Malcolm Alexander

Small Worlds Among Interlocking Directors: Network Structure and Distance in Bipartite Graphs

We describe a methodology to examine bipartite relational data structures as exemplified in networks of corporate interlocking. These structures can be represented as bipartite graphs of directors and companies, but direct comparison of empirical datasets is often problematic because graphs have different numbers of nodes and different densities. We compare empirical bipartite graphs to simulated random graph distributions conditional on constraints implicit in the observed datasets. We examine bipartite graphs directly, rather than simply converting them to two 1-mode graphs, allowing investigation of bipartite statistics important to connection redundancy and bipartite connectivity. We introduce a new bipartite clustering coefficient that measures tendencies for localized bipartite cycles. This coefficient can be interpreted as an indicator of inter-company and inter-director closeness; but high levels of bipartite clustering have a cost for long range connectivity. We also investigate degree distributions, path lengths, and counts of localized subgraphs. Using this new approach, we compare global structural properties of US and Australian interlocking company directors. By comparing observed statistics against those from the simulations, we assess how the observed graphs are structured, and make comparisons between them relative to the simulated graph distributions. We conclude that the two networks share many similarities and some differences. Notably, both structures tend to be influenced by the clustering of directors on boards, more than by the accumulation of board seats by individual directors; that shared multiple board memberships (multiple interlocks) are an important feature of both infrastructures, detracting from global connectivity (but more so in the Australian case); and that company structural power may be relatively more diffuse in the US structure than in Australia.

Business power in Australia: The concentration of company directorship holding among the top 250 corporates

This paper presents results from a comparative study of company directors of the top 250 Australian companies. The paper analyses the concentration of directorship holding in Australia and New Zealand in 1991 and compares this with other Australian, New Zealand, British, Canadian and American studies. The paper argues that while the density of interorganisational interlocks in Australia is quite normal by international standards, such comparisons are substantially affected by the relatively small number of board positions characteristic of Australian companies. When we allow for this external parameter by considering the concentration of directorship holding by persons, there is evidence of a significant concentration of available positions in the hands of relatively few persons in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The paper suggests that the organisation of business power in Australia reflects a continuing tension between principles of regulation derived from the larger economies of Britain and the Unit...

The Queensland Capitalist Class: Spectator or Actor in Regional Differentiation?

This paper explores the role of a local capitalist class in the process of regional development as portrayed in three models: a political economy model; a growth machine model; and a model of complementary dependence. It looks at the suitability of these models as applied to Queensland and then outlines a research project intended to validate or refute the hypotheses of these alternative models.

Historical Social Science: Class Structure in the Modern World System

over long periods of time, an effort exemplified, for instance, in the work of Marx, Weber, Schumneter, Toynbee or C. W. Mills. This tradition seeks to reconstruct the past with an understanding of the way in which the system of capitalist productive relations and social power has been the singular achievement of the modern epoch, emerging and triumphing over other historical systems. Currently, this endeavour retains its appeal as a corrective both to the static and ahistorical constructs of

Book Review: Global Business Regulation:

Ferguson, K. (1993) The Man Question: Visions of Subjectivity in Feminist Theory. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gatens, M. (1983) ‘A Critique of the Sex/ Gender Distinction’, pp. 143–61 in, J. Allen and P. Patton, (eds) Beyond Marxism? Interventions After Marx, Sydney: Interventions Publications. Gatens, M. (1991) Feminism and Philosophy: Perspectives on Difference and Equality. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gatens, M. (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London and New York: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grosz, E.A. (1988) ‘The In(ter)vention of Feminist Knowledges’, in B. Caine, E.A. Grosz and M. de Lepervanche (eds) Crossing Boundaries: Feminisms and the Critique of Knowledges. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Book reviews : RETHINKING YOUTH Johanna Wyn and Rob White Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1997, vii, 169 pp.,

Rethinking Youth raises questions beyond the realm of youth studies. It explores the politics of youth-how does Australian democracy handle the citizenship claims of young people? It uses youth issues as a critical indicator of how well our public institutions are operating; of the level of public amenity they provide for young people. These questions are addressed through a careful analysis of sociological concepts of marginalisation, inequality, class, gender and race. In addition the book builds a

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through parental behaviour, books, and school experiences; but too much of this literature is devoid of any challenging, insightful theoretical organising framework. Davies has done us all a favour by writing about post-structuralism in plain English, and by putting post-structuralism to work to make sense of her inherently interesting data on preschool children. I hope that her next book will carry this work farther.

Book Reviews : NATIONALISM AND NATIONAL INTEGRATION. Anthony H. Birch. London, Unwin Hyman, 1989, 253 pp.

fractions of capital within the Australian capitalist class and the degree of relative autonomy exhibited by the Australian state structure in the face of the growing internal organisation of the capitalist class. The great bulk of the book is an empirical description of the public activities of Australia’s peak employer organisations in the period 19601980. It is a specialist’s book which provides a wealth of interesting historical material but has minimal discussion of theoretical issues and only a limited exposition of its own theoretical stance.

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The social area analysis emphasis of the introductory sections is well to the fore again in an over-short fourth section on migration. Burnley supplies a useful overview of urban patterns of Australian immigration which is supplemented by an article (by Burnley and Routh) on aboriginal migration to inner Sydney, but this section highlights the problems of the scatter-gun approach of most collections ofessays. A case oftoo little and too much too little depth and too much covered in the space available. Section three, entitled ’Alternative perspectives and urban conflict’, will probably be of more direct interest to urban sociologists. There is a nice contrast between Horvath and

Book Reviews : A CLASS APART? BUSINESSMEN AND AUSTRALIAN POLITICS 1960-1980. Kosmos Tsokhas. Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1984. 197pp.

which is simply not provided. At one point O’Connor appears to recognise that his model may be empirically problematic, since it ’cannot be applied directly to particular conjunctures’. No matter: ’it may be regarded as an underlying structural process in Western capitalist development, which was played out through the mediation of politics and state policies, international rivalries, and cultural and other changes’ (pp. 66-7). ’Underlying’ structures and ’mediations’, of course, are the last resort of marxist reductionism: if the model doesn’t fit, throw in some mediations and displacements to cover over the gaps. At a more theoretical level, O’Connor’s discussion depends on numerous positions which are merely asserted or assumed without argument. Although he is critical of what he calls ’orthodox’ marxism, O’Connor nevertheless carries a considerable marxist baggage. Marx’s derivation of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall depends on an elementary algebraic error. The law of value is one of the most obscure marxist propositions, with no clear or generally accepted interpretation. O’Connor uses both as if they were unproblematic. But the most pervasive baggage of all is class struggle, which is literally everywhere. Social and economic policy and social and economic theory are all shaped by class struggle and changes in class structure. We have noted above how O’Connor interprets individualistic struggles for &dquo;more&dquo; and for the &dquo;self&dquo; as forms of class struggle. Even the ’personality’ is a battleground between labour and capital: ’precisely because love, creativity, sexuality, and so on were satisfied in the commodity form, the desublimation of desire necessarily emerged as struggles to redefine labor and life against and within the wage and commodity forms’ (p. 182). One of the most impressive developments in marxist work over the last 20 years has been the widespread recognition of the dangers of reducing everything to class struggle and the serious attempts to come to terms with the specificity of political organisations, institutions and ideologies. O’Connor makes the occasional gesture in that direction, but then proceeds to turn all he touches into yet another instance of class struggle. Accumulation Crisis is a book to give marxism a bad name. Serious marxist scholars have little to learn from it, and anti-marxists will find much to confirm their prejudices.