Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“ In France, the mostly working-class descendants of postcolonial immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa   were the first victims of the economic crisis that began in the 1980s, and were subjected to segregation, whether in accessing housing or jobs or in their contacts with the authorities (racial profiling by the police). Given the growing importance of questions of identity in French public debate, it’s not surprising that some young people express their rejection of a society that has no room for them by stressing their personal identity — religion, country of origin and race (defined by the colour of their skin). The poorest are deprived, for socioeconomic reasons, of resources that would let them diversify their social connections and affiliations. We will never understand the world we live in if we forget that social class, defined in terms of economic and cultural capital, remains the determining factor to which other dimensions of identity are tied.” —Stéphane Beaud &

Our media are dominated by ethnic strife while largely ignoring class struggles “Ethnic differences entwine with other social differences –especially of class, region, and gender. Ethnonationalism is strongest where it can capture other senses of exploitation. The most serious defect of recent writing on ethnonationalism has been its almost complete neglect of class relations (as in Brubaker, 1996; Hutchinson, 1994; Smith, 2001). Others wrongly see class as materialistic, ethnicity as emotional (Connor, 1994: 144–64; Horowitz, 1985: 105–35). This simply inverts the defect of previous generations of writers who believed that class conflict dominated while ignoring ethnicity. Now the reverse is true, and not only among scholars. Our media are dominated by ethnic strife while largely ignoring class struggles. Yet in actuality these two types of conflict infuse each other. Palestinians, Dayaks, Hutus, and so on believe they are being materially exploited. Bolsheviks and Maoists believed t

Who does coronavirus kill?

Yugoslavia, Argentina, Egypt, Tunisia, Greece ... Venezuela How to depen a crisis and accelerate conflict or how to make a killing The example of Yugoslavia Basil Davidson's review of Susan Woodward's The Balkan Tragedy

" The fake anti-élitism of today (and this may be the origin of this mind-boggling verbiage about ‘populism’ that clearly doesn’t exist) is directed at the egalitarians, especially at that odd species we might call ‘liberal egalitarians’ some of whom are just modest social democrats." This is a good piece: The mystery of 'populism' finally unveiled

Benedict Anderson on 'mapping the terrain' of nationalism

The persistence of communal cleavages "complicates rather than nullifies social class consciousness and struggle. This persistence of communal cleavages and vertical loyalties in some Arab countries is owing to the perpetuation of traditional systems in which communities are linked to their local za'ims (traditional leaders) through patron-client relationships. To the extent that constructive change can be introduced in these areas, such traditional systems will give way, increasingly, to other social and class relationships.  "... Western functionalists ... view these communal cleavages as 'a premodern phenomenon, a residue of particularism and ascription incompatible with the trend toward achievement, universalism and rationality supposedly exhibited by industrial societies.' Western sociologists whose point of departure is a sociobiological paradigm have argued that ethnic and racial solidarity are extensions of kinship sentiments. For instance, Pierre van d