Jonathan Neale writes: Over the last few years, the falls in the price of solar and wind power have been dramatic. Does this mean the the market will now produce enough renewable energy?
Unfortunately, no.
Continue readingRenewables and the Market
Author: jonathannancy
Lithium, Batteries and Climate Change
Jonathan Neale writes: I have spent the last year working on a book called Fight the Fire – Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs. Most of it is about both the politics and the engineering of any possible transition that can avert catastrophic climate breakdown. One thing I had to think about long and hard was lithium and car batteries.
[This article was first published by Climate and Capitalism on 11 Feb 2021.]
I often hear people say that we can’t cover the world with electric vehicles, because there simply is not enough lithium for batteries. In any case, they add, lithium production is toxic, and the only supplies are in the Global South. Moreover, so the story goes, there are not enough rare earth metals for wind turbines and all the other hardware we will need for renewable energy.
People often smile after they say those things, which is hard for me to understand, because it means eight billion people will go to hell.
So I went and found out about lithium batteries and the uses of rare earth. What I found out is that the transition will be possible, but neither the politics nor the engineering is simple. This article explains why. I start by describing the situation simply, and then add in some of the complexity. Continue reading
Fight the Fire
Jonathan Neale’s new book Fight the Fire – Green New Deals and Global Climate Jobs can be downloaded as a free pdf or a free e-book here. It can be ordered as a paperback for £15 here .
Advance Praise for Fight the Fire
“This is a timely book. At a time when the world is still reeling from the ravages of Covid-19 and the massive economic dislocation that it engendered, now is the perfect time to reinvigorate the campaign for climate jobs, or, as in the case of the Philippines, to launch it. And this book is just what any climate jobs campaigner would need. It provides the big picture, the science and the politics of climate change, as well as the nuts and bolts of how such a campaign would look like. More than that, it is replete with lessons that the author has gained from a life spent fighting in the trenches of various campaigns.” – Josua Mata, Secretary-General, SENTRO union federation, Philippines. Continue reading
The Falmer Method – Towards a New Kind of Conference
Andrea Cornwall, Frank G. Karioris and Nancy Lindisfarne
With all the immense pressure on young scholars to present at conferences, to publish and find jobs, it is easy to forget that we got into academia because we were excited about thinking, reading and grappling with new ideas – and that academia is full of people who have those enthusiasms. In the early summer of 2014, at the University of Sussex in Falmer, we tried out a formula for a symposium which celebrated these values. The symposium wasn’t perfect, but it was pretty damn good, and we think the format will be of interest to others. We’ve decided to call it the Falmer Method.
Too many academic conferences bore senior scholars and scare young ones, sometimes quite badly. They are a way to test people, favour a few and put others down. And keep them down. Continue reading
Racism and the Myth of Trafficking
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: The myth of trafficking was invented by right-wing evangelical Christians in the United States. It is untrue, racist and dangerous to sex workers. Yet to many people it seems both feminist and left-wing. This article explores that paradox. Continue reading
Anti-maskers, Anti-vaxxers and the Racist Right
Jonathan Neale writes: One of the puzzling and enraging things about the covid pandemic is the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers in the United States, Britain, and more widely. And then there are the other forms of covid denial – ‘It’s only the flu’, ‘It’s not real’, ‘There are no cases in hospital’, ‘Herd immunity will save us’.
Many people explain this by saying those other people are mad, deluded, stupid, paranoid, the victims of the internet and conspiracy theories. Or by saying it’s a mystery why they do that. I want to present a political explanation. It comes from some thinking Nancy Lindisfarne and I have been doing about big lies and fascist movements.
[First published at The Ecologist on 27 Jan 2021]
Continue readingPoetry Aflame and Unafraid
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
Yesterday, at Biden’s inauguration, we saw a moment that marked a turning point in the history of poetry in English. We saw also how three women marked and lived the contradictions of a turning point in the history of the United States.
Joe Biden’s speech was never going to be the centrepiece of the event. He does not have the skills as an orator. More important, the politics of compromise he brings to this moment could not do justice to the passions of the movement that put him there. So the weight of the moment fell on the shoulders of the artists, two singers and a poet, three women, one white, one Latina, one black, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Amanda Gorman. Continue reading
My First Day in Camp with the Piruzai – Afghanistan, 1971
Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper
My friend Maryam
In 1971 and 1972 Richard Tapper and I lived with Afghan villagers for nearly a year. The Piruzai, some 200 families, lived in two small settlements near the town of Sar-e Pol in northern Afghanistan. They were Pashtu-speakers, pastoralists and peasant farmers, poor people, working very hard to survive in a vicious feudal system.
The people, the setting, and even the division of labour between Richard and myself seemed to conform to every stereotype about the Middle East. There were veiled women, men on horseback, camel caravans, stunning scenery and dramatic lives. These were stereotypes shared by the Afghan officials, politicians and urban professionals we met in Kabul. But the people we met were not two dimensional.
They were warm, funny, clear-thinking and tough. They understood we were doing research – anthropology – insanshenasi – and they wanted to help us ‘write a book’. They wanted their words to be heard and written down. Living with the Piruzai was an immense privilege and our obligation to tell the story of the Piruzai is on-going. Continue reading
Anthropology and Climate Jobs
Nancy Lindisfarne
[Originally published as a letter/comment in Anthropology Today, March 2020.]
