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Tagged: imperialism

Issues

Tracing Commodities, Capitalists, and Nomads Across the Russo-Persian Border: On the Uses of Space in and beyond the Central Asian Archives 

By Ruslana Bovhyria. In the spring break of 2024, a freshly baked history graduate and barely a year into my doctoral studies, I landed in Uzbekistan full of anticipation what the local repositories of knowledge would treat me to. I was in the earliest days of researching a book about empire and nomads in the southeastern Caspian watershed. The space, perched on the imperial edges of Russia and Iran and stitched together by alluvial rivers, mountain ridges, and dozens of transient communities, presented a rich geography in which to think comparatively about mobility, extraction, and materiality.

A aerial view of a jungle landscape, on the left lie lush green trees while on the right are brown, dead trees.

Conviviality and Inequality / Series

La Vida Simple (Simple Life): A Maroon Vision on Development

By Nataly Castillo Bennett. Global practices shaped by colonization and modernity have disrupted humanity’s intrinsic connection to nature, resulting in ecological and social crises. Rooted in the colonization of the Americas, colonial inhabitation imposed exploitative relationships with nature and marginalized communities, laying the foundation for the imperial mode of living. Superficial frameworks like green capitalism fail to address this crisis, perpetuating colonial ecocide. In contrast, Afro-Ecuadorian Maroon communities, through la vida simple – a philosophy grounded in African traditions and marronage – offer transformative insights for ecological sustainability and climate justice.

A drawing of a fountain pen lying sideways, with one drop of red ink dripping from the pen's nib. Tied together on top is a pen that is broken in half.

Comment / EUME

What They Don’t Like About the Guardian’s Letter to Iran’s Political Prisoners

By Mina Khanlarzadeh. A recent Guardian open letter addressed Iran’s political prisoners directly, linking their struggle to US immigration detention and Israeli prisons holding Palestinians. It made two demands: that the Islamic Republic end executions and free political prisoners, and that the US and Israel end their wars and sanctions against Iran. The letter prompted a wave of criticism for failing some test of proper anti-imperialist politics. Mina Khanlarzadeh examines two responses, by Behrouz Ghamari-Tabrizi and Vijay Prashad, because each raises a broader question.

Gender, Sexuality, and Knowledge in Neoliberal and Authoritarian Regimes

Gender Studies in Afghanistan or jender bazi: The Neoliberal University, Knowledge Production and Labour Under Military Occupation

By Paniz Musawi Natanzi. Following the military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, private universities in Kabul became sites of marketisation and models for other cities in the country. In the process of neoliberal transformation, gender mainstreaming was a key cross-sectoral tool, intersecting foreign development and military policies, which included higher education. Funding for the development of university degree programmes and scholarships in gender studies came with conditions of adhering to an anti-social political and epistemological understanding of gender that builds on expanding “individualisation and financialisation”, while claiming to serve communities through entrepreneurialism. The hegemony of finance under neoliberal imperialism, the current manifestation of capitalism and process of empire-building, in sites of military and humanitarian-developmental intervention, reconfigured social, political, economic and epistemological structures also through the university. A critical analysis.

Reviews

Book Review: A. Getachew: Worldmaking after Empire

By Christopher J. Lee. Worldmaking after Empire is a study of political thought and institution building during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on black Anglophone leaders and intellectuals such as W. E. B. Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere. The central argument of the book is that the anticolonialism they promoted was not solely concerned with national self-determination and the establishment of nation-states.

Issues

100 Histories of 100 Worlds in one Object

This article is part of the TRAFO series “Emerging Topics. Insights from ‘Behind the Scenes’”. Today, we put the spotlight on the Explorative Workshop “100 Histories of 100 World in one...