Simten Cosar on the AKP Years in Turkey

It's taken us a little while, but we've finally got Simten's talk up on the web. The talk, titled "The AKP Years in Turkey: Neoliberalism with a Muslim Face," was held on March 20, 2012.

Enjoy!

Video: Lebowitz Keynote Address...

Okay, perhaps it has been a long time in the making, but we've finally posted Michael Lebowitz's Keynote Address (from our 4th Annual Conference in Critical Social Research) as a video on-line. His talk is titled "The Concept of Fairness: Possibilities, Limits, Possibilities," and the talk is moderated by Gulden Ozcan of Carleton University.

Radical Democracy & Popular Power: Thinking About New Socialisms for the 21st Century

Radical Democracy & Popular Power: Thinking About New Socialisms for the 21st Century from CSRCproject on Vimeo.

Varieties of Socialism, Varieties of Approaches.
Carleton University, March 5th, 2011

David McNally teaches Political Science at York University, Toronto and is a long-time activist in socialist and global justice movements. He is the author of six books, including Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance (2010) published by PM Press. To find out more about David’s articles, books, courses and events, including his blog, please visit www.davidmcnally.org

Noam Chomsky: Democracy & the Public University

Noam Chomsky: Democracy & the Public University from CSRCproject on Vimeo.

Rebecca Schein in Conversation with Noam Chomsky
Carleton University: April 8, 2011

Noam Chomsky received his Phd in linguistics in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania. The major theoretical viewpoints of his doctoral dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, 1957. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in 1975. Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. Chomsky has lectured at many universities here and abroad, and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards.

Universities in Crisis: What Are The Problems & What Faculty And Students Can Do

Universities in Crisis: What Are The Problems & What Faculty And Students Can Do from CSRCproject on Vimeo.

James L. Turk, Canadian Association of University Teachers

Austerity, Security and Resistance

Austerity, Security and Resistance from CSRCproject on Vimeo.

As austerity measures intensify around the world, the axe has come down particularly hard on public- and private-sector unions, the un/underemployed, and those denied status, with particularly marked gendered and racialized dimensions. Massive state retrenchment in the realm of social services, health care, education, pensions, unemployment insurance and stimulus spending, has been matched by wage controls, the selling off of assets and resources, as well as tax shifting for competitiveness, the weakening of environmental laws and employment standards. While resistance from student, trade union and community activists is noted, the state and its police force have responded in the most aggressive of ways. These presentations starkly reveal who will pay and who will profit as the transition from rescue to recovery increasingly returns not just to neoliberalism, but a more authoritarian form at that.

George Rigakos, Carleton University: "Security, Pacification & the Fabrication of Social Order"

Justin Paulson, Carleton University: "Social Movements & the Crisis"

Greg Albo, York University: "From Rescue Strategies to Exit Strategies: A Working Class Response?"

Security As Pacification: George Rigakos

We are told we are living in exceptional times. That the world changed after 9/11. That our age is a new age of insecurity and risk. That the police have been forced to respond in ways that are a product of this very difficult epoch. This presentation critiques these notions arguing that the concept of "security" has always trumped liberty, camouflaged domestic and international pacification and acted as a blockage to intellectual debates about social problems and potential social change. The idea of security was an Enlightenment project that quickly rose to the status of "the supreme concept of bourgeois society", eventually colonizing all aspects of commodity production and consumption, and by extension human relations. To understand security today we must deny false binaries such as liberty versus security, public versus private, soft versus hard, domestic versus international, exceptional versus normal, and civilization versus barbarism. To be against security, therefore, is to stand against the securitization of political discourse, and to challenge the authoritarian and reactionary nature of security. Instead of ever-more security, seemingly at any cost, we must fight for an alternative political language that takes us beyond the narrow horizon of capitalist insecurities and its associated police power.

Security as Pacification from negative theatre on Vimeo.

George S. Rigakos is Assistant Professor of Law at Carleton University and head of the Editorial Collective for Red Quill Books.

Sponsored by: The Institute for Criminology and Criminal Justice, The Department of Sociology and Anthropology & Critical Social Research Collaborative (CSRC)

Saving Global Capitalism: Interrogating Austerity and Working Class Responses to Crises, Alternate Routes 2011

The following video showcased the panel discussion held at the launch of Alternate Routes' latest issue, "Saving Global Capitalism: Interrogating Austerity and Working Class Responses to Crises", November 5th, 2010. The panel features Carlo Fanelli, Chris Hurl, Rebecca Shein and James Meades.

Alternate Routes: A Journal of Critical Social Research is pleased to announce the publication of our newest issue “Saving Global Capitalism: Interrogating Austerity & Working Class Responses to Crises.” The essays collected here are of particular relevance as the austerity measures around the world intensify in their scale and scope. Recent trends suggest massive state retrenchment in the realm of social services, health care, education, pensions, unemployment insurance and government stimulus spending, in favour of wage controls, the fire sale sell-off of assets and resources in order to facilitate privatization, as well as tax-shifting for competitiveness, the weakening of environmental laws and employment standards, and thereby a subsequent increase in the unpaid sphere of social reproduction. While these processes may suggest the arrival of a new phase of accumulation, post-neoliberal assertions remain premature as the precise nature and direction of these developments are indeterminate. While the legitimacy of neoliberalism appeared to be in jeopardy, current ‘exit strategies’ have starkly revealed its dynamism as ruling elites continue to impose their agenda. In fact, neoliberalism seems to be gaining new momentum in seeking wage and benefit concessions, public-sector spending restraint, and an all-out attack against the unionized, non-unionized and unwaged segments of the working class. The contributions collected here vividly demonstrate who is paying for the crisis.

Neoliberalism in Transition: Security, Police and Capital

The video feed for our October 22nd (2010) workshop, Neoliberalism in Transition: Security, Police and Capital, featuring speakers Gaetan Heroux, Mark Neocleous, and George S. Rigakos, is now available. Check it out, and enjoy:

Bryan D. Palmer, Capitalism & Confrontation: Legacies From the Past

The video feed for Professor Bryan Palmer's keynote address at the 2nd Annual Conference in Critical Social Research is now available. Enjoy!

Capitalism & Confrontation: Legacies from the Past by Bryan Palmer from CSRCproject on Vimeo.

Ecology Under Fire: Climate, Copenhagen, and Prospects for Change

Here is the video of our December workshop Ecology Under Fire: Climate, Copenhagen, and Prospects for Change. Enjoy!

NOTE: The minor sound problems are only at the beginning.

ECOLOGY UNDER FIRE: Climate Change, Chopenhagen & Prospects for Change from negative theatre on Vimeo.

Neoliberalism and the Current Crisis In Mexico

Here is the video of the talk given by Andrés Barreda: "Neoliberalism and the Current Crisis in Mexico". Enjoy!

Neo-liberalism and the Current Crisis in Mexico: Indigenous and Campesino Movements Respond from negative theatre on Vimeo.

The Roots of the Economic Crisis: Critical Perspectives

The video from our first workshop is now available on You Tube. Take a look: