COVID-19 and the Failure of Neoliberalism in the Face of Crisis
We are firmly set in the middle of a global pandemic at the moment. As it currently stands, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reporting just under 300,000…
Tag: neoliberalism
Politically charged and morally provocative: A report from the German Anthropological Association’s (DGSKA) conference in Konstanz
Hide Press Release (2 Less Words) Piyush Pushkar I had the pleasure of attending the recent conference of the German Anthropological Association (DGSKA) in Konstanz, which invited panels…
Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital
Review of Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips (Introduction by William I. Robinson). New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018. LCCN 2018017493; ISBN 9781609808716 (pbk.); ISBN 9781609808723…
Sex Sells: Female Athletes’ Use of Instagram
by Lucy Shepherd We have all seen it, female athletes being used as sex objects to sell products, pictured on billboards in bikinis or sports bras, posed in…
Clive Spash on the Lies they Tell: The pitiful state of environmentalism and its neoliberalization
Clive Spash, never one to leave you wondering what he thinks, on how environmentalism has been captured by new forms of economic reasoning. Always worth revisiting his critique…
Climate Propaganda for Corporate Profit: Bell Canada
Strategically timed to appear immediately after a heady week of international climate emergency marches, including large ones in Canada, and after the same week in which Greta Thunberg…
Trees Talk…and Sometimes They Also Tell Lies
Out on a limb in Grenada in August, I had the fine pleasure of sampling such a special sweet fruit of the “Spice Isle”. It is a fruit…
In University Restructures, is Trauma too Strong a Word?
I would argue that the unhappy academics were creating and adding to what I described in my thesis as affective swirls of discontent, and that they were doing…
Google’s Empire: The Science Fiction of Power
“For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to make a film about libraries,” explains Ben Lewis, the director of Google and the World Brain (2013).…
Brexitannia: The Faces and Voices of Brexit
First shown at London’s East End Festival in June of 2017, Brexitannia was the very first documentary about Brexit. It is a striking and deeply pensive film, in…
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…
American Exceptionalism, American Innocence
Review of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. By Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong. Foreword…
The Kursk Disaster: Facts Sunk Beneath Waves of Drama
At the turn of the millennium a trilogy of disasters gained a high profile in the international media. First, in July of 2000 the fiery crash of Air…
Ghost Exchange: Complexity, Velocity, and Risk
Increased complexity leads to increased risk. Stock markets run by algorithms, creating virtual markets that even the experts have difficulty explaining. The “flash crash,” “dark pools,” and “high-fre…
Kristóf Szombati: Protesting the “slave law” in Hungary: The erosion of illiberal hegemony?
In recent weeks, Hungary has again made international headlines. This time, it was a popular movement born out of resistance to the latest rewriting of the labor code—which…
Review of 2018, Part 1 (January–March): Unloading the American Empire
In memory of James Laxer, n. December 22, 1941, d. February 23, 2018, prolific author, and an inspiration to all Canadian academics to think for ourselves. JANUARY A…
The Thickest Review of 2018: An Overview
Numbering 100 printed pages, at about 50,000 words, the thickest review of 2018 is about to be published here in four parts over the next few days. A…
Melissa Gregg on her new book, Counterproductive
Interview by Ilana Gershon https://www.dukeupress.edu/counterproductive Ilana Gershon: When did the argument for Counterproductive come to you in the process of researching and writing? Melissa Gregg…
Publicity or Marginality? On the Question of Academic “Silencing” in Anthropology
Abstract What is “silencing” and is it out of place in the contemporary North American university? How do “silencing” and “public anthropology” intersect? What are the roles of…
Melinda Cooper’s Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism by Ilana Gershon
Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism Melinda Cooper MIT Press, 2017, 416 pages. Neoliberal policy in the United States sometimes seems internally contradictory….
Syria: The New Terra Nullius
SYRIA, seat of an Islamic Caliphate. Syria, site of the Middle East’s newest liberal democracy. Syria, socialist paradise. Syria, a corrupt and murderous dictatorship that practices genocide. Syria,…
Vlad Schüler-Costa: Academic precarity and the false coin of our own dreams
A specter haunted EASA2018—the specter of precarity. Like a “frightful hobgoblin” (that, one could argue, is a more suitable, if inaccurate, translation of Marx’s Gespenst), it appeared in…
Is Higher Education a “Family-Friendly” Career Choice?
At the end of a day of academic work, you may not want to talk to anybody else, and giving yourself that option is a form of self-care.…
Robert Reich’s “Inequality for All”: A Documentary Review
Why is there growing inequality in wealth distribution in the US? Is inequality inevitable? If inequality is inevitable, can it be useful? Can inequality become a problem? If…