Wednesday 17 July 2024
The New Cold War – Reviewing Gilbert Achcar’s latest book
In
his latest book The New Cold
War (The Westbourne Press, 2023) Gilbert Achcar provides a fascinating
account of the triangular relationships between the USA, Russia and China from
the early 1990s onwards. Two chapters published at the end of the 1990s are
complemented with up-to-date assessments of current conflicts between the US
and NATO with Russia over Ukraine and US – Chinese rivalries in the South China
Sea. In this blog post, I will assess Achcar’s many insights, but also add a
notion of caution re the theoretical framework underpinning his book.
Monday 1 July 2024
A Vital Frontier - Review of Andrea Muehlebach's book on Water Insurgencies in Europe
In her new book A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe
(Duke University Press, 2023) Andrea Muehlebach explores the struggles over
water at the financial frontier. In this remarkable book she is able to combine
in her analysis the highest and most abstract level of profit-making, i.e.
financialization, while at the same time working from the bottom up, assessing
the implications this has got on people’s everyday lives as well as revealing
the continuing struggles against this predatory model of exploitation and
expropriation. As she points out, ‘I am as an ethnographer most committed to
historically grounded, contextually specific, often also nonlinear and
surprising social struggles. I am thus more interested in attending to the
granularities and specific genealogies of political protest’ (P.23). It is this
granularity which especially sets her book apart from other recent publications
in the area of water struggles. The reader can almost feel the atmosphere of
heated debate, strong determination as well as utter frustration by those, who
find themselves at the wrong end of the water industry.
Tuesday 21 May 2024
Nottingham Save Our Services Campaign
In the dim light of austerity’s dawn, Nottingham finds itself at a crossroads. Grappling with the dire consequences of sweeping budget cuts and a community destabilised, the fight against the cuts has brought the city alive. As city councils nationwide contend with the fallout of austerity measures, the struggle of Nottingham’s residents epitomises the realities knocking on the door of communities up and down the country. In this guest post, Niamh Iliff discusses how in the face of adversity, grassroots movements have emerged to unify the city across a variety of local organisations against the measures and supporting those in the city who are struggling.
Friday 26 April 2024
The Geopolitics of Global Capitalism and Ukraine
In
Adam D. Morton’s and my latest co-authored essay in Socialist
Register 2024 we deliver a contribution to understanding contemporary
geopolitics without shying away from placing our concerns within an analysis of
capitalism. Spotlighting
contributions across the social sciences we demonstrate a common tendency to
avoid any reference to capitalism as a totality. Instead, mainstream approaches
commonly strive for an emphasis on a multiplicity of contingent social factors
shaping geopolitics that results in mystifying economic development. We therefore
argue that there is a common allergy to capitalist totality as well as
historical materialism that grips the international theory of (1) the
science-envy of structural realism; (2) constructivist ideas-centred accounts
of geopolitical change based on contingency; and (3) approaches that focus on
the discursive production and indeterminacy of geopolitics.
Sunday 21 April 2024
Vulture Capitalism: Going beyond Keynesianism and Neo-liberalism!
Tired about reading more post- or neo-Keynesian literature on how the
state may be able to step in and solve neo-liberal capitalism’s crisis
tendencies? Then Grace Blakeley’s latest book on Vulture
Capitalism (Bloomsbury, 2024) is the volume to turn to.
Engagingly written around
a host of stories such as the history of Fordlandia, a factory town in the
Amazon rainforest intended to secure rubber for car manufacturing, or the
scandals around Boeing and its faulty 737 Max causing hundreds of deaths in two
aeroplane crashes, this book provides illuminating insights about what is wrong
with capitalism and how we can get beyond it.
Tuesday 19 March 2024
Atonement for the Holocaust through support of Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: Germany quo vadis?
The Holocaust has weighed heavily on Germany
and the German population. Taught widely across almost all years in school,
there is a clear sense that Germany today must take responsibility for its past
and act accordingly to redeem itself. Nevertheless, while the German government
and many of my fellow German citizens believe that this implies unquestioning
support for the state of Israel, I will argue in this post that the main focus
has to be on opposing Genocide wherever it occurs.
Monday 11 March 2024
The New Age of Catastrophe: Reviewing Alex Callinicos’ latest book.
With The New Age of Catastrophe
(Polity Press, 2023) Alex Callinicos has published another impressive book of
great historical and thematic breadth and depth. In this blog post, I will
briefly review this volume, outline its merits but also identify a couple of
especially conceptual shortcomings.
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