Judith Dellheim: Reflections from the Perspective of Socio-Ecologic Transformation

In the beginning I have to come back to the quartet of the 4+2 connection. Globally, energy related activities produce around 63% of climate-damaging emissions and around 77% of all CO2 emissions. Around 28% of climate-damaging emissions and 36% of CO2 emissions stem from electricity generation and heating. Transport accounts for around one quarter of climate-damaging emissions. The transport sphere depends on oil for 96% of its energy; oil is responsible for over 95% of the emissions caused by transport. More

Judith Dellheim: Some Reflections on Societal and Capital Structures, and on Production Pattern

My aim is to show how the capitalist oligarchies have dealt with the crisis and how they use the crisis in order to strengthen their position in global competition, to strengthen their role in the globalization process. This is connected with financialisation and consequently with further oligarchisation. And, this, again, is connected with the development of the production and social structures. The strongest become stronger. More

For the Workshop Discussion – Theses of the Speakers

The mainstream debate on core and periphery should not distract us from the really important questions on the causes and the causers of the crises and on how ruling policy deals with them. In this context we shall have to take note of the fact that the term “peripherisation” cannot adequately express the real challenges we face. More

Sergio Tzotzes: The Case of Greece: Labour Market Reforms as Neoliberal Discipline in the European Periphery

This paper examines the dismantling of labour market institutions in Greece along neoliberal imperatives that was explicitly imposed by the loan conditionality of the IMF/EU/ECB adjustment programme. The mainstream public and academic discourse presents Greece as an exceptional isolated incident or a Greek disease where harsh adjustment was required to save the country from bankruptcy. Failing, to elucidate the structural aspects and the contradictions underlying the capitalist crisis, mainstream accounts also obscure the true nature, the aims and the implications of the labour market restructuring ongoing in Greece. More

Özge Yaka: Limits of the Core-­‐Periphery Model in the Analysis of the Contemporary Political Environment

The core periphery model, which belongs to the language of the pre 1980 era, has recently returned to the academic and political language in the context of the Euro‐zone-crisis. The model, which was originally developed against the modernisation school and Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantages, was aiming to reveal the structural processes and mechanisms which consistently disfavour primary producer countries of the periphery against the industrial western core. More

Marica Frangakis: The Case of Greece

The Eurozone crisis has re-introduced the notions of core/periphery into the debate. However, this is a theoretically contested area between those who place special emphasis on international relations and those who emphasize class relations. In view of the complexity of the subject, analyzing a particular case study can shed light on its multiple dimensions, so that conclusions of a more general applicability may be drawn. More