⁠⁠Event Tickets: Political Economy in a Time of Monsters⁠ (May 12th)

Welcome back to After Order - a series from Macrodose and the Alameda Institute - exploring power and crisis in today’s unstable world.

In this week’s episode, we’re turning to the concept of Popular Sovereignty. At a moment when the old order is breaking down - when states are less able to guarantee rights, stability, or even the basic conditions of life - what does it mean for movements, communities, and working people to build power for themselves?

Joining James to explore that question is Gabriel Tupinambá, Senior Researcher at Alameda. In an upcoming paper titled ‘Popular Sovereignties Under Peripheral Conditions’, Gabriel looks to social movements, especially those in Brazil, to understand how communities are attempting to reclaim sovereignty on new terms. 

Gains that once seemed durable - access to land, political representation, legal recognition - now appeared increasingly fragile. Right-wing forces are reorganising both inside and outside the state, and progressives are too often clinging to outdated institutions that have themselves become unstable. 

Under these conditions, Gabriel argues that we need to rethink sovereignty from the ground up. Not as a juridical status, or as participation in a national project, but as something more material and immediate, the means of life itself - food, land, shelter, social reproduction - as the basis for any sustained political struggle.

Was the stability of the postwar period always more fragile than it appeared? Are the conditions long associated with the global periphery now becoming generalised across the world? And if movements today can still disrupt systems of power, why is it so much harder to build alternatives that last?

All that and more, in this week’s After Order.

Image Credits:

• Arquivo e Memória, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST)
• Sebastiao Salgado c/o⁠ https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=2560,quality=82,format=auto,fit=contain/filestore/images/after-months-of-occupation-of-the-cuiaba-plantation-by-landless-families-the-peasants-celebrate-the-official-expropriation-state-of-sergipe-brazil-1996.jpg⁠
• Wellington Lenon c/o ⁠https://www.brasildefato.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/MST-_-Foto-Wellington-Lenon.jpg ⁠
• Gilvan Oliveria, c/o ⁠https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2024/01/22/lasdless-workers-movement-celebrates-40-years-and-becomes-the-longest-running-peasant-movement-in-brazil/⁠
• Douglas Mansur, c/o ⁠https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2024/01/22/lasdless-workers-movement-celebrates-40-years-and-becomes-the-longest-running-peasant-movement-in-brazil/⁠
• Eraldo Peres, c/o ⁠https://www.thenation.com/article/world/brazil-mst-landless-workers-movement/⁠
• Alf Ribeiro, c/o ⁠https://dissentmagazine.org/article/brazils-landless-workers-rise-mst-land-occupation/⁠

• Duda Oliva c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03_Duda-Oliva-2.jpg⁠
• Judy Duarte c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/02_Juliana-2.jpg⁠
• Natália Gregorini c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/04_Natalia-2.jpg⁠

Artworks

• Duda Oliva c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/03_Duda-Oliva-2.jpg⁠
• Judy Duarte c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/02_Juliana-2.jpg⁠
• Natália Gregorini c/o ⁠https://thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/04_Natalia-2.jpg⁠