David Harvey is one of the leading Marxist commentators on the current financial crisis. Here are some links to interviews that he has given dealing with the subject – enjoy!
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/2/marxist_geographer_david_harvey_on_the
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww9STw-o0cc
And there’s a lot of goodies on http://davidharvey.org/
These are two PDF files of articles that I’ve published on Marxist theory and social movements and the Narmada movement respectively. The former – “History Does Nothing” – is an article on the philosophical anthropology of Karl Marx and how it can constitute the basis for a Marxist theory of social movements. It was published in Sosiologisk Årbok in 2007. The latter – “On New Social Movements and the Reinvention of India” – uses the case of the Narmada movement to reflect on the characteristics and dynamics of new social movements in India. It was published in Forum for Development Studies in 2007.
“History Does Nothing” – Notes Towards a Marxist Theory of Social Movements
On New Social Movements and the Reinvention of India
PS! The drafts for these articles can be found in older posts on this blog …
The link below takes you to an article on Subaltern Studies which is forthcoming in the journal Agora. It is in Norwegian, and aims to put forward a critique of the theory of subalternity and subaltern resistance as an autonomous domain …
These two talks were presented as guest lectures at the University of Bergen in April 2008. They are very much interlinked, and seek to, firstly, develop a critique of the global hegemony of neoliberal development, and, secondly, sketch the outline of what I perceive to be a critical, Marxian sociology of development
Interface is a new journal produced twice yearly by activists and academics around the world in response to the development and increased visibility of social movements in the last few years – and the immense amount of knowledge generated in this process. This knowledge is created across the globe, and in many contexts and a variety of ways, and it constitutes an incredibly valuable resource for the further development of social movements. Interface responds to this need, as a tool to help our movements learn from each other’s struggles.
Interface is a forum bringing together activists from different movements and different countries, researchers working with movements, and progressive academics from various countries to contribute to the production of knowledge that can help us gain insights across movements and issues, across continents and cultures, and across theoretical and disciplinary traditions. To this end, Interface seeks to develop analysis and knowledge that allow lessons to be learned from specific movement processes and experiences and translated into a form useful for other movements.
We invite both formal research (qualitative and quantitative) and practically-grounded work on all aspects of social movements. In doing so, we welcome contributions by movement participants and academics who are developing movement-relevant theory and research. Our goal is to include material that can be used in a range of ways by movements – in terms of its content, its language, its purpose and its form.
We are seeking work in a range of different formats, such as conventional articles, review essays, facilitated discussions and interviews, action notes, teaching notes, key documents and analysis, book reviews – and beyond (see details in the guidelines for contributors). Research contributions are reviewed by both activist and academic peers, other material is sympathetically edited by peers, and the editorial process generally will be geared towards assisting authors to find ways of expressing their understanding, so that we all can be heard across geographical, social and political distances.
Our first issue, published in January 2009, focussed on the theme of “movement knowledge”: what we know, how we create knowledge, what we do with it and how it can make a difference either in movement struggles or in creating a different and better world.
Our second issue, to be published in September 2009, will have space for general articles on all aspects of understanding social movements, as well as a special themed section on “civil society versus social movements”. By this we mean the increasing tension between officially-approved versions of popular participation in politics geared towards the mobilisation of consent for neo-liberalism – the world of consultation and participation, NGOs and partnership – and the less polite and polished world of people’s attempts to participate in politics on their own terms, in their own forms and for their own purposes – social movements, popular protest, direct action, and so on. In drawing this distinction, we realise that civil society organisations and social movements often have complex and contradictory practices and relationships which do not fit into two clearly distinguished categories. One of the objectives of this edition is not therefore to impose a straightjacket on reflections and analysis of these different types of participation but rather to open up discussion and strategic thinking between activists, movement participants and researchers working in different contexts and with different experiences.
The types of questions and experiences we are interested in exploring include (but are not limited to):
- To what extent do social movements and civil society organisations exist in an antagonistic and conflictual relationship?
- Are there examples in which this relationship can become constructive for the struggle for popular democracy and social justice?
- What can particular experiences of these types of participation tell us about the possibilities and limitations for the development and strengthening of popular resistance to neoliberalism?
- How can we develop theory and practice that overcomes the often idealistic notion that NGOs are always actors that foster social justice?
- How can we overcome the often simplistic critique of NGOs as the ‘trojan horses of neoliberalism’?
- What can the experiences of workers and participants in civil society organisations tell us about the nature of domination and resistance?
The deadline for contributions for the second issue is May 15th, 2009. Please contact the appropriate editor if you are thinking of submitting an article. You can access the journal and get further details at http://www.interfacejournal.net/ .
Interface is programmatically multilingual: at present we can accept and review submissions in Catalan, Danish, English, French, German, Italian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. We are also willing to try and find suitable referees for submissions in other languages, but cannot guarantee that at this point.
We are also very much looking for activists or academics interested in becoming part of Interface, particularly with the African, South Asian, Spanish-speaking Latin American, East and Central European, Mediterranean, Oceanian and North American groups.
Interface is an open-access, multilingual journal of social movement research by and for activists and academics – read the first issue here:
Students at Nottingham University have occupied a lecture theatre in support of Palestine – in doing so, they join the ever-widening ranks of students across the UK protesting the Israeli attacks on and occupation of Palestine by Israel … nice one, folks 
The Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice recently published one of my articles on the Narmada Struggle as a working paper. It is also posted elsewhere on this blog – in Word format – but this version works better for reference purposes
This link takes you to the paper:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/shared/shared_cssgj/Documents/working_papers/WP005.pdf
During the spring of 2008, I taught an MA course called Global Development at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. The course set out to chart patterns of change and contiutity in development as a process (i.e. the political economy of capitalist development), project (i.e. the dominant sets of development strategies deployed by institutions of various kinds) and an object of knowledge (i.e. development theories) from the age of imperialism to the age of globalization (aka the age of imperialism). The course was centred around a comprehensive set of PPT lecture notes, which is posted below:
Global Development Lecture Notes 2008
One of my articles on the Narmada struggle was recently published in the Journal of Historical Sociology – you can access it here:
Political Economy, Social Movements and State Power
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