Nowtopia: Strategic Exodus?

Abstract: Nowtopia identifies a new basis for a shared experience of class. Specifically, the exodus from wage labor on one side, and the embrace of meaningful, freely chosen and “free” (unpaid) work on the other. A product of three decades of decomposition of the working class, nowtopians are different from “drop‐outs” in general, or surplus populations that constitute the necessary “outside” to capital, in their conscious withdrawal from capitalist culture and concerted rejection of the value form. In emergent convivial “nowtopian” communities, largely grounded in unpaid practical work which creatively meets needs such as transportation (the bicycling subculture), food (urban gardening/agriculture), and communication (open‐source communities), we see a gradual reversal of the extreme atomization of modern life. While facing the threat of corruption via re‐integration into the system, this constellation of practices, if taken together, is an elaborate, decentralized, uncoordinated collective research and development effort exploring a potentially post‐capitalist, post‐petroleum future.     

论邓小平复出前后有关按劳分配的思想

1975年邓小平第二次复出后 ,即坚决主张实行按劳分配原则 ,调动各方面的积极性 ,但由于再次被打倒 ,他的这些思想和措施没有来得及贯彻落实。粉碎“四人帮”后 ,经济学界展开了有关按劳分配理论问题的大讨论 ,邓小平始终关注并坚持这一讨论 ,并提出了许多独具胆识的论述 ,其主要思想是肯定了按劳分配的社会主义性质 ,反对平均主义分配方式 ,反对按政治态度分配 ,主张搞物质鼓励 ,提出恢复奖金、稿费制度。邓小平提出的按劳分配思想 ,实质上是对社会主义本质的思考 ,是对我党以往“左”的政治经济理论和观念的纠正 ,是对劳动群众的物质利益的充分肯定     

The “Corona Warriors”? Community health workers in the governance of India's COVID-19 response

India's nearly 1-million strong band of quasi-volunteer accredited social health activists (ASHAs) have been key actors in government efforts to control COVID-19. Utilizing a nationalist rhetoric of war, ASHAs were swiftly mobilized by the government in March 2020 as ‘COVID warriors’ engaged in tracking illness, disseminating information, and caring for quarantined individuals. The speed at which ASHAs were mobilized into mentally and physically grueling labor was all the more stunning given these minimally paid community health workers have long been seen to have low morale given their precarious, informalized work arrangements. Building on work examining the spatialities of global health governance alongside literature on geographic contingency, this paper explores the ways that nationalist COVID-19 war rhetoric promulgated from Delhi worked as a technology of health governance to propel ASHAs into certain forms of action, yet also opened up spaces of potentiality for them to reimagine their relationship to both the state and the communities they serve. In particular, in our analysis of in-depth telephone interviews with ASHA workers in the state of Himachal Pradesh, we find that their hailing as COVID warriors inspired patriotic calls to duty and legitimized their (long over-looked) roles as critical governance actors, yet also was subject to resistance and reworking due to a combination of institutional histories, local politics, as well as happenstantial everyday encounters of ASHA work. The precarious employment of ASHAs – in terms of basic remuneration as well as the great on-the-job risks that they have faced – underscores both the fragile nature of India's health governance system as well as possible political movements for its renewal. We conclude by calling for geographers to give greater attention to community health care workers as a key window into understanding the uneven ways in which health systems are made manifest on the ground, and their ability to respond to citizens' healthcare needs – both in the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.     

The Global Economic Crisis and Unemployment in China

Two noted academic specialists on labor economics and population statistics of China examine the impacts of the global economic crisis of 2008-2009 on the job security of urban workers, and the ensuing repercussions for the Chinese society and economy. More specifically, they probe and determine the magnitude of urban unemployment in China in 2008 and 2009 as it appears to be reported in different segments of the country's immense labor market. A particular focus of the paper is on differences in unemployment among two groups of workers (those with urban hukou vis-à-vis rural migrant workers) with significantly different sets of rights and privileges, as well as levels of job security. The authors also provide an estimate of the urban unemployment rate in 2009 that differs from the official rate. They argue that measures toward further integration of rural and urban labor markets and reducing natural unemployment are ultimately more beneficial than short-term interventions to adjust cyclical joblessness stemming from the global economic crisis and recession.     

“For the Means of Your Subsistence ... Look Under God to Your Own Industry and Frugality”: Life and Labor in Gerrit Smith's Peterboro

The rural hamlet of Peterboro, the home of Gerrit Smith, the nineteenth century's most famous social reformer, has been portrayed as an idyllic and peaceful community free of class conflict. The extensive documentary record suggests a less harmonious situation and indicates that the community was fraught with struggle, engendered as much by Smith's reform efforts as by general class relations. This article examines class-based struggle through several vignettes, including a look at the voting patterns of the Liberty party in Smithfield, the social conditions of African Americans who lived in Peterboro, and the story of the temperance hotel.