Papers by Zdravka Todorova
Land, International Mobile Labor, Remittances, and Provisioning
Journal of Economic Issues
Post Keynesian Economic Society, 2023
Conceptions of social stratification and oppression should be central to Post Keynesian inquiry. ... more Conceptions of social stratification and oppression should be central to Post Keynesian inquiry. The article takes a Veblenian feminist view to discuss aspects of oppression in economies of stratification, and outlines connections to areas of Post Keynesian economics. The article is structured around "five faces of oppression" delineated by political theorist Iris Young (1990): exploitation, violence, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and marginalization. The paper reframes those based on a conception of evolving social processes and diverse economic relations, and employs Veblen's theory of surplus and stratification, which has a broad understanding of domination that goes beyond capital accumulation. The article provides illustrations of these interconnected aspects of oppression, and discusses how each is co-opted today. The article presents specific connections to Post Keynesian economic analysis and concludes by highlighting the potential of Post Keynesian economics for social justice.
Institutional Theory, Socialization of Investment, and Care-Based Full Employment for Equity and Human Development
Journal of Economic Issues, 2022
The article discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a... more The article discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a renewed examination of the “socialization of investment” concept. The discussion builds on Veblen’s theory of human development, predation, and capitalism. It highlights contemporary institutional inquiry in a discussion of ongoing issues of care and disparities. Based on this, the article formulates problems for future inquiry. The article also provides insights about Job Guarantee based on institutional concepts.
Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, 2023
The paper discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923); the overa... more The paper discusses conceptual links among Hazel Kyrk’s A Theory of Consumption (1923); the overall work of Thorstein Veblen, and Wesley C. Mitchell’s essays on spending and money. The three authors are concerned with transformations in production, related changes in the organization of consumption, and the effects on people. The approach is based on reading of Kyrk’s book in light of an integrated view of Veblen’s overall work. The paper explains how Mitchell’s essays on money and spending built on Veblen’s work, and discusses their relevance for understanding Kyrk’s book as conceptually linked to institutional economics. The paper delineates the following commonalities: conception of living humans and money as an institution; distinction between business and industrial concerns; connection between distribution, waste, and consumption; and Veblen’s “machine process” of standardization in production and its relation to consumption. The paper brings more detail in the conceptual and theoretical discussion of Veblen’s influence on Kyrk’s book.
PKES Working Papers, 2022
The article discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a... more The article discusses commitment to full employment in light of institutional theory and offers a renewed examination of Keynes’s "socialization of investment" concept. The discussion builds on Veblen's theory of human development, predation, and capitalism. It highlights contemporary institutional inquiry in a discussion of ongoing issues of care and social disparities. Based on this, the article formulates problems for a broader inquiry about socialization of investment. The article provides insights about Job Guarantee based on original institutional economics concepts.
Social Provisioning within a Culture-Nature Life Process
Review of Political Economy, 2015
Abstract Social provisioning is an amalgamation of social processes within a broader culture-natu... more Abstract Social provisioning is an amalgamation of social processes within a broader culture-nature life process. This article contributes to the literature on developing the concept of ‘social provisioning' and explores its scope by presenting theoretical and methodological contexts for social provisioning. Then it delineates three categories of processes: biological and geographical processes, processes that are usually analyzed as personal characteristics or social categories (e.g., gender), and processes defined around social activities (e.g., consumption). The system of processes presented allows for diverse entry points to an analysis of social provisioning beyond consumption, production and distribution. Further, the system of processes transcends the culture-economy, nature-economy, nature-culture and micro-macro dualisms in heterodox economic theory.
