Saskia Sassen

(Full Title) Some geographers and sociologists argue that what defines the most advanced forms of global capitalism today is the revitalisation of processes and techniques of primitive accumulation. What is primitive accumulation? And how can this 19th Century idea help us appreciate the cultural dimensions of contemporary processes of globalization?

Indice

Premessa ................................................................................................................................ 3

1. Origini dello Stato neoliberale ........................................................................................... 8
1.1 Democrazia liberale nazionale e geografie imperiali .................................................. 8
1.2 Le capacità costitutive dello stato neoliberale ........................................................... 13

2. Denazionalizzazione e costituzione dello stato neoliberale ............................................ 20
2.1 Concorrenza economica globale e capacità giuridica................................................ 20
2.2 Istituzioni finanziarie e capacità economiche ............................................................ 25

3. La governance neoliberale............................................................................................... 33
3.1 Il processo di sviluppo della governance .................................................................. 33
3.2 La produzione di soggettività disciplinate ................................................................. 40

Bibliografia .......................................................................................................................... 48

A distanza di un anno l’uno dall’altro sono stati resi disponibili al lettore italiano gli ultimi lavori di Saskia Sassen: "Una sociologia della globalizzazione" (2008) e "Territorio, autorità, diritti" (2009). Il presente contributo intende ricostruire criticamente il percorso di ricerca seguito dalla sociologa olandese e, in particolare, il suo apporto teorico al vasto dibattito in corso nelle scienze politico-sociali sull’impatto che i processi di globalizzazione hanno avuto sulle strutture giuridico-politiche moderne. Diversamente dalla letteratura dominate, Saskia Sassen propone di considerare il ruolo dello Stato quale referente fondamentale per la produzione delle condizioni politicoistituzionali che rendono possibile la globalizzazione. A tal fine enuclea la categoria teorica di de-nazionalizzazione, utilizzata per descrivere l’avviarsi di un processo di ridefinizione della topologia politico-giuridica moderna in cui lo Stato non svolge il ruolo della pura vittima sacrificale.

Shanghai's Pudong financial district is known for its spectacular skyline, which Michelle Huang has referred to as 'a copy of a global city' – a reading that this article pushes further. What does this 'copy of a global city' tell us about the intricate relationships between globalisation, capitalism and urbanity? Whereas Koolhaas proposed the notion of the 'generic city' to grasp the future Asian city, this article argues that his reading reifies the conservative premise that globalisation equals homogenisation. Although Abbas' concept of the 'fake' comes closer to what we see emerging in Asia, it simultaneously reifies the problematic idea of an authentic original. Instead, the article proposes reading Pudong as a shanzhai version of the global city: meaning the culture of Chinese pirated, 'fake' products. By linking the notion of shanzhai to that of the global city, it aims to recuperate the locality, fluidity and peculiarity of the global city.

Texto original em inglês: Saskia Sassen
Tradução para o português para o livro Design e Política (ed. Fluxos, 2014): Alemar S. A. Rena

Original text: Saskia Sassen (When Clashing Visual Orders Obscure Economic Articulations)
Translation for the book Design e Política (Fluxos, 2015, Brazil): Alemar S. A. Rena

Note: Prepared for the International Design Conference April 2011, Belo Horizonte

Fragmento:

"Durante um certo período – séculos ou milênios – empresas, reinos e nações-estado nascem e morrem aos milhares. Com raras exceções, as cidades continuam. No máximo, mudam de nome. A própria materialidade da cidade a permite sobreviver. Uma vez lá, ela fica. Em contraste, a composição mais abstrata de reinos e nações-estado, e até de empresas, significa que eles podem desaparecer deixando senão um rastro. Uma cidade destruída é a fonte para sua reconstrução. Cidades tão diversas como Londres, Istambul e Mumbai são instâncias dramáticas dessa resistência através dos milênios e através de formas diversas de organização política. Mas também cidades como São Paulo ou Chicago têm uma história de séculos que gerou sua atual figuração".

