The Geopolitics of Stuff
A discussion on supply chains, commodities, and climate
The material economy is back. Economists and commentators in recent decades had heralded (or lamented) the arrival of an automated, redundant, frictionless system of international commerce. But over the past two years, multiple global crises have exposed the fragile physical…
July 23, 2022
InterviewsResource Nationalism and Decarbonization
Revisiting “resource nationalism” in a new era of raw minerals demand
Across Latin America, a recent wave of left electoral victories has drawn comparisons to “Pink Tide” of the early 2000s. The current moment, however, coincides with a global push towards decarbonization, and much of the world’s supply of commodities essential…
August 8, 2020
InterviewsEconomics, Bosses, and Interest
An interview with Stephen Marglin.
Stephen Marglin is Walter S. Barker Professor Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since he received tenure in 1968.
April 24, 2020
InterviewsThe Weight of Movements
An interview with Frances Fox Piven
Few theorists of social movements have shaped the events that they analyze. Frances Fox Piven, Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the City University of New York and one of these few, has studied and agitated within American social…
February 13, 2020
InterviewsAusterity and Ideology
An interview with Kim Phillips-Fein
Kim Phillips-Fein is an associate professor of history at New York University and the author of the books "Invisible Hands: the Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal" and "Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics",…
January 29, 2020
InterviewsHistoricizing the Self-Evident
An interview with Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston has published widely in the history of science, including on probability and statistics, scientific objectivity and observation, game theory, monsters, and much else. Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science since 1995 (emeritus as…
September 26, 2019
InterviewsOptimizing the Crisis
An interview with Seda Gürses and Bekah Overdorf
Software that structures increasingly detailed aspects of contemporary life is built for optimization. These programs require a mapping of the world in a way that is computationally legible, and translating the messy world into one that makes sense to a…