New Left Review Issue 89 out now!

Analysis of Scotland’s independence referendum and the hollowing of Labour’s electoral hegemony north of the border, after its lead role in the Unionist establishment’s Project Fear. What tectonic shifts have brought the UK’s archaic, multinational-monarchical state to the fore, as focus for an unprecedented mass politicization?

Ching Kwan Lee: The Spectre of Global China

China’s overseas expansion has unsettled Western commentators. In this striking ethnographic study, Ching Kwan Lee investigates the labour regimes, investment patterns and management ethos of the PRC’s state-owned firms on the Central African Copperbelt, in contrast to the giant multinationals. Surprise findings include Zambia’s first SEZs and a distinctive, quasi-Weberian ethic of ‘eating bitterness’. 

Timothy Brennan: Subaltern Stakes

If the post-colonial theory that emerged as a militant intellectual project in the 80s has faltered over the past decade, against a backdrop of actual imperialist excursions, Vivek Chibber’s critical intervention in the field has ignited fresh debate around it. Timothy Brennan asks whether an effective challenge can be mounted without tackling the theory’s amnesia more directly.

Nancy Ettlinger: The Openness Paradigm

Hailed by management gurus as a new strategy for hard-pressed companies in the advanced economies, the ‘open business model’ aims to transform post-Fordism’s flexibilized forms of production—with, Nancy Ettlinger argues, bleak prospects for global labour.

Erdem Yörük, Murat Yüksel: Class and Politics in Turkey's Gezi Protests

What social forces have been mobilized in the mass protests of recent years? Following Göran Therborn and André Singer’s contributions in NLR 85, Erdem Yörük and Murat Yüksel examine the class backgrounds and political ideologies of the Gezi Park protesters, finding that manual workers outnumbered ‘new middle classes’. 

NLR 89 also features the following book reviews:


Emilie Bickerton on Michael Witt, Jean-Luc Godard, Cinema Historian

Landmark reading of the director’s epic audiovisual essay, Histoire(s) du cinéma.

Joshua Rahtz on Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion.

The high culture of neoliberalism’s interwar progenitors set in contrast to its 1970s popularizers.

Alex Niven on Richard Burton, A Strong Song Tows Us. 

First full-length biography of the singular English modernist poet, Basil Bunting.