KPFA - Against the Grain

Who gets put into solitary confinement, and why? What roles do race, racism, and mental health diagnoses play? Terry Kupers describes what spending time in solitary does to the human psyche; he also cites recent changes in attitudes toward, and laws regulating, solitary confinement. (Encore presentation.) Bruce Arrigo and Brian Sellers, eds., The Pre-Crime Society: Crime, Culture, and Control in the Ultramodern Age Bristol University Press, 2021 Terry Kupers, Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It University of California Press, 2017 The post Thrown Into Solitary appeared first on KPFA.

Historian Lily Geismer looks at how the the Democratic Leadership Council and Clinton-era Democratic Party increased inequality, through development zones, charter schools, welfare “reform”, and microfinance. Creative commons image The post The Legacy of the New Democrats appeared first on KPFA.

According to James Martel, what anarchism opposes is “archism,” a form of politics based on rule and hierarchy. He points to three instances in which anarchism – by which he means horizontalist and collective politics– took hold: the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s; the Rojavan Revolution in contemporary Syria; and a region of Papua New Guinea where a man named Yali once held sway. James Martel, Anarchist Prophets: Disappointing Vision and the Power of Collective Sight Duke University Press, 2022 The post Anarchist Visions and Realities appeared first on KPFA.

Utopias aren’t unique to the left. The right has labored in myriad ways for a world without fetters on private property. In one striking case, a character called Michael Oliver, with a motley group of associates ranging from English lords to soldiers of fortune, successively attempted to set up a capitalist paradise in the South Pacific and Caribbean. Historian Raymond Craib discusses Oliver and his contemporary techno-utopian equivalents, dreaming up floating cities on the high seas and other private enclaves made possible by authoritarian power. Resources: Raymond Craib, Adventure Capitalism: A History of Libertarian Exit, from the Era of Decolonization to the Digital Age PM Press/Spectre, 2022 The post Capitalist Paradises appeared first on KPFA.

If emancipation is what we seek, what form should it take? How far can legal reforms and rights decrees take us toward a better world? Peter Burdon mines Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” essay for insights into how to think about emancipation and whether legal initiatives can deliver true freedom and equality. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Peter Burdon, Earth Jurisprudence: Private Property and the Environment Routledge, 2015 (Image on main page by Eric Haynes/Creative Commons.) The post Forms of Emancipation appeared first on KPFA.

At a time when media ownership was held in a few hands, rightwing press barons combined celebrity coverage with xenophobic and nationalist politics, lauding authoritarian leaders and playing down the threat of fascism. In the lead up to World War Two, the likes of William Randolph Hearst and Robert McCormack in the U.S., and Lords Rothermere and Beverbrook in the UK, flirted with fascism and promoted imperialism. Historian Kathryn Olmsted argues that they paved the way for far-right mass media today. Resources: Kathryn S. Olmsted, The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler Yale University Press, 2022 The post The Roots of the Far Right Press appeared first on KPFA.

Sidewalks take us places, but they’re also places of their own, where all sorts of people come together and interact. Shannon Mattern, who has written about the history of the sidewalk, claims that we’re entering a new era of sidewalk planning, use, and politics, driven in large part by advances in communications, surveillance, and smart technologies. Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh, eds., Re-Understanding Media: Feminist Extensions of Marshall McLuhan Duke University Press, 2022 Shannon Mattern, A City Is Not a Computer: Other Urban Intelligences Princeton University Press, 2021 The post Sidewalk Planning and Politics appeared first on KPFA.

The effects of climate change are here and serious. While it may seem like uncharted waters in the modern era, our ancestors in the 1600s faced a global climate crisis in a century wracked by wars, famines, and social unrest. Historian Geoffrey Parker discusses the lessons of the 17th century, where elites — with the exception of Tokugawa Japan — responded to the “Little Ice Age” with wars and scapegoating. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Geoffrey Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century Yale University Press, 2013 The post 17th Century Climate Crisis appeared first on KPFA.

How does political ideology work in Cuba? What is ideology anyway? Katherine Gordy argues that socialist ideology in Cuba, far from constituting a static, abstract canon of beliefs, is practiced and produced by people at all levels of Cuban society. She also comments on Fidel Castro’s espousal of Marxism and on the role of nineteenth-century intellectuals in Cuban revolutionary history. (Encore presentation.) Katherine Gordy, Living Ideology in Cuba: Socialism in Principle and Practice University of Michigan Press, 2015 Katherine Gordy, “Strategies of Imperialism and Opposition in Cuba: Reflections on the Purity of Anti-Imperialism” Viewpoint Magazine (Image on main page by Emmanuel Huybrechts.) The post Cuban Socialist Ideology appeared first on KPFA.

A hallmark of our age is feeling we’re perpetually struggling with time—not having enough of it to accomplish seemingly endless tasks and obligations, while swimming in a sea of distractions. Can we cope if we learn, following the gurus of time management, to become ever more disciplined and productive? Or does that just feed into a capitalist logic that doesn’t benefit us? Journalist Oliver Burkeman discusses the perils of time management orthodoxy. (Encore presentation.) Resources: Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2021 The post Mastering Time? appeared first on KPFA.