Insa Koch: The Making of Modern Slavery in Austerity Britain
Insa Koch, London School of Economics States’ claims that they are relieving human suffering have become a central element of their ongoing liberal legitimation amid their production of…
Author: focaal_admin
Mao Mollona: Fully Exterminated Communism, or Anthropology in the Time of Cholera
Mao Mollona, Goldsmiths College, London One thing is sure. If just briefly, the pandemic struck at the heart of capitalism. It paralysed the economy, broke the bureaucratic machine…
Don Kalb: Covid, Crisis, and the Coming Contestations
Don Kalb, University of Bergen At some point in late January I told my family over WhatsApp with the Marxist bluster they usually enjoy from me that if…
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…
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 pro…
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…
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…
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…
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…