Material Crimes

Material Crimes
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How can a mine, a road or a prison be criminal? Material Crimes answers this question, investigating the “true crimes” of infrastructure. We explore how the physical sites of everyday life are connected to global histories of conquest, resource extraction, profit-making – and resistance! Check out our website: materialcrimes.com Get in touch: materialcrimespodcast@gmail.com Instagram: instagram.com/materialcrimespodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 2d ago

    [S2: E5 Re-release] Shelter on the Hill (Benedetta Zocchi) with Surviving Society Productions

    Sitting at the edge of the notorious ‘Western Balkan Route,’ Bihac’s Borici Temporary Reception Centre is witness to some of Europe’s worst border violence. Only a few kilometres from the Bosnian-Croatian border that separates the Western Balkans from the European Union, migrants find themselves stuck; arrested, tortured and pushed back over and over again by Croatian police. But within Borici, they also find themselves part of this building’s 75-year history. Borici is a place where communities have always found shelter: against fascism, against civil war and siege, against post-war abandonment, and now against fortress Europe. Benedetta Zocchi is guided through Borici’s many incarnations by local historians, Asmir Piralic and Almir Kurtovic, human rights activist, Silvia Maraone, and local volunteer, artist and activist, Adem Hajdarevic.* *This episode first aired in 2024.  **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis.** Useful Links: Border Violence Monitoring Network: www.borderviolence.eu IPSIA (Institute for Peace, Development and Innovation ACLI) Bihac: www.ipsia-acli.it Radio Elsewhere: www.radioelsewheres.net Further Reading: Barbara Beznec & Andrej Kurnik. “Old Routes, New Perspectives: A Postcolonial Reading of the Balkan Route,” movements 5:1 (2020), pp. 34-54. Marta Mitrovic et al. (eds). The Dark Sides of Europeanisation. Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the EUropean Border Regime (Belgrade: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, 2020). Bene Zocchi. “The Game: Ritualized Exhaustion and Subversion on the Western Balkan Route,” Journal of Borderlands Studies (2023), pp. 1-21. Bene Zocchi. “Contesting the EU Border: Lessons and Challenges from the Bosnian Frontier,” Postcolonial Studies 26:1 (2023), pp. 165-182. This episode was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Queen Mary University of London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S2: E5 Re-release] Shelter on the Hill (Benedetta Zocchi) with Surviving Society Productions

  2. Sep 10

    [S2: E4 Re-release] Underwater (Eray Çaylı) with Surviving Society Productions

    When a dam on the Tigris burst in 2018, waters rushed towards Amed, Turkey’s largest predominantly Kurdish city. In its aftermath, the Turkish state claimed there were no casualties. Speaking with environmental justice campaigners and farmers (Samed Uçaman, Doğan Hatun and Zeki Kanay), Eray Çaylı reveals how this claim was based on dodgy accounting. Delving into the depths of this case, he explores Turkey’s long history of using water as a tool of war and treating Kurdistan as a laboratory for resource extraction. But, as we’ll hear from conversations with Amed residents like Berivan Arslan, these riverbanks are also fertile sites of struggle against the tide of Turkish state violence.* *This episode first aired in 2024.  **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis.** Useful Links: Coordination Council of Amed-based Professional Organizations: @Amedikk A short documentary on the "commune field" mentioned in the episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=vWYSphqOfTb6_o9A&v=v11PuSvpaUY&feature=youtu.be Amed Ecology Association: @Ekolojidernek Further Reading: Zeynep S. Akıncı, Arda Bilgen, Antònia Casellas, & Joost Jongerden. “Development Through Design: Knowledge, Power, and Absences in the Making of Southeastern Turkey,” Geoforum 114 (2020), pp. 181–188. Eray Çaylı. “The Aesthetics of Extractivism: Violence, Ecology, and Sensibility in Turkey’s Kurdistan,” Antipode 53:5 (2021), pp. 1377–1399. Eray Çaylı. “Contemporary art and the geopolitics of extractivism in Turkey's Kurdistan,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46:4 (2021), pp. 929–943. Anıl Olcan & Zozan Pehlivan. “Wildfires in Mount Cudi and the Ecological, Ideological, Political, and Historical Dimensions of Forest Fires: Turkey's Destruction of the Kurdish Environment,” Jadaliyya, 30 September 2020 https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41791/Turkey’s-destruction-of-the-Kurdish-Environment-WILDFIRES-IN-MOUNT-CUDI-AND-THE-ECOLOGICAL,-IDEOLOGICAL,-POLITICAL-AND-HISTORICAL-DIMENSIONS-OF-FOREST-FIRES.  This episode was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Queen Mary University of London.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S2: E4 Re-release] Underwater (Eray Çaylı) with Surviving Society Productions

