Hilbourne Watson on Global Capitalism, White Supremacy, and Nationalism

Here is a recent presentation (that I recorded) by Emeritus Professor Hilbourne Watson.  It is titled "Crisis of global capitalism, global white supremacy, and the new nationalism" and was given at the 2018 conference of the Global Studies Association-North America at Howard University in Washington, D.C.  

Here is Hilbourne's Google scholar page and Amazon page.


Here is the abstract for his talk:

The study of social change is dominated by philosophical individualism and methodological nationalism that fragment the social, treats the individual as the irreducible unit of analysis, makes the sum of the parts greater than the whole, and reduces social relations between humans to technical relations between things. Contrastingly, I offer a historical materialist analysis of global white supremacy (GWS) and the new nationalism, and subsume them under the crisis of global capitalism, as reflected in overaccumulation, social polarization, legitimation and sustainability, and the impacts on working classes and other exploited and oppressed groups. I argue that GWS naturalizes and racializes world history, culture, politics, and social existence; historicizes nature; foments reactionary identitarian tendencies; doubles as the dominant norm of world order, and represents a politico-ideological expression of power relations, beyond the white somatic norm. ”

Island of Hispaniola: Coalitions and cross-border solidarity

I published a new op-ed on the Pambazuka Website (with an updated/corrected version published in the hardcopy of CounterPunch Magazine). The article provides some brief remarks and ideas on the political situation and social conflict in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and the connection between the two. A version in español is published on the Rebelión website and a Français verison is published in L'Aut'Journal (Haiti Liberte weekly newspaper version pasted below). 

全球化的双重危机：从墨西哥湾到亚利桑那

杰布 斯普拉格（Jeb Sprague）& 西赛尔 罗德里格斯（Cesar Rodriguez) 。

从漂浮着絮状原油的墨西哥湾，到发生针对移民袭击事件的亚利桑那，如今我们的国家似乎正处于一种持续的紧张状态。而对于在全球化进程中居于核心地位的我们来说，这两则事件都能在我们社会的基本结构中找到其更为深刻的原因。

四月二十日，距离路易斯安那海岸五十英里远的英国石油公司（BP）海上钻井平台发生了爆炸事故，从而导致十一名工人丧生并引发大量原油从海底喷涌而出，这次原油泄漏事件是美国历史上最为严重的一次。而仅仅在三天后，亚利桑那州州长简•布鲁尔就签署了针对非法移民的第1070号新决议法案，要求州警核查一切有非法移民嫌疑的移民的法律地位。尽管这两件事看似毫无关联，但是在一个认为资本的积累远比人的生计和生存环境更为重要的价值体系内，考虑这两者如何复杂的进行相互作用就显得极为重要。