The New Imperialism
Abstract
People around the world are confused and concerned. Is it a sign of strength or of weakness that the US has suddenly shifted from a politics of consensus to one of coercion on the world stage? What was really at stake in the war on Iraq? Was it all about oil and, if not, what else was involved? What role has a sagging economy played in pushing the US into foreign adventurism? What exactly is the relationship between US militarism abroad and domestic politics? These are the questions taken up in this compelling and original book. In this closely argued and clearly written book, David Harvey, one of the leading social theorists of his generation, builds a conceptual framework to expose the underlying forces at work behind these momentous shifts in US policies and politics. The compulsions behind the projection of US power on the world as a "new imperialism" are here, for the first time, laid bare for all to see.
... 24 For an argument of how BBU could be seen as paradigmatic of the (re)centralization of the decisionmaking process and resource allocation vis-à-vis the "care" of the displaced beyond the purview of other bodies of governance in Austria, see (Çaglar 2024). what forms of capital accumulation we are confronted with, we need to approach the set of unequal social relations and the naturalizing and legitimizing narratives of racialized, culturalized, gendered, and nationalized differences they are embedded in, playing a fundamental role in appropriations and the dispossessive processes that underlay capital accumulation (Luxemburg 1951;Butler 2016;Quijano 2000;Melamed 2015;Piketty 2014;Edwards 2021;Harvey 2003). Thus, we need to analyze accumulation processes and the formation of culturally and socially constructed hierarchies of difference in relationship to each other. ...
Compartmentalized historiography of cities and labor hinders us from seeing the common grounds and contour lines connecting disparate places, periods, processes, institutions, and groups of actors in the making and remaking of cities. Through exploring the historical geography of a street in Linz (Austria), I call for shifting our lens to expanded extractivism to bring economies of (im)mobile labor and confinement and the governance of the displaced inscribed to distinct periods and regimes within a common analytical lens. The longue durée perspective I adapt enables us to situate the commodification of the containment and care of refugee and asylum seekers within the broader dynamics of extractivism.
Heritage protection can sometimes disrupt the remaking and reimaging of cities by prioritising and protecting alternatives based on non‐market values of architectural and historical significance. In England, the “post‐war listing” programme has positioned state heritage protection as an unlikely advocate and defender (sometimes of last resort) of the diminishing material and symbolic legacy of the architecture of the welfare state and its socialist values from the 1950s and 1960s. In this paper, we explore what might be at stake ideologically, materially, and symbolically in the protection of post‐war architectural heritage in England. While post‐war listing has creating scope for alternatives, its subaltern role (in and against the state) has been limited in various ways by state strategies of market‐based regeneration that erode and marginalise social housing and welfarist rights to the city. Although heritage protection has been only a minor irritant in the politics of regeneration, the paper explores what might be at stake for the Left in engaging more explicitly with heritage building protection and the selectivity of heritage value.
Les politiques néolibérales au Brésil ont été introduites sur la scène politique et économique à partir des années 1990, déclenchant un processus de néolibéralisation qui a été tardif dans le développement du pays par rapport au scénario latino-américain. En 2003, malgré l’élection d’un gouvernement dit de gauche, les politiques néolibérales ont continué à se perpétuer dans l’agenda économique, coexistant de manière contradictoire avec une série de politiques sociales adoptées, révélant la tendance des gouvernements Lula vers ce que l’on appelle le "néo-développementalisme". L’objectif de cette recherche est d’analyser les plans et programmes nationaux pour le développement du tourisme, élaborés par le ministère du tourisme, à la lumière de la propagation et de la reproduction supposées des tendances néolibérales et néo-développementistes. Pour ce faire, l’analyse a été réalisée par le biais d’une recherche bibliographique et documentaire dans les organismes officiels. La conclusion est que ces paradigmes étaient présents sous le gouvernement Lula da Silva (2003 - 2011), guidant les plans et les programmes destinés au développement du tourisme brésilien.
Neoliberal policies in Brazil were introduced in the political-economic scenario from the 1990s onwards, inciting a late neoliberalization process in the country comparing to Latin American scenario. In 2003, despite a so-called left-wing government having been elected in the country, neoliberal policies continued to perpetuate themselves on the economic agenda; coexisting contradictorily with a series of social policies adopted, revealing the tendency of Lula governments to the alleged "neodevelopmentalism". Therefore, this research aims to analyse the national plans and programs aimed at the development of tourism activity, elaborated by the Ministry of Tourism, in the light of a supposed propagation and reproduction of neoliberal and neodevelopmentalism tendencies. Methodologically, the analysis was carried out through bibliographic and documentary research in official agencies. It is concluded that these paradigms were present during the Lula da Silva government (2003-2011), guiding plans and programs aimed at the development of Brazilian tourism.
