Janne Heederik: The Voluntarisation of Welfare in Manchester: A Blessing and a Burden
As a result of welfare reform and continuing budget cuts, social service agencies in the UK have struggled to make ends meet and match the still-growing demand on…
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Adam James Moore: The human cost of city upgrading in ‘pro-poor’ Medellín
On 1st March 2018, a group of protestors blocked a dual-carriageway in front of Acevedo Metro (and Metro cable line) Station in the North of Medellín, Colombia. Those…
Nicole Weydmann, Kristina Großmann, Maribeth Erb, Novia Tirta Rahayu Tijaja: Healing in context: Traditional medicine has an important role to play in Indonesia’s fight against the coronavirus
The first two cases of COVID-19 in Indonesia were announced on 2 March 2020, quite late compared to other countries. The first patient was a 31-year-old woman who…
In Memoriam: David Graeber
happy now? pic.twitter.com/fIDlp2DOIs — David Graeber (@davidgraeber) June 3, 2020 David Graeber at a protest in London, June 3rd 2020 David Graeber: Anthropologist and Revo…
Lieke van der Veer: Group-making and distrust within the infrastructure of refugee support
In the Netherlands from 2015 onwards, the ‘spectacle’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015) of people arriving into Europe seeking refuge was channeled by vast media attention and political debate.…
Sven da Silva: Special Zones, Slums, and High-rise buildings: Community leaders between “occupancy urbanism” of the poor and the powerful in Recife, Brazil
This blog documents the politics of community leaders in an area selected for “urban renewal” in the center of the city of Recife in the northeast of Brazil.…
Vita Peacock: The slave trader, the artist, and an empty plinth
On 7th June 2020, the bronze statue of Edward Colston in the English city of Bristol was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters with a rope, rolled…
Ezgi Güler: Trans Sex Workers’ Collective Struggle in Urban Turkey
Facing family rejection and domestic violence, many transgender (trans) people leave their hometowns especially for large cities in search for greater acceptance and opportunities (Engin 2018). Due t…
Anne-Christine Trémon: Variegated Valuation: Governance and Circuits of Value in Shenzhen
Over the past two decades, the central authorities in the People’s Republic of China have shown an increasing concern about the inequalities between urban dwellers and predominantly rural hukou (resi…
Sarah Winkler-Reid: Higher Education-Led Urban Development in Newcastle and the North East of England, and its abrupt Covid-19 interruption
Between 2017 and 2020 Universities in the UK were on a building spree, in this period two billion pounds of construction contracts were agreed or enacted between universities…
Richard H. Robbins: The Economy After Covid-19
Richard H. Robbins, SUNY Plattsburgh One feature of both the economic recession of 2007/2008 and the present Covid-19-induced economic collapse is increased central bank bouts of quantitative easi…
Don Nonini: Black Enslavement and Agro-industrial Capital
Don Nonini, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Insa Koch’s recent (2020) FOCAAL blog, “The Making of Modern Slavery in Austerity Britain,” reminds us that enslavement and…
Raúl Acosta, Flávio Eiró, Insa Koch and Martijn Koster: Introduction: Urban struggles: governance, resistance, and solidarity
Raúl Acosta, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich Flávio Eiró, Radboud University Insa Koch, London School of Economics Martijn Koster, Radboud University The global …
Raúl Acosta: Navigating promises and good intentions: technomorality and scepticism among peripheral cycloactivists in Mexico City
Raúl Acosta, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich On April 4, 2019, Pedro cycled for over an hour to get to our meeting with Mexico City’s Security Minister. …
Enikő Vincze: Post-covid “Economic recovery” in Romania: forget labor, save capital, and support militarization?
Enikő Vincze, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoc On May 28th the liberal Romanian government published the last data on the employment situation. This is therefore a good time to review…
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…
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…