Islam and “the Sword”

Ross Douthat has an uncharacteristically ignorant post on Islam in yesterday’s New York Times. Douthat wants to contest the Trumpists in his own party that identify Islam with violence. He argues that there is a place for Islam in the modern world, as another religion, but -- he concludes -- “it has ...
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The Spectacle of Art’s Reproduction

On the Venice Biennale 2015

When entering the bookstore of the 56th Venice Biennale of Art, you may think that having Marx’s Capital, Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, and the official catalog of the Milan Expo 2015 displayed next to each other is just a fortuitous -- and not particularly happy -- coincidence. Expo 2015 ...

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The Spectacle of Art’s Reproduction

Neoliberal B Team Win Canadian Election

Assessing the conservative defeat

The decisive defeat of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was the big news of the 2015 Canadian election. Harper resigned as party leader, and the dirty laundry of his heavily controlled campaign is now being aired publicly. The Harper reelection campaign drew deeply on racist and Islamaphobic politics, attacking ...

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Neoliberal B Team Win Canadian Election

On the Other Side of the Berlin Wall

East Germany and the fall

It was a colleague, Jonathan Bach, who discovered that Trebor Scholz and I, both currently associate professors at the New School, happened to be serving in the German military 25 years ago -- but on opposite sides of the wall! As such, he brought us together for the ...

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Inventing the Future

“The ambition here is to take the future back from capitalism.” (127) Which would be all well and good if there still was a future. The encounter that never arrives in Srnicek and Williams (hereafter S+W) is with, say, the work of John Bellamy Foster or Jason Moore, which would ...
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The Triumph of Design (Thinking)

What’s wrong with useful creativity

September’s edition of that venerable and elite journal of contemporary capitalism, the Harvard Business Review, is devoted to the evolution of something called “design thinking” and its role in current business practices. We are all likely familiar with the way in which design has come to play a central role ...

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Who Bankrolled Jim Crow?

Global capital and American segregation

Look no further than American suburbs to find some of the starkest legacies of Jim Crow. Segregated through redlining and disproportionately benefiting from state subsidies, American suburbs fixed the geography of white supremacy. But when we look at American suburbia, we must also look beyond America’s borders. It ...

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Slaves: The Capital that Made Capitalism

A re-post

This post, adapted from a lecture in the team-taught course "Rethinking Capitalism" at The New School for Social Research and first published last year, is being reposted today to provide critical insight into today's headlines. Slavery was central to the development of the American political economy. Ott reviews the recent ...

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Economic Globalization and Mental Health

Individual suffering in social context

Economic globalization is much in the news these days, most recently as Congress debated President Obama’s proposal for a “free trade” agreement with the nations of the Pacific Rim. My impression is that few mental health professionals keep up with the details of economic globalization and its impact ...

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The Greek Referendum: A New Battle of Marathon

The historical resonance, significance and challenges of ‘no’ on July 5th

Some commentators have compared the victory of the "Oxi" at the Greek referendum of July 5th to a Pyrrhic victory, implying that while the anti-austerity camp won this battle, it is doomed to lose the war, strangled by the insurmountable economic difficulties caused by the lack of liquidity. Others have ...

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