How did the influential scholar Cedric Robinson understand black radicalism and global capitalism? Yousuf Al-Bulushi has written about what he sees as several constituent elements of the Robinsonian black radical tradition, including an appreciation of culture (which pushes back against Marxism’s materialism) and a critique of state-based models of self-determination. Al-Bulushi also considers Robinson’s engagement with world-systems analysis. (Encore presentation.)

Yousuf Al-Bulushi, “Thinking Racial Capitalism and Black Radicalism from Africa: An Intellectual Geography of Cedric Robinson’s World-System” Geoforum (pdf)

The post Cedric Robinson’s World appeared first on KPFA.

How does capitalism tap into our desires with the promise of objects to satisfy us? Yet when we possess them, the urge for something new reemerges. Geographer Jared Marguiles attempts to explain that paradox by looking at some of most endangered, and coveted, species in world: cacti. He examines the market for succulents and the collectors who drive it, including the strange illicit trade in legally available cacti.

Resources:

Jared D. Margulies, The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade, University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The post Looting Cacti appeared first on KPFA.

How can people be moved from sympathy to solidarity with an oppressed group? Juliet Hooker considers how the legendary writer and activist Ida B. Wells and Harriet Jacobs, whose slave narrative was the first authored by a woman in the U.S., balanced grief and grievance in an effort to mobilize white people to act to end Black suffering.

Juliet Hooker, Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss Princeton University Press, 2023

The post Portraying Black Loss appeared first on KPFA.

It’s the most important program combating food insecurity in the United States – and it originates from aid to the agricultural and food processing industries, not poverty alleviation. Christopher Bosso argues that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — has survived for almost sixty years, against those would would eliminate it, precisely because of this connection to agricultural interests.

Resources:

Christopher John Bosso, Why SNAP Works: A Political History — and Defense — of the Food Stamp Program UC Press, 2023

The post Food Aid to the Poor, Aid to Agriculture appeared first on KPFA.

What was the most powerful technology introduced into schools in the past century? You might answer the computer, or something like Zoom, or even the slide projector. But scholar Antero Garcia argues that it was the humble yellow school bus. Buses have been central to the struggle to desegregate education. And school buses are a zone — and mainly an unnoticed one — in which many working class children and children of color spend a significant part of their day. (Encore presentation.)

Resources:

Antero Garcia, All through the Town: The School Bus as Educational Technology University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The post The Yellow School Bus appeared first on KPFA.

What role have historians, and the discipline of history itself, played in how historical events unfold? Priya Satia contends that historians were key architects of British imperialism, that history enabled empire in fundamental ways. She also contests the notion that history unfolds in a linear and progressive fashion, and discusses the work and impact of the working-class historian E. P. Thompson. (Encore presentation.)

Priya Satia, Time’s Monster: How History Makes History Belknap Press, 2023 (paper)

The post History’s Complicity in Empire appeared first on KPFA.

Revolutionaries in one country can inform and inspire rebels in another. Kevin A. Young examines the impact of Vietnamese and Chinese revolutionary strategies on El Salvador’s guerrillas in the tumultuous 1970s and ’80s. Among other things, he describes how conceptions of “prolonged popular war” were adopted and adapted by the FPL, the FMLN’s largest faction.

Becker, Power, Wood, and Zumoff, eds., Transnational Communism across the Americas University of Illinois Press, 2023

The post (Re)making Revolution appeared first on KPFA.

The pandemic highlighted the vital importance of care work—whether childcare, nursing home care, medical care or schooling – and the struggles many people face to get sufficient care. Would more public investment solve the crisis? Historian Premilla Nadasen argues that the problem lies with contemporary capitalism itself, as care has become an enormous arena for corporate profit, in which the state is often deeply complicit.

Resources:

Premilla Nadasen, Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism Haymarket Books, 2023

The post Profiting from Care appeared first on KPFA.

Our regularly scheduled programming is preempted from 6am to 9pm (PST) today for a special fundraiser.

During this one-day event, we air old and new broadcasts that demonstrate the richness of the Pacifica Radio Archives and how important it is that we ensure their preservation and accessibility.

We appreciate your understanding and support in contributing to the success of this important initiative.

The post Preempted for Pacifica Radio Archives Fundraiser appeared first on KPFA.

Why is the aging of populations framed as a crisis? What settler-colonial and capitalist logics are at work, and how are older people viewed and treated as a result? Sandy Grande delineates and critiques mainstream frameworks; she also advances a decolonial perspective that draws on indigenous attitudes toward elders and toward old age-associated conditions like dementia. (Encore presentation.)

René Dietrich and Kerstin Knopf, eds., Biopolitics, Geopolitics, Life: Settler States and Indigenous Presence Duke University Press, 2023

Sandy Grande, ed., Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought Rowman & Littlefield

The post Aged Out? appeared first on KPFA.