Views
From IIPPE
Jump to: navigation, search

The minerals-energy complex (MEC) is a concept developed by Fine & Rustomjee and presented most fully in their seminal 1996 study of The Political Economy of South Africa. The MEC, as uniquely applied to South Africa, outlines the form of capital accumulation as incorporating a core set of industries associated with large-scale mineral extraction, energy provision, and associated downstream sectors; it can be expanded to characterise a broader system of accumulation underpinning the incorporation, or not, of other sectors and socio-economic development more generally. Core MEC industries are closely linked, with energy being supplied predominantly through increasing coal extraction and with mining absorbing a large proportion of the energy supplied. As a system of accumulation, the MEC was historically driven by two key processes: the post-World War II consolidation of capital from initially separate Afrikaner and British colonial origins, on the one hand, and the emergence of both public- and private-owned large conglomerates reflecting these roots, on the other. Development theories’ prescriptions often focus on "recipes", i.e. policies that should be implemented, either because they have worked somewhere else (industrial policy in South Korea), or because they fit in a fashionable discourse (good governance), or simply because they favour whoever promotes them (for instance employer organisations lobbying for labour market flexibility, arguing it will reduce unemployment). Approaching economic development through the prism of a system of accumulation allows analysis to be rooted in a specific world-historical context of national class politics. Although developed for the South African economy, through the MEC in particular, the methodology deployed of identifying a system of accumulation is of more general applicability.

Capital accumulation around the MEC, and policy measures supporting this structure and its associated processes, shed light on the rise of the core industries and how other (especially manufacturing and financial) sectors have subsequently evolved. The MEC as a system of accumulation potentially incorporates all economic sectors through various (economic, political and functional) forms of control, ownership, relations with state or capital and, as such, does not have clearly delineated boundaries. Though this fluidity presents a challenge in defining the impact and scope of the MEC, it also enables the concept to be used to assess the underlying class relations and related interest group dynamics especially with regard to labour control. In this respect, the MEC concept can be used to address the continuing failure of South Africa to reduce poverty and inequality substantially since 1994.

Three key outcomes of this system of accumulation are drawn out and are of interest not only in the context of South Africa but also in (natural resource-dominated) industrial processes elsewhere. Firstly, the tensions between the core MEC and non-MEC manufacturing are reflected in government policy, access to and distribution of investment, as well as in levels of output and employment. Secondly, the ongoing conflict between the interests of labour and capital point to the need to understand how the dynamics linking capital and the state interact with underlying social relations of production. Thirdly, the historical integration of the state and industrial interests through policy and the evolving structure of capital accumulation raises challenging questions concerning the shifting distribution of economic and political power.

Whilst this working group has its origins in work on the South African economy, and this will remain an important element, it will focus on the broader theoretical, historical and contemporary debates around industrial accumulation, and the associated roles of classes and the state. Founding members of the Working Group have been heavily involved in offering alternative policies for the South African economy and this, together with support for labour and other progressive organizations, will continue to inform the Working Group’s activities.