With the dissolution of the frontiers of the cold war and the erosion of economic solidarity among USA-led countries, in a world dominated by geo-economic rivalries and not by geopolitics, the creation of a global economic market requires the control of trade routes, the access to natural resources, and the creation of strategic industrial clusters, in order to attract investments. For some analysts, Asia has so far been a passive user of global governance and the rise of the Chinese economy would be rebalancing its narrative. The thesis aims to synthetically explore, with a multi-scale approach through the New Silk Road, between Political Geography and the discipline of International Relations, the use of the power of digital devices, and the analysis of social transformations in urban contexts, how global governance is evolving.

This paper presents an overview of my dissertation work at roughly mid-stage. The paper examines the depiction of urban space and its destruction in three significant works of visual culture -- the Metropolis tales – attempting to understand its articulation as an expression of political and social conditions of interwar Germany, postwar Japan, and Japan today. The destruction which threatens each of the imagined cities in these three stories is also tied to the destruction of the human body. The paper advances the hypothesis that this twinned annihilation speaks of tensions relating to identity, citizenship, and biopolitics.

Jak przebiegały przygotowania do Euro 2012 w Polsce? Jakie korzyści polityczne, gospodarcze i społeczne widzieli w tym procesie przedstawiciele polskich instytucji? Czy relacje z globalną organizacją sportową miały wpływ na funkcjonowanie państwa? A może relacje z polskimi instytucjami miały wpływ na globalną organizację? Książka opisuje proces globalizacji organizacji sportowych, a także globalny wymiar wielkich imprez sportowych na tle przemian roli państwa narodowego. Jest również wciągającą opowieścią przedstawiająca Euro 2012 zza kulis – widziane oczami osób najbardziej zaangażowanych w jego zorganizowanie. Od pierwszej, szalonej myśli, by aplikować, przez żmudne tworzenie wniosku aplikacyjnego i zbieranie gwarancji, aż po przygotowania samych Mistrzostw i wnioski po ich zakończeniu.

"Technologies for Freedom" is a sentence in Manuel Castells’ "Communication and power"; they are intended as a "material basis and cultural movements in their struggle against capitalist globalization", and against the consequent displacement of decision-making places from democratic instances.
In order to confirm the validity of this statement, this thesis initially wanted to develop a theoretical approach that would allow to compare the thought of some of the most important experts in the impact of digital technology on our society and, later, to verify its compliance in political upheaval that characterized the year 2011.
Trying not to be determinist, we have realized that many of the theories of authors like Bauman, Castells, John Friedmann, Hardt and Negri, Latouche, Mezza, Rheingold, Sassen, and others, could contribute to the definition of a single theoretical framework in which the digital, and particularly the Web 2.0, is actually helping to create a new man: today, as in italian Rinascimento, is no longer sufficient to stand on the nineteenth-twentieth century giants’ shoulders, but people claim to be an active participant in social, economic and political choices.
Beyond the obvious effect of "amplification of informations", there was evidence that three changes are characterizing people who are questioning the current arrangements of power, and any change has been associated with a precise method in digital social use:
· Disintermediation: Awareness of the failures of the short century and acquisition of
new sense of responsibility;
· User-generated content: Analysis and construction of a shared alternative; it consists in
the production of new meaning;
· Adhocracy: The action, the tendency to form spontaneous groups in the network, also
chasing minimum goals; fact that in 2011 took a lot more political characteristics.
Even using the parallelism between the movements of the 2001 Social Forum and those of 2011, steps were taken to see if what is proposed is theoretically then actually occurred in the Arab Springs protests, in the indignados and Occupy Wall Street movements. To verify this statement has been used the comments that journalists, writers and bloggers produced for networks and web.
The conclusion of the thesis is that the dynamics that made the 2011’s protesters occupy the squares of Arab and Western worlds are not detectable in the protests of previous years, except for the first period of the 2001 Social Forum, characterized by spirit of Genoa: the horizontality of the decisions taken both at birth and in the management of movements, refer to the three steps described above.

