What are the implications of the rise of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) for agrarian and environmental transformations, worldwide and in the BRICS countries in particular? This is the main issue with which the BRICS Initiative for Critical Agrarian Studies (BICAS) has been concerned since 2013, when it was launched in Beijing by a collective of largely BRICS-based research institutions1.
The durability of austerity policies in the European Union is due in part to the way neoliberal values such as competition and individual responsibility are perpetuated in popular media. How can movements break this monopoly on information to articulate different values and help mobilise citizens against austerity.
Walden Bello shares some reflections on the meaning of Seattle for change in knowledge systems, discusses how despite the deep crisis of neoliberalism, finance capital has managed to retain tremendous power, and appeals for a new comprehensive vision of the desirable society.
There is mounting evidence that neoliberal policies are losing legitimacy. The translation of such disaffection into positive commitment to an alternative, however, requires deeper disengagement from the dominant order and practical participation in creating alternatives. A social order built on escaping the pressures of democracy while at the same time depending on the capacities of many desiring democracy is unlikely to be stable. Thus the opaque and indirect forms of power typical of neoliberal rule are simultaneously sources of vulnerability and dependence, and breeding grounds for the power to subvert and transform.
The philosophy and experience of radical movements in the 1960s and 70s are in several ways complementary to the ideas of the direct action movements of today. Hilary Wainwright examines the possibility of forging a new kind of political economy by learning from the best of both of them.
Whose interest does the ten-year Strategy document for Africa actually serve? The World Bank has shown little insight into the real problems Africa faces, focusing instead on ineffective policies, support for repressive regimes and projects that are known to have failed.
Free trade or slave trade? How the EU's free trade agreements in Colombia and Peru reward human rights abuses, destroy livelihoods, promote land grabbing and strip governments of their sovereignty to regulate capital flows.
After a brief period of destabilisation, self-justification and the occasional mea culpa, the very people and institutions that plunged the world into crisis have re-emerged unscathed, as the fount of truth and all reasonable policy.
The U.S. and India should not sign a treaty that will only serve the short-term interests of large corporations, and undermine the authority of governments to protect their people from financial crisis.
India's story starkly illustrates the disconnect between GDP and social progress, and the need for radically new economics developed from the bottom up.
A clear and plain language guide to the EU's neoliberal investment regime, explaining both the social and environmental costs of prying open poor, vulnerable countries' economies, as well as outlining a number of ethical alternatives.
