What is a feminist methodology? Academicians and scholars of gender and feminist studies have focused on feminist research methodology since the introduction of gender studies as a course in universities.Feminist methodology has developed as a result of several objections towards traditional positivist research. Theory and methodology can be seen to be closely interrelated in a dialectical relationship wherein a feminist methodology can validate feminist theory and indicate the need for modifications. Many of the social sciences have theories that speak about human beings. But theory is rooted ..read more

The Gaza crisis has underscored the deep fractures of domestic politics in Western Europe, the US and Australia. It is as much a domestic political crisis as a conflict in the Middle East. What is the nature of this crisis? Well, it is not one but multiple crises that are condensed around the Gaza war. Now condensation is an interesting concept – first used by Freud to show how a single idea or dream stands for multiple associations and ideas. We can think of the Gaza crisis as a political condensation of several multiple and intersecting crises and their  different temporalities. It con ..read more

By Steve Salaita Feeling helpless does not mean being useless. It is possible to support Palestinians from afar. College instructors, particularly those in Europe and North America, are generally limited when it comes to meaningful intervention in imperialist horrors afflicting the Global South.  Nevertheless, it is usually their governments either orchestrating or abetting the horror.  They ought to do something, then, even if it seems pyrrhic or inadequate.  People around the world are now witnessing a particularly gruesome event as the Zionist entity, armed by its U.S. spons ..read more

Researcher Irene Nduta in Kayole-Soweto. By Adrian Wilson, Faith Kasina, Irene Nduta and Jethron Ayumbah Akallah In August 2020, people all over the development world started talking about water in Nairobi. There was a lot of anger, and some calls for sending people to the guillotine. The reason: the publication of results from a development randomized controlled trial (RCT), run by two American development economists, working together with the World Bank. In order to compel property owners in Kayole-Soweto—a relatively poor neighborhood in eastern Nairobi—to pay their ..read more

What is particularly harrowing about the current situation in Gaza not only has to do with the multiplication of war crimes and with the moral and ideological bankruptcy of a Western liberal order that seeks to obfuscate, by all means – media blackouts, censorship, stigmatization, blackmail, etc. – what is already patently clear for most. The resonances with the darkest side of 20th century fascism, in particular, are a clear warning sign. In the words of Israeli intellectual Daniel Blatman: “As a historian whose field is the Holocaust and Nazism, it’s hard for me to say this, but there are n ..read more

In the 1960s, newly independent African governments asserted sovereignty over their metal and mineral resources, in a reversal of their prior colonial exploitation by European mining corporations. In this excerpt from his new book Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus, Ben Radley shows how transnational corporations have once again become the dominant force assuming ownership and management of industrial mining projects. Radley argues this latest reversal has taken place through a three-stage process grounded in a misguided reading of Afri ..read more

It is an uncontroversial observation that the history of capitalist development in South America is characterised by its subsumption to global capital accumulation through the production and export of agricultural and mining commodities for the world market. From this common starting point, however, there emerge divergent ways to account for the reproduction, and development limits, of this mode of insertion into the global economy. For many working in Latin American traditions of political economy it is almost common sense to assume, depending on one’s political and theoretical tastes, that ..read more

The Gaddi community of the Indian Himalayas experience the present as fraught with various, entangled pressures – pressure to ensure upward social mobility and inclusion in India’s middle class, pressure to secure stable domestic incomes, pressure to maintain sexual and gendered propriety. Written by Nikita Simpson, this piece examines how such pressures are not evenly distributed across the community but are absorbed by particular people through the experience of bodily and mental ‘tension’. ‘tension’, Simpson argues, both registers these pressures in the body, and allows people to push back ..read more

Narayana Murthy, the founder of Infosys, has attracted significant attention for his recent interview in which he advises Indian youth to work 70 hours a week to contribute to the nation’s growth. Mr. Murthy,  who also happens to be the father-in-law of the UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, supports his advice by drawing parallels to the post-war recoveries of Germany and Japan. He suggests that Indian corporate leaders should similarly consider increasing employees’ working hours to enhance productivity In my view, Mr. Murthy’s advice is ignorant and misinformed at best, or highly malici ..read more

By Claudius Gräbner-Radkowitsch and Birte Strunk The degrowth movement is a radical attempt to challenge our current economic system, arguing that its excessive focus on economic growth will ultimately harm people and planet. It has recently gained increasing attention, not only because it has found its way into mainstream political debates (see, for example, the Beyond Growth conference at the European Parliament), but also because related research projects have won prestigious international funding awards (see, for example, here). However, as you may have noticed, these events are mainly ta ..read more