Economic and Social Classes in Theorizing Unpaid Household Activities Under Capitalism
Journal of Economic Issues, 2015
Abstract: In this paper, I offer a framework for analyzing non-market oriented household activiti... more Abstract: In this paper, I offer a framework for analyzing non-market oriented household activities in a way that overcomes some issues about defining the boundaries among household activities. I utilize the concept of a social process and discuss how unpaid household activities are part of labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes. Next, I explain the importance of introducing economic class and social class processes into the framework, as well as the importance of making a distinction between the two. Economic class accounts for the basics of the capitalist economy, and social class opens contexts of variation. The framework allows for a multidimensionality of individuals and opens the question of unpaid activities varying in categorization based on economic class. Also, it helps the economic analysis of capitalism consider that maintaining a household lifestyle directly involves and pertains to unpaid household activities that are part of each of the delineated labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
The article discusses consumption as a social process that is a part of social provisioning and i... more The article discusses consumption as a social process that is a part of social provisioning and is in an evolutionary interplay with other social processes. The discussion is grounded in, but is not limited to the contributions of Thorstein Veblen. The first section delineates social provisioning as a framework for consumption inquiry. This section emphasizes that social provisioning is a part of collective life process embedded in culture and nature, and that it is comprised by two general sets of activities-those motivated by money and those that are not motivated by making money. The second section delineates features of capitalism as a system, so that it provides a social context for consumption inquiry. The third section formulates a categorization of social processes, one of which is the consumption process. Further, the section delineates the meaning and components of the concepts: social activities, institutions, and habits of life and thought. The fourth section applies these concepts to consumption social process in the specific context of capitalism. The section discusses consumption activities; institutions and systems of provision; and habits of life and thought-illustrating with examples obtained from various disciplines. The section introduces "gated consumption" as an example of a habit of life and thought. It is argued that the formulated analysis transcends the cultural-material dualism. Finally, the article draws implications of the offered analysis, concluding that the category of "consumers" is of little use to heterodox economics.
The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics, edited by T-H. Jo, L. Chester, and C. D’lppoliti. New York: Routledge, 2018
The paper builds on various heterodox approaches to economics to explore a direction towards anal... more The paper builds on various heterodox approaches to economics to explore a direction towards analyzing households within heterodox economic theory of social provisioning. The first section delineates five main theoretical foundations of households within heterodox economic perspectives. The second section discusses the analytical categories of the household as a going concern, the household as an institution, and the household as an actor-participant within a system of provisioning processes. Finally, the paper offers three specific suggestions for future developments.
Remittances and Households within Neoliberalism: A “Triple Movement”
Journal of Economic Issues, 2021
Abstract The article aims at advancing feminist institutional theory by expanding and revising Ka... more Abstract The article aims at advancing feminist institutional theory by expanding and revising Karl Polanyi’s framework of capitalist development as it applies to remittances and transnational households. The triple movement is offered by Nancy Fraser to revisit Karl Polanyi’s conception of the double-movement from a feminist perspective. It encompasses not only marketization and social protection, but also emancipation from social relations and markets. The article applies this concept to an understanding of remittance-driven labor exports and the formation of transnational households as an emerging institution of social protection. The discussion focuses on labor as a globalized fictitious commodity, global care chains, and the effects of COVID-19. The article points to the centrality of social subordination in marketization of remittances and labor, as well as to the fragility of this approach to social provisioning.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2013
This paper establishes connections between the frameworks of social provisioning and functional f... more This paper establishes connections between the frameworks of social provisioning and functional finance, and discusses a post-Keynesian-Institutionalist theory of the public sector that emerges out of these linkages. The concept of social provisioning has emerged out of Institutional economics, and has been further developed by institutional and other heterodox economists. Its potential as a methodological foundation that connects various heterodox approaches has received some growing attention. Such discussions have not referred in an analytical manner to functional finance. On the other hand, the principles of functional finance have been elaborated and developed outside an explicit grounding in a social provisioning framework. The article specifies further the concept of social provisioning and discusses functional finance within such a framework. The framework of functional finance gains a structural and institutional grounding which enables a deeper and more critical conceptualization of the public sector.
