SPERI Blog

Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute

SPERI develops and promotes new analysis and understanding of contemporary capitalism, and the major economic and political challenges arising from it.

Latest posts

Part 4: Research-policy-industry network and normalisation of militarism

Barış Çelik -  9 December 2024

European Security Studies has traditionally focused on the functional outcomes of defence and security policies, but it should shift towards a more critical approach that considers its silence about the realities of organised violence, as well as the economic and institutional entanglements shaping the field. Part of our series 'The production of organised violence'. 

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Part 3: Conceptualising dual-use technologies and companies

Elena Simon -  5 December 2024

With wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and rising tensions between the US and China, the proliferation of arms and their enabling technologies is back on the agenda. To fully capture the breadth of the means of violence a broader approach to technologies and a closer analysis of the 'dual-use' technology dilemma is necessary.

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Part 2: Green promises, violent realities: how large-scale renewables perpetuate violence in vulnerable regions in Yucatan Mexico

Sandra Barragan Contreras & James Jackson - 25 November 2024

Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula reveals that renewable energy projects perpetuate forms of hidden violence against local ecosystems and indigenous communities. In a global push for large-scale solar and wind deployment, lives, livelihoods and cultures are being erased.

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Part 1: Extraction, infrastructure, and the coloniality of violence: Why land matters

Vicki Reif-Breitwieser and Joanna Tidy - 28 November 2024

We explore the relationship between land and violence in extractive and infrastructure projects. In doing so, we highlight the centrality of land in the (re)production of the many tangible, as well as unseen, forms of violence that underlie past and present capitalist development. 

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Introduction: The production of organised violence

Elena Simon, Remi Edwards, Vicki Reif-Breitwieser, Joanna Tidy, Sandra Barragan Contreras, James Jackson, Baris Celik and David Yates - 25 November 2024

This series, inspired by a SPERI workshop in June 2024, explores the intersections between economy and the exercise of organised violence.

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