Back from a break to share a new paper (with Neil Brenner) that just came out in Development and Change. An expansive energo-metabolic theorization of the geographies of capitalist urbanization: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

In Detroit, what’s good? #aag2025

Welcome new followers! I post infrequently, usually about things related to my scholarship, which sits somewhere between geography and history, and deals with capitalism, imperialism, urbanization, infrastructure, and the environment. I also post about Palestine 🇵🇸

WATCH | Palestinians prepare for a large iftar, in Rafah, southern Gaza.

The UTL is now on bluesky! Follow for updates on our projects and publications.

New publication! In this paper in Critical Historical Studies, I undertake a detailed methodological engagement with Jairus Banaji’s remarkable scholarship on historical capitalism: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

"This is the first university that Palestine Legal is aware of where students have been suspended without a hearing and without having a chance to see any evidence against them before the deadline for filing an appeal." palestinelegal.org/news/2024/11...

So is this just Twitter but no one talks about the pesky genocide?

Once again, I find myself thinking about this diagram.

Due to the unyielding work of Palestinian journalists, Twitter still enables one to witness some of the world historical horrors unfolding in Gaza right now. This—the only reason for being on these apps—seems more or less absent here.

This place is like when you show up to a huge party and immediately head to the kitchen and hang out with the 3 other people you know.

Weird thing on here is that one both misses and does not miss the ostentatious “lateness” of the other app.

Slowly moving here

The grandpère of the American “progressive” movement can’t get himself to utter the word ceasefire. Shame on you for not doing even the bare minimum. And shame on me for having canvassed for you all those times.

This is evil beyond words. I hope my American comrades never forgive Biden and the Democrats for presiding over a genocide in full view of the world.

A depraved, world historical crime that will be remembered forever.

I may have just witnessed the most shameful episode in the history of my Union.

Words are weak in these times of genocidal brutality but I honestly believe Gabe Winant’s Dissent piece performs an invaluable service: www.dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...

The pictures coming out of London :’)

I don’t know how anyone on the “American Left” can ever justify voting for the Democrats again.

This is insane

For @nplusonemag.bsky.social, I wrote about how we're living through the post-9/11 period all over again, in all the worst ways

From a time when important Harvard professors (including the great Richard Lewontin) stood up against oppression and occupation, and didn’t feed their students to a baying mob.

It’s 2002-03 again

And some people thought we’ve transcended the need for old fashioned ideologiekritik

Twxtter is now a cesspool of genocide glorification on the one hand and genocide apologia on the other. Just revolting and horrifying.

Meanwhile over on Twxtter, people are claiming that dialectics is when you’re… a liberal centrist.

If the Braverman be Harry, it’s salutary If the Braverman be Suella, I’d rather have Salmonella.

“It’s a wild scene” - Nancy Fraser (at the Critical Theory at 100 conference at Harvard)

Watching sundry liberals, “decolonial” scholars, and Ukraine-flag-in-bio people like a hawk today

This invaluable (and moving) new essay by Kanishka Goonewardena should be required reading for anyone interested in David Harvey and the history of Marxist geography: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New from me at Jewish Currents - why strikes are a positive good, not a necessary evil jewishcurrents.org/revaluing-th...

Very striking how the “global south” has rapidly become a central category of practice in geopolitics, deployed most vigorously by the foreign policy establishments of reactionary governments in the South.

My favorite genre of mainstream social science research is “everyone has always known this thing is terrible and bad but now we know it too so please cite us”

Never forget

I think the main problem with the Ackerman essay is that it needed to be twice as long (at least).

This might just be the best thing Jacobin’s ever published: jacobin.com/2023/09/robe...

LFG!

Revisiting old tweets on the bad app and remembered the best feedback I’ve ever received on a paper:

My favorite Marx dunk - “…the arch-Philistine, Jeremy Bentham, that insipid, pedantic, leather-tongued oracle of the ordinary bourgeois intelligence of the 19th century. Bentham is among philosophers what Martin Tupper is among poets. Both could only have been manufactured in England.”

It turns out there are things that my blood boil even more than the Gerstle book. There is some really shocking stuff on Chile in Jennifer Burns' forthcoming biography of Milton Friedman: ourtime.substack.com/p/the-mighty...

This is a very helpful roundup/ critique. I wouldn’t say this on Txitter but a larger issue, I’ve always felt, is that historians arrived to neoliberalism as a topic by leapfrogging very important early-2000s scholarship in economic geography/ geographical political economy.

So it turns out (i) Messi is better at politics than political scientists and (ii) the American Catholic Church *thinks* it’s better at Catholicism than the Pope. These two things are somehow connected but I don’t know exactly how.

Always felicitous to receive an email with the following subject line:

Always felicitous to receive an email with the following subject line:

Mario Tronti has died. RIP one of the great Marxist intellectuals of the twentieth century. https://www.repubblica.it/politica/2023/08/07/news/mario_tronti_morto_politico_92_anni-410335343/

I'm here I guess