  3. Sep 3

    [S2: E3 Re-release] Gaslighting Tengratila (Paul Gilbert) with Surviving Society Productions

    In 2005 blowouts occurred at Bangladesh’s Tengratila gas field operated by Canada’s Niko Resources Ltd. Toxins leached into the surrounding environment, devastating local habitats. Niko pled guilty to bribery charges related to Tengratila in 2011, but it had already sued Bangladesh’s government for losses at an international arbitration tribunal. What the hell is international corporate arbitration? The opaque legal wranglings of this case reveal the invisible infrastructure of international investment law, its colonial inheritances, and how companies shirk criminal liability for corporate negligence and corruption. Paul Gilbert, this episode’s host, speaks to leading Global South arbitrator and academic Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah, legal scholar Gus van Harten and Catherine Coumans from Mining Watch Canada.* *This episode first aired in 2024.  **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis.** Useful Links:  Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development: www.bwged.blogspot.com ISDS Platform: Resources for Movements: www.isds.bilaterals.org National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports: www.ncbd.org Further Reading:  Paul Robert Gilbert. “National Resources, Resistance, and the Afterlives of the New International Economic Order in Bangladesh,” International Development Policy, 12 June 2023. Kamal Hossain. “Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources,” in Legal Aspects of the New International Economic Order, pp. 33-43 (London: Bloomsbury Academic Collections, 1980). Frederico Ortino. “The Public Interest as Part of Legitimate Expectations in Investment Arbitration: Missing in Action?” in Charles Brower et al. (eds), By Peaceful Means: International Adjudication And Arbitration  (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2022). Muthucumuraswamy Sornarajah. “On Fighting for Global Justice: The role of a Third World International Lawyer,” Third World Quarterly 37:11 (2016), pp. 1972–1989.  This episode was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Queen Mary University of London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S2: E3 Re-release] Gaslighting Tengratila (Paul Gilbert) with Surviving Society Productions

  4. Aug 27

    [S2: E2 Re-release] Death by Welfare (China Mills) with Surviving Society Productions

    *TW: This episode contains discussions of suicide which some listeners may find distressing* On Tothill Street, in the heart of London’s Whitehall, sits Caxton House, home to the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP administers the UK’s welfare system, a key infrastructure of everyday life. For many, the DWP determines if they have enough money to eat, stay warm, power medical equipment - to live. For many, it has also become synonymous with suicide. In collaboration with activists and scholars Stella Dadzie, Imogen Day, John Pring, and Rick Burgess, in this episode, China Mills (from Healing Justice London) describes the grinding bureaucratic crimes committed as the DWP has sought to force disabled people into work. This painful story is also one of power. We’ll hear how disabled people and people of colour have fought tirelessly to expose the true scale of this crime - and get justice.* *This episode first aired in 2024.  **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis. Voiceovers by Claire Lauterbach and Chris Alger.** Useful Links: *Caring for ourselves and each other when the state tells us that we don’t matter is a radical act. We hope you find these resources useful.* Deaths by Welfare Project podcast (including BSL interpretation and captions): www.healingjusticeldn.org  Disability News Service: www.disabilitynewsservice.com  DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts): www.dpac.uk.net Welfare State violence: a feature, not a bug with Stella Dadzie, Tumu Johnson, Derica Shields & China Mills: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nJNJzm53pg&t=1564s Grief toolkit (by Camille Barton) www.global-diversity.org/grief-toolkit Further Reading: Ellen Clifford. The War on Disabled People: Capitalism, Welfare and the Making of a Human Catastrophe (London: Bloomsbury, 2022). Deaths by Welfare Project timeline of evidence www.deathsbywelfare.org.  China Mills and John Pring. “Weaponising Time in the War on Welfare: Slow Violence and Deaths of Disabled People within the UK's Social Security System,” Critical Social Policy 44:1 (2024), pp. 129-149. John Pring. The Department How a Violent Government Bureaucracy Killed Hundreds and Hid the Evidence. (London: Pluto Press, 2024).  This episode was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Queen Mary University of London.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S2: E2 Re-release] Death by Welfare (China Mills) with Surviving Society Productions

