The Life and Times of " Who Rules America " and the Future of Power Structure Research (original) (raw)

2017, Studying the Power Elite: Fifty Years of Who Rules America (New York, Routledge, 2017),:

G. William Domhoff's arresting biography of his masterwork, Who Rules America details the connecting links and evolving analysis perfected in the new editions – and later additions – that comprise the corpus of Domhoff's power structure research. Such a comprehensive review of key ideas invites the respondents in this volume to point towards related work that extends and enriches the bedrock analysis that Domhoff has constructed. I If Domhoff’s perspective is to remain useful in understanding 21st century dynamics, it must be extended to encompass semi-autonomous elites within the U.S. state system and beyond the U.S. territorial limits, and understand the leverage applied by mobilized publics within the United States as well as the global venues of U.S. economic and military aggression. Domhoff’s achievements in historical and sociological explanation demonstrate the intellectual importance of this task of extension and clarification. The moral crisis created by neoliberalism and dangerously deepened by the 2016 U.S. Presidential election underscores the urgency of this work.

‘Imperial governmentality’; theorizing power in US foreign policy

This article suggests that one way to go about analysing the diversified social reproduction of liberal capitalism throughout the international sphere is by looking at different yet complementary modes of power. To do this, the paper conflates a specific historical materialist approach, namely an updated version of imperialism, and governmentality, which best exposes the mechanisms that produce certain kinds of subjects and systematize the management of people and contingency in specified locations. To illustrate this theoretical combination, the article looks at the particular configuration of force, ideology and technical-administrative models in two important episodes in the history of US foreign policy, namely the Vietnam and Iraq (2003) wars. Throughout, the focus is on the historically specific rationalities of government that complement the projection of US material and ideational power.

The Contradictions of US Supremacy

2005

This essay seeks to conceptualize and analyze some of the central principles, practices and contradictions of US efforts to unify global political, social and economic space under a particular form of Western supremacy. The use of the term 'supremacy' is deliberate, intended to connote a form of rule based on economic coercion and the use--potential or actual--of organized violence as a means of intimidating and fragmenting opposition. There are two main faces of US power in the contemporary world order. On the one hand, US strategy involves the globalization of Anglo-American constitutional principles and neo-liberal mechanisms of accumulation and economic discipline. These are analogous to John Locke's conception of property rights and limited government, i.e. one that asserts the primacy of private property over political jurisdiction. Thus from the Marshall Plan onwards the US took initiatives to make foreign territories more permeable for mobile capital. These measu...

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