The Left and the London protests two years on: “On a cold Saturday evening last March, the huge crowd queuing on a damp street corner in Bethnal Green looked like they were waiting in line for a club. Pumping music with African drumming riffs could be heard inside the venue, and outside the crowd of […]
The several days spent in the atmosphere of the Sofia political protests predictably led me to compare them to the Russian experience of 2011-2012. Despite the significant contextual differences, these two movements could be seen as part of а single—but to an even greater degree—a potential East European protest wave. As such, its analysis and […]
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Terminal 2: The joke is on us
Perhaps one of the most common jokes that are circulating lately in Bulgaria is the one that depicts emigration as the most relevant escape from the politico-economic crisis. The joke goes something like this: Question: “What are the possible exits out of the crisis?” Answer: “Terminal 1 and Terminal 2” Author: Christo Komarnitski. Source: (http://www.ideyazabulgaria.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4264:-2013-&catid=55:karikaturi&Itemid=107). […]
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Unpacking the “Bulgarian Spring”
Mary N. Taylor I’ve just come back to New York from Sofia, Bulgaria, where there have been daily protests gatherings and marches, punctuated by chants of “step down” and, less frequently, yet consistently, “red garbage” and “mafia out of parliament”, accompanied by the sound of a three whistle march step. A general assembly has met […]
Since mid-June, public spaces of downtown Sofia have been constantly in use by protesters against the current Bulgarian government. In this short paper, I offer a critical geographical reading of how these daily demonstrations have been orchestrated in the urban milieu, and how these performances strengthen, or in some cases weaken political and economic claims […]
Maryia Ivanceva in The Guardian about the Bulgarian protests.
JULY 20-24, 2013 Social Center Xaspel, Sofia 8 Madrid rd. (house in the inner courtyard) 20th of July, Saturday 08:45 – 09:10 Mary Taylor Opening Panel: The rise of the Entrepreneurial City in the East After 1989: Neoliberalization, Gentrification and Resistances Chair: Mary Taylor 10:00 – 10:20 Daniel Saric The Right to the City Movement […]
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China 2012
The debates concerning the present and future of China—an “emerging” power—always leave me unconvinced. Some argue that China has chosen, once and for all, the “capitalist road” and intends even to accelerate its integration into contemporary capitalist globalization. They are quite pleased with this and hope only that this “return to normality” (capitalism being the […]
Since 2010, Orbán Viktor’s government symbolically announced an anticolonial war against Western capital. At the same time, it carried out major transformations in the 1989 system of political democracy, and started a campaign of economic centralization. Due to these, Hungary came under the spotlight of international discussions, as a model impersonating the fate of democracy […]
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Bulgarian ‘Children of the Transition’
A text by Mariya Petkova about the current protests in Bulgaria: It did not take much for the Bulgarian public to take to the streets demanding the fall of its new government after the disaster of an election it witnessed in May. Bulgarian voters had already punished political parties with a largely fragmented vote which […]