The History and Political Economy Project

A Real Political Economy of Technology - The Ideas Letter Two technological futures are competing for political and material priority: generative AI and the green transition. Benanav argues that while AI is marketed as a world-reordering breakthrough, its pr...

What might we be able to build in the future that we can't build today? For the @TheIdeasLetter, I wrote about the political economy of technology and technological change in a world beyond capitalism.
www.theideasletter.org/essay/a-real...

Bethany Moreton talking now about the Christian reconstructionist movement, Gary North, and the relationship between neoliberalism and religious far right at the KHC in Oxford/Wadham.

holy smokes huge honor to be next to these books

The Choice of Civil War Margaret Thatcher’s mantra ‘there is no alternative’ was not a statement of historical fact but a strategic objective. She shared with Hayek, Pinochet, Mises, Trump, Bolsonaro, and Macron a commitment...

Turning citizens into enemies, neoliberal governments hamstring democracy

Out today - The Choice of Civil War: Neoliberal Strategy and the Politics of the Enemy by Pierre Dardot, Haud Guéguen, Christian Laval and Pierre Sauvêtre

Baltimore! Join the great Nathan Connolly and me at @redemmas.org on January 29th!!

Cédric Durand, After AI — Sidecar Legacies of the bubble.

An epidemic of workforce demoralization? "Intensive AI use is demotivating and deskilling, fuelling boredom and mediocrity. We could even see a reverse ‘productivity J-curve’: short-term productivity gains rapidly overwhelmed by a deterioration in labour quality" newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

Debates continue to circulate—as they should—about the utility of neoliberalism as a category of analysis and political practice. Myself + three other historians wrote a brief overview of how it works in our field for the Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Very grateful for this smart and far-reaching review of Born in Flames by @david-helps.bsky.social in @dissentmag.bsky.social
dissentmagazine.org/article/the-...

Opening page for the Royal Historical Society article 'Writing the History of Neoliberalism: A Comment'. Full abstract: This series of comments brings together four historians of neoliberalism, each of whom focuses on a different part of the world but whose work has implications that are transnational if not global. Quinn Slobodian reconstructs the rise of the category of neoliberalism among historians and identifies the different paths of inquiry it is generating. Priya Lal, offering an Africanist’s perspective, moves beyond the reduction of the neoliberal narrative of the continent to one of linear declension and abjection by way of structural adjustment to show continuities from the colonial era to early independence. Gary Gerstle, an Americanist by training, offers a macro take on the move from a Keynesian and social democratic order to a neoliberal one while insisting we attend to the diverse ways policies and elite neoliberal ideas are taken up by populations for whom promises of freedom may mean something different from what intellectuals intended. Finally, Tehila Sasson, a historian of modern Britain and the world, explores the left-wing features of what has come to be called neoliberalism, insisting we keep a keen eye out for unintended consequences and unlikely origins. Together, the comment offers a satellite’s eye view of a subfield reaching maturity."

'Writing the History of Neoliberalism: A Comment' bit.ly/3LKB8NF - new article in 'Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'.

With contributions from Quinn Slobodian, Priya Lal, Gary Gerstle & Tehila Sasson.

@quinnslobodian.com, @priyalalista.bsky.social @tsasson.bsky.social #Skystorians 1/2

Two, Three, Many Developmentalisms As we close out 2025, we write to share a wide range of publications, to celebrate our recent grantee workshop, and to alert you to upcoming award, conference, and job opportunities.

In case you missed our last newsletter of 2025, check out our latest publications, a couple CFPs, job and fellowship ads, and more:

Post-Neoliberalism is the New Centrism At a recent convening devoted to the death of neoliberalism, what emerged was less a rupture with the past than a centrist project of status-quo stabilization.

Today, @quinnslobodian.com takes you inside a recent conference devoted to the world after neoliberalism. What emerged, he argues, was less a rupture with the past than a centrist project of status-quo stabilization.

Very grateful for the opportunity to receive feedback from the @hpe-project.bsky.social community on my doctoral project, after receiving a HPE summer grant to conduct further archival and interview research in Geneva and Paris