As políticas neoliberais no Brasil foram introduzidas no cenário político-econômico a partir da década de 1990, incitando um processo de neoliberalização tardio no país frente ao cenário latino-americano. Em 2003, a despeito de um governo dito de esquerda ter sido eleito no país, as políticas neoliberais continuaram a se perpetuar na agenda econômica; coexistindo contraditoriamente com uma série de políticas sociais adotadas, revelando a tendência dos governos Lula ao denominado “neodesenvolvimentismo”. Assim, esta pesquisa tem o objetivo de analisar os planos e programas nacionais voltados para o desenvolvimento da atividade turística, elaborados pelo Ministério do Turismo, à luz de uma suposta propagação e reprodução das tendências neoliberais e neodesenvolvimentistas. Para tanto, a análise foi realizada mediante pesquisa bibliográfica e documental em órgãos oficiais. Conclui-se que estes paradigmas estiveram presentes durante o governo Lula da Silva (2003 – 2011) pautando planos e programas voltados ao desenvolvimento turístico brasileiro.
The current context of increasing global inequality, economic instability, and political polarization underscores the need to re-examine foundational theories that address social change and class conflict dynamics. This study investigates the significant impact of Hegelian philosophy on the formation of Marxist thought, specifically how Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels incorporated and transformed Hegel's dialectical method into a materialist framework. The research focuses on critical aspects of Hegelian dialectics, such as the synthesis of contradictions. It explores how these were reinterpreted to create Marx’s dialectical materialism, emphasizing the role of material conditions and social relations in shaping history and society. The research method involves a critical analysis of primary texts by both Hegel and Marx, as well as secondary literature that traces the development of Marxist theory from its Hegelian roots. By examining how Marx and Engels transitioned from Hegel's idealism to materialism, the study highlights the importance of understanding the economic base of society and its influence on cultural and political structures, a concept known as historical materialism. The findings demonstrate that Marx's critique of ideology, derived from Hegelian ideas, remains crucial for understanding how dominant ideologies serve to maintain the power of the ruling classes. This research is significant because it offers a deeper understanding of Marxism's theoretical foundations, which continue to inform contemporary social and political analysis. The relevance of this study lies in its potential to provide insights into ongoing issues of class dynamics, inequality, and social change in the modern world.
Why do some pastoralists join bandit groups in Nigeria? This conundrum is yet to be explored in the emerging scholarly literature on pastoral banditry in Nigeria's troubled northwest region. Whereas the upsurge in pastoralist‐related banditry has been predominantly explicated with the theoretical frameworks of ungoverned spaces and relative deprivation, the role of structural violence in some pastoralists' decision to become bandits has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Drawing on the analytical framework of structural violence first advanced by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, I contend that some pastoralists take to the composite crime of banditry as a consequence of the inegalitarian distribution of resources and power. Pastoralists resorting to banditry in the northwest region can therefore be considered as a rebellious response, albeit misguided, to the structural violence of everyday life―precisely, poverty and repression―in the Nigerian state that precludes them from meeting their basic human needs. To reverse the mayhem and to heal the broken communities in the banditry‐affected northern states in Nigeria, I argue that federal and state governments should not solely rely on a killing approach fixated on military warfare―or the surveillance of forests and remote areas―but must address the structural factors that nurture alienation amongst some pastoralists.
