Kuyasu, a member of the Teduray tribe in the Philippines, recently stayed for several weeks at the IIRE. He participated in the International Youth Camp in Perugia this summer and later, visited Denmark and Sweden. We had numerous talks, on his life in the Central Mindanao Region, in his village. The Teduray tribe consists of about 6000 people, claiming an ancestral domain of 201,850 hectares.
Marijke Colle studied Biology at the Ghent State University, from 1965 until 1970. She was always interested in ecology and the protection of the environment. As a student, she was active in radical left movements, in solidarity with the MAI 68 Revolt and in the campaigns against the Vietnam War. She became a founding member of the RAL/LRT, Belgian Section of the Fourth International in 1970. The seventies were also the start of the women’s movement in Belgium.
Marijke Colle was centrally involved in the struggle for free abortion and contraception on demand and later on, also in the struggles of trade-union women against the crisis. She participated in writing the Resolution on Women’s Liberation for the XIth World Congress of the Fourth International in 1979. In 2008, she became involved in the founding process of the NPA in France and was elected in the national leadership of the NPA in January 2009.
Her work as co-director of the IIRE opens a new prospect in which ecology and feminism will certainly play an important role.
Marijke was co-director from 2009 to 2013.
IIRE/Socialist Resistance, Notebook for Study and Research no. 41/42 (182 pp.)
The IIRE has just published Strategies of Resistance & ‘Who Are the Trotskyists?’, a collection of works by IIRE Fellow Daniel Bensaïd including his history of Trotskyism, newly translated into English by Nathan Rao. This 182-page book has been published in cooperation with Resistance Books. The introduction by Paul Le Blanc gives a flavour of the contents:
The results of the IIRE's work are made available to a larger public in large part through our publication series, the Notebooks for Study and Research. Since 1986 we have published 36 issues of the Notebooks in English. For many years we had a parallel series in French, the Cahiers d'étude et de recherche (currently under review). The Notebooks focus on themes of contemporary debate or historical or theoretical importance, sometimes based on lectures given in sessions in our Institute. Since 1998 they have been published as a book series in collaboration with Pluto Press in London. Different issues of the Notebooks have also appeared in languages besides English and French, including German, Dutch, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Turkish, Swedish Danish and Russian.
A compilation of notebook titles and descriptions. We are in the proces of digitalizing the notebooks to further availability of the Institutes research.
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Ernest Mandel, professor at the Free University of Brussels, author of major works in economics such as Late Capitalism, and first chairperson of the IIRE, died in July 1995. In 1996 the Ernest Mandel Study Centre was established in his honour, in order to promote research in economic and social theory in his humanist and militant spirit. The Centre was launched on the first anniversary of his death with an international seminar on his contributions to economic and social thought, in which IIRE Fellows and other distinguished scholars discussed a range of topics such as economic long waves, non-market economies, the theory of bureaucracy, the history of political thought and civilization and barbarism. Ernest Mandel's writings have been collected, catalogued and indexed in the IIRE library to assist with further research.
We are pleased to note that more and more works of Ernest Mandel are available on the web. In English, for example, International Viewpoint offers access to a number of his writings. The Belgian site www.ernestmandel.org provides access to a number of Mandel's works in Dutch, French and English.
<a href="http://www.internationalviewpoint.org" target="_blank">iv-test</a>
Two of Ernest Mandel's books are also available from the IIRE as Notebooks for Study and Research:
Since 1993 four Economists' Seminars have been held at the IIRE. Beginning in 1997, the Economists' Seminars have taken place under the auspices of the Ernest Mandel Study Centre. The seminar generally brings together about 20 professional economists from various European countries, North America, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Themes discussed have included globalization, social clauses, and the transition to the market in Eastern Europe. Each year the seminars have resulted in a substantial body of published work in various forums. Thanks to the participation of Nicaraguan and Brazilian economists in our 1992 and 1993 Economists' Seminars, the discussions there on alternative models of economic development for small countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador were drawn on in several different countries.
The Ernest Mandel Study Centre is also dedicated to the preservation, study and discussion of the classical Marxist tradition that Mandel steadfastly defended, for example by (helping) organize conferences on relevant themes.
The papers presented at the 1996 Ernest Mandel Memorial Seminar are available in English as The Legacy of Ernest Mandel, a strikingly handsome and sturdy hardcover published by Verso Press. A review of the book in French by Francis Sitel concluded that it 'will constitute a reference point for any future understanding of Mandel's indispensable work'. Covering not only Mandel's pioneering explorations of the economics of late capitalism but also his work on bureaucracy, the transition to socialism and Auschwitz, it was edited by IIRE Fellow Gilbert Achcar and with contributions by Robin Blackburn, Michael Löwy, Michel Husson, Charles Post, Catherine Samary and Norman Geras among others. It also includes several of Mandel's articles never before available in English.
The IIRE is making this book available to our friends for special low prices.
To order:
* From Britain, please send a cheque in pounds sterling for £14.25 made out to 'P. Rousset', (and your address) to IIRE, Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam.
* From the Netherlands, please do a giro transfer (indicating your address) to Netherlands Postbank account no. 1757144, CER/NSR, Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam, in the amount of € 20.50.
