Colum Graham
@clmgrhm.bsky.social
Postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Agrarian studies, politics, history.
“Food inflation has spurred states into action: in Mexico, the Morena admin negotiated a fixed-price basket of basic food items; in Brazil, Lula manipulated tax rates on select products. And in New York, Mamdani is beginning to roll out public grocery stores.” phenomenalworld.org/analysis/a-f...
Fernando Rugitsky | A Fragile Food Regime
Recurring crises in global food provision
phenomenalworld.org
Thousands of members of the Cockroach Janata Party descended on Delhi in frustration over failures in the national exam system, while an activist held a three-week hunger strike to call for the education minister’s resignation.
India's Cockroach Janta Party formed as a play on the name of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, with the slogan “Secular, Socialist, Democratic, Lazy”. Within days, the CJP's social media presence dwarfed both the BJP and the opposition. trib.al/SxFRe6u
The rise of India’s Cockroach Janta Party
Indian students studying in Australia are riveted to politics in their home country, as the rise of the Cockroach Janta Party threatens a reckoning with the ruling class.
trib.al
Tech billionaires like to claim their work is inspired by science fiction, but in truth, they are using its ‘chrome-plated aesthetic’ as a fig leaf to further what the social theorist Ali Rıza Taşkale labels ‘reactionary futurism’
Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem | Aeon Essays
Tech titans claim the genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future
buff.ly
“To remain in place without the means to move is to experience a narrowing of possible futures.” Emma Goldrick on how distance in Australia is political.
Left in place: how distance in Australia is political - Overland literary journal
If we are to better understand inequality within Australia, we must begin with the recognition that disadvantage does not only reside in income brackets or postcodes associated with urban poverty. It ...
overland.org.au
“During Lula’s current term, after a long period of stagnation, the Brazilian economy grew about 3% and the unemployment rate declined by 3.5%. And yet, the polls are suggesting this won’t be enough to guarantee an easy reelection.” NEW by @rugitsky.bsky.social phenomenalworld.org/analysis/bra...
Drowning in Debt | Fernando Rugistky
Financial inclusion and financial expropriation in Brazil
phenomenalworld.org
So nice to see this piece out with @jacktaggart.bsky.social @policyrelevant.bsky.social and Peter Dauvergne on global environmental governance in a fracturing liberal political economy... We talk about climate, food and plastics governance as liberal norms erode...
Jack Taggart@jacktaggart.bsky.social · 2mo agoWhat happens to global environmental governance when the liberal world economy underpinning it fragments? New piece in @ripejournal.bsky.social, w/ Peter Dauvergne, @jennifer-clapp.bsky.social & @policyrelevant.bsky.social. We ask what comes after ‘liberal environmentalism’. doi.org/10.1080/0969...
“In Argentina and Brazil, the economic transformation led by the giant grain traders increased the countries’ foreign vulnerability at the same time as it sowed the seeds of anti-democratic politics.” @rugitsky.bsky.social on the world-shaping business of soy www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/soy...
Soy Republics | Fernando Rugitsky
The region's role as a key soy exporter has empowered the far right and fuelled ecological resistance, in the biome and beyond.
phenomenalworld.org
OBITUARY: "Vince Rafael exemplified the onset of a long overdue shift in the intellectual centre of gravity in Southeast Asian Studies to new generations of scholars hailing from the region...his work was distinctive in its close attention to identity, ideology, and experience."
Vicente L. Rafael (1956–2026) in memoriam - New Mandala
John Sidel honours his contributions to the study of Southeast Asia
newmandala.org
#OpenAccess from @jeas-journal.bsky.social - Myth and Measurement: Spatial Heterogeneity, Ecological Fallacy, and the Urban Narrative in Peninsular Malaysia’s Electoral Politics - https://cup.org/4q8eI77 - Tyler Rongxuan Chen #FirstView
Remembering is resistance. On International Day of Peasant Struggles, we honor land defenders killed for justice, connect past and present violence, and affirm memory as defiance against exploitation, dispossession, and ecological destruction. www.tni.org/en/article/c...