Il volume di Michele Lancione, For a liberatory politics of home (Duke University Press, 2023), è stato presentato in diverse occasioni all'estero e recensito in riviste internazionali (Rose, 2024). Il Politecnico di Torino, il 5 aprile 2024, ha ospitato la prima presentazione in italiano dell'opera, coordinata da Silvia Aru e animata (nell'ordine) da Francesca Governa, Margherita Grazioli, Sandro Mezzadra e – raccolti gli stimoli dei convenuti – dallo stesso autore.In For a liberatory politics of home, Michele Lancione propone un nuovo approccio al tema della casa [home] e della sua ‘mancanza' [home-lessness] che presuppone, concettualmente, un doppio movimento. Da un lato, una critica ai modelli più diffusi, epistemici e materiali, su cui ruota la ‘questione casa'. Dall'altro, una tensione [il For non è casuale] verso una visione trasformativa della concettualizzazione imperante e delle pratiche ad essa associate.Il tema è di stretta attualità, l'approccio teorico e metodologico di sicuro interesse.Per questo, come Redazione della Rivista geografica italiana, abbiamo proposto ai relatori e alle relatrici dell'incontro di dare forma scritta alle loro riflessioni sull'opera. Da questo nostro desiderio e dalla loro risposta positiva nasce questo Forum, la cui struttura è speculare a quella dell'incontro torinese del 5 aprile.Silvia Aru presenta in maniera ragionata i temi principali e la struttura del lavoro. Francesca Governa, Margherita Grazioli e Sandro Mezzadra riflettono – attraverso prospettive differenti e complementari – sui principali nodi concettuali del libro, mentre il saggio conclusivo dell'autore approfondisce e contestualizza ulteriormente alcuni passaggi, rilanciando il dibattito attraverso le pagine di questa rivista. La Redazione
As an emancipatory political project, cosmopolitanism always invited skepticism. This paper focuses on the economic-progressivist line of critique of cosmopolitanism, which has gained momentum in recent years. This critique is based on real concerns that the economic left must prioritize and integrate into its thinking; however, it is also fatally flawed. Any progressive project that takes seriously strong democratic self-determination for all peoples needs some version of a commitment to a global order that is democratically politically integrated, and this means stronger forms of supranational political integration, not weaker ones. I argue that the allure of progressive economic statism rests on erroneous assumptions about the character of the Westphalian state system and its relation to the evolution of global capitalism, which give a misleading impression that this system is somehow less friendly than neoliberal globalization to capitalist imperatives for extraction, accumulation, and growth. But there are equally expropriative and violent versions of capitalism that thrive in a closed Westphalian world. With great power rivalry once again emerging as a structuring feature of world order, signs of such versions are already making their appearance today.
This article examines the portrayal of AI in Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun through Deleuze and Guattari’s framework of the twofold movement of capitalist deterritorialization and reterritorialization. It highlights how neoliberal capitalism leverages AI to create new markets, reinforces social inequalities, and ultimately alienates individuals from their communities and identities through processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The commercialization of AI reflects capitalist dynamics, disrupts social interactions, and challenges human moral choices. The analysis reveals how AI contributes to technolo- gical divides, human displacement, and the creation of new territories of alienation and economic disparities. Both novels serve as cautionary tales, depicting dystopian futures where AI-driven automation leads to widespread unemployment and social unrest, highlighting the potential for AI to exacer- bate existing inequalities. The novels expose the profit-driven promise of technological progress – particularly the allure of increased productivity and efficiency – and its impact on society. This paper emphasizes the urgent need for a critical reflection on the ethical and social implications of AI to ensure a more equitable and human-centered technological future.
As editor of this section, Eylem Çamuroğlu Çığ is following the traces of the violent accumulation that leads to the transformation of media and triggers ‘new-exile journalism’, among other things. She draws the theoretical framework of the forced migration of journalists from Turkey to Germany, which accelerated after the Gezi Resistance in 2013, and at the same time to underline the potential of new-exile journalism for the future of journalism and democracy in terms of transnational experiences. This chapter theoretically analyses the transformation of media in Turkey and emphasizes the unique characteristics of the repression of media and journalists in Turkey with regard to the characteristic coupling of neoliberalism with political Islam.
The chapter discusses the general nature of globalisation theory and identifies the key arguments. After that the chapter points out the centrality of media and communications in several noted globalisation theorists’ work, calling into question their preoccupation with new media technologies and their assumption that the impact of those technologies is historically so significant that it necessitates a complete renewal of social theory. A consequent point, developed in the final two sections of the chapter, is that at the same time as globalisation theorists have diverted attention to new communication technologies and networks, they have shown a massive disinterest in powerful political and economic forces that continue to shape the society. I will argue that this feature is not unrelated to the specific historical conjuncture in which globalisation theory rose to prominence, that is, the post-1989 period characterised by the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the global triumph of neoliberal capitalism. Besides analysing the contours of globalisation theory, the chapter also addresses its political implications, namely the question of whether or to what extent neoliberalism, as a political ideology, has affected the focuses and ways of reasoning that are typical for globalisation theory.
Anti-mining movements are gaining momentum in mineral-rich regions of India, often led by local and tribal communities who resist the negative environmental and social impacts of mining. While governments promote mining as a crucial economic development tool, many mining areas remain underdeveloped compared to non-mining regions. Local resistance to mining is often framed within broader environmental and social justice struggles, particularly in the Global South. Many of these movements, termed the “environmentalism of the poor,” emerge as marginalized communities fight to protect their resources, livelihoods, and rights. The ideological foundation of these movements centers around opposition to capitalist exploitation, focusing on “accumulation by dispossession”—the privatization and destruction of local resources for profit. Such movements articulate alternative development models and often highlight the failure of industrial projects to improve the quality of life for local communities. The chapter offers a detailed discussion on anti-POSCO and later anti-JSW projects in Odisha, and it offers theoretical debate on the anti-capital local movement and cartel politics in the global south and its ideological challenges.
