125 years after the Berlin Conference inaugurated the Scramble for Africa, Black Berliners and their allies marched through the streets of the Kreuzberg neighborhood.>>
Blog
Two of the more influential books that have taken swipe at our contemporary intellectual property landscape concerned themselves with trademark, logos, and capitalism. Here I am thinking of Rosemary Coombe's seminal The Cultural Life of Intellectual Property and Naomi Klein's more activist take on the subject, No Logo. What would happen if you condensed the arguments in these two books into a 15 minute video?>>
Ever since the effective collapse of the Copenhagen Climate Summit, I've been thinking about how we represent survival and futurity in a conjuncture in which hegemonic ideology is so clearly bankrupt and the ruling classes in the world's most powerful nations are so transparently unwilling to take the steps necessary to save civilization.>>
Protest and Organization in the Alternative Globalization Era, by Heather Gautney, details the history of the alter-globalization protests over the last decade and the attempts by various groups on the global left to build alternatives to neoliberal development through the mechanism of the World Social Forum.>>
The Skim
Fred Moten and Stefano Harney on the fugitive public of bad debt.
A Tale of Two Depressions: Check out these striking graphic comparisons of the 1930s and the current economic crisis from economists Eichengreen and O'Rourke. Global indicators (rather than simply domestic data) give a bracing picture.
A Tale of Two Depressions: Check out these striking graphic comparisons of the 1930s and the current economic crisis from economists Eichengreen and O'Rourke. Global indicators (rather than simply domestic data) give a bracing picture.
March 4th -- Save Public Higher Education Day -- Map of Activism Nationwide
The LSE library shares photos of its staffmembers in 1993.
GOP booster Michael Zak compares ACORN to the KKK.
New York magazine has posted a slide show of Obama feigning interest in mundane things.
Congratulations to Ann Pellegrini and Janet Jakobsen, whose book Secularisms (Social Text book series) is going into its second printing.
New York Times bloggers talk about why there's so little interesting discussion of culture in U.S. public life.
RIP Colin Ward, Britain's most famous anarchist.
Events
Those in the London area over the next two months may want to check out this seven-week long series of artist residencies on the theme of art, action and activism at the Stanley Picker Gallery in Kingston.
Reviews
Under Review:
Tim Lawrence, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).
I began reading these two elegantly composed, deftly researched studies around the same time, with absolutely no sense that they might speak to one another. But despite the vast difference of their subjects, they form fascinating bookends to the history of American music in the 20th century. David Suisman's Selling Sounds shows how the music industry taught Americans to understand recorded music as a commodity. On the other side of the century, we have Arthur Russell, the composer and musician whose work and life are given deservedly serious, thoughtful treatment Tim Lawrence's excellent biography. >>
Periscope
critical intelligence on current events
Ayiti Kraze / Haiti in Fragments
For some, Haiti is the “poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.” For others, Haiti is a beacon of freedom, evidence of the only successful slave revolt in modern history. This forum brings together scholars from different fields of study, and different parts of the world, for a conversation about the challenges Haiti now faces. >>
