Overview

Crisis and Contagion is a selection of fourteen interviews conducted by Ian McKay of the Wilson Institute at McMaster University. Interviews with Nancy Fraser, Mike Davis, Mack Penner, Andreas Malm, and Merrill Singer explore capitalism’s organic crisis and the ways it has made this and future pandemics inevitable. Nora Loreto, Tithi Bhattacharya, Chandrima Chakraborty, Merlin Chowkwanyun, and Sanjay Nepal discuss the experiences of ordinary people in the pandemic. J. Michael Ryan, Laura Spinney, Naomi Klein, and Noam Chomsky explore the long-term effects and likely historical legacy of a pandemic that has changed millions of lives–and, maybe, the trajectory of human civilization. These scholars propose that to understand the impact of Covid-19, we have to understand the conflictual history of capitalism–and to ward off future pandemics, we need to start building a post-capitalist alternative to the disease-generating and highly unequal global neoliberal order. As capitalist forces work to shove what we have learned from the Covid-19 pandemic down the memory hole, Crisis and Contagion offers a must-read for those wanting to seize this moment of change and revolution.

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9781771136396

Table of Contents

Reviews

“While global profit-seekers and the states that protect them push to normalize the Covid-19 pandemic, Crisis and Contagion conveys the urgency of international solidarity amongst the wretched of the earth. There is nothing natural about the premature deaths and disposability caused by our current world order. The interviews in this book provide us with the sharp analysis we need to understand that the social and material crises inherent to capitalism are as mutable as the virus.” - Nanky Rai, MD MPH CCFP, physician and organizer with the Toronto Overdose Prevention Society and Toronto Street Medics // “This immersive, wide-ranging collection of interviews reveals many potential ways forward for organizers and activists to reclaim health as politics, away from the control of technocrats and professionals. These engaging, personable interviews rightly contextualize Covid-19 as an expression of multiple crises created by capitalism—with its atomization and commodification—which beg for a transformative vision from the Left. Crisis and Contagion is essential reading for all those invested in centering health, care, justice, and liberation in the world we are now building.” – Baijayanta Mukhopadhyay, MA MD CCFP DTM&H, author of Country of Poxes and A Labour of Liberation, co-coordinator of People’s Health Movement Canada

Author Information

Ian McKay is the L.R. Wilson Chair in Canadian History at McMaster University and the author of the award-winning Reasoning Otherwise: Leftists and the People’s Enlightenment in Canada, 1890–1920 and the co-author of Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in the Age of Anxiety.

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