  5. Aug 20

    [S2: E1 Re-release] Murder in Melville (Nicky Falkof) with Surviving Society Productions

    On New Year’s Eve 2019, a drive-by shooting took place in the popular Johannesburg suburb of Melville. Two people were killed and six injured in this shocking and as-yet-unsolved case. Almost unheard-of in this crime-ridden city, the drive-by horrified local communities, provoking surging anxiety in everyone from middle class home- and business owners to student renters and informal workers. To unravel the “true crime” beneath the sensational headlines, Nicky Falkof speaks with Antonette Gouws, who was present at the drive-by, as well as local “character,” Danny Nunes, and filmmaker and academic, Dylan Vally. As we’ll hear in this episode, these unsolved murders expose the convenient fictions of Melville’s multilateral security infrastructure. Local sleuthing about the drive-by also unveils long-held beliefs about race, corruption, violence, insecurity and belonging in this complicated city.* *This episode first aired in 2024.  **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis. Additional voicework by Nkululeko Sibiya.** Useful Links:  Sophiatown Arts Akademy: @sophiatownartsakademy Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa: www.seri-sa.org Sticky Situations:www.stickysituations.org  Dlala Nje: www.dlalanje.org Further Reading:  Zimitri Erasmus. Race Otherwise: Forging a New Humanism for South Africa (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2017). Nicky Falkof and Cobus van Staden (eds). Anxious Joburg: The Inner Lives of a Global South City (Johannesburg: Wits Press, 2020). Martin J. Murray. City of Extremes: The Spatial Politics of Johannesburg (Durham: Duke UP, 2011). Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis, Wake Up, This is Joburg! (Durham: Duke UP, 2023).  This episode was supported by the Leverhulme Trust and Queen Mary University of London. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S2: E1 Re-release] Murder in Melville (Nicky Falkof) with Surviving Society Productions

  6. Aug 13

    [S1: E4 Re-release] The White Elephant (Mor Cohen) with Surviving Society Productions

    *This episode first aired in 2022 before the Israeli state began committing genocide against the Palestinian people.* What on earth can a central bus station have to do with racial capitalism and settler-colonialism? This week’s host, Mor Cohen, tells the story of the Central Bus Station (CBS) in the Tel Aviv neighbourhood Neve Sha’anan. Talking to activist Shula Keshet and academic Sharon Rotbart, Mor learns how the CBS’ fortunes show how Israel concretises its colour lines in the urban environment. These racial divisions pit the wellbeing of Israel’s different precarious communities against one another - in this case, Neve Sha’anan’s largely Mizrahi Jewish residents resisting the station’s polluting effect on their neighbourhood, and Israel’s migrant communities who have eked out precarious ecosystems within the CBS. And, as we’ll learn with Mor, underlying all of this, is the spectre of settler-colonialism. Long before the 1948 nakba (catastrophe), peripheral neighbourhoods such as Neve Sha’anan were planned as front line settlements separating Jews and Palestinians. Still used as a buffer between Jewish cities and Israel’s dwindling Palestinian urban areas, Mor tries to understand the significance of Neve Sha’anan today as an expression of Israel’s settler-colonial violence in the present.* **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Bronte Dow and Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis, alongside Tissot Regis.** Useful Links: Hotline for Refugees and Migrants (in Israel): hotline.org.il Further Reading: Rotbart Sharon. "White City, Black City: Architecture and War in Tel Aviv and Jaffa,” (London: PlutoPress, 2018). Tali Hatuka. “Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv,” (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010). Yara Sa'di-Ibraheem. “Jaffa’s Times: Temporalities of Dispossession and the Advent of Natives' Reclaimed Time,” Time and Society 29:2 (2020), pp.340-361. Shula Keshet. “Israel's "Backyard": First South Tel Aviv then Holot,” +972 magazine, November 11, 2014 https://www.972mag.com/israels-backyards-first-south-tel-aviv-then-holot/. This episode was supported by the Economics and Social Research Council and Queen Mary University of London.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S1: E4 Re-release] The White Elephant (Mor Cohen) with Surviving Society Productions

  7. Aug 10

    “He Fell from a Piece of Soap”* (Robyn Gill-Leslie)

