@soc4pal.bsky.social

If the American Sociological Association wants to stay out of politics and only stand up for university research, then perhaps it should at least be bothered that all 19 universities in Gaza have been decimated. Universities. Bombed. All of them.

I just don't see how shutting ppl out and NOT allowing votes on issues members care abt is constructive here (no matter what the issue in question is)

guest post: the sociologist as bystander The following is a guest post by Roi Livne and an anonymous co-author. They called them “aid distribution centers.” Orwell himself would not have thought of a better term. Every day, shortly after …

Good response here by Roi Levine and anonymous scatter.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/g...

asa should not vote on the boycott proposal This text is posted on behalf of the sociologists listed at the end of the text. Others are welcome to sign via comment or by contacting one of the original signers. We are sociologists (and many o…

“I vote to not let people vote” @soc4pal.bsky.social

scatter.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/a...

Mary Romero, President of the ASA for its 110th session in 2019, when her theme was “Engaging Social Justice for a Better World” has announced she is boycotting this year's meeting in reaction to ASA leadership's decision.

With her permission we share the full text of her letter here.

spineless & unprofessional stance by @asanews.bsky.social. There was a vote last year on a genocide statement & now the ASA is trying to delegitimate it. Reminds me of other so-called leaders trying to delegitimate elections & rewrite history.

The Five Best Books for Understanding Trump’s Dreams of Empire The US president’s hunger for new territory feels outdated to this historian. These titles give context to his goal of control.

Read about the five best books for understanding Trump's imperialism (and yes I not too humbly note that my 2011 book Patterns of Empire is listed): www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

The 'Imperial Boomerang' Explains Why We've Seen What ICE Is Doing Before The boomerang is already in flight in the U.S., a sociologist says.

I spoke to @juliango.bsky.social about the imperial boomerang and how US war tactics abroad are being employed at home by ICE

"America’s cities are treated as colonial zones of conquest and imperial borderlands because that’s all ICE knows. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"

In today's La Presse (Montreal)

Brilliant talk by @juliango.bsky.social

To sum, those atrocities committed in faraway lands always come back home.

www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/vi...

I'm looking forward to returning to Glasgow to deliver the 2nd Annual Racial Justice Lecture following Patricia Hill Collins inaugural lecture last year. It’s great that @glasgow.ac.uk is open to discussions of racial justice when in the US it has become a taboo topic.

From 2014. Longstanding tactic.

www.thenation.com/article/arch...

The conditions for this have been set for a while: growing economic inequality within countries and growing economic multipolarity globally. And I fear Trump 2.0, without worrying about reelection and just interested in smashing and grabbing, is the final trigger. 7/7

I have been fretting about this ever since I started researching and writing about the history of empires (culminating in my 2011 book, Patterns of Empire). And it is keeping me awake at night. Which sucks for me :) 6/7

This is not hyperbole. It is history. It is how the world wars of the 19th century erupted (the Napoleonic wars). It is how WWI and WWII happened (they were really just 1 long world war). And I fear what we have in our future. 5/7

Rival regionalisms form; geopolitical blocs are created and hardened; mercantilist imperial networks replace global free trade. Then the only way the global field can withstand this instability is the final outcome: world war. 4/7

This only serves to do one thing: anger and embolden geopolitical rivals to get more aggressive too. More imperialist machinations by all parties ensue, some subtle or covert, others more open and violent. 3/7

In the past, declining hegemonic powers (or rising ones) - like Britain or Germany - tend to enhance their imperialistic aggression. Desperate to regain ailing power & wealth, they turn away from market mechanisms/free trade & instead use their only hand: military might. 2/7

No doubt about it: Trump's new imperialism re Venezuela & its unabashed discourse of aggression is exactly what desperate empires do as they fall, and it is exactly what has led to revived imperialism and world war in the past. It's all so predictable & and also so dangerous 1/7

note too the photo from Trump's war room basically trying to imitate the pics of when Obama witnessed the mission on bin Laden. The attempt to copy is so sad. The unoriginality laughable 6/6
x.com/jgo34/status...

Many other precedents to Trump's new imperialism (which he himself boasts about) incl the Monroe Doctrine. 5/6

For more see my "American Decline and Performative War, or How to Do Things with Force" (2020) in Frederic Merand, ed., Coping with Geopolitical Decline. 4/6

In other words, while the attack was meant to demonstrate American greatness, it was little else than an admission o f American weakness, desperation and decline. 3/6

It was a "performative war" meant to ward off criticisms of the Reagan admin & deny American decline through spectacular feats of military power in the name of freedom and anticorruption. 2/6

Trump War Room on X: "America is back 🇺🇸 https://t.co/clnZQXHxWF" / X America is back 🇺🇸 https://t.co/clnZQXHxWF

One of the pathetic things about Trump's new imperialism is that it isn't even original. When Reagan invaded Grenada in 83 the admin boasted it meant America was back & had gotten over its "Vietnam syndrome." But this was an expression of weakness not strength 1/6
x.com/TrumpWarRoom...

Do those folks critical of dems and say Dems are the same as Trump actually believe that Harris would have also sent in the US military to Venezuela to capture Maduro? She might have used other means but this blatant empire-ing is surely more of a Trump/Repub thing.

Falling empires do not behave well. #trump

Fanon, Gaza and the anxieties of empire - ROAPE This radical supplement to the editorial of ROAPE’s Fanon special issue raises awareness of how Fanon’s ideas, in the year of his centenary, continue to provoke fear and anxiety within the Western imp...

“For Fanon, anticolonial violence was never a celebration of bloodshed…It was a diagnostic category, a way of naming the fact that colonial domination had already made violence the organising principle of everyday life.” hate that we have to keep clarifying this to dolts
roape.net/2025/12/21/f...

Wrote a thing on racial capitalism in the French journal Marronnages. Some commentators - Malcolm Ferdinand, Diamond Ashiagbor - commented. Then I wrote a comment on their comment.

marronnages.org/index.php/re...