A crisis of their own making: Covid-19 and the pressure on Higher Education in the UK

Since the Conservatives returned to power in 2010, the ‘free market’ has also been increasingly introduced into Higher Education (HE) in the UK. A hike in tuition fees to £9000 per year as the dominant way of financing the sector plus the removal of the CAP, allowing universities to recruit as many students as they want, has fundamentally transformed HE. In this blog post, I will argue that it has also prepared the grounds for the current crisis with many British universities facing large shortfalls in income and potentially bankruptcy (The Guardian, 6 July 2020). 

Nature Strikes Back? COVID-19 and the limits to capitalist outward expansion.

In 2007/2008, the Global Financial Crisis, caused by financial market speculation related to home ownership and mortgages, spilled over into a global economic recession. The current coronavirus crisis too will result in a perhaps even more dramatic global economic crisis. Unlike in 2007/2008, however, many argue that this time it is not human error, which caused the crisis. Rather, we are dealing with a natural crisis unrelated to our capitalist economy. In this post, I will critically engage with this claim. 

Ecofeminism as Politics – a conversation with Ariel Salleh

In 2017, Ariel Salleh published the second edition of her book Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern (Zed Books, 2017). In her outstanding engagement with multiple oppressions within the capitalist global economy, she convincingly argues that patriarchal oppression is inextricably internally related to the destruction of nature in capitalism’s relentless search for accumulating ever higher levels of surplus value. - The conversation that follows is an overview of the book, as well as offering some critical reflections.

Social Care under pressure: the problem of the for-profit sector

How we take care of seniors at a time in their life when they are most vulnerable and need the greatest support is an important public policy challenge. It also is a clear statement about who we are as a society. (McGregor and Ronald 2016)

Covid-19 and the related high number of deaths in care homes has revealed the shortcomings in the UK care home sector. While private companies reap large profits, the quality of care is often low and staff is poorly trained and lowly paid. I will argue that only the re-municipalisation of care homes can ultimately address the problems. 

Logistics, power resources and the strike of Brazilian truckers in 2018

Work in logistics and transport has moved to the centre of attention of labour studies in the past few years. One of the central assumptions of this research is that workers in this sector command the power to block so called choke points, crucial nodes where commodities have to pass, like ports and warehouses, providing these workers with extraordinary power. In the study Logistik, Machtressourcen und politische Ökonomie des Rohstoffexports about the 11 day long strike of truck drivers and petroleum platform workers that occured in Brazil in 2008, Jörg Nowak contends the assumption that the power to block choke points is sufficient for effective exercise of power of workers. In this guest post, Jörg provides a summary of the main argument in English.

An emerging global working class? Critical reflections on Ronaldo Munck’s Rethinking Global Labour.

In Rethinking Global Labour (Agenda Publishing, 2018), Ronaldo Munck has produced an important contribution to ongoing analyses of the potential role of global labour in shaping the global political economy and resisting capitalist exploitation. In this review, while appreciating Munck’s empirical insights, I will nonetheless be rather critical of the underlying conceptual assumptions, which ultimately limit the impact of his findings.

Ecofeminism as Politics in times of crisis

In 2017, Ariel Salleh published the second edition of her book Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern (Zed Books, 2017). In her outstanding engagement with multiple oppressions within the capitalist global economy, Salleh convincingly argues that patriarchal oppression is inextricably internally related to the destruction of nature in capitalism’s relentless search for accumulating ever higher levels of surplus value. In this blog post, I will provide an overview of the main arguments of the book as well as offer some critical reflections.