Bill Cochrane, from Waikato, New Zealand, has joined OPE-L.
Bill has the distinction of being our 1st subscriber from NZ and our 1st
regulationist. [doesn't it seem odd that our 1st regulationist is from
NZ?].
He introduces himself to you in the following (and modestly omits
to mention that he is a co-moderator of the marxism-thaxis list and has
been doing some recent Marxian empirical research on NZ):
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G'day
I'm Bill Cochrane a thirty six year old soon to be Doctoral student
at the university of Waikato New Zealand. Apart from my student
activities I work for David Neilson, my doctoral supervisor, as a
researcher. Both of us are engaged in attempting to develop a regulation
school story for the New Zealand economy in the post war period. Our
particular variant of the regulation school is more focused on the
marxian elements within the regulation school than many of the second and
third generations of regulationists and we explicitly retain the labour
theory of value as a central category. My approach is perhaps best
summarized as Jessop + Lipietz + Tickell and Peck.
Obviously the particular conjuncture that we address, a small dependent
agricultural economy, requires some reworking of the standard explanatory
structures adopted by the regulationists (ie Fordism) but I am confident
that the regulation approach is wide enough to allow such adaptation.
Before setting forth on my academic adventures I endured the usual
succession of mind numbing soul destroying jobs in the civil service or,
more enjoyably, manual laboring and of course the ritual of unemployment.
All of this was leavened with a uncontrollable enthusiasm for ultra
leftism, membership of micro cliques, political cults of the left and a
desire for employment in the trade union movement. The former was dulled
by age and history while the latter succumbed in part to the reality of
trade union politics and largely to the slaughter of unions in NZ.
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Bill: welcome aboard!
In solidarity, Jerry