12th Working Class Bookfair

12th WORKING CLASS BOOKFAIR

31st October 2015
Saturday at 11:00–17:00

Museum Vaults
Silksworth Row, SR1 3QJ City of Sunderland, UK
Directions: About 11 minutes walk from Sunderland rail station

Sunderland Working Class Bookfair 2015

Books, magazines and pamphlets will cover at least: local and general history, Marxism, environment, football and other sport, culture, railways, mining, fiction, social science, co-operatives, economics, Anarchism, international relations, Socialism, trade unions, sex, drugs & rock n’ roll… smile emoticon
Stalls confirmed so far include Unite Community, Clothing Bank, Active Distribution, PM Press and Mayday Books

What is going on?

Despite the accidental way Jeremy Corbyn has become Labour leader this has opened up new spaces for politics, and we aim to welcome all progressive people.

Immediately, the Tories are in crisis with the defeat in the Lords, but this doesn’t mean we are happy with things as they are, no – we want lots more!

REMEMBER Remember the 5th of November is coming up soon and we hope everybody’s making their Tory dummies to burn. Andrew Lloyd Webber is the latest candidate to add to our list of dummies.

On a wider level the Liberals have collapsed because they’re career opportunists; its class against class now and you have to take sides. Recent media scare stories have proven that the spectre that haunts Europe is no longer that of communism but of anarchism, and on this Halloween we can note the importance of this haunting.

Our side are the poor, workers, unemployed, the NEETS, disabled, the pensioners and those trying to get a decent pension, migrants and the otherwise oppressed such as the trainee workers – THE STUDENTS. We want to spread great literature that is useful for our people.
Words are not enough though and we have to put ideas into practice on a large scale.

Come and plan for the day out in London when the massed ranks of education workers, students and the otherwise pissed off at the TORY government will be making their voices heard for once on the large STUDENT protest on November 4th in London.

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of anarchism

In London a large Anonymous march on November 5th will see Class War dragging an effigy of Zac Goldsmith, the posh Tory boy Mayoral candidate, down Downing Street where it’s going to be burnt.

Hopefully we will be hearing from those who went to the Manchester Tory conference about what a great time they had too.

This is an open invite to all fellow travellers to come on down to the 31st October Bookfair and have a great time; Teesside Solidarity Movement, Steelworkers, Sunderland Welfare Action group, the Industrial Workers of the World, SPGB, Class War, NUM, Mayday books, North East Anarchists, the Black Bloc (if we can find them), UKUNCUT, syndicalists, students, teachers and lecturers, and many more are invited as well.

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/12th-working-class-bookfair.-31st-october-2015.-sunderland

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

How Class Works 2016 Conference

Social Class

HOW CLASS WORKS 2016 CONFERENCE

A Conference at SUNY Stony Brook

June 9-11, 2016

CALL FOR PRESENTATIONS

The Center for Study of Working Class Life is pleased to announce the How Class Works – 2016 Conference, to be held at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, June 9-11, 2016.

Proposals for papers, presentations, and sessions are welcome until December 9, 2015, according to the guidelines below.  For more information, visit our Web site at <www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass>.

Purpose and orientation: This conference explores ways in which an explicit recognition of class helps to understand the social world in which we live, and the variety of ways in which analysis of societies can deepen our understanding of class as a social relationship across the globe.  Theoretical and historical presentations should take as their point of reference the lived experience of class in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, within nations and internationally.  Presentations are welcome from people outside academic life when they sum up and reflect upon social experience in ways that contribute to conference themes and discussion.  Formal papers are welcome but are not required.  All presentations should be accessible to an interdisciplinary audience.

Conference themes: The conference welcomes proposals for sessions and presentations that advance our understanding of any of the following themes:

* The mosaic of class, race, and gender: To explore how class shapes racial, gender, and ethnic experience, and how different racial, gender, and ethnic experiences within various classes shape the meaning of class.

