The Latest
The Real Border Crisis
The problem isn’t immigration. It’s the failure of liberal democracy itself.
The Claims of Close Reading
Literary studies have been starved by austerity, but their core methodology remains radical.
The Care Factory
In the decades since the Wages for Housework movement, care work has become a site of profit in ways its leaders could never have predicted.
Profiting in Nowhereland
The sordid histories behind Texas’s industrial-scale immigration detention center.
First Day of School in South Rimal
Classes have started for a lucky few, but Gaza’s public sector lies in ruins.
What We Call Progress
Can we still imagine change for the better? Critical theorist Rahel Jaeggi tries in her new book.
The Kitchen Tables Behind Mamdani’s Kitchen-Table Strategy
Staging sites aren’t new to political campaigns, but they’ve never been done like this before.
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Celebrating 50 years of Boston Review
“
Melinda Cooper challenges the assumption that “the personal or domestic sphere” had been an externality in U.S. economic thought and policy. As her article sweeps across economic theory and the politics of social policy, a different narrative becomes clear: In the Reagan and Clinton eras, conservatives and neoliberal Democrats alike embraced a free-market view of families which bound them by legally enforced obligations, shifting what public responsibility onto the fragile family.
—Mark Schmitt, political scientist, on “All in the Family Debt” (2017)
Forums
“In our work, we assumed—before anything else, before any evidence—that there was meaning, and that we were rational, and we decided that we treat texts, ourselves, and each other this way..”
—Johanna Winant, “The Claims of Close Reading”
“Just as many men hesitated to strike on the grounds that their dependents relied on their wages, the bargaining of housewives was limited by love.”
—Emily Baughan, “The Care Factory”
“The first ICE inspection report on Camp East Montana revealed a litany of abuses: makeshift construction, broken sinks and toilets, flooded cells, insufficient food, lost medical records, negligent medical treatment.”
—Honora Spicer, “Profiting in Nowhereland”
“Walid is lucky that his dad can afford to pay for any kind of kindergarten at all, while hundreds of thousands of children are on the streets.”
—Rami Abu Jamous, “First Day of School in South Rimal”
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