WORKING GROUP

Class Struggle Revisited: Theory, Method, & Praxis

Jackman Humanities Institute Working Group 2020-2021

Faculty Lead: Dr. Shahrzad Mojab

Organizing Team: Genevieve Ritchie, Shirin Haghgou, & Wesal Abu Qaddum

Taking the social relations of class struggle as its point of departure, the Working Group strives to make sense of and retheorize the chaotic yet organized conditions of global accumulation, displacement, and dispossession. Although class formations determine the exploitation of working people, class struggle encompasses myriad processes and practices of ideological repression, which include, without being limited to, hetero-patriarchy, racialization, colonization, migration, Indigenous erasure, nationalism, and white supremacy. In the Working Group, we will bring seminal works into conversation with emergent social struggles by revisiting the theory, method, and praxis of class struggle.

September 2020 – April 2021

Fridays 3:00 – 4:30pm (EST) on Zoom

For Inquiries and registration email: class.struggleworkinggroup@gmail.com

Reading List

Class Struggle Revisited:

Theory, Method, & Praxis

Presenter: Dr. Shahrzad Mojab

Facilitator: Dr. Genevieve Ritchie

Reading:

Estes, N., & Dunbar-Oritz, R. (2020). Examining the Wreckage. Monthly Review.

Capitalist Imperialism:

Colonization, Racism, & Patriarchy

Presenters: Dr. Manu Karuka in conversation with Dr. Michelle Murphy

Reading:

Karuka, M. (2019). Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroads. University of California Press.

Class Struggle: Black Power Movements

Presentation: Dr. Beverly Bain in conversation with Kali Akuno

Facilitator: Dr. Chandni Desai

Readings:

Austin, D. (2013). Fear of a Black Nation: Race, sex, and security in sixties Montreal. Between the Lines
Kelley, R. (2002). Freedom Dreams: The Black radical imagination. Beacon Press.

Violence, Dispossession, & Profits:

Money & Markets

Presenters: Dr. Chandni Desai

Moderator: Shirin Haghgou

Readings:

Estes, N. (2019). Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the long tradition of Indigenous resistance. Verso.
Desai, C. (forthcoming). Indigenous intifadas, resurgent solidarity: Disrupting settler colonial economies from Wet’suwet’en to Palestine.

Violence, Dispossession, & Profits:

Money & Markets

Presenters: Dr. Adam Hanieh & Dr. David McNally

Moderator: Dr. Shahrzad Mojab

Readings:

Hanieh, A. (2018). Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the political economy of the contemporary Middle East. Cambridge University Press.
McNally, D. (2020). Blood and Money: War, slavery, and the state. Haymarket Books.

Violence, Dispossession, & Profits:

Class & Migration

Presenters: Dr. Immanuel Ness, Dr. Philip Marfleet, & Dr. Leandros Fischer

Moderator: Dr. Genevieve Ritchie

Readings:

Fischer, L., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2020). “We are here to stay” vs. “Europe’s best
hotel”: Hamburg and Athens as Geographies of Solidarity. Antipode, 0(0), 1-21.
Marfleet, P. (2007). Refugees and history: Why we must address the past. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 26(3), 136–148.
Ness, I. (2015). Southern Insurgency: The coming of the global working class. Pluto Press.

Migration & Social Reproduction

Presenters: Dr. Ashely Bohrer & Dr. Jamie Magnusson

Moderator: Dr. Sara Carpenter

Readings:

Bohrer, A. (2020). Wages for immigration: Labour and social reproduction under contemporary capitalism. Spectre. 1(1): 48–60.