International election observer

    This weekend I am serving as part of an international election observer delegation working with the Mexican civil society organization “Ni un fraude más". We are investigating electoral processes in the State of Mexico as it undergoes an important gubernatorial election. Here is information in español about our mission, and the institutional and democratic crisis that Mexico faces.

Extend Haiti's TPS designation

I am a co-signer of this open letter calling for the U.S. government to extend Haiti's TPS (temporary protected status) designation. As the letter states: failure to extend TPS "would be disastrous for families here and there and destabilizing, adding a significant burden to a nation already saddled with overwhelming challenges, increasing desperation..."

New Op-Ed on Whiteness & the U.S. Political Scene

See Counterpunch for a new op-ed that I have co-authored : "The US Political Scene: Whiteness and the Legitimacy Crisis of Global Capitalism".  It also appears here in Spanish and here in French.

Interview on The Real News

I was interviewed today by The Real News Network on current events in Haiti and in relation to my earlier research on paramilitarism in the context of economic restructuring, social conflict, and political tensions in the country.

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My new piece in Latin American Perspectives

The journal Latin American Perspectives has published my lengthy review of Caribbeanist Hilbourne Watson's excellent new monograph Globalization, Sovereignty and Citizenship in the Caribbean (published with the University of the West Indies Press).

The review also includes some thoughts on the contributions to the volume by other well-known Caribbean political economists, such as Alex Dupuy, Linden Lewis, and Anton L. Allahar. You can read the entire review here.  

CFP: Global Capitalism in the Americas

Call For Papers: Global Capitalism in the Americas The 4th Biennial Conference of the Network for the Critical Study of Global Capitalism (NCSGC) November 1-3, 2017 Colegio Universitario San Geronimo de La Habana, Cuba Featuring keynote speakers Luis Suarez and William I. Robinson

Co-sponsored by the Universidad de La Habana

In today’s global political economy, we are witnessing a new era of integration and inequality, which is playing out through particular expressions of systemic crises. We are also witnessing the rise of a ultra-neoliberal authoritarian political project in the United States, in conjunction with the resurgence of right-wing political sectors across the Americas. What should we understand about the particularities of this globalization phase in the history of world capitalism, and in the context of these regions and their populations? How can working and popular classes, and their movements from below, effectively coordinate and struggle in a world of capitalist globalization? The purpose of this conference is to focus critical studies of global capitalism on Central, North, and South America, and on the Caribbean, to provide opportunities for interested scholars and activists to explore, discuss, and debate related issues occurring in these regions.  • The transnational capitalist class across the Americas. • Capitalist globalization, capital accumulation and development. • Trumpism: the rise of neo-liberal authoritarianism and its neo-fascist contingents. • Movements from below, activism, and the popular classes in the 21st century Americas. • Migration and crossing borders. • Transnational capital and the state. • State repression, militarization, soft power, & coup d’etats. • Class war on the marginalized and super-exploited. • Financialization and tax havens. • Education and other institutions. • Global corporate networks intersecting with Latin America and the Caribbean. • Capitalism, class and power relations in these regions. • Gendered and Racialized social relations in the Western Hemisphere. • Ideological formation in the global epoch. • Natural resource conflicts and environmental movements. All abstracts (100 words) must be submitted by August 15, 2017 to: Vladimir Pacheco Cueva, vpc@cas.au.dk CONFERENCE COST: $175.00 US    For more information on the Network for the Critical Study of Global Capitalism see: https://netglobalcapitalism.wordpress.com/about/ Conference Organizing Committee: William K. Carroll (Univ. of Victoria, Canada), Vladimir Pacheco Cueva (Aarhus Univ. Denmark), Anthony van Fossen (Griffith Univ. Australia), Jerry Harris (Global Studies Association, US), Marek Hrubec (Czech Academy of Sciences), Georgina Murray (Griffith Univ. Australia), Isaias R. Rivera (Univ. Autonoma de Chihuahua, Mexico), William I. Robinson (Univ. of California Santa Barbara, US), Leslie Sklair (London School of Economics, UK), and Jeb Sprague-Silgado (Univ. of California Santa Barbara, US).

