Race, finance and inequality: The entangled legacies of empire
A new collection of 22+ short, readable, imagine-driven essays for students and experts alike, plus more...
Entangled legacies
To mark the arrival of the new year, I’m very pleased to announce the Manchester University Press has published The entangled legacies of empire: Race, finance and inequality, a collection of 22 short, accessible, image-driven essays, edited by Paul Robert Gilbert, Clea Bourne, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie, geared towards students and experts alike, aiming to explore the way today’s processes of finance and financialization are rooted in the history of colonialism, empire and racialization.
More than 25 experts from around the world have contributed to this unique and provocative book. In a series of illuminating short essays, each author has presented a striking image as an invitation to consider the ghosts of colonialism and imperialism in today's global economy. In defiance of those who claim that today's capitalist system is free of racism and exploitation, this book shows that the past is not behind us, it defines our world and our lives.
This book takes the reader on a global tour, from Malaysia to Canada, from Angola to Mexico, from Libya to China, from the City of London to the Australian outback, from the deep sea to the atmosphere. Along the way we meet the financiers, artists, advertisers, activists and everyday people who are grappling with the entangled legacies of empire.
More information can be found here, as well as information on how to pay an eye-watering price to hold it in your hands.
Why not ask your library to order a copy using this handy link?
I will also gladly send you a PDF.
Here is the TOC:
Introduction - Paul Robert Gilbert, Clea Bourne, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie
Part I: Blowouts
1. Pumpjacks, playgrounds and cheap lives - Imre Szeman
2. 'Boom!' - Tracy Lassiter
3. Spillcam - Alysse Kushinski
Part II: Circulations
4. Te Peeke o Aotearoa: colonial and decolonial finance in Aotearoa New Zealand, 1860s-1890s - Catherine Comyn
5. Both sides of the coin: Lady Liberty and the construction of 'the New Native' on currency in Oregon's colonial period - Ashley Cordes
6. Milo - Syahirah Abdul Rahman
Part III: Borders
7. 'The trust will pursue debt through all means necessary' - Kathryn Medien
8. Hunger or indebtedness? Enforcing migrant destitution, racializing debt - Eve Dickson, Rachel Rosen and Kehinde Sorinmade
9. Libre: debt, discipline and humanitarian pretension - Christian Rossipal
Part IV: Emergence
10. 'Afro-pessimism' and emerging markets finance - Ilias Alami
11. Dreams of extractive development: reviving the Benguela Railway in central Angola - Jon Schubert
12. Spectral cities and rare earth mining in the North China Plain - Linsey Ly
Part V: Gestures
13. Italy, Libya and the EU: co-dependent systems and interweaving imperial interests at the Mediterranean border - Alessandra Ferrini
14. Racial capitalism and settler colonization in Australia: Australian debts to Gurindji economies - Holly Eva Katherine Randell-Moon
15. Connected by a blue sweater: ethical narratives of philanthrocapitalist development - Zenia Kish
Part VI: Play
16. Eternal conflict: Sderot's underground playground - Oded Nir
17. I am your dividend - Ben Stork
Part VII: Control
18. 'The shape of the Stock Exchange is shapeless' - Laura Kalba
19. Data Centre Séance: telepathic surveillance capitalism, psychic debt and colonialism - Jacquelene Drinkall
Part VIII: Imaginaries
20. Mesoamérica Resiste: staging the battle over Mesoamerica - capitalist fantasies vs grassroots liberation - Debbie Samaniego and Felix Mantz
21. Extractive scars and the lightness of finance - Maria Dyveke Styve
22. Imagined maps of racial capitalism - Gargi Bhattacharyya
Index
This project is the latest product of a very fruitful collaboration with Paul Gilbert, Clea Bourne and Johnna Montgomerie that began in 2016 out of mutual frustrations with the way the emerging study of financialization was playing out. The project has also included:
A 2017, 2-day workshop at Goldsmiths University’s Political Economy Research Centre “Colonial debts, extractive nostalgias, imperial insolvencies”
A 2018 special section of the online platform Discover Society on the same theme that included the texts:
“FOCUS: Colonial Debts, Imperial Insolvencies, Extractive Nostalgias” (Clea Bourne, Paul Gilbert, Max Haiven and Johnna Montgomerie)
