Politics Theory Other

Rana Barakat joins PTO from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank to talk about the current humanitarian situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, the significance of the recent general strike and the protests amongst Palestinians within the 1948 borders, and what Israel's escalation of violence may mean for Netanyahu's efforts at normalising Israel's relations with Arab states in the region.

Jacqueline Rose joins PTO to talk about her new book, On Violence and on Violence against Women. We discussed how psychoanalysis can help us grasp the mental states that make male violence possible, where Jacqueline parts company with the radical feminist perspectives of Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, and how the experience of trans women illuminates more broadly the nature of male violence against women. Finally, we talked about the violent history of South Africa - from the the colonial and apartheid eras up to the present day.

At the end of the 1980s, China's leaders came close to implementing the kind of economic shock therapy reforms that a few years later caused a social and economic catastrophe in the former Soviet Union and much of eastern Europe. A moment of enormous significance for Chinese and world history, Isabella Weber explains how and why China came to the brink of initiating an economic "big bang", and why ultimately the leadership chose to pursue a gradualist process of market reform instead. Later this month Isabella will be taking part in the book's official launch, along with James Galbraith, Branko Milanović and Bin Wong. You can register here if you would like to attend: https://tinyurl.com/4ybec9z2

Alex De Waal joins PTO to talk about his new book, New Pandemics, Old Politics: Two Hundred Years of War on Disease. We discussed the history of pandemic disease control, from the cholera outbreaks of the 19th century to HIV/AIDS and the Covid19 crisis. We chatted why the war on disease narrative is so unhelpful, how colonial era vaccination programmes spread HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and why the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918-19 is so little discussed and written about, despite its extraordinary death toll.

Earlier this month rioting broke out in loyalist communities in several towns and cities in Northern Ireland - the worst such violence for years. PTO spoke to Daniel Finn about his recent article for the London Review of Books on the causes of the disturbances. Become a £5 PTO supporter to get access to this episode and all other episodes of PTO Extra: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50112410

Robbie Shilliam joins PTO to talk about his article, 'Enoch Powell: Britain’s First Neoliberal Politician' which appeared in the New Political Economy Journal. We spoke about how Enoch Powell, far from being a political throwback was in fact a key figure in the emergence of neoliberalism and Thatcherism, and how his politics presaged the Brexit project. We also chatted about how Powell, in contrast to many conservatives became hostile to nostalgia for the British Empire and how he believed that an independent Britain, neither ruling an empire, nor becoming part of the embryonic European Union would find its proper place in the world.

Earlier this month the UK government published the latest defence review, titled 'Global Britain in a Competitive Age'. PTO spoke to international security analyst Paul Rogers about the defence review, and the government's move to increase the UK's nuclear stockpile by 40%. We also talked what the review tells us about the UK in a post-Brexit world and finally what the review means for the government's relations with China.

Owen Hatherley, Juliet Jacques, and Alberto Toscano join PTO to talk about Adam Curtis's new BBC series Can't Get You Out of My Head. We chatted about Curtis' politics, the changes in his documentary style since the early 1990s, and why he avoids talking about neoliberalism.

Melissa Gira Grant and Chardine Taylor Stone join PTO to discuss police and male violence and the murder of Sarah Everard. We talked about the importance of not seeing Wayne Couzen's role as a police officer as merely incidental to the murder of Everard and we also talked about why carceral feminist approaches that seek to combat male violence through the police and the courts are doomed to fail. We also talked about the social media reaction to the initial vigil for Sarah Everard on Clapham common and how the struggle against police violence and violence against women in general requires the building of a mass movement of collective struggle that cuts across different identities.

Emma Dowling joins PTO to talk about her new book 'The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It'. We chatted about the scale of the care crisis today, how social reproduction theory can help us to make sense of the crisis, and we also talked about how conservatives conceive of care and of how they believe practices of care should be undertaken.