The phenomenon of transforming natural marine space into proliferative capital holds global significance in modern modes of production. Under China’s socialist market economy, the property rights system and resource allocation methods have created a unique approach to the capitalization of marine space. Drawing on concepts related to the capitalization of space and land, this paper develops the idea of the capitalization of marine space. It is a process where the right to use the sea area is transferred by the rights holders through methods such as transfer, lease, or shares and is ultimately put into production as a means of production to realize the creation of capital value and surplus value. Using the mariculture industry on Guanglu Island in Changhai County as a case, this analysis delves into the process and mechanisms of the capitalization of marine space in China, the world’s leading mariculture nation, while considering the material agency of marine space. The research results show that: ① The specific realization process of marine space capitalization in the mariculture industry has gone through three stages: from natural marine space to marine space resources, from marine space resources to marine space assets, and the participation of marine space assets in creating value and surplus value. ② The material agency of marine space determines the feasibility of the capitalization of marine space and is also the decisive subject in shaping the specific practice of capitalization. The survival and profit needs of mariculture fishermen and enterprises drive the realization of the capitalization of marine space. China’s central and local governments participate in realizing the capitalization of marine space with the relevant institutional policies and norms aimed at economic development.
Decarbonization, or the replacement of fossil fuels by renewables or ‘cleaner’ forms of energy, is an essential response to global warming. A gap in the debate on decarbonization is its implications for fragile fossil fuel-producing states (FFFPs). Unable to implement strategies for planned decarbonization, FFFPs face the prospect of rapid, unmanaged ‘traumatic’ decarbonization. This paper examines the political economy of this phenomenon drawing on six countries that have experienced dramatic losses in carbon revenues in the recent past: Ecuador, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan and Venezuela. It also draws on two thematic papers – on peace-making during oil shocks and a review of the literature on energy transition in fragile states. The paper finds that in decarbonizing FFFPs, the rules of the political game tend to be ‘sticky’ and elites react to the loss of oil revenues by looking for alternate sources of rent and turning to coercion. Political settlements including peace agreements are structured around the allocation of oil rents to elites and their future viability is in question. We find only modest evidence for sustainable and democratic paths away from a carbon-based political settlement, despite the efforts of civic movements.
This chapter explores some implications of this work for theory and practice. It first brings together the many configurations of the inventraset assemblage into a field of possibilities. We then consider these interrelations through a set of broader overlapping lenses: markets and capital; spatial governance; urban morphology; image and visibility. The spatial logic of informal urbanism is embodied in, and circulates between, all of these critiques and cannot be reduced to any of them.
Despite its near-universal popularity, economic significance, and political power, football (or ‘soccer’) remains, save for a few notable exceptions, on the margins of political studies, international relations, and international political economy. This article, written to mark twenty-five years of the BJPIR, reflects upon the remarkable growth of the English Premier League during this same period, and considers how the conceptual toolkits of these disciplines might explain this growth trajectory and those fault-lines that have emerged as a result of its own dominant position across the globe. By building the case for those working within these disciplines to take seriously the politics, IR and IPE of football, this piece offers a research agenda designed to encourage colleagues to consider ways that their own scholarship might be extended to interrogate those power relations and various sites of political struggle that will be present within football over the next twenty-five years.
The censorship of Boys’ Love (BL) content in mainland China is marked by inconsistencies in both its intensity and scope. Amid these shifting regulatory boundaries, this study analyzes the systematic removal and occasional reappearance of visual BL content from the public sphere. We found that as visual channels are most susceptible to suppression, audio – though still monitored – emerges as a crucial medium, leveraging the agentive power of sound and media remediation to sustain fan engagement with BL narratives. Focusing on Miss Evan, a Chinese audio streaming platform, we explore how it navigates state censorship and market marginalization while restoring the BL subculture through innovative design features, sexually appealing voice performances, and provocative sound effects. Additionally, we investigate the agency of Chinese BL fans in reclaiming BL’s presence through polymedia engagement. We argue that the dynamic negotiation between the platform, state censorship, and fandom reveals an ongoing contest between queer marginalization and restoration. While the platform seeks mainstream acceptance by conforming to censorship through the minimization of queer visual representation, the BL fandom employs counterstrategies to sustain the subculture in audio form. This tension highlights the cultural resilience and technological adaptability of queer subcultures as they navigate and resist the censorship imposed by state and societal norms.
The Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the Brazilian genocide against Black and Indigenous populations provide an opportunity to investigate the processes of elimination in settler-colonial nations. This article aims to examine the conditions under which settler states can exercise sovereign power against subaltern populations. It is argued that the escalation of structural genocide to expand settler colonization and govern surplus populations was facilitated by the rise of far-right governments. Nevertheless, the Brazilian state’s capacity to exercise sovereign power has been restricted by the transition to neocolonialism, which enabled Brazilians to contain the far right. The space for the promotion of the largest genocide in recent history in Gaza was created by the Israeli effort to abort any possibility of transition to neocolonialism in Palestine, resulting in the maintenance of direct settler colonialism, the far-right government, and its close alliance with the United States.
