Journals at the University of Arizona
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Nicos Poulantzas on political economy, political ecology, and democratic socialism
No full textAbstract This article presents the inaugural memorial lecture at the Nicos Poulantzas Institute in Athens. It examines and extends the work of the eponymous Greek legal and political theorist, political economist, and communist intellectual, Nicos Poulantzas, who radically transformed Marxist state theory, made major contributions to the critique of political economy for the era of Atlantic Fordism and post-war American imperialism, and called for a judicious balance between representative and direct democracy to secure a democratic transition to democratic socialism. It first offers some general reflections on the originality, legacy and actuality of Poulantzas's work in these respects and then reconstructs his later views on the critique of political economy before his death in 1979. Noting his neglect of the environment and issues of political ecology, which was typical of the French and Greek left in the 1970s and also rooted in more general features of Marxist theorizing on nature and the environment, the article elaborates a Poulantzasian view of political ecology based on key arguments from his work. The article concludes by reasserting the validity of his vision of democratic socialism, indicating that it would have become a critique of political ecology, and suggests that he would have approached this in the same spirit of romantic public irony that was advocated by one of his major theoretical and political influences – Antonio Gramsci. Key words: capitalist states; class analysis; democracy; ecology; imperialist rivalries; Nicos Poulantzas; productivism; state theory; the strategic-relational approac
The unit of resilience: unbeckoned degrowth and the politics of (post)development in Peru and the Maldives
No full textAbstract This article asks how people envision lives without economic growth in contexts where conventional development ceases to be feasible. It presents ethnographic research I conducted in Peru and in the Maldives, which policymakers see as two climate crisis frontiers. I argue for defining resilience as a grounded, necessarily local, actor's theory of permanence; it is a theory people from diverse social classes and institutions generate in situations of vulnerability and crisis. In the Andes' Colca Valley, which some residents predict has only several habitable decades left due to increasing water scarcity, sustainable development projects are attenuating their presence as their budgets shrink, while mining enterprises and their corporate social responsibility programs have emerged as development's new agenda setters. The Maldives is one of the world's lowest-lying nations, which rising seas could soon render uninhabitable. Between 2008 and 2012, President Mohamed Nasheed made addressing the climate crisis a policy priority by substituting conventional industrial development with a short-lived quest for national carbon neutrality. Examining this contrapuntal pair of frontier sites, I argue that defining the unit of resilience is a political act: forging this definition means prioritizing what, in a human-driven ecosystem, should remain permanent and what should be left behind. Keywords: resilience, degrowth, climate change, Peru, Maldive
Beyond (anti)utilitarianism: khat and alternatives to growth in northern Madagascar
No full textAbstract: Madagascar has one of the lowest GDPs in the world. Colonization brought the country into the global economy, but left it at its margins—vulnerable to the hardships of structural adjustment and limitations of state infrastructure. This analysis reveals economic decision-making that defies the utilitarian logic of homo economicus and inspires creative thinking about alternatives to growth as a dominant paradigm. In northern Madagascar, the economy of the stimulant khat is part of one socionatural world characterized by low levels of production and consumption. Madagascar provides a case study for suggesting that "making a living" invokes an intricate web of material desires, cultural meaning, and social connections that do not necessarily revolve around a capitalist growth motive. This article proposes that a path to sustainability is not only in changing social imaginaries but also in valorizing and leveraging cognitive orientations and practices that exist but that may fall below the radar of traditional economic analysis. Keywords: Madagascar, khat, utilitarian, degrowth, economy, urba
The political ontology of climate change: moral meteorology, climate justice, and the coloniality of reality in the Bolivian Andes
