1. Developing alternative models of economic analysis and organisation

2. Actively engage in public debates and discussions (including on the media) related to their research

3. Participate in collaborative research projects

4. Give some public lectures

5. Contribute to the organization of lectures or workshops with established scholars in the field

1. Societies are relational.

1. Societies are relational.

2. The endless accumulation of capital is inherently destructive in terms of humanity and the environment.

1. Societies are relational.

2. The endless accumulation of capital is inherently destructive in terms of humanity and the environment.

3. The capitalist mode of production is a patriarchal mode of production – ‘economic man’ saturates its conceptual framework.

Two aspects of modern globalisation:

1. Concentration of capital in fewer hands and the domination of TNCs

2. The growing role of finance capitalVisible transfers, that is, the

trade in goods, have lost their importance vis-á-vis invisible transfers like banking transport, insurances, tourism.

Finance transactions play the most important role in this shift.

… right from its beginnings the capitalist economy has been a world system, based on colonialism and the marginalisation and exploitation of peripheral countries and agriculture. This c0lonial structure was and is the basis for what became known as “free trade” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

Due to its inner logic of permanent growth or accumulation, capitalism has to strive towards universality and globalism.

Colonies were not only necessary to initiate the process of capital accumulation in what has been called the period of ‘primitive accumulation’ at the beginning of capitalism. They continue to be necessary even today to keep the growth mechanism going.

Therefore we talk of the need for ‘on-going primitive accumulation and colonization’.

The ever-expanding process of capital accumulation is based on the maintenance or even re-creation of patriarchal or sexist man-woman relations, an asymmetric sexual division of labour within and outside the family…

This sexual division of labour is integrated with an international division of labour in which women are manipulated both as ‘producer-housewives’ and as ‘consumer-housewives.’

Closing down of Dissent - Attacks on Equality in IrelandEquality Bodies – closed down or with reduced Budgets

Combat Poverty Agency –closed 2008 incorporated into the Department of Social Protection Equality Authority – 2009 43% cut and now being merged with the Human Rights Commission Women’s Health Council – closed 2009  Crisis Pregnancy Agency – closed and merged with the Health Service Executive  Irish Human Rights Commission -Budget cuts since 2009 and merged with Equality Authority Equality for Women Measure - co-funded by EU Operational Programme ---budget partly transferred out of

this area and now under Dept. For Enterprise, Trade and Employment  National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) _Closed 2009  Gender Equality desk at the Department (Ministry) of Justice, Equality and Law Reform – Desk Closed 2009 Gender Equality Unit – Department of Education – Closed early 2000s Higher Education Equality Unit – UCC -Closed and merged into Higher Education Authority (early 2000s) National Women’s Council of Ireland -158 member organisations- budget cuts of 15% in 2008-11 and 38%

in 2012 Traveller Education cutbacks 2011 and 2012 – all 42 Visiting teaches for Travellers removed*  Rape Crisis Network Ireland – core Health Authority Funding removed 2011

SAFE Ireland network of Women’s’ Refuges - core Health Authority Funding removed 2011

People With Disabilities in Ireland's (PWDI) - funding removed 2012

National Carers’ Strategy – abandoned 2009

Kathleen Lynch, Equality Studies UCD School of Social Justice 23

Over the past thirty years, despite their being essential to human life, neoliberal restructuring across the world has privatised, eroded and demolished our shared resources, and ushered in a ‘crisis of social reproduction.’

‘Cuts are a Feminist Issue’, Soundings (Dec 2011), p.73.

The term social reproduction encompasses all the means by which society reproduces its families, citizens and workers. It includes all the labour that is necessary for a society to reproduce itself: the biological production of people and workers, and all the social practices that sustain the population – bearing children, raising children, performing emotional work, providing clothing and food, and cooking and cleaning.

The term social reproduction encompasses all the means by which society reproduces its families, citizens and workers. It includes all the labour that is necessary for a society to reproduce itself: the biological production of people and workers, and all the social practices that sustain the population – bearing children, raising children, performing emotional work, providing clothing and food, and cooking and cleaning.