This article critically examines the pervasive yet often-neglected influence of capitalism on psychological processes and human behavior. While capitalist ideologies like neoliberalism have entered the mainstream in psychology, there remains a lack of deeper engagement with the foundations of capitalism. The article argues that capitalism generates distinct cultural syndromes that emerged from the unique historical experiences of Western societies and are deeply rooted in the core principles of capitalism: profit motive, market competition, and private property ownership. The article then argues that these principles manifest as capitalist cultural syndromes termed the “gain primacy,” “zero-sum rivalry,” and “ownership” syndromes, which collectively drive a self-enhancement agenda resulting in an overarching “individualist syndrome.” It then explores how these syndromes maintain and reproduce social inequalities. By adopting a critical-historical approach, this article situates its analysis within a broader critique of capitalism, aiming to illuminate its impact on human thought, behavior, and well-being.
Public Abstract
Our thoughts, behaviors, and well-being are deeply influenced by the economic system we live in—capitalism. While psychologists have explored capitalist ideologies like neoliberalism, they often overlook capitalism’s core foundations driving inequality. This work argues that capitalism, rooted in Western colonial history, generates powerful cultural narratives prioritizing profit, competition, and private ownership. These capitalist principles manifest as pervasive societal mindsets obsessed with personal gain, viewing life as a zero-sum rivalry, and deriving self-worth from possessions. Collectively, they breed an individualistic syndrome of selfish striving at the expense of community. By understanding how these capitalist cultural forces psychologically shape us, maintaining oppressive societal hierarchies, we can reimagine economic systems that truly uplift the human spirit across all peoples and the planet we share. Unveiling capitalism’s influence is crucial to recover from its alienating effects and envision liberating alternatives.
ABSTRACT
In the past decade, contract farming has re-emerged due to the increased opposition to large-scale land acquisitions in many developing countries. During this era, contract farming has been promoted as an inclusive alternative to land grabbing that could help farmers retain their land, and an inclusive business model that could help link smallholder farmers to the markets, helping alleviate poverty and promote rural development. Guided by the PRISMA protocols, this article reviews the implications of large-scale agricultural investments (LSAIs) and contract farming on Tanzania's rural livelihoods, food security, and the environment. The study found little evidence of LSAIs and contract farming's contribution to improving rural livelihoods and food security. LSAIs and contract farming exacerbate the ‘dispossession from below’ by accelerating land transfer from poor to rich farmers, suggesting that the schemes do not largely benefit the poor. The schemes have increased pressure on land between outsiders and indigenous farmers and declined the land size used to produce food crops, affecting local food security. The excessive use of synthetic inputs, clearing forests for LSAIs, and contract farming lead to ecological degradation. The study highlights the importance of ensuring LSAIs and contract farming schemes are more sustainable, inclusive and responsible investments.
This Special Issue questions the problem of international interventions’ persistence and multidimensionality by asking what makes interventions still relevant and for whom. In this introduction, we advance a dialectical understanding of interventions to study their diverse modalities and enduring mechanisms of order-making, with specific attention to space, time, and scale. We elaborate on Laura Doyle's interimperial method to highlight interventions' relational, transformative, and durable aspects. We interpret interventions as coconstituted by diverse, overlapping, and contradictory rationales and modalities. We stress the intertwined histories and practices of interventions as integral components of colonial modernity in relation to empires, imperialism, and their contemporary rearticulations. As a method, we identify three key historical processes for a dialectical understanding of intervention: the coformation of interventions’ state-building, economic development, and cultural practices; the coproduction of institutions and infrastructural systems; and the cumulative accretion of interventions’ infrastructures and imaginaries.
One question regularly recurs concerning an ethics of care, which is how it can be applied beyond the intersubjective relationship, or otherwise than within the caregiver/care receiver dyad. To the extent that it presumes affects, or an attentiveness to the particular or the individual, is it possible to show concern collectively and bring it to bear on an unknown other? This inquiry is generally approached through the prism of the institutionalization of an ethics of care, of its compatibility with the scale of the state and its logic of universalization. But the question I wish to address here is that of the market. Can care, which I will call concern for others, be deployed on and with the market? This is the proposition advanced by contemporary consumer ethics and the one I would like to critique in this paper. After drawing up a cartography of the objects with which contemporary ethical consumption is concerned, I will show that there is a vainness to ethical consumption as a critique of capitalism insofar as it centers on immoderation. I will then highlight what the market does to care by translating it into the language of prices.