*  Class, power, and social structure: To explore how the social lives of working, middle, and capitalist classes are structured by various forms of power; to explore ways in which class dynamics shape power structures in workplaces and across broader societies.

*  Class in an age of income inequality:  To explore the implications and consequences of the growing income gap between top earners and the rest for the lived experience in class in different corners of the world.

*  Class, Community, and the Environment: To explore ways in which class informs communities and environmental conditions where people work as well as where they live; also to consider questions of “home,” community formation and sustenance, and environmental justice.

*  Class in a global economy: To explore how class identity and class dynamics are influenced by globalization, including the transnational movements of industry, capital, and capitalist elites; the experience of cross-border labor migration and organizing; and international labor and environmental standards.

*  Middle class? Working class? What’s the difference and why does it matter? To explore the claim that the U.S. and other developed nations have become middle class societies, contrasting with the notion that the working class is the majority; to unpack the relationships between the middle class and capitalist, working and other subordinate classes both in the developed and the developing world.

*  Class, public policy, and electoral politics: To explore how class affects public deliberations and policy in a variety of nations around the world, with special attention to health care, the criminal justice system, labor law, poverty, tax and other economic policy, housing, and education; to explore the place of electoral politics in the arrangement of class forces on policy matters.

*  Class and culture: To explore ways in which cultures and subcultures transmit, sustain, and transform class dynamics around the world.

*  Pedagogy of class: To explore techniques and materials useful for teaching about class, at K-12 levels, in college and university courses, and in labor studies and adult education courses.

How to submit proposals for How Class Works – 2016 Conference:  We encourage proposals for panel sessions (three or four papers) and roundtables that bring diverse perspectives and experiences into dialogue: scholars with activists; those working on similar themes in different disciplines; as well as those working on similar issues in different parts of the world. Proposals for individual presentations are also welcome. Proposals for presentations must include the following information [for session proposals this information must be included for all proposed presentations, as well as indication of presenters’ willingness to participate]: a) short descriptive title; b) which of the conference themes will be addressed; c) a maximum 250 word summary of the main subject matter, points, and methodology; d) relevant personal information indicating institutional affiliation (if an y) and what training or experience the presenter brings to the proposal; e) presenter’s name, address, telephone, fax, and e-mail address. A person may present in at most two conference sessions. To allow time for discussion, sessions will be limited to three twenty-minute or four fifteen-minute principal presentations. Sessions will not include official discussants.

Submit proposals as an e-mail attachment to michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu or as hard copy by mail to: The How Class Works – 2016 Conference, Center for Study of Working Class Life, Department of Economics, SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384.

Timetable:  Proposals must be received by December 9, 2015. After review by the program committee, notifications will be mailed by the end of January 2016. The conference will be at SUNY Stony Brook June 9-11, 2016.  Conference registration and housing reservations will be possible after March 7, 2016.

Details and updates will be posted at: http://www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass

See flyer: http://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/workingclass/images/HCW-2016%20call.pdf

Conference coordinator:

Michael Zweig

Director, Center for Study of Working Class Life

Department of Economics

State University of New York

Stony Brook, NY 11794-4384

631.632.7536

michael.zweig@stonybrook.edu                   ##

 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/how-class-works-2016-conference-proposals-due-december-9-2015

 

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Social Class in the Twenty-First Century

Social Class

SOCIAL CLASS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

AMSTERDAM RESEARCH CENTER GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Conference: ‘Social Class in the 21^st Century’

October 22-23, 2015

See: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/social-class-conference.html

Theme

Intersections between class, gender and sexuality revisited

The question of social class has re-emerged as a central concern for the analysis and politics of gender and sexuality in the public sphere in many societies worldwide. The ascent and subsequent crisis of global neoliberalism have been deeply implicated in growing inequalities, which have affected the shape of gender and sexual meanings and relations in fundamental ways.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Professor Cecilia Ridgeway and Professor Anoop Nayak + Roundtable by Professor Gloria Wekker

