Field Notes
On Laundromats
By George GryllsThe greatest social spaces in the great city of New York will soon be lost. Admittedly the subway stakes a good claim when the 2 train’s dispatcher calls the world to a halt between 14th and Chambers; we see the shackles of class, color, and commuter etiquette broken in a general display of grumbling discontent.
Dreams of National Capital: Market Socialism, Past and Present
By Jamie MerchantThe apparition of a general trade war stalks the global economic order. In the United States, it recently manifested itself in the debate over the issue of sanctions leveled against Chinese companies. Bernie Sanders, the unofficial standard bearer of neo-social democracy in the U.S., excoriated the Trump administration for walking back on sanctions against the telecommunications firm ZTE.
Jobs, Bullshit, and the Bureaucratization of the World
By Jason E. SmithYou probably first heard of him when reading, on Bloomberg.com or in the pages of The New Yorker, about his role as one of the “founders” of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some of you might have stumbled across him even earlier, when The New York Times published a short article on the openly anarchist anthropology professor whose politics, he lamented, thwarted his plans for tenure at Yale.
The Aggressiveness of Vulnerability
By Pavlos RoufosTrump has been president for over a year now but the arguments over what led to his victory are far from settled. Many sought to explain the surprising results with an age-old idea about a part of America historically resistant to “progress.”
ZAD: The State of Play
by S.G. and G.K., translated from the French by Janet KoenigToday in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, in western France, there is an area of about 4,000 acres that is illegally occupied, called ZAD (Zone à défendre, Zone to Defend). A few hundred people from different autonomous groups cohabit this place of social and ecological experimentation.