Climate change impacts various social systems and has been linked to conflicts, especially resource conflicts in dry and semi-dry lands of West Africa. Climate change exacerbates conflicts by influencing the migration of pastoralists towards southern West Africa. Thus, resolving farmer-herder conflicts can be placed in the context of addressing climate change impacts. The political imbroglio in negotiating the climate change regime has impacted communities exposed to climate change. The difficulty of reaching a global binding regime that addresses climate change ethically because of power struggles among states defines climate change geopolitics. Climate change geopolitics thus remains a challenge to addressing farmer-herder conflicts and sustainable development goals 15 and 16 concerning sustainable use of land and promoting peace, respectively. This article argues that the geopolitical ecology framework can help analyse the link between climate change geopolitics and farmer-herder conflicts that addresses the limitation of the eco-violence thesis. Building on the emerging literature on conservation geopolitics dubbed ‘geopolitical ecology’, it demonstrates how integrating the critical geopolitics perspective that has received little attention in the farmer-herder conflicts literature with the blossoming ‘access to resource’ framework of political ecology helps to achieve this.
Logistics is the science and art of moving goods, people, and information efficiently to maximize profit; though it has become synonymous with the rise of the shipping container, its history is as old as trade itself. At the end of the nineteenth century, the ancient human action of loading and shipping boxes became part of a globalizing network of refrigerated supply chains and transoceanic shipping. Appearing briefly as a detail in Bram Stoker's novel Dracula (1897), the “cold chain” nonetheless orchestrates the plot and governs the vampiric mythology. This temperature-cooled supply and distribution network imbued the times, spaces, and aesthetics of human life with the new capability to ship perishable food, or in the novel's metaphor, “un-death.”
In the social, historical, and political context of Xi Jinping’s China, particular forms of racialization and racial capitalism have emerged in Altay Prefecture, the homeland of ethnic Kazakhs on China’s northwest border. This study examines the husbandry industry in Altay Prefecture to elucidate how Xi’s China has built a mode of racial capitalism through the management of Kazakh land, ethnicity, and culture. Within the framework of a case study, I employ document collection and participant observation methods to gather data that are then interpreted through critical policy analysis. The research shows that Kazakhs have been racialized based on their mobile pastoral traditions, enslaved in the “debt economy,” and exploited through husbandry policies and programs. The particular ways in which husbandry has been restructured and assimilated into Chinese industrial production chains exploit and reproduce the Kazakh-Han hierarchy and segregation. This close look at racial capitalism in Altay sheds light on the operations of Xi’s ecological civilization and war on poverty policies in an ethnic minority border region and discusses how they align with the broader geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
The city, and public space in particular, reflects the dual effect of globalisation processes—the depoliticisation and disengagement of citizens, on the one hand, and, the expression of new political spaces and subjects, on the other. We acknowledge that urban spaces tend to be immersed in a diffuse totalitarianism (the result of the entanglement of neoliberal capitalism with technological acceleration) and that political action extrapolates the bonds of nationality and culture. Thus, we challenge the traditional concept of political space in the city (dichotomised into “centre” and “margins”) and the dominant practices of oppositional politics. We argue that the city fosters exposure and confrontation with the other, resulting in new resources that coordinate demands and identities, as well as diversify modes of resistance and democratic practices. At the same time, solidarity is seen as an ethical-democratic commitment, as modes of violence, injustice and discrimination spread and are refined throughout the world. Consequently, what the institutional modus operandi of politics considers “marginal” or apolitical may become politically indispensable to public space due to its radical nature, i.e., the revisionist character of the structures and spaces that organise everyday life and its alternative understandings of politics.
Can the two Karls – Karl Polanyi and Karl Marx meet? Sociological debates tend to provide a negative answer and prioritize Karl Polanyi in current education and labor studies. This article poses an alternative approach by examining how the commodification of human life, the central postulation of Karl Polanyi, can be bridged into Karl Marx’s labor process theory where different forms of commodified student-labor will eventually end up in the production sphere, producing variegated internship and labor regimes. Using China’s vast vocational education system as an anchor to ground the theoretical dialogue, I contribute not only to raising an intellectual puzzle, but disclosing complex school-to-work phenomena that internship regimes, namely, the dual-despotic, market despotic or hegemonic, shapes the world’s largest young working class. By studying the complex configuration of the student-labor regimes, I argue that commodification process of human life could hardly escape the class perspective, as Karl Polanyi put it.
