Long read review: commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici edited by Camille Barbagallo, Nicholas Beuret and David Harvie

The collection Commoning, edited by Camille Barbagallo, Nicholas Beuret and David Harvie, offers an impassioned tribute to the intellectual labours of George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici as well as the forms of thought and action that have emerged alongside them. Focusing particularly on the theoretical implication of their works as they specifically relate to land and the commons, Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre finds that the volume overall does an exemplary job of placing action, social solidarity, feminist struggles and common labouring at the forefront of all of their thought

Bangladesh's response to one of the biggest refugee crises of the century (part 1)

LSE South Asia Centre hosted Mr Md. Shahidul Haque, Hon'ble Foreign Secretary of the Government of Bangladesh, to speak on the issue of the 'Rohyngia Humanitarian Crisis' on the 15 March 2018. The event took place following the second Strategic Dialogue earlier that day between the UK and Bangladesh. Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre writes about his interaction with Mr Haque and the event proceedings, where the foreign secretary gave an insightful, humble and compassionate presentation on the successes and challenges faced by the Bangladeshi government as it attempts to manage one of the largest refugee crises of the past century

Book review: Mekong dreaming: life and death along a changing river by Andrew Alan Johnson

In Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River, Andrew Alan Johnson offers a new anthropological study that explores how infrastructural projects – in this case, hydropower dams on the Mekong – interrupt and reconfigure the social life of the river and relations of those whose fate has long been intertwined with its currents. This accessible book powerfully illustrates how the more-than-human, and the stories and techniques central to daily life on the river, cannot be separated from the political realm as well as the ways in which the Mekong and the border itself are conceived and reshaped, writes Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre. Mekong Dreaming: Life and Death Along a Changing River. Andrew Alan Johnson. Duke University Press. 2020

On the Genealogy of Signification in Peirce's New List of Categories

Many scholars believe that "On a New List of Categories" is a metaphysical or transcendental deduction. This essay will argue that Peirce derives the categories by induction and validates their order by precision . Afterwards, the article will draw support from Peirce's youthful and mature writings to explain how the new way of listing the categories can serve as a genealogy of meaning : how different types of terms, propositions and arguments emerge in the reasoning process as different types of signs. In this way, the genealogy of meaning would then qualify as both a phenomenology of logic and a science of semiotics.. Such a science of semiotics will have three types of comparison corresponding to the sign-relation in inference: namely, uniparance, diaparance and comparance. Then, the three types of comparison will give rise to three types of relative in different types of proposition: namely, concurrent, disquiparant, and equal. Finally, the three types of relative will give rise to different types of signs corresponding to different types of terms: namely, icons, indices and symbols. With this classification, then, there is an explanation of how the reasoning process is a semiotic process with three forms of valid arguments: namely, hypothesis, induction and deduction

Repatriation, refoulement and Rohingya nationality: Bangladesh's response to one of the biggest refugee crises of the century (part 2)

This is the final segment of the two-part report on "Rohingya Humanitarian Crisis: Bangladesh's response", where SAC hosted Mr Md. Shahidul Haque, Foreign Secretary, Government of Bangladesh. Dominique Dillabough-Lefebvre writes about issues of of repatriation, refoulement and Rohingya nationality, based on his interview with Mr Haque and his presentation

Testimonies of Syrian Academics Displaced Post 2011: Time, place and the agentic self

This article explores the experiences of protracted displacement in a group of 19 displaced Syrian academics now living in Turkey who are often referred to as the precariat that is, a group or collective of people who are living in conditions of high unpredictability, insecurity and uncertainty. As part of a small-scale collaborative professional enquiry , semi-structured interviews with these academics were conducted to understand the social, affective and professional experiences, needs and concerns of the academics during and after their forced displacement. The key concepts of precarity and crises of selfhood, alongside memory and testimony, inform the analysis. This article seeks to provide an account of this collective experience and its complex character and concludes with observations on how one might understand the constraints on professional agency and how might one support displaced academics in such contexts. Solidarity in exile and the development of political friendships are argued for as a principle to inform all work.CARA and Soros Foundatio

Cultural trauma and the politics of access to higher education in Syria

This paper examines the relationship between the politics of Higher Education access pertaining to longstanding practices of patrimonial authoritarian politics and the narration of collective trauma. Building on an empirical study of Syrian HE during war, we suggest that a narrative disjuncture within HEIs has a damaging impact not only upon the educational process, HE reconstruction and reform, but also upon the possibility of social reconciliation. This is especially true when access to education and post-graduation opportunities are directly linked to patrimonial favouritism; widespread social inequalities in access and retention; a violent turn in the purging of oppositional academics; a severely exacerbated brain drain linked to political views; and significantly sparser employment opportunities. Building on the study findings, we show how these challenges are linked to ethico-political positioning vis-à-vis the mass movement of 2011 and related cultural trauma narratives. In closing, we suggest that understanding the relationship between HE access and cultural trauma can inform decision-making on HE reconstruction and future reform. © 2020, © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group