Desde economistas postkeynesianos hasta intelectuales lo han advertido. Las implicaciones de la globalización económica en sus múltiples dimensiones son desalentadoras. Los costos políticos, económicos y sociales del modelo de “injerencia mínima del Estado” son empíricamente referenciables y pueden ser visualizados tanto cualitativa como cuantitativamente.

Datos emitidos por organismos nacionales e internacionales han demostrado que  la calidad de las condiciones políticas, económicas y sociales del Estado mexicano ante el fenómeno de integración global parece diluirse. Aunque el modelo neoliberal adoptado en la década de los ochenta ha traído consigo estabilidad macroeconómica (no sólo en México, sino en gran parte de los países latinoamericanos), las consecuencias a nivel micro no han sido las que se esperaban.

Per la Repubblica romana dell’intelletto collettivo. Dalla parte delle madri costituenti di una Roma repubblicana, prodotto dell’intelletto collettivo diffuso nelle pratiche quotidiane di autogoverno, tramite mutuo soccorso, correzione reciproca e progressive approssimazioni: saperi comuni, in acquisizione evolutiva. Come nelle due esperienze repubblicane dentro il lungo cinquantennio rivoluzionario europeo.
La Roma senza papa della Repubblica romana del 1798-99 e quella del 1849, quando riemerge quella spinta alla rigenerazione sociale e alla trasformazione istituzionale, nel gorgo del sempre ingovernabile popolo romano, reso fatalista dalla millenaria presenza papalina, ma anche suscettibile di caotiche sommosse, spinte dall’urgenza di applicare e diffondere princìpi, valori e pratiche repubblicane, democratiche, laiche, libertarie, sociali, autonomistiche nel governo cittadino di ogni giorno, per il diritto della città e alla città.
https://www.bordeauxedizioni.it/prodotto/rome-nome-plurale-di-citta/
https://www.bordeauxedizioni.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DE-FINIS-BENINCASA-Rome-ESTRATTO.pdf

In the beginning of the 1970s, Michel Foucault dismisses the terminology of 'exclusion' for his projected analytics of modern power. This rejection has had major repercussions on the theory of neoliberal subject-formation. Many researchers disproportionately stress how neoliberal dispositifs produce entrepreneurial subjects, albeit in different ways, while minimizing how these dispositifs sometimes emphatically refuse to produce neoliberal subjects. Relying on Saskia Sassen's work on financialization, I argue that neoliberal dispositifs not only apply entrepreneurial norms, but also suspend their application for groups that threaten to harm the population's profitability. Neoliberal dispositifs not only produce entrepreneurial subjects, but also surplus populations that are expelled from the overall population to maintain its productivity. Here, the concept of 'exclusion' is appropriate if understood in Agamben's sense of an inclusive exclusion. The surplus population is part of neoliberal dispositifs, but only as the element to be abandoned.

Na atualidade, existem ten dências sistêmicas emergentes, explicadas pela lógica das expulsões de Saskia Sassen, uma forma de compreender o fenômeno da crimigração globalmente, para além das dinâmicas locais ou de um Estado, como a brasileira, já delineada no meu livro "Crimigração: a relação entre política migratória e política criminal no Brasil".

As Ulrich Beck noted in « The Risk Society » (1986), the radical change in the threats to contemporary societies implies an equally radical change in the way in which collective action is managed and regulated. The process of globalization further aggravates the distortion between crisis-control capabilities and the reality of threats. In this context, the real challenge of public reforms lies in the ability of States to answer some questions: how can the framework and modes of action of the nation-state, which remains the unavoidable place of democratic control, be changed in a process of globalization that is accompanied by an increase in systemic risks? how can public strategies be adapted to collective action based on the paradigm of sustainable development, involving new forms of arbitrage between public goods and market activities ? In the face of these challenges, the strategies for reforming the States in and their management systems are totally obsolete. To support this finding, this paper compares the fundamental principles of organizing public action with the analyzes of a few sociologists who have particularly thought about the changes taking place: Antony Giddens and « the consequences of modernity »; Ulrich Beck and « the risk society »; Hans Jonas and « the imperative of responsibility »; Jean-Pierre Dupuy and « the enlightened catastrophism »; Francis Chateauraynaud and « the whistleblowers »; Saskia Sassen and « the global city » etc. This confrontation highlights the extent of the delay in the way public action adapts to the challenges of the contemporary world.