    *TW: This episode contains descriptions of state torture and murder that some listeners may find disturbing* On 27th  September 1969, a healthy man supposedly falls down a set of stairs in police custody, and dies a few days later. But these aren’t just any stairs, and this isn’t just any man. Imam Abdullah Haron was an anti-apartheid activist, arrested by South Africa’s notorious security services for campaigning against apartheid. It took over 50 years to reopen the inquest into Imam Haron’s death, and for his family to hear a judge admit he was murdered. In this episode, Robyn Gill-Leslie investigates the cover-up of Imam Haron’s death. Speaking to Zaid Kimmmie, Steve Naidoo, Enver Samuel and Gina Snyman, she uncovers the infrastructures that shielded apartheid systems of torture and abuse – and those inflicting it - from justice. But along the way, she learns that justice doesn’t live in stuffy courtrooms, and discovers uncomfortable truths about how apartheid endures in the absence of criminal accountability in the decades since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission closed its doors.  *The title of this episode is an excerpt from Chris Van Wyk’s poem “In Detention” (1979).   Useful Links  The Imam Haron Foundation: https://www.imamharon.com/ Enver Samuel’s documentaries: www.thetruthbetold.co.za The Imam’s Re-opened Inquest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2orld22Mhw&pp=ygUSaW1hbSBoYXJvbiBpbnF1ZXN0 The Foundation for Human Rights: https://unfinishedtrc.co.za/ Further Reading Barney Desai and Gardiff Marney. The Killing of the Imam: South African Tyranny Defied by Courage and Faith (Quartet Books: 1978).  Robyn Gill-Leslie. ‘A Substantial Part of the Trauma was Caused by an Accidental Fall’: Liminal Spaces and Post-Apartheid Accountability in South Africa,” The International Journal of Human Rights 30:1 (2026), pp.84-101.  Adam Sitze. The Impossible Machine: A Genealogy of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation (University of Michigan: 2013). This episode was supported by the Independent Social Research Fund, Leverhulme Trust, the Norwegian Research Council’s Bodies of Evidence project and the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    “He Fell from a Piece of Soap”* (Robyn Gill-Leslie)

  8. Aug 6

    [S1: E3 Re-release] Leaking Guantanamo (Shereen Fernandez) with Surviving Society Productions

    *TW: This episode contains discussions of torture that some listeners may find disturbing* Guantanamo Bay prison leaks. Parts of it are overgrown with weeds. And yet, as of today, 36 detainees still remain imprisoned within its leaking walls.* How did the United States of America come to erect this gruesome, derelict prison on Cuban soil? In this episode, Shereen Fernandez, tells the story of how the crimes of Guantanamo Bay prison are part of a longer history of American imperialism and racial exclusion. As we’ll hear, it is also a story of the true crimes of capitalism and privatisation. We’ll learn how big corporations like Kellogg Brown & Root and Mitchell Jessen and Associates have raked in profits off of the detainees' suffering, sustaining GTMO in a state of total disrepair and piloting enhanced interrogation techniques on its prisoners’ bodies. The former detainee Moazzem Begg and the academic Lisa Hajjar paint Shereen a vivid portrait of what it is like to be within Guantanamo, making an irrefutable case for why this criminal prison must be shut down.  *This episode first aired in 2022. As of 2026, the number of detainees still held in Guantanamo is 15. **This episode was executively produced by Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski. Surviving Society Productions co-produced, hosted and recorded episodes. Sound mixing and design by Bronte Dow and Surviving Society creative director George “Adders” Ofori-Addo. Interview with Surviving Society’s executive producer and host, Chantelle Lewis, alongside Tissot Regis.** Useful Links: CAGE: www.cage.ngo  Further Reading: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. “The Mauritanian” (originally published as Guantánamo Diary), (London: Little, Brown, 2015). Mansoor Adayfi. “Don't Forget Us Here,” (London: Hachette Books, 2021). Nikòl Payen. “Lavalas: The Flood after the Flood,” Calaloo 25: 3 (2000), pp. 759-771.  Joseph Hickman. “Murder at Camp Delta,” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).  This episode was supported by the Economics and Social Research Council and Queen Mary University of London.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    [S1: E3 Re-release] Leaking Guantanamo (Shereen Fernandez) with Surviving Society Productions
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About

How can a mine, a road or a prison be criminal? Material Crimes answers this question, investigating the “true crimes” of infrastructure. We explore how the physical sites of everyday life are connected to global histories of conquest, resource extraction, profit-making – and resistance! Check out our website: materialcrimes.com Get in touch: materialcrimespodcast@gmail.com Instagram: instagram.com/materialcrimespodcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Material Crimes
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Maia Holtermann Entwistle & Sharri Plonski
  • Show Website
    Material Crimes