How facing grief can help us navigate a world in crisis

Interview by Nate Hagen….How has an absence of ritual and the avoidance of grief in our culture distorted our relationship to loss – and therefore our ability to protect what we love? What practices do other cultures use to nurture ecological identity and kinship with the more-than-human world? And finally, why might grief, when honored and integrated, be a vital part of building more resilient and ecologically-grounded systems for the future?

Counter-hegemony and polycrisis I: how to eat and how to think

by Raj Patel in The Journal of Peasant Studies…Through examining twentieth-century counter-hegemonic movements, particularly the Italian mondine and the Black Panther Party, this paper advances a theoretical understanding of how counter-hegemony emerges through experimental renegotiations of world-ecological relations. This analysis demonstrates how movements dialectically integrate material practice with intellectual formation, producing new social relations within the interstices of hegemonic power. The mondine struggles against mosquitos and exploitative labour conditions, like the Panthers’ hidden gardens and breakfast programmes, illustrate a crucial theoretical insight: counter-hegemony operates not merely as critique but as practical experimentation with the very boundaries between social and ecological reproduction.

BRICS in 2025

by Tim Sahay and Kate Mackenzie in Phenomenal World…There are now two competing global models of energy and influence: one based on fossil fuels, one on green technologies and a new model of sustainable development. China’s technology is finding new markets around the world because lots of people want it. But there is so far no real wraparound support of finance, trade, and tech transfer—as no new international order of sustainable governance has yet been built. The critical question of the future of BRICS lies with its member countries’ willingness and ability to effect broader collaboration in the fields of technology, trade, and finance. A quarter of the way to the twenty-second century, everything is up for grabs.

Critical responses to global systemic risk in an era of polycrisis

by Ruth Richardson in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science…As grand challenges intensify and intersect across the globe, policymakers and decision makers at all levels continue to face mounting pressures. Increasing fiscal and financial constraints, cognitive overload, and a persistent lock-in to crisis response modes prevent—or, indeed, derail—the development of long-term policies and actions needed to move toward a safer, more just, and sustainable future.

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