the meatpacking industry endured a revolution stemming from IBP’s ability to maintain enough community consent to gain large market shares and draw down substantial profits.</p> <p>Yet gaining and keeping consent was not easy, nor was it linear. At one point or another all of these entities opposed IBP on a myriad of fronts, but their early cooperation aided in creating a corporate juggernaut that often limited their economic or political power. For IBP’s part, the company’s founders and subsequent executive managers fostered a masculine, individualistic sense of corporate capitalism, which I refer to as cowboy capitalism. Executives painted themselves as farm boys and cowboys, as renegades who were bringing hard work and plain talk to the inefficient meatpacking industry. This conservative, bootstrap mentality played well in the Siouxland region of the Northern Great Plains, where IBP began. Just as corporate success is aided by community consent, rescinding consent creates challenges for the company that can temporarily cause a decline, or at the very least roadblock to company growth. Though founders, managers, and key innovators gain critical and laudatory attention for their role in growing American capitalism; extended community support in terms of governmental and non-governmental actors rarely have been the focus of a corporate study. It is community consent, both active and latent, governmental and non-governmental, that supported the cowboy capitalism IBP deployed to start a revolution.</p>

No description available.

Este trabalho investiga a formação, na segunda metade da década de 1990, daquilo que alguns grupos ativistas denominaram anticapitalismo global. A pesquisa buscou acompanhar a emergência dessa nova forma de ativismo por meio da reconstituição do processo de construção da rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal que começou a se formar em solidariedade ao levante do Exército Zapatista de Libertação Nacional (EZLN) no México, em janeiro de 1994, ganhou corpo com a realização do Primeiro e do Segundo Encontros Intercontinentais pela Humanidade e contra o Neoliberalismo, em 1996 e 1997, respectivamente, e culminou na fundação, em 1998, da Ação Global dos Povos (AGP), rede de movimentos sociais que criou os dias de ação global e inspirou as grandes manifestações contra as reuniões de instituições multilaterais como a Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) e o Banco Mundial a partir do protesto que impediu a realização da abertura da terceira Conferência Ministerial da OMC em Seattle, em novembro de 1999. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o processo de emergência e descrever as características centrais de um novo tipo de anticapitalismo que surgiu a partir da articulação das lutas contra a globalização neoliberal em nível mundial e situá-lo na longa tradição das lutas anticapitalistas dos séculos XIX e XX, mostrando como as transformações do modo de produção capitalista deram origem a novas formas de resistência ao longo desse período. Para isso, conduzi uma pesquisa em dois planos, um teórico e outro empírico. A pesquisa empírica se baseou no levantamento e análise de documentos produzidos pelos movimentos que integraram a rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal entre 1994 e 1998. A pesquisa teórica consistiu na aplicação de um modelo teórico elaborado a partir da combinação de duas leituras contemporâneas da economia política marxiana para analisar as transformações do capitalismo e do anticapitalismo ao longo dos séculos XIX e XX. Esse modelo foi elaborado a partir da teoria do antagonismo de classe formulada pelos pensadores operaístas e autonomistas italianos, como Antonio Negri e Mario Tronti, e da teoria dos ajustes espaçotemporais via acumulação por espoliação de David Harvey. Ao aplicar esse modelo teórico à análise dos dados empíricos fornecidos pelas fontes textuais produzidas pelos movimentos que formaram a rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal foi possível constatar a emergência de um novo anticapitalismo que surgiu em resposta às transformações do modo de produção capitalista a partir da crise de acumulação iniciada na década de 1970 e que deu origem a uma nova estratégia de enfrentamento do capital e a uma nova concepção do sujeito revolucionário. Como a pesquisa se baseou nas declarações escritas dos movimentos envolvidos na construção da rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal, os resultados obtidos permitem falar em um novo discurso anticapitalista, mas não fornecem os elementos necessários para atestar a emergência de uma nova prática anticapitalista capaz de se enraizar no cotidiano dos movimentos envolvidos. Por isso, o trabalho conclui sugerindo que é necessário realizar pesquisas de história oral para verificar se e como esse discurso se refletiu na prática cotidiana dos movimentos integrantes da rede. / This work investigates the formation, in the second half of the 1990s, of what some activist groups have called global anticapitalism. The research analyzed the emergence of this new form of activism by studying the building of the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization that began to take shape in solidarity to the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico, in January 1994, strengthened itself with the organization of the First and Second Intercontinental Encounters for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, in 1996 and 1997, and culminated in the foundation, in 1998, of Peoples Global Action (PGA), a netowrk of social movements that created the global days of action and inspired the big demonstrations against multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, starting with the protests that shut down the inaugurarion of the third Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Seattle, in November 1999. The aim of this work is to analyze the emergence and describe the main characteristics of a new kind of anticapitalism that grew out of the articulation of the struggles against neoliberal globalization in a global level and situate it within the long tradition of anticapitalist struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries, showing how the transformations of the capitalist mode of production gave birth to new forms of resistance. To do that, I have conducted a research in two levels, one theoretical and the other empirical. The empirical research was based on the analysis of documents produced by the movements that formed the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization between 1994 and 1998. The theoretical research consisted in the application of a theoretical model built upon the combination of two contemporary interpretations of the Marxian political economy in order to analyze the transformations of both capitalism and anticapitalism through the 19th and 20th centuries. This model was elaborated departing from the theory of class antagonism formulated by Italian workerist and autonomist intellectuals such as Antonio Negri and Mario Tronti, and from David Harveys theory of spatiotemporal fixes through accumulation by dispossession. By applying this theoretical model to the analysis of the empirical data provided by the textual sources produced by the movements that formed the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization it was possible to see the emergence of a new anticapitalism that took shape in response to the transformations of the capitalist mode of production since the accumulation crisis started in the 1970s and that gave rise to a new strategy to confront capital and to a new conception of the revolutionary subject. Since the research was based on the written declarations of the movements that built the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization, the results allow us to identify a new anticapitalist discourse, but dont provide enough elements to prove the emergence of new anticapitalist practices rooted in the everyday life of the movements involved in the network. Thus, the work concludes suggesting the necessity of conducting oral history researches to verify if and how this discourse was reflected in the everyday practice of the movements that took part in the network.

