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"In rural northern Idaho in winter 2013-14, Syringa Mobile Home Park's water system was contaminated by sewage, resulting in residents' water being shut off for 93 days. By summer 2018 Syringa had closed, forcing residents to relocate or face homelessness. Trailer Park America chronicles how residents dealt with regulatory agencies, frequent boil order notices, threats of closure, and class-based social stigma over this period. Despite all this, what was seen as a dysfunctional, 'disorderly' community by outsiders was instead a refuge where veterans, women heads of households, and people with disabilities or substance use disorders were supported and understood. The embattled Syringa community also organized to defend the rights and dignity of residents and served as a site for negotiating with local government, culminating in a class-action lawsuit that reached the federal level. The experiences Syringa residents faced in this conservative, predominately white region of the United States are emblematic of the growing national and global crisis in affordable housing and home ownership, with declining work conditions and incomes for the working-class as leading edge"--

Fundamental to Kari Marie Norgaard's Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People is the seizure of land most evident in the overtly violent era of state-sanctioned frontier genocide and forced relocation of the Karuk. Settler colonialism, Norgaard reminds us, is an ongoing state-led project up to this day—it is not just a moment relegated to the past and, thus, the inherent treatment of Native Americans as relics of U.S. history must be challenged.

AbstractThe Ukrainian dacha is a rural site where urban residents grow food and relax during the summers, in the process also contributing significantly to households' food provisioning since the Soviet Union's collapse. This article seeks to understand how gendered class relations shape why people participate, or not, in dacha work. Using ethnographic data collected during fieldwork in Komsomolsk, a central Ukrainian town, I examine how people's process of accepting or rejecting the worth of dacha work is both a strategy of navigating market transition and a process whereby they reveal the ways in which age, physical ability, and sense of efficacy factor into whether dacha work is worth their while. These, I argue, are gendered class processes that have been overlooked in dacha research. By taking into account how gendered processes intertwine with class practices, we are able to observe how privileged masculinities reinforce the ideology of market transition, an ideology most evident in agricultural policy approaches favoring fewer and larger food production sites. Moreover, my interactions suggest the dacha enables men experiencing masculinity crises to accrue patriarchal dividends in exerting decision‐making power over their wives.

<div class="bookreview">Heather A. Brown, <em>Marx on Gender and the Family: A Critical Study</em> (Chicago: Haymarket, 2012), 323 pages, $28.00, paperback.</div><div class="bookreview">Silvia Federici, <em>Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle</em> (Oakland: PM Press, 2012), 189 pages, $15.95, paperback.</div>In the face of global economic crisis and the dismantling of social programs under austerity policies, many feminists are re-engaging Marx's critique of capitalism. This return to Marx is necessary if we are effectively to overcome gender oppression, especially since the latest trends in feminism&mdash;or at least those "fit to print" and discussed in the popular press&mdash;place the onus of equal treatment squarely on women's shoulders. Newfound feminists like Sheryl Sandberg advise women to "lean in" and adjust their behavior to suit the aggressively entrepreneurial norms rewarded in the real world that men lead. As Nancy Fraser aptly puts it, these tendencies within feminism serve as "capitalism's handmaiden": such identity-centered, cultural critiques have helped obscure capital's dependency on gendered oppressions.&hellip; Fortunately, recent scholarship by Heather Brown as well as Federici herself provides useful insights for feminists on how to reconsider Marxist theory.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-8" title="Vol. 67, No. 8: January 2016" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

This article proposes a problem-based group project that encourages students to make connections between classroom and community. The project fosters transformative education; social activism becomes more tangible to students who learn to strategize around social issues. The following discussion highlights the goals and process of teaching with an assignment that simulates the creation of a social movement and describes examples of student actions in introductory social movements courses. The class project forges creative and effective social activism.

