Nearly on a weekly basis during the Trump years we heard pundits proclaim something along the lines of “who saw it coming?!” While the specifics were not predictable, the trend was clear. One of those for whom the writing was on the wall was historian and public policy expert Nancy MacLean, who published Democracy in […]
Tags: #Buchanan #Charles Koch #Democracy #Liberty #Nancy MacLean
Following years of protests, unrest and instability Abiy Ahmed became the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in 2018. After a year of optimism and positivity, the challenges put increasing pressure on a fragile transition. It was around this time that a group of scholars met to take stock of the situation and develop the ideas of […]
Tags: #Abiy Ahmed #Ethiopia #Political Reform #Transition #Tsehai
I looked forward to Hamid Dabashi’s Can Non-Europeans Think? (2015), with a forward by Walter Mignolo. Although the articles are interesting, they are a disconnected set of writings over a period of fifteen or so years. Most are former journalistic publications, which leaves academic readers wanting for references to follow-up on and dig deeper. The […]
Tags: #Can Non-Europeans Think? #Colonized mind #Eurocentrism #Fast Knowledge #Hamid Dabashi
With the potential for an end, or at least easing of tensions, in the GCC, it seems an interesting moment to look back and see what the perspectives were when the crisis started. “The Gulf Crisis: The View from Qatar” (2018), edited by Miller, gives a set of perspectives on a wide range of issues, […]
Tags: #Blockade #Gulf Crisis #Qatar #Saudi #UAE
In the realm of those interested in inequality, Milanovic and Piketty have been leading intellectual voices in the last decade. A few years ago I wrote about Milanovic’s 2016 book on global inequality, this post covers his 2019 book Capitalism, Alone. In general, I think anyone interested in development economics should read this, and fortunately […]
Tags: #Capitalism #Citizenship #Ideology #Inequality #Milanovic
Mahmood Mamdani has written a number of essential reading books, including When Victims Become Killers, as well as Citizen and Subject and Neither Settler Nor Native (reviews on those to come in future posts). Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity (2012) is the W. E. B. Du Bois lectures, presented in three chapters (Nativism: […]
Tags: #Colonialism #Define and rule #Ethnicity #Mamdani #Race