Society Archives | Reset DOC

Analyses

Society

You may think that Americans have heard more than enough by now about how the influence peddler and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein “networked” with accomplices, victims, and their apologists. But all the tawdry cravings for money, sex, power, and, later, conspiratorial dealings by this country’s plutocracy-serving elite have been merely symptoms of a deeper, more dangerous craving that we need to understand. No matter whether we characterize that craving as pathological or as sinful in the nature of our divided human hearts, it has been poisoning the country since long before Epstein and Trump began riding and accelerating it in an ever-widening gyre. I came to it nearly half a century ago, when I got to know a practitioner of sinuous methods and morals that anticipated Epstein’s and Trump’s decades later.

Society
Khurram Parvez and the Weaponization of India’s Anti-Terror Law
Maria Tavernini 3 February 2026

Khurram Parvez has been in jail for over four years now. His crime? To be a Muslim human rights advocate from India-administered Kashmir who has been critical of the ruling Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). In November 2021, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested Parvez after having raided his home and office. He was charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), reportedly on allegations of “terrorism funding, being a member of a terrorist organization, criminal conspiracy, and waging war against the state.” Human rights organizations that repeatedly called for his release allege Parvez’s arrest is motivated by his work documenting human rights violations in Kashmir.
Society
The Possibility of “Soft Universalism”
Sari Hanafi 1 December 2025

I read Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab’s essay with great interest, as well as Mohammed Hashas’s thoughtful response. Kassab rightly calls for the emergence of a new contemporary Arab thought—one less culturalist and more attuned to people’s demands for freedom, dignity, accountability of rulers, and social justice.
Society
The Arab Spring as a Turning Point
Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab 12 November 2025

Undoubtedly, 2011 was a turning point in the history of the Arab region. The 2011 popular uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Syria, and, to a lesser extent, Morocco, were followed by another wave of such uprisings in Algeria, Iraq, and Lebanon in 2019. The genocidal war raging in Gaza since 2023 has taken the region to a yet deeper abyss in existential, moral, political, and economic terms. How have thinkers of the region been interacting with these upheavals? How have these dramatic events impacted the intellectual scene of the region?
Political Theory
The Three Failures of Neoliberalism and Europe’s Democratic Renewal
Emanuele Felice 31 October 2025

Neoliberalism is a political ideology that, in its most “kindly” interpretation, places economic freedom at the center, as both the key and foundation for all other freedoms. Since the 1970s, it has taken shape through a set of principles, especially in economic policy, applied with varying degrees of intensity and consistency by nearly every country in the world.
Political Theory
Toward a Reparative Democracy
Wendy Brown 31 October 2025

With no clear vision for a lasting peace in Palestine, and private interests winding ever deeper into the fabric of public life, there appear to be no real bulwarks left to counter the dangers threatening our shared future. Liberal democracy no longer seems to possess the vitality needed to protect the very institutions that once sustained it. Between war and accelerating climate breakdown, how can we place people—rather than markets or power blocs—back at the center of democracy? Wendy Brown, of the Institute for Advanced Studies, spoke with Reset DOC about her idea of reparative democracy—a post-liberal vision for renewing democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism, ecological collapse, and the exhaustion of the liberal order.
Political Theory
As U.S. Hegemony Founders, can the E.U. Step up to the Plate?
Michele Salvati 31 October 2025

The democracies born in the last century are facing a deep crisis. Rivalries among factions of transnational capital and between states are reshaping the relationship between economics and politics in chaotic and unpredictable ways. As U.S. hegemony wavers, and Europe seeks greater autonomy, nationalism and authoritarian tendencies are resurfacing. In this unsettled landscape, the Left struggles to find a common voice, while new social and cultural energies are trying to imagine a future in which freedom is no longer a privilege of the market. On these issues, Reset DOC spoke with Michele Salvati, emeritus professor of Political Economy at the University of Milan.
Political Theory
Financial Wars and the New Global Disorder
Alessandro Volpi 31 October 2025

Given the current context of financial conflicts, it is essential to distinguish between the market—conceived as a mechanism for the fair and efficient allocation of resources—and capitalism, which, defined by its relentless pursuit of profit, has generated significant distortions in the “normal” functioning of the market and triggered a multi-level global tension, most notably in the financial sphere. The emergence of this new world, in which the two concepts have become entirely decoupled, began in December 2001. Twenty years after the Reagan administration’s decision to steer the world toward the liberalization of capital flows, Bill Clinton’s long-pursued project to integrate China into the international market—through its accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO)—was finally realized.
Political Theory
The Broken Social Pact. Work, Time and New Forms of Citizenship
Marina Calloni 31 October 2025

The fracture in the historical bond between capitalism and democracy now seems evident. The connection that had held, albeit ambiguously, throughout the era of industrial capitalism and Fordist growth today appears to be definitively broken due to financial neoliberalism, the offshoring of production, and the crisis of democratic institutions.
International Affairs, Political Theory
The West is the Rest. The Liberal Order Turns Provincial
Carlo Galli 31 October 2025

Liberal democracy is a Western affair, not a global one. It was born and evolved in the West during the late modern era, grounded in cultural, economic, and social preconditions that cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Its export has often been an element of neocolonial ambition. The world knows well how to distinguish good governance from oppression, order from violent chaos, yet it neither thinks nor organizes itself democratically. Nor does it admire the democratic West or aspire to emulate it—except in the production of goods and services. Today, liberal democracy concerns scarcely one-eighth of the world’s population. Europe, the West (which are not the same thing, or at least have not always been), and democracy have long since been provincialized. The West is the rest.