• Whereas some women have emerged as highly successful agents in the new global economy, their ascent to wealth and power is almost always contingent upon the labor and ongoing exclusion of other – the working classes, the poor, migrants, and/or women of colour.
• Similarly, with the introduction of some openly lesbian women and gay men into the cosmopolitan-managerial and so-called ‘creative’ global classes, very particular articulations of LGBTQ identity and culture – mostly middle-class and ‘homonormative’ – have become more visible.
• At the same time alternative and marginalized expressions of LGBTQ identity have increasingly disappeared from public view. Among other factors, social class has played a key role in these dynamics. While institutional sexism and homophobia have perhaps lessened for social upper classes, the social exclusion of others has increased as the result of growing inequality and precarity.
• These dynamics call for greater attention to the interconnections between social class, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality.

Focus on Class

Contemporary global developments exemplify what has long been seen as a central topic of scholarly inquiry: class and other social and cultural divisions have affected lived experiences and have had an impact on people’s abilities and opportunities, as well as on their constructions of gender and sexual identities, categories, and politics. A focus on ‘inclusion’, equal rights and democratic citizenship runs the danger of obscuring growing structural inequalities. Inside and outside of the academy, intersectional and other new forms of critical analysis have gone a long way in accounting for such inequalities, as well as for the divergent social positioning of actors. Nonetheless, these new approaches have not been productive on all levels of social relations and dynamics. Partly as the result of the crisis of Marxism and the theoretical problems associated with overtly reductive class analyses, the effects of class on gender and sexuality remain under-theorized and have suffered from insufficient empirical investigation.

The dominance of white, middle-class, homonormative, and cisgender LGBTQ cultures and identities in scholarly debates conceals class differences and the dominance of a particular ontology. A focus on class and its interconnection with race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality enables scholars to take seriously the complexities of contemporary gender and sexual dynamics in a global world. Class analysis not only unveils inequality but brings to light difference, distinction and dissent, both between and within social groups. Such an analysis questions the dominance of particular identities, but does not satisfy itself with explanations attributing alternative experiences to essentialized or depoliticized notions of cultural difference.

Dominance of global Western ontologies

A major question that needs to be addressed is the dominance of global Western ontologies in the study of social class. North–south comparisons (as well as comparisons unsettling this binary) will bring fresh insights into the way in which global dynamics have reconfigured relations between classes or the concept of class itself.

For instance, class identification in many parts of the world is a matter of how well connected one is transnationally, resulting in specific forms of gender inequality. Transnational migration also reveals class dynamics in configuration with sexuality, from exploitation and labour rights in migrant sex work to examples of successful transgender migration patterns. Neo-liberalisation is often and rightly so critiqued for creating (more) inequalities, but for some groups in the global South it also implies new opportunities. Recent studies on the global middle classes, for instance, have also emphasized the symbolic meaning of class. Eventually, such studies point out the necessity of questioning how the material and cultural dimensions are dialectically intertwined in the generation of gendered class subjectivities and relations. Exploring the class dynamics of gender and sexuality in and from the global South thus brings new understandings.

Interconnected developments 

Four interconnected developments background our call for a focus on class:

• Gender and sexuality are often largely absent from class analysis.
• Class since the 1980s has increasingly been abandoned as a theoretical tool in feminist theory, even though Marxism had informed feminist theory and practice until the 1980s.
• The central role that queer approaches to social and cultural analysis attributes to choice, change, and the destabilization of categories comes at a cost, namely the lack of attention to more enduring power relations and inequalities.
• Taking a transnational standpoint will help further theorise the questions of social classes in the 21st century.

Unpacking the concept of class – aim of this conference

The way forward, we suggest, is to start unpacking the concept of class. Interestingly, while most of us recognise immediately the notion of class, definitions of it remain elusive and differ tremendously in their reach and implications.

