The political economy of the flu

In response to the email I sent out yesterday with a link to an interesting analysis of  the geopolitics of the flu , Bradie Williams from our class responded with this:

Something else that one could find interesting in this whole ‘swine’ flu hysteria is the impact on global economics. With reports being released about the pandemic potential of the flu, it seems that many governments defense mechanisms may be stretched too far. For example, the Chinese government has recently banned all pork imports from the United States, a severe overreaction considering the illness is not  food-borne at all. This action taken by China could lose farmers in the US upwards of a billion dollars. In terms of space and globalization, it’s amazing how a disease that will most likely never affect the farming communities here in the US may lead to their demise.

Bradie recommends this link to more debates and discussions on the political economy of the flu

PBS documentary Dharavi’s redevelopment

This video was sent in from your classmate Natasha Dockter on the redevelopment of Dharavi. I am having trouble embedding it, but it really is worth a watch:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/video/module.html?mod=1&pkg=033009india&seg=1

Derelict Landscapes: Documenting Urbicide

Auto Body Plant, Detroit

Its hard not to notice the circulation of apocalyptic images of the city: abandoned suburbs, boarded up rowhouses, (the ‘vacants’ as they were called on The Wire, where they were used to house the city’s dead), shuttered factories, and empty storefronts.

Florida Foreclosures

Over twenty years ago, Marshall Berman coined the term ‘urbicide’ to catalogue the wholesale destruction of his South Bronx neighbourhood, a place where ‘more than 300,000 people fled in the 1970s as their homes were …destroyed.’ In the 1970s he says, the South Bronx were the greatest ruins outside of Beruit:

‘these stricken people belong to one of the largest shadow communities in the world, victims of a great crime without a name. Let us give it a name  now he says, and calls it ‘urbicide, the murder of a city.‘

Cincinnati

Erich Hanxleden sent in a striking photo essay from Time maganize which documents Detroit’s ‘beautiful, horrible decline’, or we could say, the urbicide the city. Today, we bear collective witnessness to the methodical murder of one of the most powerful cities in the history of 2oth century America. What is the social significance in documenting Detroit’s landscapes of dereliction (along with others in Cleveland, Braddock, suburban Minneapolis, Florida, etc)? How do these landscapes reveal the world of globalized economies? Whose voices are absent as we document the urbicide of US cities and suburbs?

Fox News Interview with Mayor of Lansing on Auto Bailout

Mayor Bernero offers an impassioned overview of the uneven geographies of bailout conditions.

Focus: Hope, a grassroots project rebuilding Detroit

This PBS story was sent to us by your class mate Natasha Dockter, who thought it tied well into out focus on Detroit and its changing economy. One of the most interesting side stories contained within this facinating video is how a  job training and production centre for young inner city people reinvented itself from serving the auto industry to serving the military. While this video does not dwell on this transformation, it raises important questions about the military and war as growing economic industries unto themselves. This is a question that often gets overlooked in discussions about spatial transformations of post-fordism. Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Online NewsHour: Social Entrepreneurs…“, posted with vodpod

Iceland vs India: Globalization ‘resisters’ fairing better in current economic crisis

A Harvard economist attending the World Economic Form at Davos said that countries like India that have had been comparatively stringent with global capital flows have fared much better in this current era of global turmoil. One Indian businessman praised the strong regulatory approach to financial investment adopted by the Indian state. On the other hand, countries that fully deregulated their markets to entice global capital flows, have suffered the most. Iceland for example. As the article in the NYTs reports it: ‘Iceland was the wonder economy of the world; now it is broke.’ In a noteworthy shift of mind,  IMF economists appear to now be calling for a new global financial regulator. Read the full report in today’s NYT here.

Bailouts and ‘Buy American’ policies ‘distorting competition’ say leaders in Davos

World Economic Forum 2009

The bailout of the banks and the auto industry, the recent measures proposed by Obama’s administration to protect the domestic  steel industry,  all have come under attack at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. These measures, warned foreign officials at Davos  ‘have serious consequences for Washington and the rest of the world.’ According to an article in today’s NYTs, Germany’s chancellor condemned US protectionist policies, warning that they must not be allowed to ‘completely distort’ market forces and global free trade. Read the full article here

“Geography Is Dividing Democrats Over Energy”

An article in the NYT  yesterday detailed a debate in Congress over proposed environmental legislation that will inflict tougher regulations over greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of these new regulations would play out unevenly over the US. According to the NYT, Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio said:

“There’s a bias in our Congress and government against manufacturing, or at least indifference to us, especially on the coasts…It’s up to those of us in the Midwest to show how important manufacturing is. If we pass a climate bill the wrong way, it will hurt American jobs and the American economy, as more and more production jobs go to places like China, where it’s cheaper.”

How are real material practices –like the manufacturing economy– tied to a Midwest identity and sense of place, as well as broader notions of American identity? How is this identity harnessed to differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘them’ at two different scales? Read the full article here.

Globalization…in a Box

In mid-September 2008 the BBC embarked on a year long project to track the the route of a shipping container around the globe as it travels from port to port, carrying

The BBC container. A GPS device tracks its movement around the globe in real time

the goods and services that sustain the networks of international trade that we now call ‘globalization’. ‘Containerization’ and the various regulatory and landuse changes that support the shipping industry revolutionized  the speed and ease with which goods flow around the world. Marc Levine, an economist, recently published a book “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger”. Read a review in the New York Times here. Follow the container’s journey around the world on the BBC’s website here.