The Lost City of Solidarity
Organized labor in the United States has always been an urban institution. But new estimates of union density in American metropolitan settings show that relationship unraveling.
Winter 2025
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Photo Essay: Consuming China
Despite being the “world’s manufacturer,” China has been moving toward a consumption-led economy. In this photo essay, Tong Lam looks at the consumer products and information that saturate everyday life in China.
WikiLeaks and the 2014 Sochi Olympics
Precisely ten months from today, the 2014 Winter Olympics will open in Sochi, Russia. This weekend also marks the three-year anniversary of one of WikiLeaks’s most controversial interventions: the release of a video documenting American troops in Apache helicopters gunning …
Feminism’s Tipping Point: Who Wins from Leaning in?
In her time at Facebook, Losse saw the ideas behind Lean In take root. The book’s goals become legible when understood to be as informed by Silicon Valley business tactics as by feminism. What exactly are we leaning into?
A Thousand Kinds of Life: Culture, Nature, and Anthropology
Marshall Sahlins has resigned from the National Academy of Sciences in political and academic protest. His motivations lead to some big questions: What is anthropology? What is it for? And what does it mean to be human?
Social Democracy for Centrists
The Economist, long identified with libertarian economic ideals, lauded the “Nordic model” in a cover story last month as a “centrist” economic path for global capitalism.
The Franchise Fight: Workers Look to Hold Fast-Food Corporations Accountable
Organized fast-food workers recently celebrated a tentative victory in New York. Deliverymen at four Manhattan Domino’s locations were granted leave to amend a complaint in an ongoing class-action lawsuit—a mundane but necessary step in what labor organizing has become in …
Make Way for High Rises: Who Benefits from Slum Demolitions in Mumbai?
Throughout Mumbai, one can see members of a vast, seldom-remunerated labor pool that does not share in globalization’s promises of plenty and exists on the legal margins. Sixty-two percent of Mumbaikars live on land to which they have no legal claim.
Dresden, Nazi-Free: The New Politics of German Civil Disobedience
In the last few years, Dresden became the site of an intense political struggle over how to adequately respond to thousands of neo-Nazis marching annually in the streets. It also became the site of an ongoing authoritarian-conservative backlash against social movements.
Yes I Said Yes I Will ¥€$: Koolhaas in China
The CCTV Headquarters constitutes Koolhaas’s attempt to mitigate the pervasive banality he associates with the present. It is probably his masterpiece.
Italy’s Anti-Austerity Election: The Comedian Takes the Stage
The ex-comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement is now the first party in the Italian parliament. His rise, along with the resurgence of Berlusconi, signal a stable right-wing hegemony in Italian politics and society.
Demanding a Voice, Enduring Silence: Lessons from a Brazilian Women’s Movement
In the movement and in their town, Ivone and Vania learned firsthand the pain that comes from silence. They didn’t want to damage a movement that protected other women from this pain by demanding a space in the movement for themselves.
What’s So Bold about $9.00 an Hour? Benchmarking the Minimum Wage
However bold the president’s pitch seems in the current political climate, a minimum wage of $9.00/hour is still a modest threshold by any sensible measure.
An Expedient Alliance? The Muslim Right and the Anglo-American Left
Left-wing alliances with fundamentalist groups are betrayals of the majority of their co-religionists, who do not wish to be represented by extremists. Such alliances are also betrayals of basic socialist principle.
Can The Gatekeepers Open the Gates to the Empire?
A college professor once taught me that a decaying empire clenches onto power with a chokehold. Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian people may not be an empire, but after nearly forty-six years, it has become a sort of reigning paradigm …
