Community members and activists meet with an environmental law firm in Somkhele, KwaZulu Natal, 2019, amid a dispute over a coal mine in the area. South Africa’s laws and post-apartheid constitution have been effectively leveraged by civil society organizations over the past few decades, but direct action has dwindled.Photo: Zuma Press/Alamy

All rise

South Africa’s constitution has allowed social movements to clock up a number of legal victories. But, Claire-Anne Lester asks, can the law really deliver social and economic justice?

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NI 548 - South Africa 30 years later - March, 2024
Photo: Ndongo Samba Sylla

The Interview: Ndongo Samba Sylla

The Senegalese development economist speaks to Hazel Healy about monetary sovereignty, debt – and the perils of Afro-liberalism.

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NI 538 - Rivers of life - July, 2022
Illustration: Andy Carter

What if…

We took degrowth seriously? Ditching planet-popping expansion for justice is a vision worth getting behind, says Dinyar Godrej.

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NI 536 - Abolition - March, 2022
Illustration: Pete Reynolds

Could money be the ultimate decolonizer?

Jason Hickel makes a compelling case for modern monetary theory as a way for countries in the Global South to throw off the shackles of international capital and finally meet their people’s basic needs.

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NI 533 - Food justice: who gets to eat? - September, 2021
Illustration: Andy Carter

What if…

What if we all got paid the same? Vanessa Baird on a simple but bold measure to reverse roaring income inequality.

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NI 531 - Vaccine equality - May, 2021
The packed huddle of Rocinha favela, clumped just beyond the skyscrapers in Rio De Janeiro’s South Zone, Brazil. An astounding 100,000 people are crammed into an 1.4 square-kilometre area.Photo: Thomas Haensgen/Alamy

A human story

According to the old adage, ‘the economy is a subset of society’. Now, more than ever, we need to act like we believe it, says Dinyar Godrej.

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NI 527 - Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic - September, 2020
Photo: Kate Raworth

The Interview: Kate Raworth

As ecological collapse looms, our growth-at-all costs economic system urgently requires a different vision. Renegade economist Kate Raworth is preaching a new mindset fit for the challenges ahead. She spoke to Hazel Healy.

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NI 523 - Borders - Freedom to move, for everyone - January, 2020
Illustration: Peter Reynolds

What we cannot avoid

Jeremy Seabrook surveys a political landscape riven with virulent nostalgias which obscure an essential conflict – how to reconcile the needs of the planet with the necessities of economics?

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NI 521 - Who owns the sea? - September, 2019
Night falls on Ranchi’s dreamers.Photo: Arun Dahiya/EyeEm/Getty

Small city, big dreams

India’s rapidly expanding cities attract young dreamers like magnets. Snigdha Poonam observes how the horizon of promise keeps receding in Ranchi.

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NI 520 - The right to the city - July, 2019
All drinking from the same pool.Illustration: Peter Reynolds

For the greater good

A radical proposal to redefine and extend service provision to all those in need without breaking the bank has the potential to spark something truly transformative. Nick Dowson takes a closer look.

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NI 518 - Building a new internationalism - March, 2019
Illustration: Steve Munday

Investor rex

The beast that won’t lie down and die – the ISDS ‘investor protection’ racket is still with us, in all but name.

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NI 517 - Trade in Turmoil - January, 2019
Illustration: Steve Munday

Is trade in turmoil a chance for justice?

The global free trade system is being battered like never before. Can any good come of it, asks Vanessa Baird in the first of an eight-article exploration?

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NI 517 - Trade in Turmoil - January, 2019
Julius sits on the porch of his house in Trenton, New Jersey, looking north at Ewing Township where foreclosure rates are drastically lower.Photo: Jack Crosbie

Home sweet home

Ten years ago the world focused on the US foreclosure crisis as thousands lost their homes in dodgy mortgage deals. Today, the crisis is still a reality for many. Jack Crosbie reports.

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NI 514 - The next financial crisis - July, 2018
Workers labouring on a suspension bridge across the Yangtze River in May 2018.Photo: AFP/Getty Images

China: a post-neoliberal order?

If the global financial crisis symbolized the decline of the West, it also signalled that the future belongs to China – a superpower that ‘understands’ the developing world better than the US, IMF or World Bank, according to Martin Jacques.

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NI 514 - The next financial crisis - July, 2018

The carbon bubble

Yohann Koshy looks at the impending catastrophe linking the stock market to climate change.

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NI 514 - The next financial crisis - July, 2018

When the world almost ended

It’s 10 years since the global financial system almost sent the world into a great depression. Yohann Koshy takes stock of what went wrong and where we are now.

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NI 514 - The next financial crisis - July, 2018
Waiting in vain: passengers at Clapham Junction, south London. According to a 2017 Legatum Institute poll 76 per cent of British passengers want the railways in public ownership.Photo: Toby Melville/Reuters

The efficiency myth

Heard the tale about the private sector always doing things better? Nick Dowson wonders why it still has believers.

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NI 512 - Public ownership rises again - May, 2018
Photo: Marco Verch (CC 2.0)

The other side of the Bitcoin

Bitcoin is more than premium bonds for hipsters or the veganism of finance, writes Omar Hamdi.

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NI 511 - Humanitarianism under attack - April, 2018
Donald Trump greets workers on a tour of Carrier Corporation in Indianapolis, Indiana on 1 December 2016. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images

When ‘America First’ is a corporate scam

A year ago, Trump announced he had reached a deal with manufacturer Carrier to keep jobs from moving to Mexico – with $7 million in incentives. Yet hundreds of workers were still laid off, the last of them this January. Trump’s policy should be called ‘Corporate America First’, argues Mark Engler.

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NI 510 - Black Lives Matter - March, 2018

Mixed Media: Books

This month we review The Growth Delusion, by David Pilling; The White City, by Roma Tearne; The Unmapped Country, by Ann Quin; and Old Demons, New Deities, edited by Tenzin Dickie.

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NI 509 - What's left for the young? - January, 2018

Articles in this category displayed as a table:

Article title From magazine Publication date
South Africa 30 years later March, 2024
Rivers of life July, 2022
Abolition March, 2022
Food justice: who gets to eat? September, 2021
Vaccine equality May, 2021
Covid-19 lessons from the pandemic September, 2020
Borders - Freedom to move, for everyone January, 2020
Who owns the sea? September, 2019
The right to the city July, 2019
Building a new internationalism March, 2019
Trade in Turmoil January, 2019
Trade in Turmoil January, 2019
The next financial crisis July, 2018
The next financial crisis July, 2018
The next financial crisis July, 2018
The next financial crisis July, 2018
Public ownership rises again May, 2018
Humanitarianism under attack April, 2018
Black Lives Matter March, 2018
What's left for the young? January, 2018
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