No full textAbstract Taking Boaventura de Sousa Santos' argument that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice as its starting point, this article suggests that there is no global climate justice without global cognitive justice (implying both ontological justice and epistemological justice). If we take "the ontological turn" in anthropology and other disciplines and its focus on indigenous ontologies seriously, however, we seem to end up in a situation that is difficult to maneuver in relation to conventional understandings of climate justice. When discussing climate change in relation to multiple ontologies, there are two risks: 1) reproducing what I call "the coloniality of reality", arguing that indigenous ontologies are actually nothing but a cultural (mis-) representation of the world; 2) reproducing a conservative relativism that leads to nothing but the maintenance of status quo and that bears a resemblance to climate change denial. A thorough ethnographic understanding of what I would call "the moral meteorology" of the Andes and a broadened understanding of climate change, however, make it possible to navigate between the Scylla of coloniality and the Charybdis of relativism and to articulate a radical critique of fossil-fueled capitalism from a relational ontology, demanding climate justice while denouncing coloniality, and discussing the political ontology of climate change without ignoring its political ecology - and vice versa. Key words: Coloniality; climate justice; cognitive justice; political ontology; political ecology; Aymar
Toward an urban political ecology of energy justice: the case of rooftop solar in Tucson, AZ
No full textThe rapid deployment of rooftop solar panels in many US cities has raised new concerns about the fair distribution of electricity costs through rates. Electric utilities argue that existing rate structures shift costs from solar owners to lower-income ratepayers, while critics say rooftop solar benefits all ratepayers and helps address environmental injustice. In light of these competing justice claims, this article asks: what are the implications of rooftop solar for energy justice? Drawing on a case study from southern Arizona, we use urban political ecology (UPE) to analyze debates about rooftop solar that speak to three types of justice: distributive, procedural, and recognition. While dominant justice claims revolve around the distribution of costs through rates, competing claims emphasize procedural and recognition (in)justice. Focusing on political economy, power relations, and the materiality of the grid, we reframe the utility company's cost shift argument as a strategic narrative and explain why this understanding of justice is recognized as legitimate while others are not. We propose that UPE can further an energy justice analysis by understanding procedural and recognition injustice as systemic products of rate of return regulation, and the material configuration of the electric grid.Keywords: urban political ecology, energy justice, rooftop solar, decentralized energy, electric utility regulatio
Jack Kerouac: An Uncommon Public Intellectual
No full textJack Kerouac: An Uncommon Public Intellectual
Egypt and Assyria in Isaiah 11:11–16
Get PDFIn the following article I will deal with one of Isaiah’s prophecies, Isaiah 11:11–16, whose date is debated. In this article, I will concur that the prophecy is not original to Isaiah, nor was there an early Isaianic core that was expanded in later periods. Other scholars suggested different dates for the prophecy, ranging from the reign of Josiah at the end of the Assyrian rule in the Levant until the Hasmonean Period. I will forward a different historical setting to the oracle than the hitherto given options. According to this understanding, the oracle was composed in the mid-7th century BCE and reflects the political situation during the reigns of Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, and Manasseh, King of Judah, respectively
Chronological Conundrums: Egypt and the Middle Bronze Age Southern Levant
Get PDFThe current volume of Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections assembles papers that were given at the member-organized session on “The Middle Bronze Age in the Southern Levant Revisited: Chronology and Connections” at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2016.The session’s goal was to stimulate a renewed discussion on Middle Bronze Age chronology for the southern Levant and its connections with Egypt, as a number of recent radiocarbon sequences from several sites challenge current chronologicalassessments and, thus, correlations with the historical chronology of Egypt..
HIV TARGETS CELLS: EFFECT OF THEIR INFECTION BY HIV ON THE PATHOGENESIS OF AIDS
No full textPathogenesis of HIV infection and expression of retroviral proteins are gradually being elucidated. Antibody to HIV is a marker of past or present viral infection. The virus can be isolated from cultured lymphocytes of seropositive but not seronegative patients. Sero-epidemiological studies show that the majority of infected patients are asymptomatic carriers without biological sign of immune depression. Some then show immune abnormalities such as a decrease of CD4 cells in the blood; some patients present with lymphadenopathies or signs of AIDS-related complexes. Frank AIDS is a late stage of the disease. Some cofactors increase the immunodeficiency and then accelerate the passage from asymptomatic carrier to persistent generalized lymphadenopathies or AIDS by spreading the virus into target cells, susceptible T4 cells, bone marrow precursors, or brain. These AIDS patients then present with opportunistic infections and/or malignancies like Kaposi's sarcoma, lymphoma, and/or brain diseases (dementia or encephalitis)