Why are India’s elite emigrating?
Sanjaya Baru’s Secession of the Successful examines 200 years of Indian migration with a focus on the drivers and impacts of the recent exodus of the country’s elite.…
Tag: democracy
What it means to live in a city of equals
City of Equals by Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit examines what it means for one citizen of a city to feel equal to another, despite different experiences and…
Preparing for the next pandemic – behavioural policy insights from COVID-19
In Behavioural Economics and Policy for Pandemics, editors Joan Costa-Font and Matteo M. Galizzi bring together global, multidisciplinary insights into human behaviour and policy responses during the …
Policy reforms for long-term economic growth in Pakistan
Development Challenges in Pakistan by Jamil Nasir explores why Pakistan struggles with sustaining economic growth compared to nations in Southeast Asia. Combining economic, political and sociological …
Is it time to rethink participatory democracy under urban capitalism?
Markus Holdo’s Participatory Spaces Under Urban Capitalism examines how citizens engage with and leverage power through participatory institutions in capitalist societies. The book is meticulously res…
David Kwok Kwan Tsoi: ‘Lifeboat’ Campaign for Hong Kongers: Why is Capitalistic Agenda a Mandate for Democratic Intervention?
Since 2021, along with the British and Australian governments, the Canadian government has relaxed immigration policy for Hong Kong immigrants. This policy offers an unconventional path with lowered…
Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia: A Century of Protestscapes – review
In Revolution and Democracy in Tunisia, Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh present an interdisciplinary analysis of Tunisia’s rich history of protest, arguing that popular resistance has long shaped t…
The Incarcerations: BK-16 and the Search for Democracy in India – review
In The Incarcerations, Alpa Shah unpacks the plight of the Bhima Koregaon-16, a group of human rights defenders who were imprisoned without trial for an alleged plot against…
The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power – review
Caty Borum‘s The Revolution Will Be Hilarious: Comedy for Social Change and Civic Power considers how comedy intersects with activism and drives social change. Borum’s accessible text draw…
Book Review: Citizen Designs: City-making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand by Eli Elinoff
In Citizen Designs: City-making and Democracy in Northeastern Thailand, Eli Elinoff explores citizenship struggles and the political engagement of residents living in Northeastern Thailand. Unlike tra…
Costa Rica: Democracy Takes a Stand Against the Vax Junta
Rodrigo Chaves, the central protagonist in this drama, has been cast by Costa Rican media as a renegade. One paper spoke of how he “shook the country by…
Introducing: “Disaster X”
Disaster X is a new publication, that is tied to this site: it is available on Substack. Here I just want to briefly introduce the material that already…
Book Review: ‘Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland’
In the book Ethnicity and Democracy, Mona Chettri offers a rich ethnography originating from fieldwork conducted in three EH borderland areas: Darjeeling (India), Sikkim (India), and Ilam in…
Can the Democratic Party survive racism as a strategy?
The Democratic Party is famously bad at communicating a unifying story about its vision for society. Indeed, Democrats all too often campaign as if their opponent is another…
The Pandemic Narrative and the War Against the People: Day 2 of an Online Interdisciplinary Symposium
Friday, July 30, 2021 was Day #2 of an online international and interdisciplinary symposium organized by Doctors for Covid Ethics (see the report for Day #1). The symposium…
GameStop, the Platform-Democracy-Complex and the Promise of Crypto
The trading platform Robinhood tried to wiggle itself back into the heart of the masses with a prime-time ad during the Super Bowl break the first weekend of…
Military coup in Myanmar: back to square one?
In the early morning of 1 February, the day that a newly elected government was supposed to convene, Myanmar’s military staged a coup, taking government leaders captive and…
Roberto J. González on his book, Connected
Interview by Patricia G. Lange https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344211/connected Patricia G. Lange: According to your book, the people of the remote community of Talea in Oaxaca, Mexico have a say…
The Chilean Estallido, Plebiscite 2020, and Legacies of Truth-Telling
On November 25, 2019, Chilean feminist collective, Las Tesis, gathered in Santiago’s Plaza de Armas. Against a backdrop of anti-Piñera graffiti painted on government buildings, museums, and Catholic…
India’s lockdown tragedy: bleeding along the fault lines of a nation
As India comes out of a long and harsh lockdown, and Covid-19 cases are rising with worrying speed, it is important to reflect on the Indian government’s response…
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…
Brexit, the Uncivil War: Watering Myths with the Teardrops of the Ruling Class
What have been billed as momentous EU Parliament elections are taking place this week (May 23–26), and it seemed like the right time to review some Brexit films—one…
A Desperate Empire Crashes in Venezuela
The April 30, 2019, coup attempt in Venezuela has come and gone. The coup has failed. “Failed state” theory just got a lot more complicated. No longer can…
The WikiLeaks Case: Democracy Dies in Empire
In the avalanche of news reports that have washed over the globe since the abduction of Julian Assange, this conversation struck me as containing numerous points of importance.…