Category Archives: Blog
Gavin Smith: Rereading Marx on machines in the time of COVID-19
Gavin Smith, University of Toronto “One of the many perils lies in normalizing the ‘batshit crazy’ presently underway.”—Wallace, Liebman, Chavez & Wallace 2020: 5 The COVID-19 pandemic has stripped the veneer off capitalist society whether in its softer social democratic version or its bare-faced pseudo Darwinian version. Both the cause and the cure are down […]
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber: “A Matter of Priority”: The Covid-19 Crisis in Indonesia
Sophia Hornbacher-Schönleber, University of Cambridge COVID-19 is wreaking havoc in Indonesia. The government ignored the crisis for too long, relying on a dubious religious discourse of divine protection. When it finally reacted, its response was unsystematic and favored economic stability over health and welfare measures. Although the government has neither imposed a strict lockdown nor […]
Sharryn Kasmir: Prospects for Left Politics in the United States amid Coronavirus and Capitalist Crisis
Sharryn Kasmir, Hofstra University & University of Bergen Several weeks into the global pandemic, the gravity of the COVID-19-triggered economic crisis in the United States is coming into focus. As of this writing, some 22 million people were put out of work, one in four small businesses face permanent closure, and a third of renters […]
Ramesh Sunam: The Precariousness of Migrant Workers in Japan amidst COVID-19
Ramesh Sunam, Waseda University, Tokyo Suraj (name changed), arrived a year ago from Nepal to study at a Japanese language institute in Nagoya, Japan. He was working part-time at a convenient shop to make a living. Unfortunately, Suraj’s situation has changed in the last two months following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In March, […]
Andrea Tollardo: No return to old normalities: Reflections on a time of passage in locked down Italy
At the end of February, the center of Italian capital encountered an unexpected problem. Not an unforeseeable one, but one that was not previously thought possible in the highly integrated European tertiary hub of Lombardy. Some weeks of contradictory official announcements passed by. Local and central governments, experts, and politicians first closed the few institutions […]
Sandro Mezzadra: Politics of struggles in the time of pandemic
A prolonged wait at the pharmacy, a long queue before entering a supermarket. Experiences like this, today increasingly common, can help us to see how the spreading of Coronavirus is transforming our society. Yet, more precisely, the global pandemic, and the measures put in place by the Italian government to attempt to counteract it, are […]
Mario Schmidt: “In Pipeline, Panic is Unnecessary” – How Poor Nairobians Deal with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic
Mario Schmidt, University of Cologne Mototaxi drivers wearing face masks, supermarkets obliging customers to wash their hands before entering, hawkers selling indigenous vegetables as prophylactics against COVID-19, and strangers running away from me shouting “Corona, Corona, Corona” only to smile and break out in laughter—these are all strategies that inhabitants of Pipeline, one of Nairobi’s […]
Mariya Ivancheva: The casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour: a wake-up call for trade unions
Mariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The […]
William Suárez-Gómez and Ismael García-Colón: Puerto Rico: Resistance in the world’s oldest colony
In July 2019, Puerto Rico was in turmoil. An organic movement asking for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló emerged throughout this US colonial territory. After 12 days of mass protests, the governor resigned on 24 July. The international media portrayed his resignation as a successful and peaceful outcome. This is the first time that […]
Ståle Knudsen: Debts and the end for infrastructure fetishism in Turkey
The immense new Istanbul Airport, additional spectacular bridges over the straights, the Marmaray metro/train tunnel under the Bosporus, high-speed trains, highways, extension of the Istanbul metro network, energy projects. These were highlights in a campaign video for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yıldırım in the rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election in […]