About the event
Join our friends at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics who will host authors Ujju Aggarwal, Maria Luisa Mendonça and Kafui Attoh for a conversation on capitalism, the state, and movement building, with Ruth Wilson Gilmore
as discussant. Drawing on material from their recently released books,
Usettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public
Education, The Political Economy of Agribusiness, and Disrupting D.C.:
The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City, the authors will discuss the
links between the neoliberal restructuring of school systems, food
systems, and urban transportation systems. This event is free and open to all, and takes place in the Skylight Room (9100) at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, NYC.
ABOUT THE BOOKS
Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education by Ujju Aggarwal
What do rights to “public goods” like
education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Following
the contestations that emerged in the wake of the Great Recession when
public schools navigated austerity by expanding choice-based programs, Unsettling Choice explores
what the struggles that ensued over who schools would serve and
prioritize—and the contradictions embedded therein—might teach us about a
partitioned public. That
is, a public entrapped within neoliberal regimes that exceeded
privatization and ensured exclusion, competition, precarity, and the
cultivation of a consumer citizenship—even while mobilizing the language
of equity, diversity, care, and rights.
The Political Economy of Agribusiness by Maria Luisa Mendonça
What is agribusiness? When did it emerge? In answering these questions, Mendonça traces the global contours of contemporary agriculture, bringing a critical analysis of the origins of agribusiness in the United States and its subsequent international signature. The investigation of historical dynamics reveals that the industrialization of agriculture was a result of a dialectical movement of economic crisis and expansion. This analysis sheds new light on current debates about food sovereignty, agriculture technologies, international markets and financial speculation on farmland.
Disrupting D.C.: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City by Kafui Attoh
Drawing on interviews with gig
workers, policymakers, Uber lobbyists, and community organizers, Katie
Wells, Kafui Attoh, and Declan Cullen show how and why Uber was able to
conquer US cities. Their new book, Disrupting D.C.,
argues that Uber’s success was never a sign of urban strength or
innovation but a sign of urban weakness and low expectations about what
city politics can achieve. Understanding why Uber rose reveals just how
far the rest of us have fallen.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Ujju Aggarwal is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology & Experiential Learning at The New School’s Bachelor’s Program for Adult and Transfer Students(and affiliate faculty, Global Studies and Anthropology). She is author of Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). Ujju currently serves on the Board of Teachers Unite, on the Advisory Board of the Parent Leadership Project (Bloomingdale Family Head Start Center, PLP), and PARCEO (Participatory Action-Research Center for Education, Organizing).
Maria Luisa Mendonça is a research scholar at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of São Paulo (USP). Mendonça is a co-founder of the World Social Forum and co-director of Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos (Network for Social Justice and Human Rights – www.social.org.br). Her recent book Political Economy of Agribusiness (Fernwood Publishing, Halifax, 2023) demonstrates the central role of food systems in international relations and transnational activism.
Dr. Kafui Attoh is an Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and an affiliated faculty member of the Earth and Environmental Sciences department at the CUNY Graduate Center. In addition to a co-author of Disrupting DC: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City, he is also the author of Rights in Transit: Public Transportation and the Right to the City in California’s East Bay (University of Georgia Press 2019).
This event is organized and co-sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics, Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
It is free and open to the public. A picture ID is needed to enter building.
