Entangled Modernity and the Study of Variegated Capitalism: Some Suggestions for a Postcolonial Research Agenda

Abstract

Industrial capitalism, right from its beginnings in Southern Lancashire and Northern Cheshire at the end of the 18th century, has been characterized by its expansive and tendentially global character. Yet, apart from a few exceptions, the (post-)Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) and Comparative Capitalisms (CC) literatures have mainly produced a large variety of national case studies, ‘typically framed in “horizontal” comparisons with other national models’ (Zhang and Peck, 2014, p. 3). Whereas the Triad has ceased to be the only reference point, in particular for a new generation of scholars, this geographical expansion (or ‘globalization’) of CC research has not overcome some of the central methodological shortcomings. For example, by focusing on supposedly national production and regulation regimes, most of the current research turns a blind eye to the conceptual challenge of analysing capitalism as a variegated but interconnected global system, characterized by power asymmetries, conflicts and contradictions (see also Jessop, in this volume). The relational character of capitalism — that is, the fact that national forms of production and social regulation are influenced by international competition, predominant (global) modes of capital accumulation and transnational (inter-)dependencies — remains largely under-theorized.