Saskia Sassen on extractive logics and geographies of expulsion

By Gustavo García López* Saskia Sassen (Professor of Sociology, Columbia University) argues that the foundational transformation of capitalism since the 1980s is dominated by a speculative and extractive logic, characterized by “predatory formations” such as vulture funds making cities of ‘dead buildings’ and peripheries of expelled people. In her recent keynote speech at the  16th …

ENTITLE workshop on ‘Political ecologies of resource and rent extraction’.

This workshop will explore the changing political economy and ecology of resource extraction, interrogating the financialization of old and new commodities, and the changing politics of extraction, in agriculture and the mining sector, especially in Latin America. Organisers Rosaleen Duffy is Professor of Political Ecology of Development, Department of Development Studies, SOAS University of London. rd38@soas.ac.uk …

The Bio-Financialization of Irish Water: New Advances in the Neoliberalization of Vital Services

By Patrick Bresnihan * Patrick Bresnihan discusses the emerging neoliberal trend of financialization of basic infrastructure and its implications for scholars and activists, in the context of significant ongoing changes in the organization of water services in Ireland. In their recent article, “Banking Spatially on the Future: Capital Switching, Infrastructure, and the Ecological Fix” (2015), Noel …