Laura Bear, Karen Ho, Anna Tsing, Sylvia Yanagisako: Gens: A Feminist Manifesto for the Study of Capitalism (2015)

“Our title signals a major redefinition of the multilayered historical meanings of the term gens. Gens began as the Roman concept of a family unit descended from a common male ancestor and was scaled up to social distinctions like aristocratic lineage. It was transformed by Lewis Henry Morgan to found the anthropological study of kinship and reveal the “original” matriarchal origins of community. Friedrich Engels then drew on Morgan to argue that the patriarchal form of gens led to the end of matriarchal systems. Gens is also, of course, the etymological root of gender, genus, genre, generations, and generate. We find this term broadly helpful because it carries a long history of the appropriation of human and non-human life-forces by social forms. Its varied usage inspires reflection on the depictions of these life-forces that in turn contribute to forms of social inequality. Moreover, it specifically refers to a history of contradictions between male authority and female kinship ties that signals the mix of capture and generativity that characterizes all social power. Finally, by adopting this term, we play with the irony that a patriarchal unit provides the root for the word gender even as we found our approach to capitalism on a more liberating (but hidden) ancestry of feminist analyses of gender, kinship, and race, as well as other forms of epistemological insights garnered from the margins.” (opening paragraph)

Part of the series Generating Capitalism, Fieldsights – Theorizing the Contemporary, Cultural Anthropology Online, March 2015.

Commentary: Donna Haraway (EnviroHumanities 2015, see note 16)

HTML

Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 1(1): Inaugural Issue (2015)

“Catalyst is an online, juried journal that expands the feminist and critical intellectual legacies of science and technology studies into theory-intensive research, critique, and practice. It supports intersectional and transnational scholarship and seeks to foster accessibility and experimentation in scholarly form. The inaugural issue demonstrates the scope of Catalyst‘s intellectual and political vision.”

With contributions by Lindsey Andrews, Neda Atanasoski, Kalindi Vora, Jih-Fei Cheng, Anne Pollock, Elizabeth A. Wilson, Jackie Orr, Joanna Zylinska, S. Lochlann Jain, Jackie Stacey, Lilly Irani, Monika Sengul-Jones, Jenny Reardon, Jacob Metcalf, Martha Kenney, Karen Barad, Daphna Joel, Anelis Kaiser, Sarah S. Richardson, Stacey A. Ritz, Deboleena Roy, Banu Subramaniam, a.o.

Publisher University of California, San Diego, September 2015
Open access
ISSN 2380-3312

HTML, PDFs

Alan Moore, Alan Smart (eds.): Making Room: Cultural Production in Occupied Spaces (2015)

“An anthology of voices from the post-1968 squatting movement in Europe and beyond. It focuses on creative production and cultural innovation driven by squats. Squatting is certainly a tactic which has enabled a tremendous body of collective culture work to be done, and new kinds of lives to be lived. Making Room lays it out in the words of those who did it and study it.

The dark matter undercommons of disobedient culture surveyed in this book begins its roam in a theoretical introduction that includes autonomist theory, ‘monster institutions’ and simple economic justice. It moves from north to south, portraying by country some specific local conditions of an international movement.”

With contributions by Miguel Ángel Martínez López, Alan W. Moore, Stevphen Shukaitis, Universidad Nómada, Tino Buchholz, Vincent Boschma, Geert Lovink, Alan Smart, Aja Waalwijk, Jordan Zinovich, Britta Lillesøe,Tina Steiger, Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, x-Chris, Kasper Opstrup, Azomozox, Ashley Dawson, Sarah Lewison, Azomozox, Nina Fraeser, Julia Ramírez Blanco, Tobias Morawski, Eliseo Fucolti, Gianni Piazza, Assembly of Teatro Valle, Patrick Nagle, Emanuele Braga, Margot Verdier, Vincent Prieur, Jon Lackman, Jacqueline Feldman, Julia Lledin, Elisabeth Lorenzi, Julia Lledinm, Stephen Luis Vilaseca, La Casa Invisible, Stephen Luis Vilaseca, Yasmin Ramirez, Gregory Lehmann, Sutapa Chattopadhyay, Jasna Babic, Tristan Wibault, Galvao Debelle dos Santos, E.T.C. Dee, Spencer Sunshine, Maxigas, and mujinga.

Co-published by Journal of Aesthetics & Protest and Other Forms, October 2015
Designed by Other Forms
Translation Milena Ruiz Magaldi and Jeannette Petrik
Open access
ISBN 9780979137792
355 pages

Publisher
Publisher

PDF (27 MB)
PDF (G Drive, from publisher)