This chapter delves into the broader social and historical context of Australia, a settler-colony that has been shaped by colonial legacies, contemporary neoliberalism and global capitalism. It traces our current overlapping crises—social, environmental, existential—through a modernity/coloniality framework, unravelling Australia’s power dynamics and social hierarches which inevitably impact the lives of young people, albeit in different ways and to different degrees. At the coalface of these crises, the chapter considers the forms of violence—symbolic and cultural—that cause social suffering for young people as they craft identities and make lives within this historical moment. Finally, this chapter examines how young people, despite being characterised as politically apathetic, are resisting, surviving and thriving through spectacular, creative and quiet forms of activism, leading and partaking in social movements, and building new communities and ways of being from the ground up.
Este artigo procura fornecer uma visão geral de algumas das principais abordagens do campo de estudos críticos sobre a internet e as tecnologias digitais, destacando os principais conceitos dessa problemática. Os campos de estudos críticos em cibercultura e da economia política crítica/teoria crítica da internet são identificados como fazendo parte da problemática mais geral do campo dos estudos críticos sobre internet. O artigo também discute brevemente o papel desempenhado por onze conceitos marxistas centrais para esse campo de investigação. Dentre estes conceitos podemos mencionar os de dialética, capitalismo, “mercadorização” (commodification), mais-valia/exploração/alienação/classe, globalização, ideologia, luta de classes, bens comuns, esfera pública, comunismo e estética. Sublinhamos ainda a necessidade de reconhecer explicitamente a importância do pensamento de Marx para uma reflexão sobre a internet e os modernos meios de comunicação no capitalismo contemporâneo, destacando as contribuições desse autor para uma reflexão sobre a temática.
O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar e discutir as principais abordagens teóricas sobre o comum que se desenvolveram, nos últimos anos, no âmbito do pensamento crítico de linhagem marxista. Toma-se como ponto de partida a recente emergênciado comum no imaginário político como alternativa emancipatória às dicotomias Estado-capital, propriedade pública-privada. Apresentam-se os principais argumentos e conclusões de três perspectivas teórico-conceituais e políticas centrais ao debate crítico sobre o comum, que de modo diferente dialogam com Marx: o comum da produção biopolítica de Michael Hardt e Antonio Negri; o comum autonomista da reprodução social de Silvia Federici e Massimo De Angelis; e o comum como princípio político de Pierre Dardot e Christian Laval. Além da apresentação desse quadro panorâmico, conclui-se com uma tentativa de balanço provisório do debate a partir do apontamento de aproximações, divergências e contradições entre as abordagens.
A “nova leitura de Marx” proposta no artigo afasta-se tanto do “operaísmo” de Antonio Negri ou Karl Heinz Roth, em sua crença de que algumas importantes categorias elaboradas por Marx já não são mais capazes de dar conta do capitalismo contemporâneo, quanto da ideia de uma Weltanschauung marxista que forneceria respostas para todas as questões históricas, sociais ou filosóficas preexistentes. A “nova leitura de Marx” reconhece que seu legado está composto por um gigantesco e desigual conjunto de trabalhos teóricos fragmentados, porém que em seu nível de generalidade constituem um indispensável instrumento para a compreensão de nossa época.
Este artigo faz uma análise conjuntural em relação às contradições presentes durante os últimos anos no Equador. Para isso, abordando o país a partir da sua condição de dupla dependência (dolarização e recursos do petróleo), a investigação sinaliza para a retomada do receituário neoliberal em meio ao movimento reacionário de descorreização na política nacional. Dessa forma, o texto ressalta as contradições do neodesenvolvimentismo equatoriano, durante a experiência da “Revolução Cidadã” (2007-2017), e as plataformas políticas do buen vivir, concebidas, sobretudo, pelos movimentos indígenas. Em síntese, resgatando algumas contribuições do pensamento marxista, o texto pontua os principais dilemas e caminhos da sociedade equatoriana nas primeiras décadas do século XXI.
The city of Mumbai is engaged in large‐scale urban restructuring efforts. Foundational to these is the demolition of many of the city's informal settlements and the relocation of residents to newly built housing complexes. Often discussed in terms of dispossession, this process is also one of formalization , with spatial, economic, cultural and sociopolitical implications. This article focuses on formalization's sociopolitical dimension, entailing the registration of residents and the establishment of formal governance provisions and new citizenship expectations. The provision of formal housing and recognized housing tenure has, designedly, been coupled with the establishment of official self‐governance mechanisms leading to new civic responsibilities and reshaping the experience of citizenship among former slum dwellers. We explore these governance arrangements, the interaction between formality and informal governance processes and how these arrangements impact residents’ perspectives on citizenship. We also identify several challenges to effective self‐governance and the ways in which formal and informal processes shape residents’ experiences of community life, citizenship and urban integration. While residents have benefited from some aspects of formalization (e.g. indoor plumbing and codified tenure rights), it has brought additional burdens, and the challenges of self‐governance have, for many relocatees, reproduced a kind of marginalized citizenship within formal structures.