Résumé
Comme Ulrich Beck le notait dans « La société du risque » (1986), le changement radical des menaces qui pèsent sur les sociétés contemporaines implique un changement tout aussi radical des modalités de pilotage et de régulation de l’action collective. Le processus de mondialisation aggrave encore la distorsion entre les capacités de maîtrise des crises et la réalité des menaces.
Dans ce contexte, le véritable enjeu des réformes publiques se situe dans la capacité des États à répondre à quelques questions : comment faire évoluer le cadre et les modes d’action de l’État-nation, qui reste le lieu incontournable du contrôle démocratique, dans un processus de globalisation qui s’accompagne d’une multiplication des risques systémiques ? comment adapter les stratégies publiques à une action collective fondée sur le paradigme du développement durable, impliquant des formes d’arbitrage nouvelles entre biens collectifs et activités marchandes ? Face à ces enjeux, les stratégies de réforme des États et de leurs systèmes de management sont totalement obsolètes.
Pour étayer ce constat, ce papier confronte les principes fondamentaux d’organisation de l’action publique aux analyses de quelques sociologues qui ont particulièrement pensé les mutations en cours : Antony Giddens et « les conséquences de la modernité »; Ulrich Beck et « la société du risque » ; Hans Jonas et « le principe responsabilité »; Jean-Pierre Dupuy et « le catastrophisme éclairé » ; Francis Chateauraynaud et « les lanceurs d’alerte » ; Saskia Sassen et « la ville globale » etc. Cette confrontation met en évidence l’ampleur du retard dans la façon dont l'action publique s'adapte aux défis du monde contemporain.

Eles eram muitos cavalos (2001), de Luiz Ruffato, é um romance estruturado em vinhetas, que apresenta diferentes histórias, gêneros e narrativas. Neste artigo, afirmo que a obra rompe com a linearidade geográfica na sua descrição de uma São Paulo com dimensões ao mesmo tempo locais e globais. Assim, convida um público hoje transnacional a múltiplas leituras e interpretações, através de suas micronarrativas e personagens de diversas procedências. Essa obra de Ruffato desafia a divisão global-local e um discurso de globalização frequentemente homogeneizante, colocando esses dois parâmetros espaciais-temporais em diálogo no âmbito da cidade. Por isso, teóricos como David Harvey, Saskia Sassen e Fredric Jameson contribuem para esta análise, em que se expõe a mescla textual do romance, os recursos visuais que o caracterizam e sua relação com a pós-modernidade global do século XXI. Põe-se em evidência, portanto, o universo polifônico de vozes da obra, suas referências a produtos globais assim como à cultura popular, além de suas particularidades locais. A manipulação temporal também é destacada, já que distorce presente, passado e futuro, conectando-se à produção cultural pós-modernista.

Palavras-chave: Luiz Ruffato; globalização; transnacionalidade; romance pós-moderno; representação da cidade.

Abstract: Eles eram muitos cavalos (2001), by Luiz Ruffato, is a novel structured in vignettes that allows for many interpretations, unconfined by a singular story, genre or narrative. In this article, I argue that the novel disrupts geographic linearity in its depiction of a São Paulo that is simultaneously global and local. It invites multiple readings and interpretations to its now transnational audience, through the work's use of micro-narratives and its depiction of protagonists of diverse backgrounds. The work challenges the global-local divide of a frequently homogenizing globalization discourse, placing these time-space parameters in dialogue in the framework of the city. Theorists such as David Harvey, Saskia Sassen and Fredric Jameson contribute to this analysis, as the work's textual mélange and its visual nature place it in dialogue with 21st century postmodernity. The work's polyphonic voices and references to global artifacts and popular culture extend beyond local particularities. Finally, this article stresses the novel's varied treatment of time and examines how it distorts present, past and future, further situating it into the theoretical framework of postmodernity.

