Category Archives: Blog
Joe Trapido: Elections, politics, and power in central and southern Africa
The conference “Elections in central and southern Africa, dynamics of exclusion and participation,” at SOAS on 26 June 2015, prompts me to some personal reflections. Elections in central and southern Africa are marked by a paradoxical dynamic of participation and exclusion. Ostensible rituals of mass participation and of legitimation by civil power, electoral processes in […]
Ismael García Colón & Harry Franqui-Rivera: Puerto Rico Is NOT Greece
Notes on the Role of Debt in US Colonialism UPDATE: On Tuesday, September 8, the City University of New York (CUNY) Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies is hosting a free panel discussion and presentation based on this blog post. For more details, visit the FocaalBlog event page here. Early July 2015, at an […]
Alan Bradshaw: European austerity and collective blame
According to Richard Seymour (2015), current European austerity politics ought to be regarded not as a temporary period of economic rationalization during crisis but rather as a shift toward a new political economic paradigm. This new paradigm is to be driven by a rhetorical commitment to “worker flexibility” and “labour market competitiveness”—both euphemisms for a […]
David Cooney: The Montréal student protests
Vers un Automne Érable?1 Whenever threatened, the first thing power restricts is the ability to linger or assemble in the street. —Henri Lefebvre2 In September of 2014, I arrived in Montréal to study the students’ strike that had erupted throughout the province of Québec three years earlier. I was particularly interested in learning more about […]
Theodoros Rakopoulos: Of direct and default democracy: The debt referendum in Greece
Thessaloniki, 4–5 July 2015 Default has a twofold meaning: it means both “taken for granted,” or the known path, and an economic halt on someone’s debts. Greece has recently oscillated between these two meanings. On the one hand, the Left government’s choice to go to the ballot for a referendum should have been a default […]
Sharryn Kasmir: Mondragón coops and the anthropological imagination
In 2013, Fagor Electrodomésticos, the home appliance division of the world-renowned Mondragón cooperative group, declared bankruptcy. The announcement disheartened coop advocates who consider Mondragón the most successful worker-owned enterprise in the world.
Manissa Maharawal: Shut it down: Notes on the #blacklivesmatter protests – Part 2
Part 2. Breaking windows and broken windows policing: “Do we have the same level of outrage when a young black person gets killed as we do when a window gets broken? And if not, then why is that?” —Alicia Garza, co-founder of #blacklivesmatter Trader Joe’s In Berkeley, California, on a warm night in mid-December 2014, […]
Marieke Brandt: The hidden realities behind Saudi Arabia’s Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen
In recent weeks, as part of Operation Decisive Storm, a military coalition of ten predominantly Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia has been shelling military installations, arms stockpiles, airports, streets, bridges, and infrastructure throughout Yemen. The collateral damage is estimated as one thousand deaths and a multiple of injured. These were mainly attributable to the […]
Susana Narotzky: Hope for Change: The Problem with Podemos
Podemos is hailed by many as the only hope in a Spanish landscape devastated by austerity. In the elections to the European parliament (2014), Podemos received 7.97 percent of votes and 5 MPs. In the elections to the Autonomous Parliament of Andalucía, it gathered 14.84 percent of the vote and 15 regional MPs, becoming the […]
Manissa Maharawal: Shut it down: Notes on the #blacklivesmatter protests in Oakland, California – Part 1
Part I. Rage, grief and learning while walking: Since the summer of 2014, there have been sustained protests across the United States surrounding issues of police violence, systematic racism, and the devaluation of Black life. What started as protests over the non-indictment of the white police officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in […]