They were difficult times when Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein met in 1981. Shortly after the Front National won their first important election, the themes of “race”, “nation”, and “class” assumed a new urgency throughout France. The sociologist and the philosopher seized the opportunity to discuss all three social constructs and their interdependencies with their students in a long since legendary series of lectures. The later book Race, Nation, Class: Ambivalent Identities (1988, published in English in 1991) summarizes Balibar and Wallerstein’s research and reflects on the connection between racist structures and now newly established global class systems, both past and present. The Cultural studies scholar Manuela Bojadžijev spoke with both authors about the book and why it continues to be relevant. To article...

The writer Rana Dasgupta questions sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos about the state organizing its own erosion and the lack of alternatives to protect our societies from the consequences. To article...

The historian Cemil Aydin about the effects of breaking up multi-ethnic societies and the Ottoman Caliphate as a symbol for Cosmopolitanism. To article...