Keywords: Luiz Ruffato; globalization;  transnationality;  postmodern novel;  representation of cities

Il volume offre una ricognizione storico-teorica sul concetto di trauma, da meccanismo psichico patologico (individuato sul finire dell’Ottocento in ambito clinico) a dinamica caratterizzante della storia contemporanea, della produzione culturale inscritta in quest’ultima e della formazione dei soggetti, ripercorrendo così anche l’evoluzione accademica dei cosiddetti Trauma Studies, nati in seno agli studi culturali statunitensi. Senza tralasciare le principali teorie novecentesche sul rapporto tra visione e metropoli, che videro nello shock percettivo il concetto principe dell’esperienza del vivere moderno, il volume si spinge fino all’analisi di alcune tra le tendenze dominanti dell’estetica mediatica e cinematografica contemporanea. Dai mind game film (in particolare alcune pellicole di Christopher Nolan) ai disaster movies, dal fotogiornalismo post 11 settembre agli user generated contents e ai focus delle rassegne internazionali fotografiche e cinematografiche sugli tsunami di Thailandia e Giappone, questo lavoro evidenzia come l’attrazione per le immagini recrudescenti e l’assottigliamento del confine tra norma e abiezione abbiano prodotto, a cavallo degli anni Duemila, una vera e propria sfera pubblica “patologica”, frutto di una cultura visuale dominata dalla spettacolarizzazione del trauma.

http://www.wobook.com/WBBG33L2e54u/Collection-1/estratto-da-trauma-cinema-media-capitolo-6.html

To explore how we can take assemblage thinking seriously, this chapter engages the study of images in world politics. Images need to be understood in their own multiplicities, with each requiring fundamentally different methodological tools. Yet numerous obstacles hamper the establishing of this type of heterogeneous methodological framework. Key among them is the antagonistic dualism between qualitative and quantitative methods. They are divided not only by different methodological trainings, but also by a range of linguistic and epistemological assumptions that seem to make genuine cross-method collaboration all but impossible. Assemblage thinking can provide a conceptual path beyond this impasse. Drawing on the notion of 'rhizome', I explore potential and limits of understanding the political dimension of images through a heterogeneous combination of seemingly incompatible methods.

While migration scholars often neglect the national and transnational relations of production and exchange within which labor migration occurs, international political economists tend to treat labor migration as a mere side effect of transnational capitalism. By contrast, this article considers the constitutive role that post-socialist transformations and the EU integration played in shaping the various patterns of intra-European east–west labor migration since 1989. We argue that labor migration was not driven by development differentials between the west and the east as such, but rather by the particular type of development the latter adopted after the fall of communist regimes and by the way post-socialist countries were integrated in transnational circuits of production and exchange. We are sustaining our claims by a comparative assessment across time of the articulations between the different modes of production and different labor migration patterns during different stages of Romania's post-socialist transformation. This historical comparison enables us to insulate the influence of changing levels of development and modes of production on labor migration because our focus on a single country is keeping the influence of other national institutional factors constant.

Drawing on recent interventions in political philosophy and globalisation theory (Hardt and Negri 2009; Butler 2006; Sassen 1998), this essay examines the shifting expressions of biopolitical life in the collaborative project Borderless: A Docu-Poem about the Lives of Undocumented Workers (2006). Depicted as a risk to society’s security, the illegal workers portrayed in the short documentary occupy a paradoxical borderline position in Canadian society. On the one hand, they are invisible and disembodied forces of production, while on the other they generate visible profit for the nation, as Darragh P. Hall’s analysis of Monica Ali’s Brick Lane in this volume also evidences. In other words, the bodies of the undocumented workers in Borderless are sacrificed and consumed by both national and global capitalist structures, while often being erased from the public sphere. These ‘modern outlaws’, as the voice over calls them, are thus subjected to biopolitical structures that obliterate t...

