PERC Podcasts: Recent Episodes
PERC Goldsmiths
Quinn Slobodian visited Goldsmiths on 28th March to discuss his new book, Crack-up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy
PERC Director, Will Davies, is joined by Prof Joseph Vogl, Humboldt University, Berlin, to discuss Vogl's new book, Capital and Ressentiment: A Short Theory of the Present
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Neil Vallelly (University of Otago) to discuss his new book 'Futilitarianism: neoliberalism and the production of uselessness'. Vallelly tells the story of how neoliberalism transformed the relationship between utility and the common good. The book at once maps the historical relationship between utilitarianism and capitalism, develops an original framework for understanding neoliberalism, and recounts the lived experience of uselessness in the early twenty-first century. In doing so, it shows that countering the futility of neoliberal existence is essential to building an egalitarian, sustainable, and hopeful future.
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Tim Jackson to discuss his book 'Post Growth: Life after Capitalism'.
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Jessica Whyte to discuss her book 'The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism'.
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Mark Blyth to discuss his new book 'Angrynomics' (co-authored with Eric Lonergan).
In this event, hosted by PERC on 8 Dec 2020, Brett Christophers joined PERC Director Will Davies to discuss his new book Rentier Capitalism. How have economies such as Britain’s become so unequal? Christophers shows that a fundamental driver is the rise of rent-seeking, in which ownership of key types of scarce assets – land, intellectual property, natural resources, digital platforms – is dominated by a few unfathomably wealthy companies and individuals. Profits grow increasingly linked to having rather than doing. With profound lessons for other countries subject to rentier dominance, Christophers’ examination of the UK case is indispensable to those wanting not just to understand this insidious economic phenomenon but to overcome it.
Nick Taylor interviews Sarah Knuth (Durham University) about her work on the political economy of the green economy. Knuth's work explores how urban capitalism is being shaped by climate change and how, in turn, the drive for endless accumulation shapes responses to environmental breakdown in cities. They discuss the role that devaluation takes in new accumulation strategies, the changing fortunes of US cleantech and the role of progressive policy agendas and movements in shaping a more desirable green economy.
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Lisa Adkins and Martijn Konings to discuss their recently published book 'The Asset Economy' (co-authored with Melinda Cooper).
PERC director Will Davies is joined by Michelle Meagher to discuss her book 'Competition is Killing Us - How Big Business is Harming Our Society and Planet'. Michelle is a Senior Policy fellow at the UCL Centre for Law, Economics and Society. She is the co-founder of the Inclusive Competition Forum and a UK and US-qualififed lawyer specialising in competition law and corporate governance. Author of the book How Competition Is Killing Us.
PERC's Nick Taylor is joined by Dr Amy Horton (UCL) to discuss the political economy of care, the nature of financialization in the care system and prospects for resistance and alternatives to the status quo. Amy is the author of ‘Financialization and non-disposable women: Real estate, debt and labour in UK care homes’, which came out in 2019 in Environment and Planning: A. The conversation moves from a discussion of the interacting trends that have affected social care - privatisation, austerity and financialization - to the specific models of financial ownership at play and the crucial role that labour plays in both enabling and limiting financialization in residential care, and finally to principles for imagining an alternative future for care that recognise its social and relational value.
PERC’s Sahil Jai Dutta is joined by Dr Aled Davies (Oxford University) to discuss the City of London and Social Democracy. He is the author of The City of London and Social Democracy: The political economy of finance in Britain, 1959-1979, (Oxford University Press, 2017). The conversation spans across the topics of British industrial decline, the Labour party's approach to economic policy, and whether the material conditions for social democracy no longer exist.
PERC’s Sahil Jai Dutta is joined by Dr Sandy Brian Hager (City, University of London) to discuss the political economy of the corporation. He is the author of the book Public Debt, Inequality, and Power: The Making of a Modern Debt State (2016) published by University of California Press. The conversation spans across the topics of ownership and the politics of public debt, the power of large banks in the US, and his most recent work exploring what drives long-term shifts in the stock markets in the ‘advanced’ economies.