Zach gets it exactly right. Orban was an authoritarian who built a rigged election system for his own gain. But Peter Magyar cracked the code - realizing that every vote in the countryside was worth two to three votes in the cities and so racked up countryside support, winning 2/3rds of the seats.
Zack Beauchamp@zackbeauchamp.bsky.social · 4mo agoA lot of Orbán's American fans are saying that this election proved he was never an authoritarian in the first place. This is completely wrong — and, in fact, betrays a complete misunderstanding of both Hungarian politics and modern authoritarianism. Here's why.
I find amazing the deafening silence from US universities on Trump's explicit threats to commit war crimes. It is astounding how he has managed to silence them/us. Is this what we agreed to when we bought into institutional neutrality?
Most commentators characterize the aftermath of the 2006 Thai coup as a “resurrection of the bureaucratic polity.” But bureaucrats remained influential even during the period from 1992–2006. How should we understand their political influence? Read more here: t.co/znKFxNkZ1P
My book interview is up on the @NewBooksEAsia podcast! I discuss with Dr. Sarah Bramao-Ramos how I started researching this topic, why global South-South development history matters, how Taiwan constructed a unique model of agrarian development, and more! newbooksnetwork.com/in-the-globa...
James Lin, "The Global Vanguard: Agrarian Development and the Making of Modern Taiwan" (U California Press, 2025) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
If you're looking for an academic Chinese Politics job, apply to this one: www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQT568/a...
Assistant Professor - China & Global Development at University of Cambridge
An academic position as a Assistant Professor - China & Global Development is being advertised on jobs.ac.uk. Click now to find more details and explore additional academic job opportunities.
jobs.ac.uk
The Strait of Hormuz is closed just as spring planting starts. Here's a quick illustrated guide on how 'warflation' will make your food more expensive later this year: newsletter.rajpatel.org/p/how-the-wa...
By "non-hegemony", I wonder if the authors are really making a case about the anarchical society?
Ilias Alami@iliasalami.bsky.social · 6mo agoLink to the piece: www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/non...
The $16.6 trillion in net assets held by private funds in 2025 were ultimately managed by just four thousand registered advisors. New from Lenore Palladino, on the unregulated finance at the heart of the American economy. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/fin...
Finance in the Dark | Lenore Palladino | Finance in the Dark
An opaque sector is reshaping the US. Only ambitious regulatory reform can check its power.
phenomenalworld.org
Please join in person at MIT on Friday, February 27 for a fantastic lineup of speakers—including Prakash Kumar, Sigrid Schmalzer, Micah Muscolino, Benjamin Siegel, and Heather Roller—exploring conservation, ecology, and food production in China&India. Hope to see you there!
At the artisanal oilfields of Wonocolo again late in the afternoon.
A lot of claims recently about the emergence of "tech feudalism". Regular (garden variety...?) "feudalism" in contemporary times seems overlooked. "Civil oligarchy" may be interlocked with modernization processes, but not all oligarchs are civil or perhaps even see themselves as civilians.
Raj Patel@rajpatel.org · 6mo agoFarm Action's Angela Huffman looks behind the duel at the top of the land-ownership charts to ask what land concentration means for farming. But, just fyi, the US' largest landowner is no longer Bill Gates, it's Stan Kroenke. angelasuehuffman.substack.com/p/forget-bil...
Hi @tompepinsky.com from cosmopolitan rural Java where many millions persist in the countryside (often with migratory experiences) and few protest vote against urban chauvinism... 🤔
Tom Pepinsky@tompepinsky.com · 6mo agoAll over the world, people flock to big, diverse, cosmopolitan cities. And the people who stay back in the poorer, rural, more isolated regions use their vote to complain about it.
www.iseas.edu.sg/articles-com...
“Decolonizing the North, Cracking the Federation: Inside PAS’s History War (and Madani’s Response)” By Amrita Malhi
This paper examines how Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) is transforming its northern regional strength into a nationwide “Green Wave” by fusing electoral strategy, cultural production and historical revi...
iseas.edu.sg
"...the inclination among some senior clergy is to blame a few bad eggs for misbehaviour in the monkhood, rather than organisational failings that permit so-called “mafia monks” to thrive." www.economist.com/asia/2026/01...
economist.com