As a concept social reproduction has been key to feminist social theory, because it challenges the usual distinctions that are made between productive and reproductive labour, or between the labour market and the home.

The term social reproduction encompasses all the means by which society reproduces its families, citizens and workers. It includes all the labour that is necessary for a society to reproduce itself: the biological production of people and workers, and all the social practices that sustain the population – bearing children, raising children, performing emotional work, providing clothing and food, and cooking and cleaning.

As a concept social reproduction has been key to feminist social theory, because it challenges the usual distinctions that are made between productive and reproductive labour, or between the labour market and the home.

Labour in this sphere is often devalued and privatised, and is typically performed by women in their ‘double day’ or ‘second shift’, alongside paid wage labour. But reproductive labour of this kind is just as central to capitalist accumulation as are other forms of labour, which means that struggles over its structure and distribution are fundamental to any understanding of issues of power and the relationships between labour and capital, as well as the potential for their transformation.

http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/cuts_are_a_feminist_issue

Social Reproduction

Renewing life is a form of work, a kind of production, as fundamental to the perpetuation of society as the production of things.

Moreover, the social organization of that work, the set of social relationships through which people act to get it done, has varied widely and that variation has been central to the organization of gender relations and gender inequality.

From this point of view, societal reproduction includes not only the organization of production but the organization of social reproduction, and the perpetuation of gender as well as class relations.

Barbara Laslett and Johanna Brenner, ’ Gender and Social Reproduction: Historical Perspectives,’ Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 15 (1989): 383

The difference between a subsistence orientation and scientific omnipotence mania is the understanding that life neither simply regenerates itself, nor is it an invention of engineers; rather we, as natural beings, have to cooperate with nature if we want life to continue. (26)

11 May 2010

Dear Chief Secretary,

I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left.

Sincerely,

Liam Byrne.

chief secretary to the Treasury.

“The British Government has run out of money because all the money was spent in the good years.”

George Osborne, 25 February 2012

“So we cannot just carry on as we are. Unless we reform our economy - rebalance demand, restructure banking, and restore the sustainability of our public finances - we shall not only jeopardise recovery, but also fail the next generation.”

Mervyn King, TUC Conference, 15 September 2010.

5 March 2009. QE : £75 billion

10 October 2011. QE : £75 billion

2009 – 2011. corporate bond purchase via asset purchase facility : £375 billion

2012: Monetary Policy Committee approve a further £50 billion.

“So we cannot just carry on as we are. Unless we reform our economy - rebalance demand, restructure banking, and restore the sustainability of our public finances - we shall not only jeopardise recovery, but also fail the next generation.”

Mervyn King, TUC Conference, 15 September 2010.

Long Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO)

21 December 2011: €489.2 billion to 523 banks – 3yrs @ 1 per cent

29 February 2012: €529.5 billion to 800 banks – 3yrs @ 1 per cent

Long Term Refinancing Operations (LTRO)

21 December 2011: €489.2 billion to 523 banks – 3yrs @ 1 per cent

29 February 2012: €529.5 billion to 800 banks – 3yrs @ 1 per cent

“Some banks, particularly in Spain and Italy, used portions of those funds to buy higher-yielding bonds issued by their governments at a time when most investors remained skittish, and it helped reduce government borrowing costs.

But many banks primarily used the funds to pay down maturing debts or simply deposited the money at other banks or with the ECB itself, even though they yield less. The infusion fell short of some politicians' hope that it would stimulate bank lending to customers in struggling European economies.”

Wall Street Journal, 1 March 2012

The Desjardins group first managed to democratize and decentralize financial services, making them accessible to all strata of the population and spreading them across the Québec local communities.

The [Desjardin group] system has always managed to strike a fine balance between financial constraints and social concerns, and between the members’ long-term financial security and their short-term aspirations.

The Desjardins experience suggests that its democratic procedures are partly a cost indeed, but for an irreplaceable social function…

… successive [economic] crises… instead of threatening the existence of the group, have in fact reinforced it and provided it with the opportunity to carry out institutional innovation and improve its core mission of servicing its members.

… rationalist and ethics do make a difference, provided they are allowed to find their way in the organization through the institutionalization of routines, checks and balances, and strategic priorities.