Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism has the uncanny quality of illuminating for readers what we believe we already knew. Her renderings of the affective quality of everyday life at the center of a declining US American empire, offered to us … Continue reading “Optimistic Cruelty”
On one side of town, there would be ecological ‘haves,’ enjoying access to healthy, morally upstanding green products and services. On the other side of town, ecological ‘have-nots’ would be languishing in the smoke, fumes, toxic chemicals, and illnesses … Continue reading “The Future is Now: Climate Change and Environmental Justice”
This is the final session in a two-day workshop organized by the Transnational Institute, a group that bills itself as “a worldwide fellowship of scholar activists.” The overarching theme of the workshop was Defying Dystopia: Struggle Against Climate Change, … Continue reading “People's Alternatives”
You know times have changed when the question, “Is Iran next?” no longer refers to whether Iran will be the next target in the US “war on terror,” but whether or not it will be next to succumb to a wave of revolutions. I obviously don’t have the answer but I can say that there is a profound radicalization under way in Iranian society that overruns the boundaries of class and sweeps across the continuum from religious to secular.
ST Editorial Collective member Michael Ralph shares photos from the 2011 World Social Forum (Dakar, Senegal, February 6th-11th), including a protest outside the Egyptian Embassy just hours before Mubarak’s resignation was announced. Patrick Bond and Immanuel Wallerstein share their reflections … Continue reading “World Social Forum (Dakar, Senegal, February 6th-11th)”
As Michael Cohen’s recent posting on the neoliberal crisis and the Open University makes clear, education as a human right is under assault around the world. Cohen’s discussion of the context in Britain paints a particularly dire picture, but universities … Continue reading “The Educational Commons – Introducing the Nonstop Institute”
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”
There are many things lost in the naming of a death as a “gay youth suicide.” I want to focus on two aspects of this naming: one, what is contained in the category of sexuality and two, what … Continue reading “Ecologies of Sex, Sensation, and Slow Death”
