Engaging the Imperial Mode of Living

In their powerful book The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism (Verso, 2021), Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen demonstrate how our life in the capitalist centres and its dominant forms of production, distribution and consumption can only be maintained, because the related social and ecological costs are externalised to other parts of the world. Published originally in German in 2017, this volume is now also available to the English reading audience. In this blog post, I will draw out some of the authors’ crucial findings.

 

Staff working conditions are student learning conditions – more than just a slogan!

Yet again, staff at universities across the UK are out on strike to defend their working conditions and pensions. Unsurprisingly, university management tries to pit students against staff. Students, however, are not falling for this. They realise that drastic cuts to staff pay and working conditions is mirrored in a deterioration in student learning conditions especially since the 2007/2008 global financial crisis.

 

Our History is the Future: On Indigenous peoples' central role in overcoming capitalism!

In the autumn of 2016, a large alliance of Indigenous peoples and their non-Indigenous supporters blocked the path of yet another oil pipeline in North America, the Dakota Access Pipeline. At Standing Rock, people opposed the fossil fuel industry and protected water as the essential source of life. It is this moment of contestation, which is at the heart of Nick Estes' book Our History is the Future (Verso, 2019). In this blog post, I will outline several of Estes' key contributions.