* From other European countries, please do a giro transfer (indicating your address) to Netherlands Postbank account no. 1757144, CER/NSR, Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam, in the amount of € 22.50. For international bank or giro transfers you will need the name of our bank (Netherlands Postbank), its International Bank Code (IBC) - PSTBNL21, its address (Bijlmeerdreef 190, 1102 BW Amsterdam, Netherlands), our account name (CER/NSR) and our address (Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam, Netherlands).
Our International Bank Account Number (IBAN) is NL13PSTB0001757144. For transfers inside the euro zone, indicating "shared costs" should ensure the lowest possible bank charges.
* From the US, please send a cheque for $26.00 made out to 'Solidarity' and earmarked 'CER/NSR', (and your address) to IIRE, Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL Amsterdam.
* From other non-European countries, please do a giro transfer (indicating your address, with the same bank details as for European countries) in the amount of € 26.00.'
Research:
The IIRE sees it as an obligation to conduct research which can be used by progressive forces around the globe - to change or affect the social reality, that they face. This research takes different forms, but are generally carried out in close collaboration with movements 'on the ground' on the one hand and skilled scholars on the other. We hope that by bringing together these two different groups in concrete projects helps to open up new ways of perceiving the challenge that faces social activists today.
Our network of Fellows is paramount to the conducting of our actual research.
Fellows:
During our lifetime, we have been fortunate enough to establish regular contacts with several researchers, some of whom have chosen to become fellows of the institute, supporting it morally and scientifically.
A list of our fellows can be found here
The International Institute for Social History (IISH) and the International Institute for Research and Education (IIRE)
request the pleasure of your company on
Thursday May 10th at 16.00 at the IISH (Adama van Scheltema zaal), Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam
Lectures by Dr. Jan Willem Stutje, author van Mandels biography, and Dr. Michael Krätke, Associate Professor of Political Economy and Political Science at the University of Amsterdam on Mandels Marxism.
The main language during the event will be Dutch.
The book launch will be followed by a reception
How you can help
The IIRE is an active institute, which is proud of its achievements. We want to expand our activities, which we feel are badly needed in the present world situation. We invite everybody who agrees with our aims to help us with the further development of our project, financially or through other forms. Founded in Belgium, we were officially recognized as an international scientific foundation by a Royal Decree of 11 June 1981. Contributions to our work are tax-deductible in several countries, for example in the US through the Centre for Changes International Fund.
Compared to other similar institutions, we carry out our work with an absurdly low budget. We receive no government subsidies. No money is spent on high staff salaries, public relations or luxurious meals or accomodations for participants. Everything is done with a minimal staff, with unpaid international Fellows and volunteers who often pay all or part of their fares to and from Amsterdam, and with the labour contributed by the participants themselves. We could not have launched and maintained t he IIRE without the help of many people: not just donors, but the many volunteers who have come from several countries to help with painting, repairs, and electrical work.
We are also grateful to the friends who have left their libraries to us in their wills; and particularly our lecturers, translators and interpreters, many of whom wholly or partly donate their services. This multi-faceted help will be as essential in the next century as it has been in our first two decades. If you can help in any of these ways, please contact us. Despite these contributions, the Institute costs money. We need money for plane fares: plane fares from the Third World must more and more often be completely covered by the Institute. We need money for our building, which though beautiful is old. We have carried out major renovations and improvements in recent years, but more are needed....
We also need money for food (although participants cook for themselves during their stays). We need money for gas, water, light, heat, property taxes, photocopying, phone calls.... In recent years we have benefited from the support of Germany's Jakob Moneta Stiftung, Canada's Kimeta Society and Sweden's Tom Gustafsson Memorial Fund, as well as from generous legacies in one or two wills. But regular, annual, individual donations remain crucial to our survival. We confront simultaneously a rise in costs and a struggle to find new donations. We are doing our part to breathe new life into hope and faith in the future. But we can only do it with new sources of financial support: we must acquire new donors if the Institute is to maintain and expand its work. We rely on your help.
IIRE has signed a contract with the Dutch Foundation for Research and Education in Scientific Socialism (SOWS). The SOWS has decided to support the political and educational activities held at the Institute. Such activities include Youth, Women, Middle East, LGBTT and Climate Change Schools and Seminars, plus IIRE publications. In return IIRE will ask it supporters to become a donor for SOWS. SOWS will use these funds exclusively for IIRE but decides on a yearly basis which activities of IIRE will be supported. We encourage our readers to consider testament pledges and other donations. Suggested regular donations from IIRE friends are 25, 50 and 100 euros, but any donation will of course be appreciated.
Bertil Videt holds degrees in Political Science and International Relations, from the University of Copenhagen and Middle East Technical University (Ankara).
He has previously worked as interpreter, journalist and immediate before taking up his position at the IIRE as research coordinator for "Promoting Romani Rights in Turkey".
Bertil Videt has written articles on a number of topics, including European Affairs, Middle East, Turkey, The Political Role of the Military, Minorities and Social Movements. His articles have been published in 10 languages.
Fluency: English, French, Danish.
Working knowledge: Dutch, Spanish, Turkish.
Bertil Videt was co-director from 2007 to 2010.