During this conference we intend to explore various routes to unpack the formulation of class through the prism of gender and sexuality:

• The first question is the matter of scale: from day-to-day interaction, via various levels to the state, and the transnational level: when does class matter?
• Hence, what makes class matter?
• What are the material and/or symbolic characteristics of class and how do they matter?
• Which social, political or cultural ideas, practices and institutions ‘form’ social class?
• Last but not least, how can class analysis shed light on gender and sexual relations, and how does gender and sexuality analysis shed light on class?

We invite papers from the wide range of social sciences, including social history, to take up these questions and engage in an interdisciplinary debate.

Call for Papers

We invite papers from the wide range of social sciences, including social history, to take up these questions and engage in an interdisciplinary debate.

Please send:

• Name of panel for which you are submitting
• Author name and email address
• Title
• Abstract (up to 250 words)

Online form 

Please use the online form below to submit paper proposals for the conference Social Class in the 21st Century. Submission is open from April 15, 2015 until May 29, 2015 Authors will be notified of the decision by mid-June 2015.

Submission of Papers: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/call-for-papers/call-for-papers/call-for-papers/cpitem-2/link/papers.html

Registration and Fees: http://arcgs.uva.nl/news-events/events/social-class-conference/social-class-conference/content/folder/registration/registration.html

***END***

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Marxism and Feminism

Marxism and Feminism

MARXISM AND FEMINISM

A new book edited by Shahrzad Mojab

See: http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/node/20825

Global events, from economic crisis to social unrest and militarization, disproportionately affect women. Yet around the world it is also women who are leading the struggle against oppression and exploitation. In light of renewed interest in Marxist theory among many women activists and academics, Marxism and Feminism presents a contemporary and accessible Marxist-feminist analysis on a host of issues. It reassesses previous debates and seeks to answer pressing questions of how we should understand the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism, and how we can envision a feminist project which emancipates both women and society.

With contributions from both renowned scholars and new voices, Marxism and Feminism is set to become the foundational text for modern Marxist-feminist thought.

Reviews

‘Marxism and Feminism is a serious, nuanced collection that covers a great deal of ground in a clear and concise way. The essays here represent a profoundly warm, human way of thinking through some of the toughest political problems of our age. It will be of great use to anyone thinking seriously about the relationship between Marx and feminism, not to mention gender, race, class, intersectionallity, patriarchy, work and many other key topics today.’
Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman

‘The relationship between Marxists and Feminists has always been problematic. But in these times of an ongoing crises of capitalism, when the whole world is looking for alternatives to the present destructive World System, Shahrzad Mojab’s Marxism and Feminism is especially necessary today. I hope that many women and men read it.
Maria Mies, author of Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale

‘Marxism and feminism are back! This book marks a refreshing return to basics after years spent in the wilderness of identity politics and the ‘cultural turn’. Offering a rich synthesis of the key concepts in both schools of thought, the book provides a valuable resource for rethinking Marxism, feminism, a renewed project for human emancipation and, yes… revolution.’
Radha D’Souza, University of Westminster

‘Marxism and Feminism is an outstanding contribution to the shared project of scholar-activists across diverse disciplines and movements. The collection is both the result of, and a significant contribution to, a (re)emerging conversation – one that attends to, as Shahrzad Mojab succinctly notes, ‘two major emancipatory projects.’ The keywords approach is inspired, providing breadth and depth in a single, accessible, and highly engaged volume.’
Abigail B. Bakan, University of Toronto

‘Reading this book made me aware of how much such a book is needed to awaken a dialogue between Marxism and feminism. I didn’t agree with all that I read, but that’s exactly what a book with this framework should do to awaken us.’
Dorothy Smith, University of Victoria

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

 