“When monetary coloniality meets 21st century finance: Development in the franc zone” (Vincent Guermond and Ndongo Samba Sylla)
“Recasting and Re-racialising the ‘Third World’ in ‘Emerging Market’ Terms: Understanding Market Emergence in Historical Colonial Perspective” (Lisa Tilley)
“How Real Estate Dreams of Forever” (Alexia Yates)
A 2018 2-day workshop at University of Sussex on “Finance Capital and the Ghosts of Empire”
A forthcoming 2023 special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy on “Finance Captial and the Ghosts of Empire”
Recasting the future
A chapter, titled “Recasting the future with Amazon workers,” written by me (Max Haiven), Graeme Webb and Xenia Benivolski has appeared in the Routledge Handbook for Creative Futures, edited by Gabrielle Donnelly and Alfonso Montuori (you can read it here).
Amazon is the world’s largest retailer and one of its largest corporations and employers and is aggressively seeking to reshape the future. This comes at the expense of its workers, who are not only exploited but excluded from dreaming of and shaping that future. We started a science and speculative media club with rank-and-file Amazon workers in North America to explore their perspectives on the future. After relating our methods and some of what we learned, we conclude by exploring the prospects for reclaiming the power of future “fictioning” with workers in a moment of platform capitalism.
Media
Recently:
Interview about Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire on the New Books Network (50 mins):
Interview about Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire on Against the Grain (53 mins):
Games
My research lab, RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, is spinning off a sub-lab for radical analogue game design. We’re specializing in designing board and social games that aim to deepen conversations around sociual justice and critical theory.
Along with Keir Millburn at Red Plenty Games, we’ve started a thriving little network called SPRAG: The Society for the Promotion of Radical Analogue Games with a Discord group, an announcements email list and semi-regular zoom meetings (anbd some IRL in the future).
We’re working on our first set of games, including CLUE-ANON, a social deduction and bluffing game that teaches us why conspiracy theories are so much fun… and so dangerous.
We have other games in development, too! Click here if you’d like to join a playtesting group, where we would send you games to play with your friends/students/enemies, etc., either in the mail or to print-at-home.
MA and PhD opportunities
I welcome inquiries from prospective students who might be interested in pursuing projects with me as part of pursuing a graduate degree. I can supervise students in three programs at Lakehead University:
Social Justice Studies MA program
Options: research project, creative project or coursework
2y program
Application deadline: late January
Online options available but not fully guaranteed.
English MA program
Options: research project, creative project or coursework
2y program
Application deadline: late January
Online options not guaranteed
Joint PhD in Educational Studies program, Social/Cultural/Political Contexts of Education stream) - to be confirmed
4-5y program
Application deadline: late November
Program mostly but not entirely online
These opportunities come with a number of benefits
Work on projects at RiVAL: The ReImagining Value Action Lab, including:
Research into the radical imagination and social movements
Research into the imaginary landscapes of late capitalism at its intersections with colonialism and other systems of domination
Research into art and activism
Research into anti-colonial and anti-capitalist dreaming
The development of our new tabletop games initiative
Experience working on the VAGABONDS publishing project
Canadian citizens and permanent residents are guaranteed paid Graduate Assistantships and partial funding that helps offset the cost of tuition (some funding is available but not guaranteed for international students). (UPDATE: the guarantee is sadly, no longer guaranteed, but very likely)
We will support you in applying for additional funding.
The possibility in some programs to work in whole or in part remotely.
If you might be interested, please check out the program information at the links above and get in contact: mhaiven at lakeheadu dot ca