Uncategorized Archives - Page 5 of 53

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What We Learned in Pine Valley

The conversations All My Children promoted put feminism on television’s map

January 6, 2020 • by Elana Levine

This scene, broadcast fifty years ago this week, marked the debut episode of the American daytime television soap opera, All My Children. More than forty-three years later, on the program’s final broadcast, the same character, the glamorous Erica Kane, repeated her observation, “Pine Valley . . . is still not the corner of ...

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India Roiled By Protests

This is a watershed moment for the largest democracy in the world

December 21, 2019 • by Shiv D. Sharma

The act has been condemned widely by the Indian population, including the Chief Ministers of states such as Rajasthan, Kerala and West Bengal. Large-scale protests have broken out in various parts of the country, starting with the northeastern state of Assam; and at universities such as Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and Jamia Millia Islamia ...

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Nancy Pelosi’s Leverage over Mitch McConnell

She can threaten to reopen the House investigation into the President

December 21, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

But what is done is done. And this past week the Democratic majority in the House voted to impeach Trump.. And then things took a strange, and perhaps not unexpected turn. McConnell and other Senate supporters of Trump very publicly expressed their disdain toward the impeachment; McConnell indicated that he was consulting with the ...

Nancy Pelosi’s Leverage over Mitch McConnell

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Reclaiming Victimology

Why there are no victims – only survivors

December 3, 2019 • by Alyson Cole

It’s not the poor, marginalized, or dispossessed, but those who occupy positions of privilege and power who seem most eager to assume the victim mantle today, those Lawrence Glickman classifies as “elites.” On the one hand, this is not new: American history is littered with examples of dominant groups deploying iconic imagery ...

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Can Democracy Be Established Undemocratically?

The Ethical and Political Dilemmas of the Czechoslovak Velvet Revolution

November 29, 2019 • by Muriel Blaive

November 17th, 2019 was the thirtieth anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia. This revolution, marvelous though it was, and its aftermath, I believe, demonstrates that creating a mature democracy out of thin air is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. The apparent success of the revolution hid flaws that seemed ...

Can Democracy Be Established Undemocratically?

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More Productive, Greener, More Peaceful?

The false promises of digital capitalism

November 11, 2019 • by Birgit Mahnkopf

First, for some time, there has been talk of a fourth wave of industrial revolution, which will fundamentally change the global production system. In the Anglo-Saxon context, this wave is referred to as the "Internet of Things" (IOT), while in this country the term "Industry 4.0" has prevailed. Both terms describe the ...

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Senior Citizens as “Silver Surfers”

& Other Fantasies about Working Longer

October 15, 2019 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

The new “working-longer consensus” is reminiscent of the deeply flawed and now largely-discredited “Washington Consensus” that crystallized around aid to developing countries in the 1980s. Both are based on the demands of neo-liberal policy makers, not the needs of working people. The Economist recently endorsed the findings of the 2019 OECD report “Working ...

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I Ain’t Gonna Work on Merritt’s Farm No More

A brief history of central California’s forgotten empire

October 11, 2019 • by Matthew Ford

In early 1949 as the shift away from wartime production slowed economic growth in the South, my great-grandparents (Glen and Lucille) began looking for new opportunities. Glen’s wartime jobs at a military training field and an ammunition factory in Oakridge Tennessee dried up, and he went back to tenant farming ...

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Was Theodor Adorno “The Fifth Beatle”?

How a conspiracy theory about the Frankfurt School made its way around the world

October 8, 2019 • by Andrew Woods

His latest theory asserts the Beatles could not have written their own songs, because they “were semi-literate in music” and “barely knew how to play the guitar.” Instead it was Adorno, a composer trained by Alban Berg and skilled in twelve-tone technique, who masterminded the Lennon-McCartney songbook. Carvalho’s remarks will baffle fans of ...

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Feminism, Elections, and Beyond

On the effects of the green wave in Argentina

September 24, 2019 • by Cami Baron and Gabi Mitidieri

When people from other latitudes ask us how we managed to achieve such mobilized feminisms, we have no other choice but to trace our history. The massive mobilization for Ni Una Menos in 2015 surprised us, but to prevent that energy from dissipating, the feminists that had been struggling for ...

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Why Warren’s Speech Was Terrific

She galvanized the crowd by speaking the language of radical civic republicanism

September 17, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

In the press release announcing the endorsement, Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell stated that: “We’re lucky to have two strong progressive candidates leading in this race. Senator Warren and Senator Sanders have both shaped the ideological terrain on which this campaign is being waged. They have proven an ...