Category Archives: Blog
Philip McMichael & Birgit Müller: The Land-Grab Trap: Is There a Will to Govern Global Land Grabbing?
Pause in the negotiations in the Red Room of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) How to govern the “global land rush”1 was at issue in the final negotiations on the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems at the Committee for World Food Security (CFS) in Rome, held 4–8 August 2014. For […]
Steve Reyna: Bloat and tents: Further thoughts on Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy
This brief note suggests some directions that a rising Marxist anthropology might consider taking. Sandy Smith-Nonini and Donald Nonini have done a wonderful job explaining why Carbon Democracy is a “brilliant” book that is “essential reading for anthropologists” (2014), especially for those concerned with the political economy of fossil energy. Elsewhere, I have reviewed Timothy […]
Sandy Smith-Nonini & Donald M. Nonini: Fueling the Neoliberal Turn: Why We Need to Engage Timothy Mitchell’s “Carbon Democracy”
A central, perhaps the central, question in political economy today is how forces of democracy, including organized labor and its allies, can regain a degree of control over corporate capitalism in the neoliberal era. Equally pressing (and related) is our need to confront climate change and replace fossil fuels with alternative energy resources. While the […]
Gavin Smith: Chasm: Interrupted Lives
Over the last few years I have found myself talking to people who have experienced radical displacements in their lives as a result both of economic distress and of political disturbance. They have been obliged to “move on,” to “move out,” to “move away.” Yet these are not really narratives that help put order into […]
Gustavo Lins Ribeiro: IMPACTS OF THE DIGITAL ERA ON SCHOLARLY WORK
It is hard to make comments on the contemporary world without simultaneously prospecting the future. These endeavors are entangled. Under strong momentary impressions, we may believe we are facing pressing issues, but what seems so important today may quietly disappear into oblivion. At best, it is possible to scan the likelihood of various unfoldings in […]
Marc Edelman: Dispatch from Geneva: A Treaty on Transnational Corporations? A Declaration on Peasants’ Rights?
An anti-TNC protest The anthropology of human rights has devoted increasing attention to how diverse groups and societies interpret and implement (or not) international legal norms. The pioneering work of Sally Merry and her collaborators on how global women’s rights norms are enacted in local contexts saw this as a “vernacularization” process.1 Numerous scholars have […]