Graduate Student, Politics and International Studies
Thesis Title: IPE and the lineages of Marx: recovering the classical roots of a modern discipline
About
My research concerns the original work of Karl Marx and its uses for contemporary International Political Economy (IPE). It is based on an approach that draws on the history of intellectual thought and the work of the classical political economists in order to bring to light present day issues in political economy. In particular, I am looking at the lineage of Marx's ideas both within IPE and in a number of disciplines outside of it, such as political geography and sociology, in order to make an argument about the loss of some of his original concepts and categories, as well as his method. Marx's conceptual base has been lost, above all, through the removal by self-styled Marxists of the analytical primacy of labour in theoretical and empirical research. Marxist IPE itself seems to have deviated from its classical basis in an attempt to fit the orthodox constraints of a modern discipline.
I am also integrating research into my PhD on the relationship between labour markets and welfare policy and the ways in which this relationship has evolved since the late 18th century. It seems relevant at the moment, in what is increasingly and misleadingly called an 'age of entitlement', to study this. Current government and popular rhetoric on welfare claimants and the welfare system - including phrases such as 'welfare dependency', the 'deserving poor' and the 'able-bodied' - has echoes of the early 19th century about it. It is also interesting to note the shift to a more harsh and disciplinarian system of 'welfare-to-work' policies that has accompanied an increasingly market-led approach to regulation of the labour market and the turn to flexible working arrangements. I hope to develop the classical political economy approach - and Marx in particular - as an analytical basis for exploring the so-called 'social question': how to deal with the social ills that accompany a stratified and unequal capitalist society.