The editorial by Thomas Hylland Eriksen (AT Feb 2020, Vol 36, no 1) is a passionate plea for more anthropological engagement in public debates about global warming. His focus is on knowledge – ‘what we can say’ and storytelling – ‘how can we say it?’ His hope is that anthropologists can find ways to intervene more effectively in political debate. I agree and would add that to do so, we need to be willing to take sides, and draw on our anthropological and historical understanding of resistance, social movements and the mechanics of social change (Armbruster & Laerke 2008; Lindisfarne 2010). And in the case of global warming, there is one utterly compelling way to take Eriksen’s plea for action further.
Continue readingTrump, Big Lies and the Class Con
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
This article does two things. First, we pass on Timothy Snyder’s reasons for describing as fascist the invasion of the Capitol building in Washington. Second, we explain why fascists have to tell big lies, why they tell the particular lies they do, and how this is connected to the class con which is basic to fascist politics.
Continue reading#MeToo and Class Struggle at Work
Rachel Maddow Friday night
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Yesterday we tuned in to watch Rachel Maddow’s nightly one-hour show on the US cable news network, MSNBC. Something extraordinary happened. Twenty minutes into the show Maddow began to talk about the Harvey Weinstein case. Over the next forty minutes she set forth, in powerful and coherent detail, how her bosses had attempted to protect Weinstein from the exposure of his sexual harassment and rapes on NBC News. Maddow accused her bosses, her bosses’ bosses, and her bosses’ bosses’ bosses, of lying, and of actions that were illegal and immoral. On live TV. Continue reading
The Roots of Sexual Violence
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: Lurking behind any discussion of men and masculinities is a deep presumption that men are aggressive sexual predators disposed to raging violence, while women are passive victims good only for reproduction. If this binary construction is ‘natural’, if it is our DNA as a species, then what is the point of asking ‘Why are men and women unequal?’ ‘Why are lesbians and gays oppressed?’ ‘Why are many men violent?’ ‘Why is sexual violence so common?’
Yet these are old, very important questions. For thousands of years the most forceful answers have come from the people who dominate society. Continue reading
Stonewall was a riot
Lesbian and Gay Liberation did not begin with a demonstration, a meeting, a campaign or a court case. It began with a riot. Nancy Lindisarne and Jonathan Neale tell the story.
Continue readingAbortion politics: Lessons from US History, 1980-2018
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write: With Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the US Supreme Court, the majority of justices are against women’s abortion rights. This is the second of two posts about the “abortion wars” in the United States. In retelling this history we are looking for insights that might help us to fight for abortion rights going forward. Continue reading
Defending Abortion: Lessons from US History 1964-1980
Judith Widdecombe, abortion pioneer in MIssouri
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale
This is the first of two posts looking to the history of abortion rights in America. Both focus on lessons learned that we can use in the fight for abortion rights in the future. We make two central points in this post. Abortion rights were won by a mass movement, not the Supreme Court. Second, the abortion wars continue because abortion has come to stand for women’s equality, sexual freedom and desire. Continue reading
Michael Kimmel, #MeTooSociology and Feminist Betrayal of Sex Workers in Academia
Juniper Fitzgerald writes: I’ve made an entire alter ego out of the things people hate most about women: bodily autonomy and self-determination in the form of sex work and body modifications, among other things. The recent allegations against prominent sociologist Michael Kimmel, a man known for his scholarship on masculinity and masculine entitlement, unveil the things people love most about women—complicity in the form of apologetics and silence, among other things.
As a former sex worker and sociologist, the allegations against Kimmel sent me spiraling in ways I did not anticipate, and not just because I have repeatedly experienced sexual harassment in my academic career. I am particularly revolted by the allegations against Kimmel because I disavowed my hard-earned sex worker gut feeling in order to elevate his career. Continue reading
The Rise of Socialism in the United States
Tabitha Spence writes: The American electoral field is witnessing a leftward shift not seen in at least the past four decades. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 bid for president on the Democratic Party ticket sent shock waves throughout the country, as he openly identified as a (*gasp*) socialist, opening up possibilities for the American Left that had been hitherto foreclosed. Continue reading
Pence, Trump and Evangelicals
Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale explain the relationship between Trump and evangelical Protestants like Vice-President Pence. [This piece was first published in Turkish in Cumhuriyet ,August 12, 2018.] Continue reading
Sexual politics and Trumpgate
The balance of power has shifted and Trump is going. Sexual politics has been central to this, Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale write. The turning point, the hinge of history, is Michael Cohen’s guilty plea over payments by him and Trump to two sex workers. That is not a sideshow. Continue reading
Far Right Racism and Gang Abuse
By Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale.
Three years ago we posted an article about gang abuse of young women in Oxford. This article is of national relevance now, because the fascist and hard racist right is making hay with campaigns against Asian and Muslim abusers. Two weeks ago 15,000 people marched in central London calling for freedom for Tommy Robinson. There were 500 anti-racist counter-marchers. Things are getting serious. Continue reading
Anne Bonny Pirate 