Performing Counter-Hegemonic Common(s) Senses: Rearticulating Democracy,Community and Forests in Puerto Rico

Political ecologists have developed scathing analyses of capitalism’s tendency for enclosure and dispossession of the commons. In this context commons are analyzed as a force to resist neo-liberalism, a main site of conflict over dispossession, and a source of alternatives to capitalism. In this paper we elaborate a view of the commons as the material and symbolic terrain where performative re-articulation of common(s) senses can potentially enact counter-hegemonic socio-ecological configurations. Expressly drawing on the concepts of hegemony, “common-senses” (inspired by Antonio Gramsci) and “performativity” (developed by Judith Butler), we argue that counter-hegemony is performed through everyday practices that rearticulate existing common senses about commons. Commoning is a set of processes/relations enacted to challenge capitalist hegemony and build more just/sustainable societies insofar as it transforms and rearranges common senses in/through praxis. The paper draws on the experience of an anti-mining movement of Casa Pueblo in Puerto Rico, which for the last 35+ years has been developing a project self-described as autogestion. The discussion pays special attention to Casa Pueblo’s praxis and discourses to investigate how they rearticulate common senses with regard to nature, community and democracy, as well as their implications for counter-hegemonic politics.     

Puerto Rico’s Luis Muñoz Marín: Poet,Politician, and Paradox

Some revere Luis Muñoz Marín (1898–1980); others condemn him. The author lived years of her childhood and adolescence in Puerto Rico, when prosperity—to a great extent the result of Luis Muñoz Marín’s leadership—promised a socioeconomic reality different from the current one. To understand his life and legacy, she interviewed in San Juan his daughter Senator Victoria Muñoz Mendoza (1940– ), spoke with professors, authors, and a spectrum of other individuals, and spent time at the archives of the Luis Muñoz Marín Foundation. The Foundation is a welcome oasis in an island where, despite its natural beauties, 21st century quandaries and traffic jams abound. Landing in the international airport named in Muñoz Marín’s honor, she heard a Puerto Rican airline employee say that today Muñoz Marín is a fish out of water.     

Boricuas,African Americans,and Chicanos in the “far west”: Notes on the Puerto Rican pro‐independence movement in California, 1960s‐1980s 1

Abstract

From the late 1960s through the 1980s, Puerto Ricans developed a movement in California in support of Puerto Rico's political independence that allied itself with Anglos, African Americans, Chicanos and other Latinos. These alliances were strategic in extending the influence of the movement in solidarity with Puerto Rico's struggle beyond the relatively small and geographically dispersed Puerto Rican population in California. These implicit and explicit political alliances with other sectors led to an interesting ideological and cultural exchange between radical Puerto Rican organizations and these groups. These notes initiate an exploration of this period, through the oral histories of some of the participants in this movement. The focus of the initial exploration is on those who were in positions of leadership and influence in Northern and Southern California within the radical politics of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party—at the time, the main Puerto Rican socialist organization in Puerto Rico and the US.     

Puerto Rico: National security,economic growth and colonialism

Abstract

Puerto Rico's significance for the US state and imperialism has gradually deteriorated. In the context of recent global changes and new developments in the US political economy the logic that justified colonial control cannot be sustained. However, an array of counteracting political and economic forces are conspiring to overcome the altered material and geopolitical conditions that make evident the need for Puerto Rico's decolonization.

Colonialism has given rise to an array of forces that impedes any changes in Puerto Rico's formal political status. Where once the US state, corporate capital and the dominant political forces in Puerto Rico were in relative agreement on sustaining the colonial enterprise, a new constellation of competing forces has emerged. Within Puerto Rico proponents for the status, quo and those who agitate for statehood have reached virtual electoral parity. Monopoly “capital, primarily in Pharmaceuticals, dominates the local economy. However, it is challenged by North American unions and their congressional allies who seek to rescind the lucrative fiscal policies that account for these firms exorbitant profits. Agencies of the US state and congressional committees are at odds on what needs to be done to sustain an unmanageable, increasingly expensive and anachronistic colony.

This essay presents a framework for examining the array of forces and conditions that continue to erode the colonial relation and that explains colonialism's fragility in the current period of global readjustment.     

