Rentier Capitalism for the Twenty-First Century?: Theorizing the Political Economy of Venezuela’s Crisis

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

From a political-economic standpoint, the crisis currently raging in Venezuela was all-too predictable. Long characterized by a rentier model of accumulation (el modelo rentístico), in which Venezuela’s relations with the global market and its population were guided by the exigencies of the extraction of natural resources and distribution of the proceeds from their sale, it was only a matter of time until these flows of rent dried up and with them, the support for the Bolivarian Revolution––or so the story goes. Missing from this narrative is a grounded understanding of the molecular processes that linked subaltern populations, state elites, labor, and owners of capital; it also tends to downplay the role average Venezuelans might have in any potential resolution of the current crisis. This panel seeks to theorize the tensions between popular aspirations and the demands of rentier accumulation in the context of the Bolivarian Revolution. Moving beyond simple dichotomies that frame the political-economic conjuncture in Venezuela either in terms of ‘populist largesse’ or ‘the destruction of capital-forming elites,’ the panel takes the degree of continuity and rupture in the Bolivarian process as a question for investigation. It does so from the ground up, by drawing on ethnographic and historical accounts of the larger economic process to provide a more detailed picture of the crisis many years in the making. To that end, these papers explore the realignments of livelihood and class, state and civil society, informal economies and cooperatives, state bureaucracies and official financial architectures.

Sub Track

• Culture, Power, and Political Subjectivities

Session Organizers

• Aaron E Kappeler, University of Edinburgh

• Robert Samet, Union College

Chair

• Julie A Skurski, City University of New York - Grad Center

Discussant

• Julia D Buxton, Central European University, Budapest

Individual Presentations

• In the Belly of the Beast: Rentier Capitalism and Redistribution of Rents as Articulated within the State during the Chávez-years - Iselin Åsedotter Strønen, University of Bergen

• The Dangerous Gift of Universal Income: The Problem of Rentier Dependency in Venezuela - Aaron E Kappeler, University of Edinburgh

• Venezuela’s Popular Economy: Beyond the Magical State? - Manuel Larrabure, Bucknell University

• Infrastructures of Crisis: Venezuela’s Elusive Promise of Water for All - Rebecca J McMillan, University of Toronto

• Ant-work: Bachaqueros, Black Markets, and Informal Labor in Venezuela - Robert Samet, Union College