This work attempts an as far as possible analytical perambulation in the Global City (S. Sassen) and the World City (P. Hall, J. Friedmann) paradigm under the prism of globalisation, development and generally of geography (space/place). This literature review highlights the pure interdisciplinary character of the study of the urban phenomenon (city), because of the contributions that has received from diverse epistemological fields, without implying that the ‘city’ phenomenon is only confined within this particular bibliography. This research consists of three basic Sections. Section A illuminates conceptually the terms urbanisation, development and space. For this reason, it initially performs a small introduction to the city, and afterwards, it timely presents the various approaches of regional and urban development. Section B includes the central schools of thought of the bibliography concerned, from the dawn of the 20th century and the Chicago School, till the first decade of the new millennium, including the most recent approaches. Section C passes the afore-mentioned approaches through a filter of critique, either in respect to standalone hypotheses of their own, or for the introduction of holistic (cosmopolitan) narrations that take into account all cities. The Conclusions of the research sum up the literature review, and simultaneously trace the common ground of the last approaches of Economic Geography with the corresponding approaches of the global/world city bibliography, as well as pose several research questions in relation to the political strand of the topic.

For more info, please contact me via my emai: [email protected]

Reference:
Vlachos A. (2015), Global cities & World cities: Issues of urbanisation, globalisation & development (in greek), Research thesis supervised by Assist. Prof. Athanasios Kalogeresis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki: School of Spatial Planning & Development

A differenza degli eventi catastrofici verificatisi in altre epoche, quelli avvenuti negli anni Duemila hanno la peculiarità di essere accompagnati da un’eco mediatica immediata e di enormi proporzioni, dovuta in buona parte alla (inedita) veicolazione on-line di user generated contents, brevi filmati girati il più delle volte per mezzo di telefoni cellulari, poi immessi nella rete e di lì veicolati anche dai canali di informazione internazionali, che possono così documentare il cataclisma nel suo farsi, come difficilmente avvenuto in passato.

Questo fenomeno, verificatosi per la prima volta in relazione agli attacchi alle Torri Gemelle del 2001 – che segnano di fatto l’inizio di una nuova tendenza mediatica globale – trova il proprio seguito nella documentazione di disastri ambientali di proporzioni eclatanti avvenuti negli anni successivi, ovvero nella ripresa di catastrofi capaci di stravolgere interi paesaggi modificandoli permanentemente e violentemente.
Dopo l’Undici settembre, infatti, sono gli scenari prodotti dai cataclismi ad attrarre allo stesso modo del 2001 l’attenzione degli utenti mediatici, che si prestano alla realizzazione di sensazionalistici video amatoriali girati mentre il dramma è in corso. In questa prospettiva diviene significativo indagare il fenomeno costituito dalla diffusione dei video che hanno ripreso la devastazione provocata dai due grandi tsunami avvenuti negli anni Duemila, i quali hanno registrato un’enorme interessamento internazionale, corredato di un’altrettanto ampia quantità di immagini e di racconti cinematografici e televisivi ad essi dedicati.

Conceptualizing the global city as an emblematic frontier zone of contemporary politics and society, Saskia Sassen – in an interview conducted by Elitza Stanoeva – sheds light on a series of dialectical processes at the crux of what she had coined a global city back in the 1980s. Reflecting on the overwhelming challenges confronting the global city today – ranging from racialization, social expulsion, economic deprivation and human rights violations, to asymmetric war, terrorist attacks and, furthermore, environmental disasters – Sassen nevertheless brings to the fore the unique potential held by the city to “temper destruction” by transforming urban conflicts into “a source for an expanded civicness”. However, as the global city is under the dual pressure of transnationalization of finance and labor, on the one hand, and national imperatives such as security and identity politics, on the other hand, Sassen also raises the warning that “much of the violence that happens today in cities around religion, ethnicity, terrorism, is so extreme that cities are at risk of losing this capacity for making the civic”. By using examples stretching from New York, London, Zurich and Madrid to Mumbai, Lahore, Johannesburg and Baghdad, Sassen discusses such diverse problems as the financial crisis, “the war on terror”, the uprising in Syria, immigration, new social movements and ecological sustainability through the conceptual lens of the global city.

