SISTEMA PRISIONAL BRASILEIRO: Covid-19 e os reflexos em um ambiente de “pandemia estrutural”

O presente artigo busca proporcionar uma reflexão crítica do sistema prisional brasileiro em tempos de pandemia. A partir de revisão bibliográfica, pesquisa documental, e noticiários jornalísticos,identifica como as condições precarizadas das unidades prisionais propiciam a expansão da pandemia, expondo seus(uas) internos(as) às mais variadas violações de direitos, que impactam mais diretamente a população negra e pobre, escancarando o racismo estrutural nesses ambientes. Demonstra algumas das medidas utilizadas para mitigar os efeitos da pandemia que, apesar de importantes, revelam-se limitadas diante das estruturas das prisões. Tais elementos explicitam os fundamentos das medidas de aprisionamento e das formas de controle capitalista mobilizadas em face do excedente de força de trabalho, e que no contexto de pandemia tem essa condição agravada nas prisões.BRAZILIAN PRISON SYSTEM: Covid-19 and its reflexes in an “structural pandemic” environmentAbstractThe present article seeks to provide a critical reflection of the Brazilian prison system in times of pandemic. From bibliographic review, documentary research, and journalistic news, it identifies how the precarious conditions of the prison units propitiate the expansion of the pandemic, exposing its inmates to the most varied rights violations, which most directly impact the black population. and poor, opening up structural racism in these environments. Demonstrate some of the measures used to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, which, although important, are limited in view of prison structures. Such elements explain the fundamentals of the imprisonment measures and the forms of capitalist control mobilized in the face of the surplus of workforce, and that in the context of a pandemic this condition is aggravated in prisons.Keywords: Brazilian Prison System. Pandemic. Violation of Rights. Structural Racism.

Interconnection of Class and Race with Capitalism

This article focuses on the interconnection of class and race with capitalism. First it presents a definition of capitalism and its attitude towards civil statuses and exploitation. Secondly, it analyzes the origins of racism in capitalism despite its emphasis on freedom and equality, and its indifference to the social identities of the people it exploits. Consequently, it examines racial oppression as a strategy for capitalist control of the laboring class. In the end it focuses on the very important distinction between oppression and exploitation. These distinct relations also have very different impact on the behavior of social agents and groups, their life opportunities and forms of social conflict. If we want to understand how racial hierarchies reproduce capitalist class relations, we have to understand the basic requirements of class relations and capitalist reproduction itself.

Gerakan Tolak Proyek Reklamasi Teluk Benoa sebagai Penguatan Identitas Kultural Masyarakat Bali

From the beginning of its emergence, the Benoa Bay reclamation project that received fully support from Bali Provincial Government had been rejected by Balinese people in general. The project worked by PT Tirta Wahana Bali International is considered as a form of global capitalist hegemony. Thousand of demonstrators protested against the reclamation project because it is not only threatening the ecology sustainability but also the local culture. “Reject Reclamation” movement, organized by the Balinese People’s Forum to Reject Reclamation(ForBALI), as opposition to global capitalist control. It has been thirty nine customary villages in Bali protested in various ways against the controversial project. This article discusses the struggle of Balinese peopleto reject Benoa Bay’s reclamation plan through the revitalization of Balinese cultural identity to face the global capitalist hegemony.

A Marxist Account of and Suggested Alternative to Capitalist Academic Publishing

This paper examines and situates theoretically from a Marxist political economic perspective the capitalist model of academic publishing using Marx’s concepts of ‘primitive accumulation’ and ‘alienation.’ Primitive accumulation, understood as a continuing historical process necessary for capital accumulation, offers a theoretical framework to make sense of contemporary erosions of the knowledge commons that result from various enclosing strategies employed by capitalist academic journal publishers. As a theoretical complement, the article further suggests that some of the elements of alienation Marx articulated in respect of capitalist-controlled production processes capture the estrangement experienced by the actual producers of academic publications. After offering a short assessment of the open-access movement as a remedial response to the enclosing and alienating effects inherent in the capitalist-controlled academic publishing industry, the article briefly outlines a suggested alternative model for academic publishing that, building on open-access projects, could radically subvert capitalist control.

