NLR cover image

CONTENTS

  1. Göran Therborn: New Masses? What social forces are likely to challenge the supremacy of capital in the coming decades? An assessment of potential bases of resistance—from traditional communities overrun by the global market to factory workers and an expanding yet amorphous middle class.
  2. André Singer: Rebellion in Brazil A sociological portrait of the protests that gripped the country in June 2013. Crossovers of class, ideology and generation on the major cities’ streets, as portents of deeper shifts under way.
  3. Perry Anderson: Counterpuncher Retrospective on the liberated life and work of Alexander Cockburn, whose last book, A Colossal Wreck, completes a dazzling triptych. Shaping influences of family, place and political epoch on a singularly radical temperament, and the keen-edged prose in which it found expression.
  4. Tor Krever: Dispensing Global Justice Protector of the weak or tool of the strong? Origins and evolution of the International Criminal Court, and its geopolitical tacking through a decade of imperial warfare.
  5. Teri Reynolds: Dispatches from Dar Realities of emergency medicine in Tanzania, and the process through which new facilities and existing systems mutually adapt to each other.
  6. Thomas Piketty: Dynamics of Inequality A leading French economist discusses the historical evolution of global wealth and income imbalances. After the levelling shocks of the 20th century, will the 21st bring a return to the longue durée dominance of inherited fortunes?
  7. Joshua Berson: The Quinoa Hack Staple of Andean diets long before the Spanish conquest, quinoa has lately become a global health-food commodity—with dubious results for Bolivia’s campesinos. Josh Berson maps out the limits of food justice pursued through consumerist techno-fixes.

BOOK REVIEWS

  1. Marcus Verhagen on Claire Bishop, Artificial Hells. Antecedents and critical implications of the recent wave of participatory art.
  2. William Davies on Jonathan Crary, 24/7. Is slumber itself threatened by the advance of market forces?
  3. Dylan Riley on Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself. Historical reframing of the New Deal for the age of Obama.

Articles:

  1. Perry Anderson
    ‘Counterpuncher’ Retrospective on the liberated life and work of Alexander Cockburn, whose last book, A Colossal Wreck, completes a dazzling triptych. Shaping influences of family, place and political epoch on a singularly radical temperament, and the keen-edged prose in which it found expression.

Editorials:

  1. Force and Consent As war looms again in the Middle East, what are the aims of the Republican Administration, and how far do they mark a break in the long-term objectives of US global strategy? The changing elements of American hegemony in the post-Cold War world.
  2. NLR at 50, What remains of the neo-liberal order after the implosion of 2008—with what implications for a journal of the left? Notes for a future research agenda, as NLR enters its quinquagenary year.
  3. Wall Street Crisis, Against mainstream accounts, Peter Gowan argues that the origins of the global financial crisis lie in the dynamics of the New Wall Street System that has emerged since the 1980s. Contours of the Atlantic model, and implications—geopolitical, ideological, economic—of its blow-out.
  4. Afghanistan, Reasons for the West’s stalemate in Afghanistan sought neither in lack of troops and imperial treasure, nor in Pakistani obstruction, but in the very nature of the occupation regime. Tariq Ali on the actual results of ‘state-building’ in the Hindu Kush, as a broken country is subjected to the combined predations of NGOs and NATO.
  5. NPT, What are the geopolitical origins of the NPT, and what are its actual effects? Non-proliferation as nuclear privilege of the few, weapon of intimidation of the one, submission of the many—and its impact on the peace movement.
  6. Concert of Powers, A reckoning of global shifts in political and economic relations, with China emerging as new workshop of the world and US power, rationally applied elsewhere, skewed by Israeli interests in the Middle East. Oppositions to it gauged, along with theoretical visions that offer exits from the perpetual free-market present.
  7. Arab Concatenation, From Tunis to Manama, 2011 has brought a chain-reaction of popular upheavals, in a region where imperial domination and domestic despotism have long been entwined. A call for political liberty to reconnect with social equality and Arab fraternity, in a radical new internationalism.
  8. 2011, Echoes of past rebellions in 2011’s global upsurge of protest. Against a backdrop of world economic slump, what forces will shape the outcome of contests between a raddled system and its emergent challengers?