In 2006, the Economist newspaper declared in a survey of Mexico that it was “time to wake up”, meaning that reforms in the energy sector (oil and electricity) must resume to set the economy free by making the most of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) [see November 18, 2006]. Further, as the old political model had died with the defeat of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) it was time for a new one to be born and time, also, for the real president in Felipe Calderón of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), to stand up. That was 2006. In 2012, the Economist offers us its latest survey of Mexico. Now the country is on the rise and “going up” in the world following the election of Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI with the agenda to be set by further economic restructuring in, yes, the energy sector [see November 24, 2012]. So what has changed and how can one assess the major transformations shaping Latin America’s second largest economy?
Monthly archive: November, 2012
The Making of Global Capitalism
Last week the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at the University of Nottingham hosted its Annual Lecture with the additional financial assistance of the local association of the University and College Union. Previous speakers have included David Harvey (2006), Gerald Cohen (2007), Hilary Wainwright (2008), Philip McMichael (2009), Siba Grovogui (2010), and Samir Amin (2011). This year it was a pleasure to host Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin presenting their new book The Making of Global Capitalism published by Verso.
The book is rightly heralded as a groundbreaking assessment of American empire in shaping global capitalism. In their now classic phrase, Panitch and Gindin trace how the American state came to superintend capitalism on a worldwide scale. Across a whopping tomb of some 450 plus pages, they deliver a truly accessible and popular account of the political economy of the American state as the ultimate guarantor of capitalist interests globally throughout the twentieth century. On the night of the annual lecture, Panitch and Gindin also delivered a wonderful example of public and political engagement, which has catapulted a wave of interest in their new book.
Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics
A book that has just landed on my desk is the fantastic volume edited by Michael Ekers, Gillian Hart, Stefan Kipfer and Alex Loftus entitled Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics. The book stems originally from a workshop organised under the theme of ‘Gramscian Geographies’ at Royal Holloway, University of London (8-9 January 2009).
Since then, the project has expanded to include additional participants and contributors with the book consisting of three main parts (Space, Nature, Politics) totalling 16 chapters plus two additional ‘framing’ essays, one by the editors and the other by John Berger. I was fortunate to be invited as a participant in the original workshop and as a contributor to the subsequent book with my chapter focusing on the spatiality of passive revolution.
The Architecture of Passive Revolution
I have just returned from presenting at an excellent conference organised by Faruk Yalvaç and hosted at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. The event was the First Spectrum Conference on Global Studies organised around the theme ‘Historical Sociology, Historical Materialism and International Relations’ (2-3 November 2012). The conference was an amazing success stemming from the outstanding organisation of Faruk Yalvaç and his conference assistants, including Hacer Eriş, İslamjon Mannonov, Hüseyin Sağmak, Selenay Yakıcı and Elif Zeytin.
The result was an event that weaved together a brilliant series of intellectual themes throughout the conference, which ran extremely smoothly. Panels included discussions on so-called Political Marxism; Eurocentrism; Geopolitics; Finance Capitalism; Neoliberalism; Uneven and Combined Development; Open Marxism; International Political Economy; and Historical Sociology. The event was concluded with Faruk Yalvaç’s closing speech developing a historical materialist analysis of Turkish foreign policy while keynote speeches were given by Benno Teschke (on international historical sociology and historical materialism); Jonathan Joseph (on hegemony and governmentality); Stephen Hobden (on historical sociology and complexity theory); and myself (on the ‘architecture’ of passive revolution with a focus on society, state and space in Mexico).
#6. On Victor Serge and a Requiem for Paris: The Long Dusk
Closing the second informal trilogy that comprises the ‘cycle of resistance’, as defined by Richard Greeman, The Long Dusk [1946] is Victor Serge’s sixth novel translated into English. The book is extremely rare and hard to come across and one cannot wait for NYRB Classics to republish this in its Victor Serge Collection. The Long Dusk is an adieu to Paris, France, and Europe from an assemblage of characters defined by Serge as a ‘family of stateless refugees’ facing Nazi occupied France in 1940. The constellation of characters based in Paris attempt to avoid the abyss of occupation by fleeing to Marseilles, some arriving on railway routes defined by the Paris Lyon Méditerranée Company (PLM), while others are carried by trucks loaded with ‘human potpourri’.
The Long Dusk is a prescient contemplation of the plight of stateless refugees as well as a requiem for Paris that offers further insight on the spatiality of state power. It delivers reflections on different landscapes of statehood and how the spatial form of the French state during the Vichy government extended across diverse zones, locations, places and regions. In The Long Dusk the reader is once again exposed to a narrative treatment of the territorial articulation of state space, the changing geography of state power, and the grip that forces acting in and through the state have on the subjects and agents of history.
