Whereas social and political theory has long concerned itself with the description and analysis of structures—states, classes, national economies—Mezzadra and Neilson ask what we might learn about contemporary capitalism by instead studying its operations. How are the global workings of capital reshaping the state and its institutions? What are the implications of these processes for the continued encroachment of capitalism on new spaces and new realms of social life?

The celebrations of the railroad as a symbol of national unity and progress are a reminder of its continued power in writing the myth of the nation, and of the importance of challenging such nation-valorizing narratives. Karuka does exactly this in his timely and provocative book, creating new ideas with which to re-examine the well-worn story of the railroad, and studying it through a broad array of distinct cases.

Phnom Penh is being built not only on the foundation of blood bricks, but also climate change as a key driver of debt and entry into modern slavery in brick kilns. Blood bricks embody the converging traumas of modern slavery and climate change in our urban age.

‍Lines are willfully ignorant of volume. Precisely because of this, lines are forced to confront volume at every turn. As they strive to abstract themselves down to one dimension, lines must negotiate endlessly with all three stubbornly material dimensions. Their linearity is never more than a bargain of convenience, a tolerable approximation of an abstract ideal. Abstraction is not itself an abstract process.

This video feature accompanies the article “The social production of container space”. Although a sizable body of popular and academic literature explores how shipping containers have reconstituted the spaces through which they travel, the space within containers themselves remains largely unexamined.