The article presents a further articulation of the monetary theory of production inspired by the ... more The article presents a further articulation of the monetary theory of production inspired by the writings of Thorstein Veblen. Particularly I offer a formulation of the monetary theory of production as part of broader theorizing about social provisioning and the life process. This includes an analytical focus on non-commodities; an extension of the Veblenian dichotomy to non-market activities; discussion of Veblen’s theory of social valuation in connection to monetary theory of production and class; delineation of as social processes that constitute social provisioning and their commodity and non-commodity aspects. The goal is bridging the gap between monetary theory of production and analysis of “the social”.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2005
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
The article seeks to contribute to the literature on social provisioning as an organizing concept... more The article seeks to contribute to the literature on social provisioning as an organizing concept in heterodox economics. Particularly, the article details social provisioning as an amalgamation of processes and as a part of a system of culture-nature life process. First, the article delineates a categorization of social provisioning activities with respect to motivation in their organizationmonetary and non-monetary, emphasizing the differences, as well as links between those. Second, the article discusses valuation of social activities, applying institutional theory. Third, the concept of a social process is delineated. It is argued that the concept captures agency and structure without reducing one to the other, and allows for theorizing open-endedness of social provisioning. The fourth section offers a categorization of processes and briefly explains each one of those, conceptualizing social provisioning within a historical culture-nature life process. Finally, the article concludes.
A Veblenian Feminist Articulation of Monetary Theory of Production
The article presents a further articulation of the monetary theory of production inspired by the ... more The article presents a further articulation of the monetary theory of production inspired by the writings of Thorstein Veblen. Particularly I offer a formulation of the monetary theory of production as part of broader theorizing about social provisioning and the life process. This includes an analytical focus on non-commodities; an extension of the Veblenian dichotomy to non-market activities; discussion of Veblen’s theory of social valuation in connection to monetary theory of production and class; delineation of as social processes that constitute social provisioning and their commodity and non-commodity aspects. The goal is bridging the gap between monetary theory of production and analysis of “the social”.
Journal of Cultural Economy, 2016
Over one hundred years of solitude, mainstream economics has been trying to account for society a... more Over one hundred years of solitude, mainstream economics has been trying to account for society and naturethe ordinary facts of life that were eschewed from its foundations in order to make its metaphors of harmonious exchange real. The analytical separation between the narrowly defined economy and 'the social' has been so pervasive that it enabled the development of an 'economics imperialism'the application of mainstream economics to all spheres of life (Fine & Milonakis 2009). The same separation between economy and society stealthily engenders a notion of a separate communal sphere opposed to 'asocial' destructive market forces. Perhaps the treatment of debt best illustrates this. Mainstream economic theory really does not (and cannot, if it is to be) distinguish debt relations from instances of exchange. On the other hand, within critical inquiry there is a growing interest in debt as an asocial imposition onto the 'real' economy and 'authentic' social relations. Either way, analyses of debt as a social process are precluded or inhibited. Miranda Joseph's book Debt to Society, however, offers a discussion of debt that opens up such avenues for inquiry. I find Joseph's analysis informative for developing a conceptualization of debt-credit as a social process within a system of processes that does not rigidly and universally prioritize one process over another, while also avoiding a neoliberal subjectivist discourse of identities and exaggerated sovereignty 1. I read her book as a discussion of the 'discursive apparatus' (p. 67) in gender, racial, and class processes in conjunction with the debt-credit, labor, violence, deprivation, citizenship, surveillance and punishment, and machine processes (to note a few) that sustain capitalist hierarchies. Debt embodies and forms social relations. It is problematic to view debt as an imposition onto or destructor of social relations. Conversely, as noted by Joseph (p. 2), financialization can be understood as the increase of the socially formative role of finance and a continuation, rather than distortion, of capitalist production. That is, markets and debt are social, and financial obligations are social; they are not separate from and opposed to society. This does not preclude the recognition that there are differences in social relations and valuation (Todorova 2015a). In order to recognize the social nature of debt, as well as