Whereas migration scholars often neglect the national and transnational relations of production and exchange within which labor migration occurs, international political economists tend to treat labor migration as a mere side effect of transnational capitalism. By contrast, this paper considers the constitutive role that post-socialist transformations and EU integration played in shaping the various patterns of intra-European east-west labor migration since 1989. We argue that labor migration was not driven by development differentials between the west and the east as such, but rather by the particular type of development the latter adopted after the fall of communist regimes and by the way post-socialist countries were integrated in transnational circuits of production and exchange. We are sustaining our claims by a comparative assessment across time of the articulations between the different modes of production and different labor migration patterns during different stages of Romania's post-socialist transformation. This historical comparison enables us to insulate the influence of changing levels of development and modes of production on labor migration because our focus on a single country is keeping the influence of other national institutional factors constant.

Il bacino di smaltimento di Haina non ha un tetto. Il piombo scorre libero nel suolo, nell'aria e tra le mani nude degli adolescenti che vi lavorano.
Il margine sistemico, la superficie su cui si stagliano i rapporti, le differenze, gli incroci tra le articolazioni di assemblaggi complessi e le reti della vita, umana o biosferica, è qualcosa di simile alla recinzione del sito di smaltimento di Haina, qualcosa di simile al confine che segue i contorni della mano di un lavoratore striata dal piombo che scorre libero. Attorno al margine sistemico le linee sotterranee che svolgono le logiche di un’accumulazione originaria emergono in superficie nella forma delle loro conseguenze: tagli diventano i confini epistemici entro cui si scoprono significati di testi complessi. 
L’iscrizione di frammenti, di scorie, di detriti di vita o pietra entro le maglie della narrazione dell’assiomatica capitalistica è l’ambizione che questo studio porta con sé. L’embricazione di linee eterogenee,
come i vettori della finanza, della logistica, attorno alle linee segmentate di confini, rocce, fiumi, permette di concepire la permeabilità di regimi una volta ritenuti inscalfibili: lo spazio, il tempo, la natura.
La traduzione degli impasti di frizioni, rotture, sfibramenti dell’assiomatica attorno alla rete della vita (Moore 2015) è il suolo di una sfida analitica che raccoglie sedimentazioni passate – il riferimento alle tratte coloniali - e presenti, provando a gettare luce sulle connessioni e disarticolazioni della logica estrattiva.
Lembi di terra, acqua e carne si congiungono nel momento infrapolitico del rilevamento geologico satellitare di un’operazione di capitale. L’unione sigillata in questo sguardo è sì, il riverbero di un’estrazione, ma anche la prerogativa per un’immaginazione alternativa.

Designed in 2012 by a group of 30 people and gathering around 800 users, Red de Moneda Social Puma is a local social currency network (1 puma = 1 euro) that emerged within the North historic center of Seville. People involved in the initiative started off with a revolving credit line, able to take on up to 100 pumas in debt (1 puma = 1 euro). They earn money by selling goods or providing services to other users, tracking the balances in account booklets along the way. The running of the currency thus depends on users’ verifications: every user has to grab the transactions in a digital site on the Internet so that the sum of every booklet is zero. As the network as rapidly expanded, it has become difficult to supervise its proper functioning. Last December 2013 the system collapsed and it is currently being redesigned. Without even being sure how puma network logic will be finally shaped, it is worth to study how it has contributed to assembling a new kind of territory within the city of Seville. In order to do so, it is necessary to look back and examine in detail the mixture of things, phenomena, thoughts, desires, and experiences in which puma came to be, as well as the role it has played within it.
In this paper, I will first argue that the Puma Social Currency Network (PSCN) cannot be understood separated from the geographical and historical context within it came to be. On the contrary, it has to be read as a product and as a trigger of the various urban critical practices emerged in Seville to counter money-driven urbanism around twenty years ago, and whose actions had a significant impact in the north historic central district. Next, I will describe PSCN as one of three conjunctions that have helped assemble a distinctive territory within Seville, a territory where alternative modes of citizenship are being invented and tested. With the term conjunction, I refer to new breakthroughs that elaborate, develop, modulate and expand the re-imagination of value that occurs in this territory. What singularizes conjunctions from other assembling patterns is that they cautiously incorporate traces of the reality they are contesting —may be them spatial organization, heritage legislation, or a dominant currency. In doing so, they facilitate that new values penetrate formal institutions, contributing in this manner to amplify the scope of an on-going radical shift.