Haïti : le capitalisme des paramilitaires

La revue Période a publié mon nouvel article en français «Haïti : le capitalisme des paramilitaires». Avec une approche portant sur l'économie politique globale, cet article donne un aperçu et une mise à jour des informations contenues dans mon livre datant de 2012. Une version mise à jour et élargie est publiée dans América Latina en movimiento.

Upcoming talk at Cornell University

I will be giving a talk at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York on Thursday, March 9, 4:30 pm, Founders Room, Anabel Taylor Hall, Cornell University. The talk is co-sponsored by CUSLAR (the Committee on U.S.-Latin American Relations). The talk, titled "The Caribbean in the vortex of global capitalism" will be connected to a chapter in my forthcoming book The Caribbean and Global Capitalism.

Review in Journal of Asia Pacific Economy

The Journal of Asia Pacific Economy has published a review (by Oliver Turner) of my edited volume "Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania" (Routledge, 2015). You can read the entire review here.

A look back at 'Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti'

        My 2012 book "Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti" provided a detailed documentation and investigation of paramilitarism in Haiti in the lead up to and following the 2004 coup d'état.   It looked at the manner in which paramilitary groups (and those facilitating them) altered from the Duvlierist era up through the early twenty first century, ensuring a reproduction of the coercive paramilitary apparatus. Below I want to look over some of the discussion that the book has sparked.

Call for Papers: Paramilitarism in Global Perspective

See below the CFP for a new edited volume that I am co-editting:

The Political Violence of Capital: Paramilitary Formations

In Global Perspective

Editors: Jasmin Hristov, Jeb Sprague-Silgado and Aaron Tauss

         We are seeking proposals /abstracts of 500 words maximum for chapter contributions to the volume. We encourage submissions of proposals for works that address paramilitary violence in any part of the world. The deadline for submitting a proposal is December 1, 2016. Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, and current position in the same Word document as the abstract. Acceptance notification will be sent out by December 15. If accepted, contributors will be given a general list of guiding questions that should be addressed in their work and completed chapters would be due by March 15, 2017. 

     Please insert in the subject line of your email: “paramilitary proposal” and send your document as an attachment to: jasminmanaus[at]gmai[dot]com

      Paramilitary violence is a specific type of violence exercised by non-state actors and/or state agents operating outside the boundaries of legality, on behalf of economically and politically powerful social forces. Its objectives typically revolve around attacking social movements, activists, Leftist politicians and other individuals or groups who challenge the established social order, as well as facilitating land acquisition through the forced displacement of civilians from land of strategic economic importance. Paramilitary groups may also perform other functions such as ‘social cleansing’, and ‘protection’ of private property. Despite its anti-democratic character, over the past decades paramilitarism has evolved as a revamped strategy pursued by dominant groups and elites operating through different state apparatuses primarily in developing countries. Today paramilitary formations are present in varying degrees across the Americas and other areas worldwide. A central characteristic common to all is their alliance with capital and, frequently, a mutually supportive relationship with the state’s coercive apparatus and possibly other state institutions, ranging from complicity to active collaboration. In nations where economic elites are contesting reformist, nationalist, or Left-oriented governments, paramilitary groups have been used to destabilize the regime and undermine its popular support. As is well documented, paramilitary actors have been responsible for some of the most horrifying human rights violations and yet this type of violence is very poorly understood and investigated. In part, this has to do with the fact that paramilitaries are often categorized as “organized crime” which strips the political motivations and social consequences of their actions. 

