CONTENTS
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Susan Watkins: Blue Labour?
Anatomy of the UK’s new crossbreed government, and the uneven electoral geography that produced it. Amid the ruins of New Labour’s economic model and spreading Euro-turbulence, what prospects for resistance to austerity’s impending axe?
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Tom Hazeldine: The North Atlantic Counsel
Profile of the conflict-instigation NGO, International Crisis Group. Tom Hazeldine follows the parallel courses of its Atlanticist advocacy and of Western military aggressions, from the Balkans to Mesopotamia.
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Paul Nugent: States and Social Contracts in Africa
Arguing for a renewed focus on political economy, Nugent surveys repertoires of state power and forms of social contract in Africa. Control of revenue, land and population as variables permuted by post-colonial regimes—and reordered by the pressures of structural adjustment.
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Zhang Xudong: Poetics of Vanishing
Cinematic portraits of China’s breakneck social and economic transformation, as seen from street level at its provincial margins. Zhang Xudong on motifs of disappearance, demolition and mobility in the films of Jia Zhangke.
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Steven Rose, Hilary Rose: Darwin and After
A century and a half on from Origin of Species, what is the present state of evolutionary theory? Hilary Rose and Steven Rose examine current debates around epigenesis, ‘evo-devo’ and adaptation, emphasizing—contra the determinists—contingency’s role in biological outcomes.
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Stefan Jonsson: The Ideology of Universalism
Contending visions of universality, from Kantian common sense to the doctrine of human rights. Can a constellation of singularities emerge within the standardization envisaged by globalized production? Prompts from Musil, Gursky and the carpet-weavers of Kuyan-Bulak.
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Alistair Hennessy: Spain’s Invisible Army
Alistair Hennessy on Ronald Fraser, Napoleon’s Cursed War. Masterly close-quarters account of Spanish popular resistance to the Emperor’s designs, from the author of Blood of Spain.
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Michael Mann: Family Resemblances
Michael Mann on Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences. Beneath the distinctions commonly perceived, do Europe and America fundamentally resemble one another?
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Kristin Surak: The Business of Belonging
Kristin Surak on John L Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. Anthropological case studies in the commodification of ethnic identity.
Articles:
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Paul Nugent,
‘The African State’
Arguing for a renewed focus on political economy, Nugent surveys repertoires of state power and forms of social contract in Africa. Control of revenue, land and population as variables permuted by post-colonial regimes—and reordered by the pressures of structural adjustment.
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Zhang Xudong,
‘Poetics of Vanishing’
Cinematic portraits of China’s breakneck social and economic transformation, as seen from street level at its provincial margins. Zhang Xudong on motifs of disappearance, demolition and mobility in the films of Jia Zhangke.
-
Stefan Jonsson,
‘The Ideology of Universalism’
Contending visions of universality, from Kantian common sense to the doctrine of human rights. Can a constellation of singularities emerge within the standardization envisaged by globalized production? Prompts from Musil, Gursky and the carpet-weavers of Kuyan-Bulak.
-
Kristin Surak,
‘The Business of Belonging’
Kristin Surak on John L Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. Anthropological case studies in the commodification of ethnic identity.
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Nancy Fraser,
‘Feminism Co-opted?’
Do feminism and neoliberalism share a secret affinity? Nancy Fraser on the co-option of gender politics by the ‘new spirit’ of post-Fordist capitalism, and subordination of its radical critique to a World Bank agenda. Might a neo-Keynesian shift offer prospects for socialist-feminist renewal?
Editorials:
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The End of New Labour,
As the British general election approaches, a balance-sheet of New Labour’s thirteen years in office. The record of Blair and Brown—imperial wars abroad, subservience to the City at home—as so many reasons to cheer their downfall.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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World Conjuncture,
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.
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US Hegemony,
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.
Articles:
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Tom Hazeldine,
‘The North Atlantic Counsel’
Profile of the conflict-instigation NGO, International Crisis Group. Tom Hazeldine follows the parallel courses of its Atlanticist advocacy and of Western military aggressions, from the Balkans to Mesopotamia.
-
Hilary Rose and Steven Rose,
‘Darwin and After’
A century and a half on from Origin of Species, what is the present state of evolutionary theory? Hilary Rose and Steven Rose examine current debates around epigenesis, ‘evo-devo’ and adaptation, emphasizing—contra the determinists—contingency’s role in biological outcomes.
-
Alistair Hennessy,
‘Spain’s Invisible Army’
Alistair Hennessy on Ronald Fraser, Napoleon’s Cursed War. Masterly close-quarters account of Spanish popular resistance to the Emperor’s designs, from the author of Blood of Spain.
-
Michael Mann,
‘Family Resemblances’
Michael Mann on Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences. Beneath the distinctions commonly perceived, do Europe and America fundamentally resemble one another?
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Perry Anderson, ‘Two Revolutions’
How to explain the opposed outcomes for communism in Russia and China, after 1989? Classes and leaders, anciens régimes and external settings, examined in comparative perspective.
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Tariq Ali,
‘President of Cant’
From declamations in Cairo to silence over Gaza, occupation of Iraq and escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Tariq Ali asks what has changed in us foreign policy since the departure of Bush.
