Industrial Agriculture in the Soviet Union
Historian Jenny Leigh Smith takes a second look at the successes and failures of Soviet agriculture, much reviled during the Cold War as an unmitigated disaster.
Against the Grain
12:00 PM Pacific Time: Mondays - Wednesdays
Acclaimed program of ideas, in-depth analysis, and commentary on a variety of matters—political, economic, social, and cultural—important to progressive and radical thinking and activism. Against the Grain is produced and hosted by Sasha Lilley.
Although white women have been largely excluded from histories of the domestic U.S. slave trade, they were in fact active participants in the buying and selling of enslaved Blacks. So argues Stephanie Jones-Rogers; she also elucidates the power slave owners had under federal and state law to go into so-called free states to reclaim runaway … Continued
Commodifying the Oceans
Environmental sociologist Stefano Longo discusses the multiple threats to the oceans — from overfishing to ocean acidification — and whether the notion of the “tragedy of the commons” is insufficient to explain the root of the crisis.
If Iran is (still) viewed as the enemy, how then must Iranian Americans conduct themselves? What kinds of concerns and anxieties do they harbor, and how do they go about forging identities and cross-cultural understanding? Siamak Vossoughi has written a collection of short stories that examine the Iranian American experience. Also: comments by Price Cobbs … Continued
Medicine and Risk
Historian of medicine and medical doctor Robert Aronowitz asks whether Americans are over-tested and over-treated for illnesses such as heart disease and cancer based on probabilistic calculations of risk.
National memorials and parks bombard visitors with rhetorics of nationhood. But the official stories propagated at such sites leave out critical things, including, asserts Stephen Germic, the claims of American Indians to territory and recognition. Germic examines a range of Native initiatives, both legal and militant, to assert their presence in the face of official … Continued
Peter Cannavò, drawing from Hannah Arendt’s insights into humans’ relationship with nature and the built environment, examines the politics of place in an era of rampant commodification and urban/suburban sprawl. Cannavo points to an overemphasis on development to the detriment of preservation. For more details and higher-quality audio, visit againstthegrain.org.
Why We Can’t Afford the Rich
Are the rich wealth creators, as we commonly hear? Should we be grateful to investors and entrepreneurs, as they like to be called, for generating jobs and greasing the wheels of the economy? Or is the source of their massive wealth the rest of us? Scholar Andrew Sayer discusses rentiers, capitalists, and why the planet … Continued
Lessons from Anarchist Spain
The way we think about inequality today is governed by a number of assumptions not necessarily shared by other people at other times in history. James Martel looks to the anarchists of early twentieth century Spain for an understanding and experience of political equality that could – and, in some cases, does – inform contemporary … Continued
Against the Grain – September 30, 2015
A radio and web media project whose aim is to provide in-depth analysis and commentary on a variety of matters — political, economic, social and cultural — important to progressive and radical thinking and activism.