Intro -- Contents -- 1 Introduction -- References -- Making the Personal Political: The Stories of Capitalism -- 2 'Teaching Naked' in Late Capitalism: Instructors' Personal Narratives and Classroom Self-disclosure as Pedagogical Tools -- Author's Reflexive Statement -- On the Use of Instructor's Personal Narratives in the Classroom -- Research Questions -- Telling Personal Stories -- Data and Discussion -- Discretion in Disclosure? -- References -- 3 Untold Stories: Bringing Class into the Classroom -- Authors' Reflexive Statements -- Introduction -- Why It's Important for Educators to Share Their Class Stories -- The Perils and Pitfalls of Sharing Educators' Class Stories -- Knowing Your Purpose, Being Explicit, and Strengthening the Container -- Preparing Your Stories -- Anticipating Difficult Reactions -- Scaffolding and Timing Stories -- Inviting Self-disclosure -- Conclusion -- References -- 4 'Self-made' Success on the Private Dole: An Illustration of the Reproduction of Capitals -- Authors' Reflexive Statements -- Authenticity in Teaching -- Bob and Harold Presentation -- Conclusion -- References -- 5 Financial Stumbles, Consumer Bankruptcy, and the Sociological Imagination -- Author's Reflexive Statement -- Introduction -- Financial Stumbles -- Financial Stumble #1: Student Loan Debt -- Financial Stumble #2: Predatory Auto Lending -- Financial Stumble #3: When Your Debts Are Bundled and Sold -- Financial Stumble #4: The Credit Report -- Bankruptcy -- A (Very) Brief Primer on Consumer Bankruptcy -- Their Stories -- References -- Making Marxist Theory Real -- 6 Capitalism 101: Teaching First-Year Students How to View the Social World Through the Lens of Marxist Theory -- Author's Reflexive Statement -- Introduction -- Alienation -- Reproduction -- Conclusion -- References -- 7 Teaching Global Inequality Through the World of Commodities

This book discusses pedagogical solutions that enable students to see how capitalist processes and economic inequalities intersect and shape our assumptions and behaviours. The contributors provide thoughtful reflections on the struggles and opportunities instructors face in teaching about these topics while competing against the invisibility of capitalist forces and prevalent social myths, such as "anyone who works hard can achieve". This book will not only help instructors empower students to recognize economic injustice and its interaction with capitalist organization, but also develops and acts on transformative solutions. Through analysis of the classed dimensions of the current political, economics, and cultural climate, as well as presenting novel lesson plans and classroom activities, this book is of great value for college and university professors.--

This study uses surveys and in-depth interviews to explore professors' student loan debt experiences at a university in the Northwest United States, focusing attention on their perceptions of fellow colleagues' experiences. Having been long-term students in higher education themselves, professors' student loan debt has increased with the trend toward privatization and corporatization of higher education over the last several decades. Interviews reveal professors' tendency to disassociate their colleagues' student loan debt experiences from the public issue of rising higher education costs. We find that a university culture imbued with market ethos shapes their explanations for professors' student loan debt, rationalizing debt as a result of poor spending habits or career choices. These explanations detract from the public issue of rising education costs being shouldered increasingly by students and their families, which we contend will result in excluding minority groups' access to the profession and limiting diversity in higher education and research.

Neoliberal agricultural frontiers create paradoxes for modern rural landscapes and populations as global biodiversity conservation efforts and commodity food chains increasingly structure land ownership, social relations, economic opportunities and land use decisions. In the northern borderlands of Costa Rica, in the San Juan La Selva Biological Corridor, there has been an accelerated history of agrarian change beginning with a land rush and deforestation, then the institution of strict conservation laws, a forest transition and now, the rapid expansion of pineapple cultivation amidst a growing non-farm economy increasingly based on ecotourism. This landscape presents the paradoxes of neoliberal rural development juxtaposing biodiversity conservation, agricultural industrialization and the non-farm economy as contested discourses that shape the lives and landscapes of rural populations. A political ecology and mixed method approach demonstrate the patterns of inequality at a landscape scale as well as provide a more detailed narrative of the diversity of rural livelihoods and how they are connected to distal global forces. Through in-depth interviews and household surveys conducted over 2012 this paper discusses agrarian change and the state of economic development as it is experienced and materially realized by the people who live and work in this landscape. Profiles of pineapple company managers, ecotourism lodge owners, small farmers, and Nicaraguan wage laborers are contrasted to reveal how gender, ethnicity and class relations are negotiated in this modern agricultural frontier and how the geography and development of this landscape are contested from these diverse perspectives and lived experiences.