1 Introduction: Marxism and feminism

Shahrzad Mojab
Part One: Class and race in Marxism and feminism

2 Gender relations
Frigga Haug

3 The Marx within feminism
Frigga Haug

4 Building from Marx: reflections on ‘race’, gender and class
Himani Bannerji
Part Two: Marxist-feminist keywords

5 Democracy
Sara Carpenter

6 Financialization
Jamie Magnusson

7 Ideology
Himani Bannerji

8 Imperialism and primitive accumulation
Judith Whitehead
9 Intersectionality
Delia D. Aguilar

10 Labour-power
Helen Colley

11 Nation and nationalism
Amir Hassanpour

12 Patriarchy/patriarchies
Kumkum Sangari

13 Reproduction
Michelle Murphy

14 Revolution
Maryam Jazayeri

15 Standpoint theory
Cynthia Cockburn

16 Epilogue: gender after class
Teresa L. Ebert

Recommended reading
About the authors
Index

Critique of Political Economy

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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Feminism

Capital & Class: Call for Papers

We Are the Crisis

CAPITAL & CLASS – CALL FOR PAPERS

Submit your article to Capital & Class

Looking to publish critiques on global capitalism, Marxist theory, domestic labour or any other area in the study of capital and class? Have you considered the Capital & Class?

Capital & Class is the journal of the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) and since 1977 has been the main, peer-reviewed, independent source for a Marxist critique of global capitalism. Pioneering key debates on the state, value theory, domestic labour, and all other relevant areas, Capital & Class reaches out into the labour, trade union, anti-racist, feminist, environmentalist and other radical movements.

To find out more about if your article would be suitable for Capital & Class and to submit your paper please visit: http://bit.ly/CNCAcademia

The Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) is an international, democratic membership organisation committed to developing a materialist critique of capitalism, unconstrained by conventional academic divisions between subjects. CSE runs multiple events every year alongside publishing Capital & Class three times a year.

Capital & Class: http://cnc.sagepub.com/

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Conference on Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism

CONFERENCE ON NEOLIBERALISM

ISTANBUL UNIVERSITY

The faculty members of the Department of International Relations at Istanbul University, are preparing a conference titled “Political Science in Contemporary World: Neoliberalism, Crises and Social Resistance Movements: Theorizing and Experiencing Politics“.

The conference is scheduled from 10-12 December 2014 in Istanbul. It will be the second of the annual conferences organized by our department.

This year’s conference will focus primarily on late neoliberalism and neoliberalization paths: their impact on various aspects of social formations such as state forms, social classes, social resistance movements, political regimes, rationalities of government and gender regimes.

Prof. Jamie Peck will be the keynote speaker of the conference.

The deadline for submitting abstracts was September 5, 2014 but it has been extended for three weeks.

The web address of the conference is as the following: http://www.politsciconference.org/

We look forward for your submissions.

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/conference-on-neoliberalism-at-istanbul-university

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Debating the Global Working Class

Dialectics

DEBATING THE GLOBAL WORKING CLASS

Conference of Socialist Economists

CSE South, Capital & Class

Co-hosted by the Global Economy and Business research Unit, Business School, University of Hertfordshire

 

Seminar: Debating the Global Working Class

Friday 17th October

University of Hertfordshire,

de Havilland site, Room N003

14.00-17.30

 

Marcel van der Linden (University of Amsterdam)

‘The Global Working Class: Decline or Revival’.

Jenny Chan (University of Oxford)

‘Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and China’s New Working Class’

Everybody is welcome to attend the seminar at 14.00. If you would like to join us for lunch beforehand at 13.00 you are welcome, but please register with Jane Hardy (j.a.hardy@herts.ac.uk). Please see websites for details of travel and location http://www.herts.ac.uk/contact-us/where-to-find-us/de-havilland-maps-and-directions

 

About the speakers:

Marcel Marius van der Linden

The Global Working Class: Decline or Revival

Abstract

The number of wage-earners worldwide has grown significantly in the last three centuries, and its regional distribution has constantly shifted. The class awareness and collective action accompanying the development of this world working class has and is taking on many different forms in the course of time. The presentation will discuss the new challenges that have arisen. It is argued that the building of a new kind of trade unionism will be a difficult process, interspersed with failed experiments and moments of deep crisis. Pressure from below (through competitive networks, alternative action models, etc.) will be a highly important factor in deciding the outcome of this process.

