>Posted on 7 Jun 1995 at 22:14:16 by TELEC List Distributor (011802) > >[PEN-L:5359] Re: Kondratieff > >Date: Wed, 7 Jun 1995 19:13:38 -0700 >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: "Evan Jones - 448 - 3063" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >On 7 June Eric Nilsson wrote: >My concern with a focus on K cycles and their relationship to >institutional change is the following. > >I'm sympathetic to Eric's concern. >Work like Segmented Work is too stylised; the fault is not so much >its economism but its determinism. >If one takes the post WWII long boom for example there were probably >features that were institutionalised and which underpinned the whole >period - e.g. the 'fordist' cluster of suburbia, consumer durables, >consumer credit, unprecendeted family formation,etc. You may want to consult the article Rich Florida & I wrote on this: "Housing in US Fordism". Internatinal Journal of Urban and Regional Research 12, 2 (June 1988): 187-210. >On the other hand, the notion that the periods of favourable >accumulation worked fairly automatically once set in place is silly. It seems to me generalizing either way is silly. It would depend on the specific organization of accumulation. In the case of US suburbanization, once the pieces were in place around 1950 (adding the highway act in 1956), the geographic transformation DID work fairly automatically for about 2 decades. Then profit squeezes led to restructuring, and today's suburbanization does not complete the circuit adequately. Major tinkering in the banking system did not get implemented until the late '70s when things no longer worked so well. >At the global level, cold war and some regional hot wars is crucial >for Pax Americana underpinnings of the K-like long boom. But not even >the most ardent hawks in 1945 could guess at the magnitude of >devleopments until the Soviet UNion become the unviersal bogeyman >after 1947 and Korea kicked it off in 1950. But design and automatic operation are two separate questions. >My reading of the post-WWII period in Australia is that the period >bubbled along with mini-crises which had to be resolved, not least by >the active deliberation of various agencies of the state (and by this >I mean far more than textbook Keynesian macro manipulation). This is an interesting question. I believe regulationists distinguish between regulatory crises (i.e. those within the regime) and transformatory crises (i.e. those that change it). Can we understand these mini-crises as regulatory ones? >In Australia, in particular, a major development which kept the long >boom bubbling along in the 1960s was an extraordinary expansion in the mining >sector, a phenomenon mostly unforeseen in the 1950. >This development in turn had dramatic implications of a regional >nature (meaning that the 'national economy' aggregates are hiding >important internal developments), with the epicentre of activity >moving from the more industrialised south-east States, to the >periphery of north and west. > Very important and interesting questions. Regulationists have a tendency to homogenize the social formation. In fact, uneven development is the rule, and regulation theory often adds little to our understanding of uneven development within even stable regimes. > Marsh Feldman Phone: 401/792-5953 Community Planning, 204 Rodman Hall FAX: 401/792-4395 The University of Rhode Island Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Kingston, RI 02881-0815 "Marginality confers legitimacy on one's contrariness."