Continuity or Change in Interstate Extradition? Assessing Puerto Rico v. Branstad

Interstate extradition law would appear radically altered bythe 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Puerto Rico v. Branstad,overturning a precedent established in Kentucky v. Dennison126 years earlier that extradition could not be legally compelledby the federal government. Dennison, however, is more complexthan is commonly believed, and the demise of one of Dennison'sconclusions does not signal a major overhaul of the SupremeCourt's treatment of extradition. Rather, the Court's decisionshave adhered closely to the original intent of the Constitution'sextradition clause. The part of Dennison overturned was thereforenoteworthy as an exception to the general thrust of the Court'streatment of extradition. How then did Dennison's bar of legallycompelled extradition survive so long when the theory of federalismsupporting the decision had been repudiated long before it wasreversed? This article explores this question and directs attentionto the consequences of Branstad for extradition. Despite theapparent clarity of Branstad, a survey of state extraditionofficers reveals lingering confusion over extradition law.     

Whitehall and the Refugees: The 1930s and the 1990s

Abstract

In this paper, originally presented on the occasion of the launch of her book concerning British immigration policy towards Jewish refugees from 1933 to 1948, London compares that past with present British immigration policy and attitudes towards it. She argues, above all, that the same worry about the long-term effects of immigration—that is, that refugees would settle in the country and not return home or move on—that very much influenced the tendency to inhibit aid to Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s, is still very much alive today. While the legal situation of refugees and the kinds of persecution from which they seek refuge are different in the two periods in question, the 1930s and the 1990s—there are now, for instance, international conventions on refugees to which Britain is a signatory—British immigration policies of both periods are marked by many of the same priorities and many of the same attitudes towards and perceptions of refugees. In closing, she sounds a warning that an understanding of the past, crucial as it is, should not be mistakenly used to justify a lack of humanity in the present.     

从《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》看马克思的实践唯物主义

马克思主义哲学是以马克思对实践的科学理解为基础的。《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》的发表标志着马克思开始与旧唯物主义彻底决裂,形成了自己新的世界观,创立了以科学实践观为基础的实践唯物主义。实践唯物主义的创立在马克思主义发展史上具有重大的里程碑意义。     

Signposts to the 2020s

Unless Labour in tandem with other parties of the parliamentary left offers a modernised Keynesian alternative to the neoliberal economic policies of austerity embraced across Europe, there is no prospect of winning again or defeating the right‐wing populism eating into our voter base.     

马克思主义大众化在中国道路中的价值功能

中国道路是围绕什么是社会主义,怎样建设社会主义这个根本问题,在理论和实践中形成和发展起来的中国特色社会主义道路。人民大众坚定走中国道路是中华民族实现伟大复兴的前提,这需要用马克思主义理论武装人民大众,并在人民大众的中国道路实践中,充分彰显马克思主义理论的科学认知、方法指引、实践指导价值功能。     

All the president’s reporters

His most recent book is Live from Capitol Hill! Studies of Congress and the Media.He is presently researching how the American media cover international news.     

Intergovernmental Relations in the 1980s

Intergovernmental relations in West German cooperative federalismhave often been criticized as inefficient and inflexible. Theabolition of joint policymaking and the promotion of decentralizationhave been recommended in order to reduce interdependencies betweengovernments and to avoid overloading central policymaking. Suchproposals have usually been put forward without consideringthe governmental complexity that impedes large-scale reforms.However, a detailed analysis of federalism, focusing on processesrather than structures and on different policies rather thanaggregations, reveals that intergovernmental relations in the1980s are not the same as those in the 1960s or early 1970s.The inherent dynamics of intergovernmental relations have producedmany changes. These changes have contributed to the overallstability of West German federalism because they have reflectedflexible adaptations of relations among federal, Land, and localgovernments to new socioeconomic, sociocultural, and ecologicalchallenges. Hence, events of the 1980s provide an occasion forreassessing cooperative federalism.     

Intelligence requirements for the 1980s

Roy Godson (ed.), Intelligence Requirements for the 1980's (series title), Volumes 1–5 published by the National Strategy Information Center but distributed by Transaction Books, New Brunswick. Volumes 6 and 7 published by Lexington Books, Lexington MA.).

Volume One: Elements of Intelligence, 1979. Pp. 124; $4.99; substantially revised and with a new essay, 1983. Pp.148; $6.00.

Volume Two: Analysis and Estimates, 1980. Pp.223; $7.50.

Volume Three: Counter‐intelligence, 1980. Pp.339; $7.95.

Volume Four: Covert Action, 1981. Pp.243; $7.50.

Volume Five: Clandestine Collection, 1982. Pp.231; $8.50.

Volume Six: Domestic Intelligence, 1986. Pp.290; $14.95 (hardback); $10.95. (paperback)

Volume Seven: Intelligence and Policy, 1986. Pp.192; $14.95 (hardback); $11.95 (paperback).