Contents

Working Group Co-ordinators


Current Members

  • Lucy Baker – University of East Anglia, UK.
  • Patrick Bond has longstanding research interests and applied work in global governance and national policy debates, in urban communities and with global justice movements in several countries. He is professor at UKZN's School of Development Studies where since 2004 he has directed the Centre for Civil Society. His research focuses on political economy, environment (energy, water and climate change), social policy and geopolitics, with publications covering South Africa, Zimbabwe, the African continent and global-scale processes.
  • Gavin Capps – University of Cape Town, South Africa.
  • Sergiy Chukhno – LEPII-CNRS UPMF Grenoble 2 Sciences sociales, France.
  • Kenneth Creamer – University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
  • Rudi Dicks – National Labour and Economic Development Institute [NALEDI].
  • Jackie Dugard - Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), Wits University, South Africa.
  • Ben Fine - Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He was a contributing editor to the MERG policy book, Making Democracy Work: A Framework for Macroeconomic Policy in South Africa, 1994, and co-authored with Zavareh Rustomjee, South Africa's Political Economy: From Minerals-Energy Complex to Industrialisation, London: Hurst, and Wits University Press, 1997. He served as international expert on the Presidential Labour Market Commission, South Africa, 1995/1996. In 1999, he was awarded a two-year UK ESRC research professorship to study the shifting relations between economics and other social sciences. His recent books include Social Capital versus Social Theory: Political Economy and Social Science at the Turn of the Millennium, Routledge, 2001; Development Policy in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond the Post-Washington Consensus, Routledge, co-edited with Costas Lapavitsas and Jonathan Pincus, 2001; The World of Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited, Routledge, 2002; Marx’s Capital, fourth edition, 2004, (with Alfredo Saad-Filho); The New Development Economics: A Critical Introduction, edited with K. S. Jomo, Delhi: Tulika, and London: Zed Press, 2005, Whither the Privatisation Experiment? Electricity and Water Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa, co-edited with Kate Bayliss, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory, with Dimitris Milonakis, 2009, London: Routledge, pp. 392, now available, and From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries Between Economics and Other Social Sciences, with Dimitris Milonakis, in press, available in early 2009, London: Routledge.
  • Juan Grigera
  • Don Lindsay is a full-time PhD student with the Dept. of Sociology at Wits University in Johannesburg. His research focuses on the issue of business-state relations in South Africa, more specifically the extent to which the relationship has been influenced by the various policies of black economic empowerment. Prior to starting the PhD Don consulted on black economic empowerment in the business sector. He holds an MBA from Wits Business School and a B.Sc (Hons) from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
  • David Masondo
  • Seeraj Mohamed - CSID, Wits University, South Africa.
  • Vishnu Padayachee is Senior Professor in the School of Development Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has a PhD from the University of Natal in Economics and Economic History. His research covers a variety of disciplinary fields, including Macroeconomic Policy; Finance, Banking and Monetary Policy; and the Politics of Race and Sport. He has held visiting fellowships in Europe and the USA, including the Paul H Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University (USA). Professor Padayachee has served on various research organisations (within the ANC-COSATU alliance) concerned with economic policy issues. On 1 April 1996, President Nelson Mandela appointed him to the Board of Directors of the South African Reserve Bank. He is now into his third term as Director and serves on both the Audit and Remuneration Committees of the SARB Board. He is also Deputy-Chair and a member of the Board of Directors of the Ithala Development Finance Corporation, and chairs its Banking License committee.
  • Nicolas Pons-Vignon is a senior researcher at the Corporate Strategy and Industrial Development (CSID) research programme at Wits University, South Africa. His PhD research focuses on the outsourcing of forestry operations in South Africa, exploring the link between corporate restructuring and rural poverty. He holds an MA in Public Administration from Sciences-Po (Paris) and an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). Nicolas is the initiator and course director of the African Programme on Rethinking Development Economics. At the OECD Development centre, he researched violent conflicts in developing countries and, prior to this, he was a project officer in London, Paris and Rabat for PlaNet Finance, an NGO which supports micro finance institutions. He is the editor of the Global Labour Column.
  • Simon Roberts is Chief Economist and Manager of the Policy and Research Division at the Competition Commission of South Africa.
  • Oliver Schwank is currently a consultant and trade economist with Unido. His research focuses on trade and development and industrial policy and development in South Africa. He holds a PhD in Economics from Vienna University of Economics and Business.
  • Lotta Takala-Greenish Lotta Takala-Greenish is a PhD student at the School of Oriental and African Studies researching the role of the minerals-energy-complex and industrial policy in the decline of South African textiles and clothing. Her research interests include industrialisation, privatisation, trade theory and policy, labour economics, and technology transfer with an area focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. She has previously worked as a researcher on the digital divide at the London Business School and also has extensive experience in both corporate training (Reuters) and academic teaching (School of Oriental and African Studies). She holds an MSc Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies and an MSc Management from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences.
  • Daniela Tavasci - Department of Economics, SOAS, UK.
  • Fiona Tregenna - University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
  • Nimrod Zalk is Deputy Director General for Industrial Policy at the Department of Trade and Industry (South Africa). He holds an MSc in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He is responsible for a range of work related to industrial policy including research, the development of a national industrial policy and issues related to industrial cost structures in the South African economy. Over the last eight years he has worked on various aspects of economic policy including issues related to sector strategy development; industrial financing; investment and trade promotion; and contingent protection issues. He has published papers on issues such as links between industrial and competition policy; competitiveness and equity; high growth products in world trade; and export strategy.

Related events

  • Call for papers - IIPPE Conference in Crete - September 2010

Dear colleagues,

As you may be aware, there will be an IIPPE conference in Crete (entitled ‘Beyond the Crisis’) from the 10th to the 12th of September 2010. We are keen to organize sessions around the Minerals-Energy Complex and would like to know if you would be interested in submitting papers. Our idea is for our panels to contribute to the ‘Systems of Accumulation’ stream (see attached call) in order to expand the scope of our approach to the political economy of industrialization. At the moment, we are thinking of two sessions:

- A comparative session looking at several countries’ systems of accumulation with a view to highlighting similarities and differences between them. This session could include both single country analysis or comparative country contributions covering, for instance, Turkey, Korea, Brazil, Argentina as well as South Africa… depending on submissions. - A session focusing on the evolution and current status of the original MEC framework developed by Fine and Rustomjee within the South African context. This could include both theoretical developments as well as case studies showing how the MEC influences or applies to various sections of the South African economy.

Fyi, we are considering two pieces: one on the structure of the South African economy (which could fit in either of the above sessions) and one theoretical one looking at the Social Systems of Accumulation approach developed by Kotz and at regulation theory (Aglietta, Lipietz and Boyer), and how they can be assessed from the point of view of South Africa’s system of accumulation.

Please let us know by the 15th of March if you would like to submit a paper for either of the two suggested sessions. We will then decide if we can go ahead with both sessions or only with one. We hope you will participate and look forward to seeing or meeting you in Crete.

Nicolas and Lotta

Links


Key references


Contact

To apply to join IIPPE Minerals-Energy Complex/Comparative Industrialisation group, email iippe@soas.ac.uk or Nicolas.Pons-Vignon@wits.ac.za.

Retrieved from "http://www.iippe.org/wiki/Minerals_Energy_Complex_and_Comparative_Industrialisation_Working_Group"
Personal tools