Judul buku            : Pengusiran: Brutalitas dan Kompleksitas Dalam Ekonomi Global
Penulis                  : Saskia Sassen
Penerbit                : The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press
Pengantar            : Penyortiran Savage
Editor Naskah      : Richard
Tahun Terbit        : 2014
Tebal Buku          : 298 Lembar
Indeks                  : ISBN 978- 0- 674- 59922- 2

"The liberal state has been hijacked for neoliberal agendas," says Saskia Sassen in interview, and in some cases even for "very modern despotisms". It is necessary to repossess the state apparatus for genuine liberal democracy, and ideally to create a "denationalized state".

New Urban Management discusses how the logic of economic flows poses a challenge to local governments throughout the world. The book argues that the increased fluidity in economic life must have its reflection in local economic development policy. The analysis begins with the idea of space of flows, but this goes much further than available literature in urban political analysis. The starting point is the observation that metropolitan governments' ability to maintain their economic vitality depends on their ability to attract flows of values through their assets. Such assets are, however, symbolic rather than physical, which implies the relevance of city branding. On that basis, this book builds a coherent picture of how flow analysis can be utilised in brand-oriented economic development policy.

En esta conversación con Paula V. Álvarez acerca del trabajo de Santiago Cirugeda, Saskia Sassen trazr una distinción entre "diseño" y "práctica artística" para explicar esto: el diseño puede ser una mediación entre el hacer arte y el trabajo de obtener ganancias, mientras que las prácticas artísticas y culturales son más bien intervenciones que desestabilizan esa mediación de alguna forma. Si enfocamos sobre las prácticas en vez de enfocar sobre los individuos que las ejecutan, porpone Sassen, tendríamos que un mismo individuo podría desarrollar tanto prácticas artísticas como comerciales; sin embargo la subjetividad que atañe a cada una de ellas es específica, y frecuentemente, suele ser bastante distinta. Narrar ese indefinido espacio intermedio entre estos dos polos es un tipo de trabajo que podría ser político, pero no necesariamente en el sentido restringido de la palabra, como es el caso de las críticas explícitas al sistema formal político. En lugar de ello, Sassen llama "política" a la posibilidad de "hacer algo presente", de dar expresión a algo. Esto contrastaría fuertemente con el "diseño", que tiene como fin aportar mayor utilidad, lo cual hoy en día significa, cada vez más, lograr mayores ganancias. Sassen entiende como "intervenciones políticas" aquellas estrategias de narración que, en vez de consolidar lazos con el mundo del comercio, surgen, por el contrario, de un campo urbano cotidiano.

We are living in an age of crisis—or an age in which everything is labeled a crisis. Financial, debt, and refugee “crises” have erupted. The word has also been applied to the Arab Spring and its aftermath, Brexit, the 2016 U.S. election, and many other international events. Yet the term has contradictory political and strategic meanings for those challenging power structures and those seeking to preserve them. For critics of the status quo, can the rhetoric of crisis be used to foment urgency around issues like climate change and financialization, or does framing a situation as a “crisis” play into the hands of the existing political order, which then seeks to tighten the leash by creating a state of emergency?

Critical Theory at a Crossroads presents conversations with prominent theorists about the crises that have marked the past years, the protest movements that have risen up in response, and the use of the term in political discourse. Tariq Ali, Rosi Braidotti, Wendy Brown, Maurizio Lazzarato, Angela McRobbie, Jean-Luc Nancy, Antonio Negri, Jacques Rancière, Saskia Sassen, and Joseph Vogl offer their views on contemporary challenges and how we might address them, candidly discussing the alternatives that new social movements have offered, alongside an exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Roberto Esposito on theories of community. Sparring over crucial developments in these past years of catastrophe and the calamity of everyday life under capitalism, they shed light on how crises and the discourse of crisis can both obscure and reveal fundamental aspects of modern societies.