Publications

Cashing In on the Climate Crisis through Agricultural Digitalization, a new study from the ETC Group produced with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Southeast Asia Manila Office, explores how the climate crisis is being turned into an investment opportunity for financial actors, and how agricultural digitalization is facilitating the commodification of climate into assets…

Opening New Frontiers: Expanding Global Solidarity in an Uncertain and Tangled World How can we (re)build global solidarity amidst a volatile, tangled, and unpredictable world disrupted by multidimensional crises in an increasingly authoritarian neoliberal capitalist relations and ecological devastation? This has been the underlying question in the workshop held during the office opening event of…

Die Serie von Artikeln unter dem gemeinsamen Arbeitstitel «Lessons learned durch Covid-19: Transformation einer globalen Krise zur globalen Solidarität?»,1 die wir, das Regionalbüro Südostasien der Rosa-LuxemburgStiftung in Manila hiermit vorstellen möchten, entstand zu Beginn der weltweiten Pandemie im Sommer 2020. Zu dieser Zeit schien die «Welt aus den Fugen geraten» zu sein. Nicht nur die gesundheitliche…

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the struggle of Southeast Asian nations as they face one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history. The pandemic amplified existing social divisions and inequality and paved way for the rise of new authoritarianism. The economic crisis hit the most vulnerable sectors of society with little to no social…

The official rhetoric regarding the ‘New Normal’ in Indonesia has become infused with the discourse on the imagination and aspiration of life beyond COVID-19. In this essay, we investigate how the idea of the New Normal is being complicated, negotiated, and contested by different grassroots solidarity practices in Indonesia. Embedded in specific local contexts and…

The Indonesian government released a restriction policy in response to curbing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The restrictions significantly impact almost all sectors, particularly the food and logistics sectors, creating food insecurity and a chaotic situation at the grassroots. On the other hand, community initiatives have emerged to overcome the grassroots vulnerabilities through the…

The paper examined the demands, activities, tactics and alliances forged by the Nagkaisa (United) labor coalition as the authoritarian covid response of Duterte in the Philippines led to an unprecedented economic crisis. Nagkaisa is the most successful experiment in uniting organized labor in the last decade. It pushed for a response that prioritizes workers’ rights…

In dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, the Duterte government responded too late in stopping local transmission, too little in preparation, and too much force in lockdown enforcement. The Philippines has the strictest and longest lockdown in Asia, yet the steady increase of covid infections from June 2020 until the surge on March 2021, show that…

In die offizielle Rhetorik von der «Neuen Normalität» in Indonesien sind nach und nach Überlegungen und Wünsche zur Gestaltung des Lebens nach der COVID-19-Krise aus anderen Kreisen der Gesellschaft eingeflossen. In dem vorliegenden Essay untersuchen wir, wie Praktiken aus der Graswurzel-Solidarität in Indonesien zu differenzierteren Vorstellungen von der Neuen Normalität geführt haben beziehungsweise, wie deren…

Als Reaktion auf die Ausbreitung der COVID-19-Pandemie verhängte die indonesische Regierung Restriktionen. Die Beschränkungen hatten erhebliche Auswirkungen auf nahezu alle Sektoren, insbesondere auf den Lebensmittelund Logistiksektor, und führten zu einer unsicheren Ernährungslage sowie einer chaotischen Situation an der Basis. Es sind aber auch Gemeinschaftsinitiativen wie die Solidaritätsbewegung für Lebensmittel und Logistik entstanden, die versuchen, die…