At the end of July, a remarkable event unfolded in three distinct but significant sites in Canada. Pope Francis, the Argentinian current supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic…
Since the beginning of the Russian offensive on Ukraine on February 24th, over 5 million people have registered for temporary protection programmes and other schemes across Europe. By…
Presidential elections will happen in Somalia on Sunday, 15 May 2022. This will most likely not bring peace and stability to the war-torn Somali society. To the contrary,…
Coronavirus has provoked some of us to think about our worlds in new ways and to consider different horizons of change. Yet in many pandemic-related discourses and policies,…
It is now becoming overly clear that this cruel and unjustifiable war in and on Ukraine is not going to last ten days – as the strategists in…
The war in Ukraine resuscitated a certain dangerous fascination for war. Notions such as patriotism, democratic values, the right side of history, or a new fight for freedom…
One of the casualties of Putin’s war on Ukraine will be European critical social science. While the war has instigated important discussions about ‘US-plaining’, ‘Westplaining’ and about Russian…
Introduction There is a calendar in my office which still hangs at March 2020; an artifact of the confusion and rush to ‘lockdown’ and to find shelter from…
Responding to a question about future of the MBA (Master of Business Administration) in the wake of the pandemic, the Dean of a top program recently suggested that…
Introduction Working-class people in the United States are now at a turning point – whether to compliantly return to the pre-Covid conditions capital set for them, or to…
My interest in the tensions between job preservation and ecological transition comes from my fieldwork among neorurals in Diois, a relatively isolated mountainous area in Southeastern France. The…
There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of…
The spectacle of Russia invading Ukraine has elevated tensions over Europe’s access to natural gas and may herald a sea-change in regional geopolitics of energy. But prior to…
“What’s going on inside Putin’s head?” “He’s insane.” Questions and declarations like these pepper discussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While insanity appears an obvious — albeit broad…
After nearly two weeks of violent conflict in Ukraine, it is increasingly difficult to stand back and see the bigger picture. The West has lined up behind the…
Matan Kaminer’s reflections on the workshop, “Rethinking surplus populations” is full of interesting insights and challenging puzzles. As he says, “operationalizing this concept [surplus populations]…
There’s a Committee for Committees! A few weeks ago, I received a message from a colleague. It was the sort of funny thing that one friend says to…
The invasion of Ukraine has been a shock not just to Eastern Europe, but to the post World War II international order. While the fundamental tenets of postwar…
Image 1: Czar Vladimir, by BakeNecko. I like the tone and the global historical perspective of David Harvey’s FocaalBlog article. Harvey’s socialist internationalism versus competitive nation-…
David Harvey’s February 25 FocaalBlog post is presented as “An Interim Report” on “Recent Events in the Ukraine”. Harvey’s essay effectively covers some of the core forces that…
Image 1: Young girl protesting the war in Ukraine, photo by Matti. David Harvey prepared this text for the 2022 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. We publish…
One of the lowest moments of my undergraduate studies in Economics back in the 1990s happened whilst reading Tom Peters’ Liberation Management (1992), where the management guru/McKinsey-associate pro…
Chair: Alpa Shah Discussants: Massimiliano Mollona & Andrew Sanchez When David Graeber published his article ‘On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs’ in Strike! in 2013, he knew he st…
David Graeber’s wide-ranging – and, appropriately, sometimes wildly swashbuckling – set of essays sketches his anarchist utopia by default, as a social world free of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy, he…