Category Archives: Features
Thomas Grisaffi: After the Referendum: Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism
This post is part of a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London). In February 2016 Bolivian President Evo Morales, an indigenous Aymara and former coca grower, lost his bid to amend the Constitution to allow him to stand for a third consecutive term. This […]
Iselin Åsedotter Strønen: After the Bolivarian Revolution: What’s in store for Margarita?
This post is part of a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London). I still clearly remember Margarita,[1] the first “Bolivarian activist” I got to know in Venezuela. It seems so long ago now. For more than ten years, I have followed what I in […]
Alfredo Saad-Filho: Overthrowing Rousseff: It’s class war, and their class is winning
This post is part of a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London). The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for fifty years. Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of […]
Sian Lazar: “The happiness revolution”: Argentina and the end of post-neoliberalism?
This post is part of a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London). In mid-October 2015, it appeared as though Daniel Scioli, candidate for the Frente para la Victoria (Front for Victory, FPV) would win the Argentine presidential elections relatively easily.[1] He was comfortably ahead […]
Massimiliano Mollona: The end of the Latin American pink tide? An introduction
This post is the introduction to a series on the Latin American pink tide, moderated and edited by Massimiliano Mollona (Goldsmiths, University of London). The twenty-first century opened with a wave of radical political mobilizations sweeping through Latin America and brought left-wing parties in power in Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Uruguay (2004), Bolivia (2006), Chile […]
Joe Trapido: Epochs and continents: Potlatch, articulation, and violence in the Congo
This post is part of the Modes of Production feature moderated and edited by Patrick Neveling and Joe Trapido. From the sixteenth century onward, European trading networks grew ever more extensive. In some places, they displaced or directly subjugated the indigenous population early on. In others, merchants entered trading relationships with locals. In some parts […]
Jan Newberry: Restating the case: The social reproduction of care labor
Ever felt like the best conversation at the party is happening in the next room? When I did my field research in an urban neighborhood in Java some twenty years ago, it was at a time when we were “bringing the state back in” (Evans et al. 1985). I was deeply influenced by Philip Abrams’s […]
Sandy Smith-Nonini: Petrodollar financialization, the state, and fictive production
This article argues that the oil price shocks of the 1970s triggered a wave of global financialization led by Western banks and the US State that disconnected actual production from social reproduction in hundreds of indebted countries after 1982. It draws on a case study of Citibank lending in Mexico, the first country (of dozens) […]
Samuel W. Rose: Marxism and mode of production in the anthropology of native North America
This contribution elaborates on the relevance of the concept of mode of production in understanding contemporary North American indigenous populations. While examination of Native American peoples played a crucial role in early Marxist thought, Marxist theory has never been popular in examinations of North American Indians and has even been rejected by many indigenous intellectuals […]
Rachel Smith: The “hidden abodes” of temporary migration programs
Organizations such as the World Bank have repeated what has been called the “migration development mantra.” In this, remittances appear as a panacea—or “wonder drug” (Green 2015)—for economic development, while in real world interactions “social remittances” import liberal ideals such as “work ethic,” “financial literacy,” and democracy. Thus, this “mantra” reflects a neoliberal revival of […]