Africa

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Authoritarianism, State Violence, and Vigilantism: Security Challenges Posed by Illegal Miners in South Africa

Theory & ResearchIllegal miners, colloquially known as the zama zamas — over 75 percent of whom are undocumented migrants from neighbouring Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Mozambique — risk their lives foraging for leftover minerals, notably gold, in some of the world’s deepest mineshafts
By Kennedy Manduna

Asia

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How the Farmers in India Countered the Populist Authoritarianism of the Right

Theory & ResearchCounterstrategies need not merely emotionalize protest but to also revolutionize emotions. They need to dig deep into everyday ethics, their presence in common sense, and modes of normative evaluation. This is what happened during the Indian farmers' protests. Three years after they erupted, Ajay Gudavarthy takes a look at the successful mobilization that managed to make a dent in India's authoritarian regime
By Ajay Gudavarthy, CPS, JNU

The COVID-19 pandemic and the infrastructure of hate in India

In PerspectiveIn May 2020, while the world continued to grapple with ways of dealing with the pandemic, UN Secretary General António Guterres spoke about the “tsunami of hate” targeting specific communities in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. One such maelstrom, targeting the Muslim community, was seen taking place in India, with allegations of ‘corona jihad’ becoming widespread during the first phase of the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.
By Fathima Nizaruddin

Europe

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New Podcast: This Authoritarian Life

Brought with the support of IRGAC, This Authoritarian Life is a podcast that explores everyday human stories in order to better understand modern-day authoritarian politics
By IRGAC

“Protest for Production”: Fighting the Ethnic Authoritarian Model of Governance in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina

Theory & ResearchTo be in protest for production is a political axiom that cuts through the triad of insecurity-poverty-trauma. It has resonated powerfully across communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, forging links between workers, students, war veterans, artists, and activists that continue to this day
By Damir Arsenijevic

Latin America

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Restructuring the Skies: The Post-pandemic Shift in Argentine Aviation Labour Relations

In PerspectiveThe airline industry has only just recovered from its most severe crisis in history: the COVID-19 pandemic. For cabin crew workers in particular, the sectorial restructuring following LATAM Airways’ departure and the changes in the aeronautical regulations in 2021 marked a shift in labour relations and working standards
By Sara Cufré

Punitive Imaginaries and the Aftermath of the 2022 Elections in Brazil: Mediated Representations of Crime, Punishment, and Fear among the Far Right — a Critical Criminological Approach

Theory & ResearchThe use of penal policies as a form of social control in authoritarian neoliberalism and a deep culture of violence were both already part of the political landscape and the punitive imaginary in Brazil. Thus, Bolsonarism met a landscape that was ripe for a much more radical project of neoliberal punitivism
By Paula Gil Larruscahim

North America

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Resentment and Rage as Two Reactions to Violence

Theory & ResearchRabies is a virus produced in mammals, transmitted by salivary contact, but in Spanish the word rabia is often used to connote anger, irritation, hatred, ill will, and desire for revenge. This rage often leads to negative practices such as the annihilation of others. However, it is also true that on other occasions it can generate positive practices such as the fight for dignity and life
By Karla Sánchez Félix

Disappeared Is Said in the Negative: The Radical Questioning of the Concept of Disappearance and Its Usefulness

Theory & ResearchMexico has, up to date, 115,062 people reported as being disappeared. The problem is evident but raises many questions. Who counts as disappeared? How do we count disappearance? Who counts as “disappeared” and who not? Is every absence a disappearance? How valid is it to invoke disappearance in the case of absences? What do we understand when we hear that “people can disappear”? 
By César Antonio Popoca Gómez

WANA

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Why Do We Need a New Sociology of Revolution? The (Im)possibility of Zan-Zendegi-Azadi

Theory & ResearchAll revolutions in modern times have something in common: they surprise and overwhelm. Yet we cannot endure the moment of revolution, which we perceive as chaos that must be tamed by order of conceptual rationality. The Woman-Life-Freedom revolutionary movement is no exception. How can we read and understand it without domesticating the revolution?
By Ebrahim Towfigh and Seyed Mehdi Yousefi

“We Need a Flood!” – A Young and Independent Union’s Struggle in and through Waves of Local Strikes

InterviewIn this interview, we talk to Mehmet Türkmen, President of the United Textile, Weaving and Leather Workers’ Union (Birtek-Sen), which is an independent trade union founded in Gaziantep, one of Turkey’s major textile centres, at the beginning of 2022. Since its establishment, Birtek-Sen has played a critical role in numerous strikes, particularly in Gaziantep 
By Onur Can Taştan

Global

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From (Individual) Fears to (Collective) Cares

Theory & Research Neoliberalism has dismantled the social structures that offered security and orientation to life. The far right successfully channels the resulting fears and anxieties towards purist, social Darwinist fantasies. Politics of care stands as a defiant response to that. In an era defined by uncertainty and precarity, care emerges as survival, resistance, and imagination. Care is a counter-normative project: sustaining and (re)generating social life while embracing contradiction and resisting the demands for purity.
By Firoozeh Farvardin and Gustavo Robles