Against the Grain – September 18, 2013
According to Priya Kandaswamy, race is socially constructed, and the construction of race is a gendered and sexualized process.

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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.
According to Priya Kandaswamy, race is socially constructed, and the construction of race is a gendered and sexualized process.
What accounts for the disportionate involvement of American Jews in leftist causes, socialist parties, and radical debates? A book by Tony Michels traces the contributions made by Jewish immigrants and their offspring to left-wing theory and activism. Also, Amy Herzog has written a play about three generations of a radical Jewish family.
What does it mean to say that we humans are alienated from nature? Does that statement even make sense? Not according to philosopher Steven Vogel, who contends that another kind of alienation is at play, one that we can and must address.
What does or should economics explain? How well can economists’ utopian models help us understand our messy world of class-based tensions and rampant inequality? Seth Ackerman examines these issues in the context of both mainstream and radical economics.
In Towards Collective Liberation, Chris Crass draws organizing and movement-building lessons from his experience with Food Not Bombs.
A landmark federal law bans human trafficking. So why does Grace Chang assert that the US sponsors human trafficking? And why doesn’t Chang like the federal antitrafficking regime’s emphasis on sex trafficking and prostitution?
As Stephen Germic points out, stories of nationhood propagated at national memorials and parks leave out the claims of American Indians to territory and recognition.
Sarah Swider describes what’s happening to millions of Chinese peasants who migrate to urban centers to do precarious work in China’s construction industry. She also considers what the growing concentration of Chinese migrant workers in cities might mean for working-class politics and solidarity.
In his new book, Robert Samuels describes why higher education in the US is in crisis; he also contends that free tuition, room, and board to public colleges and universities is not only desirable but feasible.
At the Historical Materialism conference in New York City, Stanley Aronowitz spoke about what technology and machinery are doing to the labor process, and Richard Smith discussed the relationship between capitalist production and ecological destruction.