Biographical note

Marcel is director of research at the International Institute for Social History and holds a professorship dedicated to the history social movements at the University of Amsterdam. Marcel is most recognized in his field for his approach of a “global labour history”, which he has developed since the 1990s. Global labour history is seen by many scholars of labour studies as a new paradigm that wants to overcome both traditional labour history and the “new labour history” developed in the 1960s by scholars like Eric Hobsbawm and E.P. Thompson.

Jenny Chan

Dying for an iPhone? Apple, Foxconn, and China’s New Working Class

Abstract

Drawing on extensive fieldwork at China’s leading exporter, the Taiwanese-owned Foxconn Technology Group, the power dynamics of the buyer-driven supply chain are analysed in the context of the national terrains that accentuate global pressures. If suicide is understood as one extreme form of labour protest chosen by some to expose injustice, many more workers are choosing other courses. In globally connected production, Chinese workers are engaging in a crescendo of individual and collective struggles to define their rights and defend their dignity in the face of combined corporate and state power.

Biographical note

Jenny is Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford. Her recent articles have appeared in Current Sociology, Modern China, Global Labour Journal, The Asia-Pacific Journal, The South Atlantic Quarterly, New Labor Forum, Labor Notes, New Internationalist, New Technology, and Work and Employment. She is writing her first book provisionally entitled Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and a New Generation of Chinese Workers (co-authored with PUN Ngai and Mark SELDEN).

 

About the CSE South Group:

The Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) http://www.cseweb.org.uk/ is an international, democratic membership organisation committed to developing a materialist critique of capitalism, unconstrained by conventional academic divisions between subjects. CSE has organised and supported conferences and seminars and publishes the Sage journal Capital & Class http://cnc.sagepub.com/ three times a year.

The CSE South Group is a network of researchers and activists founded by Capital & Class Editorial Board member Phoebe Moore and CSE participants Martin Upchurch and Chris Hesketh. Members hold workshops where people present work and hold discussions on topics that concern the CSE and our journal.

 

About the Global Economy and Research Unit, Hertfordshire Business School, University of Hertfordshire

The Global Economy and Business Research Unit (GEBRU) focuses on issues that face economies, businesses and communities in the context of globalisation. The group undertakes both empirical and policy work, as well as engaging in the theoretical and methodological debates that underpin them. Members of the group are actively engaged with a range of stakeholders which include businesses, trade unions and NGOs. The approach of the group is interdisciplinary drawing on economics, political economy, geography and international business.

The unit’s research themes include the restructuring emerging markets in economies such as Poland, Serbia, Ukraine, Zambia and Bangladesh. GEBRU also focuses on migration and labour market mobility, and in particular the dynamics of European East-West migration and the intervention of stakeholders such as states and trade unions. A number of projects are ongoing in relation to foreign direct investment and outsourcing business services. Projects include new divisions of labour within Europe and the role of China in global value chains. The Editorship of the journal Competition and Change lies within GEBRU.

 

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/cse-south-capital-class-seminar-17-10-debating-the-global-working-class

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Critical Perspectives on Intersectionality

Occupy London

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON INTERSECTIONALITY

CHICAGO EVENT WITH INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION
Critical Perspectives on Intersectionality: Addressing Struggles over Race, Gender, Class, and Ecology
The social theory of intersectionality has gained prominence among and activists and academics as a way to address the question of inclusion and social solidarity that was often overlooked by the traditional Left focus on the working class. Does “intersectionality” deliver on its promise to theorize radical social change in an inclusive way? Does it offer a real alternative to capitalism?  How might intersectionality be understood in the context of contemporary struggles?
In this discussion, panelists will be engaging these questions from various critical perspectives focused on race, gender, class, and ecological struggles.

