This week at the blog
Ijeoma Ajunwa introduced her account of “algorithmic capture” of employment decisions and the paradoxes of unbiased bias in automation.
Bob Hockett hit us with another two-parter, this time on his account of the “capital commons”. Part 1 laid out the conceptual groundwork, analyzing the inherent publicity of capital markets and the structural problems that come with private control over them. Part 2 built out the framework for public institutional architecture for management over public capital.
Elsewhere on the internet
Lydia Nicholson
This week I’m super excited about this book review by K-Sue Park, where she talks where the left fails in its discussions and studies of race. Specifically, Park writes that although the left has learned to acknolwedge histories of conquest and slavery, it stalls when it comes to integrating the question “what is the purpose of acknowledging these histories, and what do we gain from studying them?” I think this review is super interesting/useful/necessary in that it problematizes in a multitude of ways the narrative around a “common right” to land within the U.S nation state that is often employed by leftist thinkers and tenants movements. Please read the review because I feel that I am not doing it justice with this summary.
I also enjoyed: 1. This article about tenant activism in D.C. during the pandemic and its connections to other movements of our times; 2.This piece by Mariame Kaba about the abolition of policing; and 3. This amazing read about the California fires, ongoing settler colonialism in the form of real estate, and, of course, Selling Sunset– as a Selling Sunset fan cannot recommend this article enough! (For those who don’t indulge in cheesy Netflix shows, Selling Sunset is a reality show á la Real Housewives about a luxury real estate brokerage in West Hollywood).
Luke Herrine
I co-sign on the importance of K-Sue’s article. It has got me thinking about my own projects more critically. The other article that caught my attention this week is Steve Vogel and Neil Fligstein’s outline of the basics of a post-neoliberal political economy at the Boston Review. Come for the shout out to LPE and stay for the trenchant analysis of the role of the state and of political contestation in shaping the social provisioning process.
I also thought I’d highlight two sister blogs, both of which have been putting out some of the most original and forward-looking left thinking on the role of the monetary architecture in shaping global political economy: Just Money and Phenomenal World. Close readers will recognize Phenomenal World from my roundup last week–it featured an amazing analysis of how to think about causality and race in social science.
