Bungacast

On migration, monarchy, and legitimacy.

Merouan Mekouar, professor of development studies at York University in Toronto, gives Alex and Lee an in-depth view of a country at the centre of multiple tendencies.

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What actually happened with the stream of migrants at the Moroccan border with Ceuta (Spain)?

How much of a pressure valve does outward migration provide in Morocco?

What does Moroccan neoliberalism look like? What is elite cooptation?

How has Morocco avoided mass protest ,and what does the monarchy's legitimacy rest on?

How it Morocco pursuing "polyalignment", between China, US, EU...?

What's up with the massive infrastructure push ahead of the 2030 World Cup which Morocco will co-host?

Links:

Beyond the Model Reform Image: Morocco’s Politics of Elite Co-Optation, Merouan Mekouar, GIGA

Doing Research as a Native: A Guide for Fieldwork in Illiberal and Non-Democratic States, Kira D. Jumet and Merouan Mekouar (eds), OUP

On dead ends and new beginnings.

Socialist writers, teachers and podcasters, Daniel Tutt and C. Derick Varn, talk to Alex and George about their pamphlet, The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy After Left Populism, which came out this year.

Is left populism not dead and buried?

What's wrong with trying to unite people against the elite?

What is the 'populist method' of class analysis?

Are professionals and managers a class, and are its interests always opposed to the working class?

Where did post-Marxists go wrong?

Links:

The People Are Not One: Socialist Strategy After Left Populism, Revol Press, 2026

Varn Vlog

Emancipations podcast

On sovereignty and Brazil's election.

Juliano Fiori, Alameda Institute director, talks to Alex about Lula versus (Flávio) Bolsonaro through the lens of internal and external threats to sovereignty.

Is this an election about nothing? What is at stake?

How did the Left reappropriate the defence of Brazilian interests?

What's behind US interference in Brazil? Is it economic or political?

How does the state reflect social fragmentation?

Does Brazilian territory suffer from a deficit or an excess of sovereignty?

For the full episode, subscribe: patreon.com/bungacast

Links:

Sovereigns of Brazil, Juliano Fiori, Alameda

Soberanos de um Brasil fragmentado, Juliano Fiori, piauí

At the UN, Brazil's Lula warns against foreign interference in upcoming election, Reuters

A docu-series from Bungacast.

This sequence of interviews, conversations and meetings were recorded mostly in New York – the capital of the 20th century – in order to ask what the future of place is in the 21st century.

In part four, we finish off by digging into New York itself to look at the great contradictions of modernism. We conclude by asking what the capital of the 21st century is, and who, if anyone, is planning it.

This fourth episode features:

Catherine Liu, Professor of Film & Media Studies, UC Irvine

Damage summit participants

Nick Burns, writer, editor

Miodrag Mitrašinović, Professor of Urbanism and Architecture, The New School

This documentary was made with the collaboration of our friends at Damage magazine.

A docu-series from Bungacast.

This sequence of interviews, conversations and meetings were recorded mostly in New York – the capital of the 20th century – in order to ask what the future of place is in the 21st century.

In part three, we explore the political economy of place: what produces the city, and what the city produces. We also ask whether place-based cultural scenes are still possible.

This third episode features:

Christie Offenbacher, psychologist

Greg Gabrellas, psychiatrist

Damage summit participants

Pierre d'Alancaisez, critic and curator

Matthew Gasda, playwright

This documentary was made with the collaboration of our friends at Damage magazine.