     This edited volume examines the pervasive and persistent but little understood phenomenon of paramilitarism and its varying expressions throughout the world. Our aim is to reveal some of the most common features that characterize paramilitary groups such as: a)  use of violence to facilitate the accumulation of capital accumulation by transnational corporations and local companies integrated within the global  economy; b) engagement in human rights violations and illegal activities; c) attacks against social movements, Leftist organizations or individuals, and poor rural or urban communities; d)  collaboration with sectors of national and/or transnational state forces, e)  ‘security’ as an ideological cover, and f) a trend towards flexibilization and decentralization of forces. The objective is to compile empirically-oriented investigations that enable us to theorize and understand the role of paramilitaries in the processes of capitalist globalization and the increasing exacerbation of social inequalities. We are especially interested in demonstrating that although frequently the lines between paramilitarism and organized crime are blurry and fluid, paramilitary violence has comparatively much deeper implications and hence cannot simply be reduced to criminal activities. We are also open to exploring different possible configurations in the relationship between paramilitary groups, rival political factions, organized crime, and other actors. 

   

亞洲及大洋洲的跨國資本主義階級和生產關係

A Mandarin Chinese version of my forthcoming article "Transnational capitalist class and relations of production in Asia and Oceania" is now published by the Taiwan/Hong Kong/mainland China based alternative media website Ground Breaking 破土 and also by Chinese Social Sciences Net.   It can be read here (and pasted below).

New article with NACLA on the Dominican Republic

I have a new short article published with NACLA, titled "Polyarchy in the Dominican Republic: The Elite Versus the Elite". Read it here. I was also  interviewed on this topic on Latin Pulse.  An expanded version of the article in español appears in the Dominican media-worker cooperative El Grillo.

Review of 2015 edited volume with Routledge: Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania

       The Journal of World-Systems Research has published an excellent review by graduate student David Feldman of my 2015 edited volume (with Routledge) titled Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania.  Chapters in the book examined the shifting relations of production and productive forces under global capitalism through the context of East Asia, South Asia, and Oceania. It was made up of chapters submitted from the third biennial NCSGC conference in Brisbane, Australia in 2013.

         Feldman provides critical insights into the particularities of the findings in the chapters (and on differences between the authors' approaches); focusing in on the contradictions inherent in the growth of global capitalist relations.  He concludes by making a vital point (and criticism, as only two chapters dealt with this) that "gendered aspects of class and productive relations" need to be front and center in understanding the totality of production. He observes that: "transnational capital's lack of attention to the social reproduction of an ever-increasing number of strata in global society constitutes one of the key contradictions of the accumulation of capital today." Read the entire review here.

 

New article published in the peer reviewed journal Caribbean Studies

Click here for a PDF of my new article published in the scholarly journal Caribbean Studies.  This is an altered version of one chapter in my recently completed Ph.D. dissertation: The Caribbean and Global Capitalism.  The article is titled: "From International to Transnational Mining: The Industry's Shifting Political Economy and the Caribbean". The English, Spanish, and French versions of the abstract are below. Click here for a URL link to the journal.

New review of my 2012 book

Matthew Davidson, at the University of Miami, has written an excellent review of my 2012 book. You can read it here, on the website: Haiti: Then and Now.  

Symposium on Paramilitarism in the Modern Americas, November 12-13

See below, for information on an upcoming symposium at the University of Arizona, where I will be presenting updated material related to my 2012 book and put forward a theoretical approach for understanding the "flexibilization" of paramilitarism in the context of global economic restructuring.

NEW BOOK: Globalization and Transnational Capitalism in Asia and Oceania

   Please ask your local librarian to order a copy of the new volume that I have published with Routledge.   See here for a PDF of my introductory chapter: "Global capitalism and transnational class formation in Asia and Oceania." 

The book gathers together papers presented at the second biennial conference of the Network for Critical Studies of Global Capitalism which took place at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia in July of 2013.

Upcoming talk at CSULB

This March 23rd I will be giving a few talks on the Caribbean's shifting political economy.  More specifically I will look at the restructuring of the cruise ship, remittance, mining, and export processing industries and how social groups have been caught up in the changes taking place. The talks will be hosted by the International Studies Program at California State University of Long Beach. 

UCSB Department of Sociology Ranked Number One

A new study by College Factual has ranked the department that I teach in as the #1 Sociology program in the country. For more information see here.