its distinct impacts on other relations, it is best that we look at debt as a process. Debt is not just an outcome to be counted, just like money is not a thing. Debt is a social process entangled with other processesviolence, care, labor, consumption, mobility, exchange, distribution, economic class, surveillance, citizenship and residency, social class, gender, worship, race and ethnicity, to note some. Elsewhere I offer a categorization of social and natural processes, which enables one to conceptualize a diverse and evolving economy as a whole embedded in culture and nature (Todorova 2015b). My concern is with further developing heterodox economic theory, which stems from Marx and his predecessors in political economy (e.g. David Ricardo and Adam Smith) and before that, moral philosophy (e.g. again Adam Smith 2) and which continues in dispersed but more-or-less connected trajectories until today. Those are distinct from what has emerged as mainstream economics and its various trajectories of mainstream dissent (Lee 2013). In continuing to develop this web of inquiry, I find Joseph's contribution very complementary. To view debt as a process is first to connect it to its other accounting selfcredit. Second, debt ought to be seen not only as individual instances and effects. At the interactional level it seems that
espanolLa comunidad de los economistas heterodoxos ha perdido a Fred Lee, uno de sus lideres mas ... more espanolLa comunidad de los economistas heterodoxos ha perdido a Fred Lee, uno de sus lideres mas entusiastas y que estuvo en el centro del movimiento de la economia heterodoxa durante las ultimas tres decadas. Este articulo describe el amplio espectro de las contribuciones que Fred Lee realizo a la economia heterodoxa, y se centra en sus aportaciones a la formacion de la historia e identidad de la economia heterodoxa, a la teoria microeconomica heterodoxa, y al analisis del proceso de aprovisionamiento social. ?Cual es el significado de estas contribuciones para la economia heterodoxa? Fred Lee nos ha legado teorias heterodoxas, instituciones y buena voluntad que continuaran desarrollandose en el trabajo de aquellos economistas preocupados por establecer una teoria critica alternativa al statu quo. EnglishThe community of heterodox economists has lost Fred Lee, one of its fervent leaders, who has been at the center of the heterodox movement for the past three decades. The paper deli...
Consumption in the context of social provisioning and capitalism: beyond consumer choice and aggregates
The article discusses consumption as a social process that is a part of social provisioning and i... more The article discusses consumption as a social process that is a part of social provisioning and is in an evolutionary interplay with other social processes. The discussion is grounded in, but is not limited to the contributions of Thorstein Veblen. The first section delineates social provisioning as a framework for consumption inquiry. This section emphasizes that social provisioning is a part of collective life process embedded in culture and nature, and that it is comprised by two general sets of activities -those motivated by money and those that are not motivated by making money. The second section delineates features of capitalism as a system, so that it provides a social context for consumption inquiry. The third section formulates a categorization of social processes, one of which is the consumption process. Further, the section delineates the meaning and components of the concepts: social activities, institutions, and habits of life and thought. The fourth section applies these concepts to consumption social process in the specific context of capitalism. The section discusses consumption activities; institutions and systems of provision; and habits of life and thought -illustrating with examples obtained from various disciplines. The section introduces "gated consumption" as an example of a habit of life and thought. It is argued that the formulated analysis transcends the cultural-material dualism. Finally, the article draws implications of the offered analysis, concluding that the category of "consumers" is of little use to heterodox economics.
Journal of Economic Issues, 2015
In this paper, I offer a framework for analyzing non-market oriented household activities in a wa... more In this paper, I offer a framework for analyzing non-market oriented household activities in a way that overcomes some issues about defining the boundaries among household activities. I utilize the concept of a social process and discuss how unpaid household activities are part of labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes. Next, I explain the importance of introducing economic class and social class processes into the framework, as well as the importance of making a distinction between the two. Economic class accounts for the basics of the capitalist economy, and social class opens contexts of variation. The framework allows for a multidimensionality of individuals and opens the question of unpaid activities varying in categorization based on economic class. Also, it helps the economic analysis of capitalism consider that maintaining a household lifestyle directly involves and pertains to unpaid household activities that are part of each of the delineated labor, care, recreation, and consumption processes.
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Papers by Zdravka Todorova