Speakers:
Lenore Daniels, “The Marginalization of Black Radicalism in the Obama Era” (activist and writer on Cultural Theory, Race and Gender)
Sarah Mason, “From Occupy to Marx: Ecology, Labor, and the New Society” (former activist, Occupy Los Angeles)
Kevin Anderson, “Karl Marx and Intersectionality” (author Marx at the Margins)
Sandra Rein, “The Gendered Subject at the Crossroads” (author Reading Raya Dunayevskaya)
David Black, “Philosophy, Ecology, and Anti-Capitalism” (author, Philosophical Roots of Anti-Capitalism)

Friday, July 25, 6:30 p.m.
Corboy Law Center
25 East Pearson St. Chicago
Room 208
Sponsored by the Loyola University Department of Philosophy
Co-sponsored by the International Marxist-Humanist Organization

See: http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

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Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

SIC: International Journal for Communisation – Issue 2

Communisation

SIC, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR COMMUNISATION – ISSUE 2

The 2nd issue of Sic (International Journal for Communisation) is out, with texts that attempt to develop new concepts and analyse recent struggles (2011-13): including Occupy Oakland, the riots in the UK and events in Greece and France.

Copies can be ordered here: http://sicjournal.org/en/order-online

 

Contents:

Not an Editorial

Woland, The Uneven Dynamics of the Era of Riots

Leon de Mattis, Communist Measures

R.S., The Conjuncture

Woland, Rise of the (Non-)Subject

R.S., The Movement Against the French Pension Reform

Rocamadur, The Feral Underclass Hits the Streets

Rust Bunny Collective, Under the Riot Gear

Research & Destroy, Limit Analysis and its Limits

Agents of Chaos, Without You, Not a Single Cog Turns

 

Excerpts from the non-editorial:

‘Communisation is no longer being perceived as an exotic beast, and it even tends at times to become a fashionable word. Present-day struggles highlight the end of the classical workers’ movement, together with its ambition to take the supposedly good-by-nature core of the economy away from voracious capitalist predators and run it itself. It is almost obvious that the world of our days, matter and soul alike, is the world actually produced by and for capital; that, therefore, workers and their products would have never existed as such if capital had not called them into existence in the first place; that working people’s demands have nowadays become asystemic or, in other words, a scandal akin to high treason; that proletarians are forced to defend their condition against capital but, in this struggle, actions that hurt capital are also actions that tend to call into question the proletarian condition; that communism cannot possibly be conceived as a program to be realised, but only as the historical product of proletariat’s struggle against capital and, at the same token, against its own class belonging; etc., etc. All this is reassuringly easy to show, almost worryingly so in fact.’

‘There is no linear development from present struggles to revolution, but present struggles, even through their limits and impossibilities, are the only anchor of the theory of communisation. The second issue of Sic is decisively focused on a critical appraisal of struggles of varying geographical locations and content; a discussion of communist measures may serve as a theoretical counterpoint; looking into the concept of conjuncture will deal with the necessary leap away from the internal causality chain of capital’s reproduction.’

‘Sic is an international theoretical project, not a homogeneous group. Differences of opinion are welcome and eagerly put to discussion: they should come as no surprise. However, a common ground does exist, and it does differentiate Sic from other currents. For example, a transhistorical and teleological understanding of class struggle, which turns its back on any periodisation of its content, will not be at home here; the conception of ever recurring proletarian assaults, identical to each other and with no actual history in between, belongs to those ready to interpret the possibly good one just like the others, with the only difference that it was successful instead of unsuccessful; the ‘proposal’ (whom to?) of models of society which would be ‘better’ than the existing one is none of our preoccupations; the faith in the demarcation and extension of a communist terrain, in a communist rodent diving into the capitalist cheese and gradually eating it away, is not ours.’

