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For the Race, Place & Critical Theory Reading Group, convened by Dallas Rogers, my role was to act as a reader of the final main chapter and coda of Abdoumaliq Simone’s The Surrounds: Urban Life within and Beyond Capture. Here is my write up of that reading.

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So here we are. We are surrounded.

In the Coda to Abdoumaliq Simone’s book The Surrounds comes the definition of the surrounds as ‘a space of exception’, or as ‘a shape-shifting matrix of spaces, times, and practices that exist right now within the turbulent processes of contemporary urbanisation’. Earlier in the text, instead of envisioning urbanism as the unfolding of definitive forces of value capture, asset creation, and resource extraction, he defines the surrounds as ‘a liminal interstice in between multiple, diverging trajectories of urbanisation that are always in the process of being sutured, more or less’, but always in an unsettled relation.

What are the major themes in the final main chapter of the book and how has “doing time” with this text been?

The confusion about the term ‘imperialism’ can be resolved upon recognising that the term was originally popularised to explain warfare, but not national exploitation, whereas the subsequent evolution of the term sought to explain national exploitation, but not warfare. Therefore, the term ‘imperialism’ must provide an answer to the question, how do relations of national exploitation create the long-term conditions for warfare?
My PhD thesis, Imperialism: How Declining Currency Hegemony Leads to War, argues that the Indian Political Economy (PE) tradition provides useful insights to answer this question

The post Imperialism: How Declining Currency Hegemony Leads to War appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

The 90th issue of the Journal of Australian Political Economy was published this week, at the end of a deeply troubling year – with Russia’s war on Ukraine, the emergence of strong inflationary tendencies, growing fears of economic recession, and mounting evidence of deepening climate change. Incisive political economic analysis is always needed for understanding what is happening in the world around us – but now more than ever [...]

The post What’s new in Australian Political Economy? appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

In 1993 the World Bank allowed people to seek recourse for harm resulting from the projects it finances in developing countries. Within a decade of the World Bank Inspection Panel, the other Multilateral Development Banks, including the World Bank Group, the Asian, African and Inter-American Development Banks and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development would create similar accountability mechanisms. These accountability mechanisms embody a norm of ‘accountability as justice’ that seeks to provide recourse for environmentally and socially damaging behaviour through a formal sanctioning process. The norm has now spread to other development financiers. Until now, no explanation has been provided for their creation, how they function, and whether they hold the Banks to account. My book The Good Hegemon: US Power, Accountability as Justice, and the Multilateral Development Banks answers these questions with three central arguments: the US pushed for the norm, the Banks tried to resist, but the norm has become entrenched as a corrective to Bank actions rather than pre-emptive justice norm.

Following my annual practice, I have listed here my “novel” reading for 2022. This is a way of documenting what I get through in a year’s worth of reading on the commute to work, in the evenings after work, and while travelling outside of my “normal” academic reading. My use of the term “novel” reading is loosely adopted, as you will see from the list to include fiction and then really important non-fiction work I get excited to read in my spare time. As you will see, my novel reading shifted away from novels to much more academic reading in my “free time”. But that approach has been richly rewarding.

1) Dennis McCarthy, The Gospel According to Billy the Kid: A Novel (University of New Mexico Press, 2021).

2)   Larry McMurtry, In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas [1968] (Liveright, 2018).

3)   J. Frank Dobie, Tongues of the Monte [1935] (University of Texas Press, 1987).

4)   Barcley Owens, Cormac McCarthy’s Western Novels (University of Arizona Press, 2000).

5)   Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad [1952], trans. Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler (NYRB Classics, 2019).

Earth is losing its memory.

The post The Great Forgetting appeared first on Nautilus.

One question for Nita Farahany, a philosopher at Duke University.

The post Will Neurotech Force Us to Update Human Rights? appeared first on Nautilus.

How Tangled Bank Studios learned to make science documentaries that feel like feature films.

The post The Human Story at the Heart of Science appeared first on Nautilus.

There was a lot more to this year than stunning images.

The post Top 10 Underrated Astronomy Papers of 2022 appeared first on Nautilus.

Identify these people and help chart how they will be remembered or forgotten in history.

The post Test Your Trivia Knowledge for Science appeared first on Nautilus.