Cash crops in the wildlands: Different worlds are at stake

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Naomi Millnerby Naomi Millner, University of Bristol

“No-one is forced [to leave their homes]. This is an absolute lie. The people around Gambella are inhabiting the place in a very scattered manner” Ethiopian government (quoted in BBC news online 2012)

The quote is taken from the latest Sub-Saharan ‘land grab’ episode to hit the media headlines – this time we are brought to the western wildlands of Ethiopia, where, Human Rights Watch (2012) reports, approximately 70,000 indigenous people have been relocated into villages that lack adequate food, farmland, and healthcare facilities. Continue reading →

Return of the living debt

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Sara Nelsonby Sara Nelson, University of Minnesota

In the turbulent aftermath of the financial crisis, one recent development is particularly startling: the resurrection, without warning and from an unknown realm, of mortgage debts previously settled and buried. A recent article in the Huffington Post reports on several of a growing number of cases in which homeowners who had paid off and received confirmation of closure on past loans were suddenly confronted by former creditors with demands for payment. As the article reports, these specters are not so easy to shake: “sometimes haunting [homeowners] all the way to foreclosure” (Conlin 2012: np). Continue reading →

The 2012 Antipode AAG Lecture: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

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We’d like to invite anyone attending the Association of American Geographers’ annual meeting in New York to join us at the 2012 Antipode AAG Lecture. We are pleased to announce that this year’s lecture is to be given by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University).

The date/time for your diary is Friday 24 February 2012 at 16:40. Prof. Spivak’s lecture will be in the Mercury Rotunda, Hilton NY, and will be followed by a drinks reception (for more details please click here). Continue reading →

‘This is about our humanity’ redux

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Those who read Punam Khosla’s first post, ‘This is about our humanity’, should find this important report from the Real News Network interesting.

In the video below, ‘Egyptian women demand justice, denounce military’, Cairo-based journalist Jihan Hafiz reports Egyptian women protesters confronting police and soldiers as they prepare for a general strike… Continue reading →

Occupy Wall Street and ‘Occupation’

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Kareem Rabieby Kareem Rabie, City University of New York

One of the first critiques of OWS from the left has come from Indigenous activists, Palestine solidarity workers, and others questioning the use of the language of “occupation”. In my previous post I discussed some of the ways that Zionist organizers are preventing the idea of Palestine, or anti-Zionism, from entering into the debate about what Occupy Wall Street should be about. Continue reading →

What’s the point of radical scholarship?

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Radical scholarship: what’s it all about? So Clive Barnett, a geographer at the Open University, has been asking over at his blog, Pop Theory. Barnett has been ‘thinking out loud’ (his words!) about, among other things, some ideas outlined by Stanford University anthropologist James Ferguson in Antipode’s 40th anniversary special issue, The Point is to Change It. Continue reading →

Radical geographies of the sea?

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Andy Daviesby Andy Davies, University of Liverpool

In the aftermath of the cruise liner Costa Concordia capsizing off the coast of Italy, I began to think about how the sea relates to what we do in geography. This was sparked by Andrew Linnington, writing for Nautilus International, the union for maritime professionals, speaking of how the increasing size of cruise liners was placing increasing pressure on Nautilus’ membership, with more passengers on board to evacuate, it was, we are told, less a case of if than of when a disaster would occur, should something befall a contemporary cruise liner Continue reading →