Articles

Does the comfort of the quarantined consumer outweigh the life and safety of the slaughterhouse workers who cannot afford to stay home? The recent coronavirus outbreaks in meat processing plants pose a dreadful question.

Coronavirus further intensified the fetishization of science. Experts are being cast as saviours; orderly lines of masked marketgoers mimic religious processions, and daily press conferences function as mass. But metrics have to be relieved from spiritual obligations.

From anti-vaxxers to terrorists, people often look for hidden causes which match the magnitude of the collapse they are facing. Uncertainty and public distrust are fertile ground for conspiracy theories. When used to legitimize violence, however, such narratives are more a strategy than psychopathology.

Vladimir Putin’s anger and jealousy has taken down many proactive leaders throughout Russia – and left the country vulnerable to crisis. The oil price war against Saudi Arabia backfired, and a recession was already in motion when coronavirus hit the country.

Our slowed-down, cooled-down, scaled-down lives during the pandemic are evidence that quality of life does not depend on high productivity and frantic consumption. Suddenly, it has become respectable – and realistic – to talk about reforming society and the economy.

The US has no monopoly on under-serving and over-policing minorities. Police brutality is reported from the French suburbs to the Bulgarian countryside, and neo-Nazi resurgence is threatening European Roma in Hungary and Ukraine. Europeans must not wait for another horrific murder to draw attention to our own systemic racism.

The Movement for Black Lives has influenced public opinion about racism in American life, changed policy, helped reduce police violence and reshaped the politics of social justice. Finally, the wider public is coming to understand the need for a radical political transformation.

Bellingcat’s pathbreaking work on the shooting down of MH17 and on chemical weapons use in Syria has led to open source investigation being recognized as a vital journalistic technique. Eurozine talks to Bellingcat founder and director Eliot Higgins about both stories and the disinformation around them.

Σε πολλές χώρες η πανδημία του κορονοϊού COVID–19 ανέδειξε με τον πιο χειροπιαστό τρόπο προβλήματα χρόνων. Χαρακτηριστικό παράδειγμα αποτελεί η Ελλάδα, όπου οι συνέπειες των διαστρωματικού χαρακτήρα εσωτερικών ανισοτήτων, σε συνδυασμό με την εύθραυστη ισορροπία δυνάμεων της περιοχής και μια σειρά από αποτυχημένες και ατελέσφορες πολιτικές του παρελθόντος, γίνονται όλο και πιο αισθητές σήμερα. Στις προσφυγικές δομές εκτυλίσσεται σήμερα μια ανθρωπιστική κρίση, ως επακόλουθο χρόνιων ανεπαρκειών του δημόσιου συστήματος υγείας και αναποτελεσματικών εθνικών και ευρωπαϊκών πολιτικών διαχείρισης της μετανάστευσης, ενώ η πανδημική κρίση του κορονοϊού αναμένεται μόνο να επιδεινώσει την κατάσταση.

When crisis hits, vulnerable groups suffer. And sex workers, already enduring precarity, have become the scapegoats of COVID-19’s health focus, facing heavy fines, police abuse and deportation threats. Boglárka Fedorkó investigates the lessons that can be learnt from the solidarity and organization of those facing adversity.

Australia’s recent bushfires are the country’s ‘most serious environmental disaster since colonization’. John Keane considers this megadisaster the product of democracy failure, rather than natural forces, which raises questions about political culpability, economic impacts, deep environmental damage and cultural accountability.

Housing is part of the foundation upon which all other human social relations are built. Like sustenance and sex, society can’t be reproduced without shelter. Vikerkaar editor Aro Velmet announces the new Eurozine focal point ‘Room temperature: Housing in crisis’.

Sinn Féin’s breakthrough in Ireland’s general election in February ended the century-long dominance of the ‘Civil War parties’ in the Republic. On the left, the victory was celebrated as providing a ‘mandate for change’. But Sinn Féin’s image problem remains an obstacle. Unjustly so?

The corona crisis acts as a double-edged sword for Lebanese protesters: it reinforces the grievances that have fuelled the uprising, but it also provides an opportunity to political elites to bolster their support, offering welfare for political loyalty.

The pandemic prompts fundamental questions. How do we define society’s relationship to nature? How resilient are our democracies to the abuse of emergency powers? How far can science dictate political decision-making? And will the primacy of the economy remain unassailable?

Dataism is the new positivism, promising to make humans more effective. But we’ve seen horrific attempts at perfecting humans before. Instead, we need a better understanding of differences, and the wisdom that lies in the love of life.