Despite Adam Smith’s seemingly firm entrenchment within the liberal tradition, in Theory of Moral Sentiments, he forwards several positions that fundamentally challenge this understanding. Chief among them is his argument that society is necessarily prior to the individual and that our socio-political context therefore shapes our perception of future possibilities. Thus, rational deliberation is not an ahistorical and universal phenomenon, but one that is structured by the context in which it occurs. Moreover, in Wealth of Nations, Smith brings this understanding to bear on socioeconomic relationships, demonstrating how they shape a person’s temporal imagination, and consequently, their perception of self-interest. Far from adhering to a belief in the supremacy of rational self-interest, Smith actually helps us understand how different social contexts can engender profoundly irrational behavior. Using the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis as its primary case study, this article demonstrates that Smith’s analysis offers a novel and penetrating approach to analyzing fiscal crises, while offering a generative approach for developing mitigating interventions.

In the United States, the first presidential debate of 2020 featured a discussion about Antifa. While Biden argued that Antifa is “an idea, not an organization,” Trump portrayed it as a “dangerous, radical group.” The nature of Antifa sparks disagreements not only in politics but also in scholarly circles. Some view it as a loosely defined label for a fragmented collective. Others perceive it as a gang or a radical social movement. This article identifies four key factors that make it difficult to define Antifa: the anonymity of its members, the lack of identifiable representatives, the ambiguous affiliation boundaries, and the influence of external agents (including reporters, pundits, and detractors) shaping its identity. Faced with this challenge, I propose stepping back to reevaluate the underlying assumptions of the debate. I seek to complement current theories of social ontology and collective action by introducing an alternative approach centered around the concept of personification.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) prides itself on its mission and legacy, namely, “50 years of forging solutions that help people and nature prosper.” Has this solutionist approach to struggles along the frontiers of what Habermas identified as “system” to defend “life-world” actually helped people and nature prosper? The EDF has secured a relatively small number of protected stop-gap sites around the planet, which it oversees as specially “funded defensible environments.” Yet, these interventions typically assist only certain peoples and specific locations. While it presents itself as an anti-establishment or market-resistant operation, the EDF also usually depicts its “funded defensible environments” through the frames of a complex victimology in which “the system” assaults “the life-world.” It then can step forth as a third-sector “public defender,” forging solutions through defensive legal actions meant to assure fairness and justice in environmental management through legalistic and/or market-based strategies. This analysis critically reassesses how the EDF’s practices assure human, and increasingly nonhuman, beings are accorded legal service to share in the future appreciation of Nature’s stocks, services, or systems as well as a right to redress losses to these interests with legal remedies for any despoliation or destruction of shared environmental equity in the solutions it forges.

The lawsuits challenging the 2020 election tried and failed to overturn the results of the election. This article positions their contribution to constitutional decay by considering the affidavits filed by Republican election challengers who observed the processing of absentee ballots in Detroit. Using the concepts of legal consciousness and legal mobilization, this article traces the mechanisms that carried doubts about the election processes from politics to law, returning that doubt as legally acknowledged truth that could be deployed in ongoing politics. Features of the affidavits allowed the voter fraud narrative to borrow a legal concept seemingly detached from politics. Given that constitutional theories recognize strict legality as a tool of authoritarians, this article considers the affidavits’ use as a legal and political tool, indicating particular ways that it can be wielded for antidemocratic purposes.

"Prisms of the People: Power and Organizing in Twenty-First-Century America,." New Political Science, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–3