Security at home: How private securitization practices increase state and capitalist control

The impact of the security state is not only seen in the political and spatial restrictions on public space and the public sphere or inscribed in militarized national borders and cities, but also in the increasing penetration of the domestic and private realm of home. These securitization practices and how they work can be exposed through an ethnographic analysis of formal institutional structures as well as the affective, discursive and bodily practices that make up and regulate everyday life. Examining securitization as a scalar set of spatial practices and social processes that interlock through a desire for ‘security’ reveals how securitization is able to keep a political stranglehold not only on poor, homeless and marginalized people who are traditionally perceived to be at risk and the target of these controls, but also on middle-class social preferences, political actions, shared feelings, and daily movements. This paper explores five of these sociospatial securitization practices including spatial enclosure, surveillance, private governance, rules and regulations, and financialization of everyday life that constrict and then redirect middle-class home life in private housing regimes in New York City.

The Icon Project

In the last quarter century, a new form of iconic architecture has appeared throughout the world's major cities. Typically designed by globe-trotting "starchitects" or by a few large transnational architectural firms, these projects are almost always funded by the private sector in the service of private interests. Whereas in the past monumental architecture often had a strong public component, the urban ziggurats of today are emblems and conduits of capitalist globalization. In The Icon Project, Leslie Sklair focuses on ways in which capitalist globalization is produced and represented all over the world, especially in globalizing cities. Sklair traces how the iconic buildings of our era-elaborate shopping malls, spectacular museums, and vast urban megaprojects--constitute the triumphal "Icon Project" of contemporary global capitalism, promoting increasing inequality and hyperconsumerism. Two of the most significant strains of iconic architecture--unique icons recognized as works of art, designed by the likes of Gehry, Foster, Koolhaas, and Hadid, as well as successful, derivative icons that copy elements of the starchitects' work--speak to the centrality of hyperconsumerism within contemporary capitalism. Along with explaining how the architecture industry organizes the social production and marketing of iconic structures, he also shows how corporations increasingly dominate the built environment and promote the trend towards globalizing, consumerist cities. The Icon Project, Sklair argues, is a weapon in the struggle to solidify capitalist hegemony as well as reinforce transnational capitalist control of where we live, what we consume, and how we think.

The Enclosure and Alienation of Academic Publishing: Lessons for the Professoriate

This paper interrogates and situates theoretically from a Marxist perspective various aspects and tensions that inhere in the contemporary academic publishing environment. The focus of the article is on journal publishing. The paper examines both the expanding capitalist control of the academic publishing industry and some of the efforts being made by those seeking to resist and subvert the capitalist model of academic publishing. The paper employs the concepts of primitive accumulation and alienation as a theoretical register for apprehending contemporary erosions of the knowledge commons through the enclosure effects that follow in the wake of capitalist control of academic publishing. Part of my purpose with this discussion will be to advance the case that despite a relatively privileged position vis-à-vis other workers, academic cognitive labourers are caught up within and subject to the constraining and exploitative practices of capitalist production processes.

On the 'Pre-History of The Panoptic Sort': Mobility in Market Research.

This article reviews the history of market research to argue that that discipline has seen a paradigm shift during the second half of the 20th century. Originally market research developed as an integral element to the society-wide capitalist control revolution. Its aim was to contain the complexity of an increasingly mobile consumer demand in a number of pre-established categories. Since the 1950s however market researchers developed a series of techniques to observe and make use of consumer mobility. The emergence of these new techniques was coupled to a different conception of the role of marketing. Its role was no longer understood primarily as that of disciplining consumer demand, but rather as that of observing and utilizing ideas and innovations that consumer's themselves produced. This paradigm shift from 'containment' to 'control' drove the development the statistical techniques and theoretical conceptions of consumers that are now employed in the commercial surveillance of on and off-line mobility. Through ubiquitous surveillance contemporary capitalism aims at including virtually all of social life into its valorization process. The conclusion considers the possible contradictions that this might produce.