New web address: http://sicjournal.org/ (with texts also available in French)

First published in: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/sic-international-journal-for-communisation-issue-2

 

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

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Tales of the 1%: Noir and Capitalism

Eisenstein

TALES OF THE 1%: NOIR AND CAPITALISM

CLASS, CRIME & INTERNATIONAL FILM NOIR

 

Dennis Broe with Steven Wishnia
Wednesday, April 30, 7:30 pm

Brecht Forum @ The Commons, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn 11217

http://brechtforum.org/civicrm/event/info?id=12681&reset=1

 

Brecht Forum: http://brechtforum.org/

 

In the decade between the Popular Front and the Communist Purge (1938-48), lower budget, seedy crime films not only in the US, but also in Europe and Asia, collectively called film noir, were a prominent way that film artists critiqued the new international reign of corporate capital. That critique has continued today where regional formations of the style (Nordic, Asian and Mediterranean Noir) have nourished and kept alive noir’s biting critique of the accumulation of capital where lives are smashed, dreams are brutally broken, and those left standing endure with bitterness and confusion while those who hide behind the laws and accumulate bigger piles of loot.

Dennis and Steven will speak of the body of work in film, fiction and other cultural works about what noir is, and how it came about and new directions in lm and literary noir today.

Dennis Broe is a professor of media arts at Long Island University. His previous book, Film Noir, American Workers and Post-War Hollywood was a Choice Outstanding Academic Book. He has written widely on political economy, movie studio history and the Western in Cinema Journal, Jump Cut, Situations and other journals. He is also a film critic on Pacifica Radio. His latest book from Palgrave/Macmillan is Class, Crime & International Noir: Globalizing America’s Dark Art, which will be published on May 8.

Steven Wishnia is the author of the novel When the Drumming Stops (Manic D Press, 2012), the short-story collection Exit 25 Utopia, and The Cannabis Companion, and contributed to Long Island Noir. A journalist specializing in housing, labor, and drug issues, he co-edited Imagine: Living in a Socialist U.S.A. He also played bass in the 1980s punk band False Prophets and artist Mac McGill’s multimedia show.

Economics of the 1%

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues (MERD)

MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES (MERD)

Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford Campus

Wednesday 21 May 2014,

3pm – 6pm, Room: Saw 005

Education, Marxism and Society

Update: 7^th April 2014

—

3pm

Welcome by Dave Hill and Alpesh Maisuria

 

3.05pm

Deirdre O’Neill (InsideFilm.org)

Film, Prisons, Social Class and Radical Pedagogy: A Marxist Analysis

 

4.05pm

Glenn Rikowski (Visiting Scholar, Anglia Ruskin University)

Crisis and Education

 

5.05

Ravi Kumar (South Asian University, India)

Marxism and Education: An Indian Perspective

 

6.05

Social event

 

In association with Anglia Ruskin University Department of Education Research Seminars

Full address: Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford: Bishop Hall Lane, CM1 1SQ.

A map can be found here: http://www.anglia.ac.uk/ruskin/en/home.html

Edited Collection by Dave Hill

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: http://independent.academic.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com

Class: The Elephant in the Room!

Social Movements

CLASS: THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM!

“The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth” K. Marx and F. Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848

How to conceptualise class in the face of expanded impoverishment, commodification of social rights, increased social and spatial segregation, criminalised poor, austerity, global wars and ecological crisis? Under the contemporary conditions of capitalism, as class based inequalities have become sharper, the ways in which class is conceptualised matter more with respect to its political consequences.

With the discussion of class re-emerging in the social sciences, we hope to both foregrounds its centrality and search for critical perspectives. Perspectives which might shift the direction of class struggle from attacks on the ‘undeserving poor’ to the potentialities of the revolutionary class.

“A Sense of Inequality: 5 approaches, 3 themes and a variation”

Dr Wendy Bottero, The University of Manchester

“Class: Don’t Mention the War”

Professor Andrew Sayer, Lancaster University

“Sociology and Its Poor: Rethinking Social Class”

Dr Imogen Tyler, Lancaster University

Organised by: Department of Sociology, Lancaster University

Date: Wednesday, 19 March 2014

Time: 16:15 – 18:30

Location: Cavendish Colloquium Room (Faraday Building LB02), Lancaster University

See: https://twitter.com/SociologyLancs/status/435382047591260160

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskpoint.blogspot.com