This post is written by Kira Brenner, Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. In July of 2018, I met a group of women who had been occupying their former factory for six months, located in an industrial area outside of the tourist city of Monastir, on the central coast of Tunisia. The factory closed in December, and their sit-in began immediately after. They have suffered numerous
This post is written by Christian Lund who is Professor of Development, Resource Management, and Governance, at the Department of Food and Resource Economics, at Copenhagen University. It is part of the Journal of Agrarian Change blog, hosted on the Development Studies at SOAS blog. The Burning Forest. India’s War in Bastar, by Nandini Sundar. Delhi: Juggernaut, 2016. Pp. 413+xvi. ₹ (Indian Rupees) 699 (cloth). ISBN 978-93-8622-800-0. Terror is at the heart
Free Issue of Journal of Agrarian Change to mark 50 years since Naxalbari This post is written by Jens Lerche, Reader in Agrarian and Labour Studies in the Department of Development Studies, SOAS and Editor in Chief of Journal of Agrarian Change, Alpa Shah, Associate Professor (Reader) in Anthropology at LSE, and Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at Oxford University. It is part of the Journal of Agrarian Change blog, hosted
Alfredo Saad Filho is Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, industrial policy, alternative macroeconomic policies, and the labour theory of value and its applications. The certainties that used to hold neoliberalism together are melting into the air: the common sense of the age has degenerated into clichés. Tried and tested policies such as privatisation, marketisation and trade
Michael Jennings is a Head of Department and Senior Lecturer in the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the politics and history of development processes in sub-Saharan Africa; governance, civil society, non-governmental organisations and faith-based organisations; and social aspects of health in Africa. On the scale of some of the things that emerged from the mouth of now US president-elect Donald Trump on the campaign scale, allegedly calling
Tobias Franz completed his PhD at SOAS on the political economy of local economic development and institutional change in Colombia and has taught in the SOAS Development Studies department. The joy of the international community and the mainstream press was overwhelming when, on August 24th, after 52 years (or 70, depending on the definition) of armed conflict the Colombian Government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced a final
Matt Kandel is a Newton International Fellow in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. One Monday afternoon last August I was seated underneath a large palm tree with my friend, Simon, in Soroti Town in rural eastern Uganda, both of us relaxing and seeking a minor respite from the equatorial African sun. The subject of our conversation was the weekend-long clan meeting that he and his family had organised
Alfredo Saad Filho is Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, industrial policy, alternative macroeconomic policies, and the labour theory of value and its applications. The judicial coup against President Dilma Rousseff is the culmination of the deepest political crisis in Brazil for 50 years. Every so often, the bourgeois political system runs into crisis. The machinery of
Adam Hanieh is a Senior Lecturer in the SOAS Department of Development Studies. He is the author of the 2013 book Lineages of Revolt: Issues of Contemporary Capitalism in the Middle East. His research interests include political economy of the Middle East, labour migration, class and state formation in the Gulf Cooperation Council and Palestine. ISIS emerged out of the dashed hopes of the Arab Spring In the wake of the
Alfredo Saad Filho is Professor of Political Economy at the SOAS Department of Development Studies. His research interests include the political economy of neoliberalism, industrial policy, alternative macroeconomic policies, and the labour theory of value and its applications. Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies has opened impeachment procedures against President Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers’ Party (PT). This manoeuvre is led by an unholy coalition of opportunistic politicians, grubby businessmen, ravenous financiers,