Este trabalho investiga a formação, na segunda metade da década de 1990, daquilo que alguns grupos ativistas denominaram anticapitalismo global. A pesquisa buscou acompanhar a emergência dessa nova forma de ativismo por meio da reconstituição do processo de construção da rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal que começou a se formar em solidariedade ao levante do Exército Zapatista de Libertação Nacional (EZLN) no México, em janeiro de 1994, ganhou corpo com a realização do Primeiro e do Segundo Encontros Intercontinentais pela Humanidade e contra o Neoliberalismo, em 1996 e 1997, respectivamente, e culminou na fundação, em 1998, da Ação Global dos Povos (AGP), rede de movimentos sociais que criou os dias de ação global e inspirou as grandes manifestações contra as reuniões de instituições multilaterais como a Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), o Fundo Monetário Internacional (FMI) e o Banco Mundial a partir do protesto que impediu a realização da abertura da terceira Conferência Ministerial da OMC em Seattle, em novembro de 1999. O objetivo deste trabalho é analisar o processo de emergência e descrever as características centrais de um novo tipo de anticapitalismo que surgiu a partir da articulação das lutas contra a globalização neoliberal em nível mundial e situá-lo na longa tradição das lutas anticapitalistas dos séculos XIX e XX, mostrando como as transformações do modo de produção capitalista deram origem a novas formas de resistência ao longo desse período. Para isso, conduzi uma pesquisa em dois planos, um teórico e outro empírico. A pesquisa empírica se baseou no levantamento e análise de documentos produzidos pelos movimentos que integraram a rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal entre 1994 e 1998. A pesquisa teórica consistiu na aplicação de um modelo teórico elaborado a partir da combinação de duas leituras contemporâneas da economia política marxiana para analisar as transformações do capitalismo e do anticapitalismo ao longo dos séculos XIX e XX. Esse modelo foi elaborado a partir da teoria do antagonismo de classe formulada pelos pensadores operaístas e autonomistas italianos, como Antonio Negri e Mario Tronti, e da teoria dos ajustes espaçotemporais via acumulação por espoliação de David Harvey. Ao aplicar esse modelo teórico à análise dos dados empíricos fornecidos pelas fontes textuais produzidas pelos movimentos que formaram a rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal foi possível constatar a emergência de um novo anticapitalismo que surgiu em resposta às transformações do modo de produção capitalista a partir da crise de acumulação iniciada na década de 1970 e que deu origem a uma nova estratégia de enfrentamento do capital e a uma nova concepção do sujeito revolucionário. Como a pesquisa se baseou nas declarações escritas dos movimentos envolvidos na construção da rede mundial de luta contra a globalização neoliberal, os resultados obtidos permitem falar em um novo discurso anticapitalista, mas não fornecem os elementos necessários para atestar a emergência de uma nova prática anticapitalista capaz de se enraizar no cotidiano dos movimentos envolvidos. Por isso, o trabalho conclui sugerindo que é necessário realizar pesquisas de história oral para verificar se e como esse discurso se refletiu na prática cotidiana dos movimentos integrantes da rede. / This work investigates the formation, in the second half of the 1990s, of what some activist groups have called global anticapitalism. The research analyzed the emergence of this new form of activism by studying the building of the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization that began to take shape in solidarity to the uprising of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) in Mexico, in January 1994, strengthened itself with the organization of the First and Second Intercontinental Encounters for Humanity and Against Neoliberalism, in 1996 and 1997, and culminated in the foundation, in 1998, of Peoples Global Action (PGA), a netowrk of social movements that created the global days of action and inspired the big demonstrations against multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, starting with the protests that shut down the inaugurarion of the third Ministerial Conference of the WTO in Seattle, in November 1999. The aim of this work is to analyze the emergence and describe the main characteristics of a new kind of anticapitalism that grew out of the articulation of the struggles against neoliberal globalization in a global level and situate it within the long tradition of anticapitalist struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries, showing how the transformations of the capitalist mode of production gave birth to new forms of resistance. To do that, I have conducted a research in two levels, one theoretical and the other empirical. The empirical research was based on the analysis of documents produced by the movements that formed the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization between 1994 and 1998. The theoretical research consisted in the application of a theoretical model built upon the combination of two contemporary interpretations of the Marxian political economy in order to analyze the transformations of both capitalism and anticapitalism through the 19th and 20th centuries. This model was elaborated departing from the theory of class antagonism formulated by Italian workerist and autonomist intellectuals such as Antonio Negri and Mario Tronti, and from David Harveys theory of spatiotemporal fixes through accumulation by dispossession. By applying this theoretical model to the analysis of the empirical data provided by the textual sources produced by the movements that formed the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization it was possible to see the emergence of a new anticapitalism that took shape in response to the transformations of the capitalist mode of production since the accumulation crisis started in the 1970s and that gave rise to a new strategy to confront capital and to a new conception of the revolutionary subject. Since the research was based on the written declarations of the movements that built the worldwide network of struggle against neoliberal globalization, the results allow us to identify a new anticapitalist discourse, but dont provide enough elements to prove the emergence of new anticapitalist practices rooted in the everyday life of the movements involved in the network. Thus, the work concludes suggesting the necessity of conducting oral history researches to verify if and how this discourse was reflected in the everyday practice of the movements that took part in the network.