Call for Papers 51st Annual Meeting of the Social Sciences History Association Hilton Hotel, Atlanta, Georgia – November 19th-22nd, 2026 Submission Deadline: March 1st, 2026 Decentering Modernity Since the inception of social science disciplines in the nineteenth century, modernity has been viewed as a unique phenomenon originating in the West and radiating to the rest of the world. This understanding of modernity has served as the foundation of modern social sciences. It has also been embraced by both Western imperialists, who believed in their “civilizing mission,” and postcolonial nationalist elites striving to implement “modernizing programs” in their new nations. Over the last three decades, social science history has witnessed a flourishing of works that challenge this Western-centric notion of world development. They demonstrate that modernizing processes that have long been assumed to be unique to early modern Europe – such as the rationalization and centralization of the state, marketization of the economy, the rise of new ideologies pursuing individual freedom and political representation, and the transition away from the demographic ancien régime – have been parallel processes across different civilizations in the post-Mongol world. Embedded in diverging cultural idioms and manifesting local variations, the multiple forms of early modernities interacted with one another in the integrated global economy from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. As such, the rising domination of the Western form of modernity in the Age of Imperialism is far from a unidirectional imposition of Western institutions, but a constant process of power, resistance, hybridization, and negotiation. In today’s world, we see the center of gravity of capitalist development moving away from traditional Western countries with the emergence of new centers of capital accumulation in the Global East and Global South. While the ongoing democratic backsliding does not spare man…

Happy to share the CFP for next year's Social Science History Association conference under the leadership of Ho-fung Hung - "Decentering Modernity." Proposals due by March 1 - details here: ssha2026.ssha.org

FIREstorm — History & Political Economy Project Bench Ansfield in conversation with Andrew Anastasi

"[P]ublic housing was the only type of housing spared by the inferno… What would it mean to take that finding seriously?" @benchansfield.bsky.social on implications of the 1970s arson wave for the housing justice movement today: www.hpeproject.org/blog/firestorm

2025 NBCC Awards Longlist: Criticism - National Book Critics Circle Algorithm of the Night: Film Writing, 2019-2025, by A.S. Hamrah (n+1) Authority: Essays, by Andrea Long Chu (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Dismantling the Master’s Clock: On Race, Space, and Time,

A nice surprise in a bleak week www.bookcritics.org/2025/12/15/2...

Is infrastructure sabotage always a destructive act led by seditious individuals? no
my new article in Human Geography studies Colombian public sector workers ‘breaking’ infrastructure to oppose privatization in 1992, and argues sabotage can reshape policies, politicize society & more

Really enjoyed sharing thoughts on Aditi Dey’s & Charli Muller’s excellent papers!

For our concluding keynote presentation, Joel Suarez delivered a wonderful talk on “informal” work, immigration, and notions of freedom in global capitalism. And that’s a wrap on our fourth annual grantee conference!

Diana Wylie (Emerita, BU) and Christy Thornton (@llchristyll.bsky.social, NYU) brought additional perspectives from South African history and global social movements into dialogue with these excellent presentations.

Flavia Canestrini (@flaviacanestrini.bsky.social, EUI) presented research on how grassroots actors in the U.S. worked to exert financial pressure on banks to divest from apartheid South Africa

Our final grantee panel of the weekend! Chloe Bernadaux (Northwestern) analyzed how the UN embargo of Iraq in the 1990s was interpreted domestically through discursive frames of legitimacy, humanity, and imperialism

@dygottlieb.bsky.social

Responses from Dylan Gottlieb (Bentley) and Betty Anderson (BU) opened the floor to a wide-ranging conversation about local, regional, and global narratives of state and capital

Bench Ansfield (@benchansfield.bsky.social, Temple) then introduced an exciting new project on catastrophe bonds, climate change, and the politics of risk

Day 2 of our grantee conference! We started things off with a fascinating presentation by Jan Altaner (Cambridge) on real estate speculation in Beirut and its imbrication in global capital flows

A round of wonderful responses from Francine McKenzie (Western Ontario) and Quinn Slobodian (@quinnslobodian.com, BU). And that's a wrap! We'll be back tomorrow with more highlights.

Edward Knudsen (@tedknudsen.bsky.social, Oxford) presented his research on how historical memories of interwar protectionism have been reconstructed over time in service to shifting hegemonic projects.

In our final session of the day, Connor O'Brien (@connorpobrien.bsky.social, Cambridge) zoomed in for a presentation on the history of "good governance" in the context of struggles over development and political authority around the globe.

We were thrilled to have Sarah Bellows-Blakely (@bellowsblakely.bsky.social, Freie Universität Berlin) deliver our conference's first keynote presentation, based on her book Girl Power? A History of Girl-Focused Development from Nairobi: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Weekly Roundup: Dec 12 A call to join the ranks of the Association for Law and Political Economy, an interview with Bench Ansfield about the business of arson, and a new entry by Amna Akbar in our symposium on Free Gifts.

The week in review: a call to join the ranks of the @a-lpe.bsky.social, an interview with @benchansfield.bsky.social about the business of arson, and a new entry by Amna Akbar in our symposium on Free Gifts.

Plus, the best of Law and Political Economy from around the web 👇🧵