Rio as Method provides a new set of lenses for apprehending and transforming the world at critical junctures. Challenging trends that position Global South scholars as research informants or objects, this Rio de Janeiro-based network of scholars, activists, attorneys, and political leaders center their Brazilian megacity as a globally relevant source for transformational world-making insights. Presenting this volume as a handbook and manifesto for energizing public engagement and direct action, more than forty contributors reconceive method as a politics of knowledge production that animates new ways of being, seeing, and doing politics. They draw on lessons from the city’s intersecting religious, feminist, queer, Black, Indigenous, and urbanist movements to examine issues ranging from state violence, urban marginalization, and moral panic to anticorruption efforts, paramilitary policing, sex work, and mutual aid. Rethinking theoretical and collaborative research methods, Rio as Method models theories of decolonial analysis and concepts of collective resistance that can be taken up by scholar-activists anywhere.
Contributors. Rosiane Rodrigues de Almeida, José Claudio Souza Alves, Tamires Maria Alves, Paul Amar, Marcelo Caetano Andreoli, Beatriz Bissio, Thaddeus Gregory Blanchette, Fernando Brancoli, Thayane Brêtas, Victoria Broadus, Fatima Cecchetto, Leonard Cortana, Marcos Coutinho, Monica Cunha, Luiz Henrique Eloy Amado, Marielle Franco, Cristiane Gomes Julião, Benjamin Lessing, Roberto Kant de Lima, Amanda De Lisio, Bryan McCann, Flávia Medeiros, Ana Paula Mendes de Miranda, Sean T. Mitchell, Rodrigo Monteiro, Vitória Moreira, Jacqueline de Oliveira Muniz, Laura Rebecca Murray, Cesar Pinheiro Teixeira, Osmundo Pinho, Paulo Pinto, María Victoria Pita, João Gabriel Rabello Sodré, Luciane Rocha, Marcos Alexandre dos Santos Albuquerque, Ana Paula da Silva, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Soraya Simões, Indianare Siqueira, Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima, Leonardo Vieira Silva
This article explores how the British welfare state was mobilized in the United Kingdom’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of neoliberal capitalism. This response was conditioned by neoliberal dynamics that had previously shaped the British welfare state, with low investment in healthcare as a case study. The crisis response itself reproduced and amplified neoliberal dynamics, such as poorly accountable contracting out in healthcare. The pandemic context allowed some of these dynamics to be made more visible to the general public, and therefore more questionable, although, as is shown with the example of the benefit system, no overhaul of the system ensued. Ultimately, the Covid-19 pandemic has not been a game changer for the British neoliberal welfare state.
JEL Classification: P1, I1
A pesar de las predicciones sobre el agotamiento del discurso de la llamada “Argentina blanca”, los últimos acontecimientos dan cuenta de que el mito de origen europeo del país goza de buena salud. ¿Cómo es posible que, a pesar de las victorias obtenidas durante más de tres décadas de activismo indígena y afrodescendiente, resulte tan difícil derribarlo? Este artículo se vale de algunas de las teorizaciones en torno al colonialismo de colonos para analizar la persistencia de la blanquitud en Argentina como discurso que no sólo encubre los procesos de racialización sino que también invisibiliza la historia de despojo territorial sobre la cual se construyó el Estado argentino. Además de investigar el poder explicativo de dicho marco analítico para el caso de la Patagonia, este artículo aborda las distintas capas del relato dominante de la Argentina blanca, destacando el papel crucial que ha desempeñado el mito de origen europeo tanto en el pasado como sobre todo en el contexto actual de "neoextractivismo progresista". La contextualización de Argentina en este marco teórico contribuye también a rebatir las explicaciones sustentadas en la presunta excepcionalidad argentina, al localizar al país dentro de las lógicas globales de dominación colonial e identificar afinidades significativas en el contexto internacional.
In this paper, I illustrate the interplay between infrastructure and racialised differentiation through the case of the Maya Train—a contentious megaproject aimed at constructing 1,554 km of rail tracks across southeast Mexico, led by the López Obrador federal administration. Drawing on an analysis of narratives produced by the state, I argue that the Maya Train sustains and reproduces racial capitalism. The argument is developed by putting Gargi Bhattacharyya's and Nancy Fraser's understanding of the racial capitalism framework in conversation with Mónica Moreno Figueroa's conceptualisation of mestizaje. I show how the Maya Train functions as a project of mestizaje by promising homage, social justice, and development while also acting as a homogenising and oppressive force. The racialising practices embedded in the megaproject reproduce and extend colonial legacies in a heartland of expropriation and are transformed into materiality through the power of the state.
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