A year and several months ago, I returned to New York from the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia. While at the conference, I live blogged events in the many different forums of the conference, and also posted short analytical essays chronicling my reaction to the various interventions unfolding at the conference. Social Text online now presents these different pieces as a unified dossier in order to preserve this important historical moment.
An Interview with Matthew Frye Jacobson.
Michael Mandiberg: So tell us about the Historian’s Eye project…
Matthew Frye Jacobson: This started for me back in about 2007-2008. I was trying to think about different ways of getting intellectual work out in the world, continuous with all the writing I’ve done but in a different register. Read more
James Hansen: This is a time pregnant with danger. This danger exists because of a large gap between what the science has made clear and what the public realizes.It has become clear from the science that we are in a … Continue reading “The Science of Climate Change Panel”
Jonathan Neele: I speak for an alliance of 6 labor unions in the UK (www.campaigngcc.org/greenjobs). We have a campaign for 1 million green jobs in the UK. But I want to join with all of you in this campaign, because … Continue reading “Unions and Green Jobs Panel”
Oscar Olivera (OO) is a trade unionist and leader of the famous water wars which unfolded in Cochabamba in 2000 following the privatization of the city’s water supply. The water wars, which involved shutting down Cochabamba for six months, were … Continue reading “The Cochabamba Water Wars: An Interview with Oscar Olivera”
Before everything else, the Cochabamba conference was remarkable for bringing together a large group of radical activists from all around the world. The social connections and sense of possibility that resulted from the exchanges that unfolded in this setting … Continue reading “Cochabamba and Beyond”
On Sunday June 26, 2011, my wife and I, along with our daughter and son-in-law, were on the M15 bus traveling downtown to Chinatown for dinner. We had just left the celebration of a lifetime at the annual LGBT Pride … Continue reading “The Trouble with Tiaras: Facing Marriage Equality Head-on”
On arriving in Madison some years ago, I went to the huge farmers’ market that winds round the Capitol. Startled by the slow-moving procession of orderly, white shoppers all pacing in the same direction, I dubbed the market throngs “The … Continue reading “Which Way Wisconsin? The Meaning of the Madison Movement”
My remarks are structured around a consideration of four images.These images will, I hope, enable us to confront the question of violence, of a specific kind of violence, by bringing it to us in its (almost) immediate actuality, in … Continue reading “Forging Life into a Weapon”
In my work, I have defended a nonviolent ethic through Derrida and Levinas, which begins with the commandment, “thou shall not kill.” But this ethic certainly does not end there. My book The Philosophy of the Limit gives us … Continue reading “Politics of Grieving”
Three days after the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, as news of a possible nuclear leakage in Fukushima was capturing the headlines, the Italian secretary for the environment, Stefania Prestigiacomo, went on record announcing that, despite growing widespread concern, Italy’s … Continue reading “Power in Italy”
Last weekend I had a first encounter with the multimedia juggernaut that is Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Started online by Jeff Kinney as a web comic, with daily entries exploring the world of middle school angst and pranks, the … Continue reading “Diary of a Racist Kid”
I saw Miral, the new film by Julian Schnabel last week. It was opening in New York and Los Angeles, to great controversy, as it was advertised as giving us a Palestinian point of view. My ears perked up when I … Continue reading “Painfully Beautiful”
By now we should all recognize the global economic effects of neoliberalism. David Harvey reminds us that free market policies have led, first and foremost, to a dramatic class realignment in which the relative egalitarianism of the post-World War … Continue reading “The Neoliberal Crisis and the Open University”
I have been teaching a lecture class on “Religion, Sexuality, and American Public Life” at New York University since 2004. I love teaching this class. The students (the class size is usually capped at 60) are uniformly engaged and … Continue reading “Making It Better in the Classroom: Pedagogical Reflections”
