Theoretical research summaries
Last spring, encampments filled campuses, protesting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and university complicity. Now people are in the streets protesting the elimination of jobs and opposing deportations. Others have been fighting climate change. The summer of 2020 saw millions in the streets of the U.S. and many other [...]
“Rather than London, what if Marx had been in Lahore or Ludhiana in the mid-nineteenth century, and had to explain accumulation from that vantage point?” (62). This is one of the questions that animate a chapter in my book Labors of division: Global capitalism and the emergence of the [...]
Latin America is usually recognized as the most unequal region in the world. It seems clear that the region faces important obstacles to development. But how do we understand the challenges to Latin America’s development? In a recent article, Emilia Ormaechea analyzes the changes in the idea of development in the contributions of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from its creation, in 1948, to the present day. She argues that ECLAC had a very critical understanding of the challenges that a development strategy for Latin America entailed, especially during the structuralist period. However, this critical perspective lost relevance in 1990, after the neoliberal offensive and the shift from structuralism to neostructuralism.
As a critical theory of algorithmic capitalism, our contribution is grounded in an emancipation project. We explore paths of reform, revolution, and exit strategies from algorithmic capitalism. We develop a virtue ethics approach to favor collective resistance and emancipation from algorithmic capitalism.
In a recent series of articles published in the Journal of World-Systems Research (Part I and Part II), I examine why, in this current period of crisis, the contradictions of capitalism and its constituting ideology of liberalism have paved the way for fascism’s return. Though [...]
The relationship between capitalism and racism is structural rather than merely historical. It is not just that capitalism emerged in an already-racialized context, and so developed in a racialized way. It is also that racism can be explained by its functional role in stabilizing capitalist class relations. This view has occasionally been described as "class reductionist." In our view, this does not itself amount to a fatal criticism, but it does associate our argument with others that we in fact reject.
Populism has become a formidable political force across the world, ranging from Trump and Bolsonaro in the Americas to Duterte and Modi in Asia as well as Brexit and a variety of populist movements across Europe. While populism comes in different forms, conventionally grouped into exclusionary right-wing and inclusionary [...]
Democratic socialists frame their project nationally without reference to the trans-national context, while also framing neoliberals’ view of ‘nationalism’ as regressive. Actually, the transnational context of the prevailing mid-range form of capitalism or ‘model of development’ influences nationalist tendencies that may be regressive or progressive. Present regressive nationalist tendencies exploited [...]
Arizona’s strike leaders harnessed the digital powers of information and communication technologies to promote organizing, allowing the movement to reach beyond social media’s echo chambers. It was through digital tools that AEU promoted targeted in-person outreach and therefore built a more powerful walkout.
Over the past 40 years, however, a formidable body of literature has challenged the prevailing assumptions about informal workers, asserting that their vulnerability stems not from their lack of integration into the mainstream economy, but rather from their subordinated positions within it.
