In 2013, Fagor Electrodomésticos, the home appliance division of the world-renowned Mondragón cooperative group, declared bankruptcy. The announcement disheartened coop advocates who consider Mondragón the most successful worker-owned enterprise in the world.
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Category Archives: Blog
Manissa Maharawal: Shut it down: Notes on the #blacklivesmatter protests – Part 2
Part 2. Breaking windows and broken windows policing:
“Do we have the same level of outrage when a young black person gets killed as we do when a window gets broken? And if not, then why is that?”
—Alicia Garza, co-founder of #blacklivesmatter
Trader Joe’s
In Berkeley, California, on a warm night in mid-December 2014, I stood in stalled traffic and watched as protestors smashed the windows of the Trader Joe’s grocery store on University Avenue—part of the ongoing protests in the aftermath of the NYPD’s murder of Eric Garner and the non-indictment of Darren Wilson, the officer who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
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Marieke Brandt: The hidden realities behind Saudi Arabia’s Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen
In recent weeks, as part of Operation Decisive Storm, a military coalition of ten predominantly Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia has been shelling military installations, arms stockpiles, airports, streets, bridges, and infrastructure throughout Yemen. The collateral damage is estimated as one thousand deaths and a multiple of injured. These were mainly attributable to the bad habit of Yemen’s leaders to bunker vast quantities of weapons in the midst of the cities or in their immediate vicinities. Pictures of powerful explosions and grievously mutilated victims flooded social networks. On April 20 a gigantic explosion on the nearby mountain Faj Attan shook Sana’a, which was probably caused by the direct hit of a bunker-busting bomb on a stockpile of missiles. Several died, many were injured, houses were destroyed, and windows throughout large parts of the capital city were shattered; people’s nerves were on edge. When amid heavy air raids Saudi Arabia announced the end of Operation Decisive Storm on April 21—without ceasing the bombing for even a minute—a Yemeni television newscaster collapsed in front of the camera from a hysteric fit of laughter. Despite the official end of the operation, the nightly air strikes continue.
Susana Narotzky: Hope for Change: The Problem with Podemos
Podemos is hailed by many as the only hope in a Spanish landscape devastated by austerity. In the elections to the European parliament (2014), Podemos received 7.97 percent of votes and 5 MPs. In the elections to the Autonomous Parliament of Andalucía, it gathered 14.84 percent of the vote and 15 regional MPs, becoming the third party after the Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Popular Party (PP). The fragmentation of political parties in the regional parliament forewarns of what will be the possible result of the next Spanish general elections at the end of 2015. It underscores the end of bipartisan politics and the need for different alliances and hopefully new priorities. Does Podemos signal a radical political change? A new way of doing politics? Here come the thoughts of an anthropologist who is not yet convinced by their rhetoric or their practice.
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Manissa Maharawal: Shut it down: Notes on the #blacklivesmatter protests in Oakland, California – Part 1
Part I. Rage, grief and learning while walking:
Since the summer of 2014, there have been sustained protests across the United States surrounding issues of police violence, systematic racism, and the devaluation of Black life. What started as protests over the non-indictment of the white police officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York, respectively, quickly grew into a nationwide uprising that employed highly disruptive direct action tactics. These protests are expressions of collective outrage, anger, and grief that have forced a much needed, nationwide conversation about race, racism, and the value of Black life in America. They have also become important sites of political education and experimentation as people joined together, night after night, in demonstrations of collective power and rage to “shut shit down.”
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Barbara Karatsioli: Syriza and the return of the political
The electoral win of Syriza in Greece substantiates cross-European objections to austerity. Contrary to recurrent warnings that have for years emphasized how Syriza’s electoral victory would jeopardize Greece’s future in Europe and plunge the economy further into crisis, the first weeks in government underline that Syriza’s rise to power may be just what was needed to return the political to European politics. People across Europe now go beyond mere solidarity with Greek efforts, as they call for collective action to revisit the question of how to deal with fiscal policies and indebted nations. The call is for people to come before profit, not a centralized subordination of policies to a very particular economic calculus and to technocratic power.
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Nicolas Martin: Democracy subverted: Inequality, liberalism, and criminal politics in the Indian Punjab
A number of liberal scholars of India, ranging from Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze to James Manor, all broadly view democracy as the solution to a variety of social evils including poverty, inequality, corruption, crime, and even violent conflict. They all acknowledge that Indian democracy is at times a messy affair, but they share a common faith in its self-correcting potential. As they see it, democracy has fostered a more assertive citizenry that no longer accepts traditional hierarchies and that is less tolerant of abuses of power.
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Theodoros Rakopoulos: The future lasts a long time…or is it here already? The Left in power in Greece
On the evening of 16 June 2012, after the announcement of the electoral results that had brought Syriza to second place behind the conservative New Democracy (but at 27 percent, risen almost seven-fold from the previous elections), Alexis Tsipras came on the stage in the midst of bittersweet celebrations in central Athens. Syriza , the party miracle of the radical Left, had been christened as the moral authority in Greece and the Eurozone: it had taken over the questione morale to center stage and monopolized it. In a moment of powerful semantics connecting past and future, the then-38-year-old Tsipras embraced the Syriza MP (today MEP) Manolis Glezos, then 90 years old, one of the most prominent anti–Nazi Resistance Europeans alive today. Tsipras then, among other interesting points such as tearing the debt Memoranda apart, uttered the classic phrase, “The future lasts a long time.” He didn’t actually quote Althusser, but we got the point.
Theodora Vetta & Anastasios Grigorakis: Promising the meta-austerity era: Directions and dilemmas
Thessaloniki, 21 January 2015.
Since the announcement of the Greek elections, Greece has once again become the center of global attention. We know that just by watching the news on Greek TV channels. We learn bits and bytes about the discussion that has opened around possible scenarios for debt restructuring, possible domino effects of a Grexit, or analyses of the failed rescue plans. Yet, we learn substantially more about public statements coming from Wolfgang Schäuble and company, statements that address various audiences and that are meant to have disciplinary effects, to foster fear (or “reason,” in their terms). For one moment we feel happy that the era of brutal cultural stigmatization seems over (at least in mainstream media discourse), a time when Channel 4 could broadcast the reality show Go Greek for a Week. But maybe this is because we are now debating the future, not the causes, of the crisis. After all, Angela Merkel has been recurrently praising the hardworking Greeks who have patiently led the country out of the crisis.
Vintilă Mihăilescu: Santa Klaus: Presidential elections and moral revolt in Romania
On 20 December 2014, Romania got its new president: Klaus Iohannis. The processes surrounding this election deserve mention and anthropological scrutiny. Almost exactly twenty-five years after the execution of the Ceausescu couple on Christmas Day 1989, Romania is celebrating a brand new sort of President: a “Santa Klaus.”