Common space

the city as commons

Space is both a product and a prerequisite of social relations, it has the potential to block and encourage certain forms of encounter. In Common Space, activist and architect Stavros Stavrides calls for us to conceive of space-as-commons - first, to think beyond the notions of ...

Beasts and gods

Democracy is sold to us on its ability to deliver equal opportunity, and to give every citizen an equal voice. Yet time and again we see that this is not the case: power and spoils alike flow to the few, while the many are left ...

The global minotaur

America, Europe and the future of the global economy

In this remarkable and provocative book, Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis explodes the myth that financialisation, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalisation were the root causes of both the Eurozone crisis and the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper ...

The new war on the poor

the production of insecurity in Latin America

When viewed from the perspective of those who suffer the consequences of repressive approaches to public security, it is often difficult to distinguish state agents from criminals. The mistreatment by police and soldiers examined in this book reflects a new kind of stigmatization. Linking the ...

Change everything

creating an economy for the common good

Is it possible to imagine businesses whose bottom line is not profit and endless growth, but human dignity, justice, democracy and sustainability? Or an alternative economic model untainted by the greed and breakdown of current financial systems? Christian Felber says it is. Moreover, in Change ...

Africa

why economists get it wrong

Not so long ago, Africa was being described as the 'Hopeless Continent'. Recently, though, talk has turned to 'Africa Rising', with enthusiastic voices exclaiming the potential for economic growth across many of its countries. What, then, is the truth behind Africa's growth, or lack ...

Can non-europeans think?

What happens to thinkers who operate outside the European philosophical pedigree? In this powerfully honed polemic, Hamid Dabashi argues that they are invariably marginalised, patronised and misrepresented. Challenging, pugnacious and stylish, Can Non-Europeans Think? forges a new perspective in postcolonial theory by examining how intellectual ...

Another world is possible

popular alternatives to globalization at the world social forum

In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real ...

The racket

a rogue reporter vs. the masters of the universe

While working at the Financial Times, investigative journalist Matt Kennard uncovered a scam - a deception and rip-off of immense proportions. From slanging matches with Henry Kissinger to afternoon coffees with the man who captured Che Guevara, Kennard's unbridled access over four years to the ...

Marxism and the muslim world

In the wake of the uprisings which rocked the Arab world, Maxime Rodinson's work has taken on a new and powerful resonance. Dating from 1958, the time of his expulsion from the French Communist Party, to 1972, the assembled articles, papers and essays which ...

Planet dialectics

explorations in environment and development

All effects of human action will inevitably be played out within our planet's limits; any hope of infinity is an illusion. And yet, as Wolfgang Sachs warned almost twenty years ago, environmental concerns have been assimilated into the rhetoric, dynamics and power structures of ...

The lords of human kind

european attitudes to other cultures in the Imperial Age

When European explorers went out into the world to open up trade routes and establish colonies, they brought back much more than silks and spices, cotton and tea. Inevitably, they came into contact with the peoples of other parts of the world and formed views ...

After the cataclysm

postwar Indochina and the reconstruction of imperial ideology. The political economy of Human Rights. Vol.II

The second volume of The Political Economy of Human Rights remains one of the most controversial works produced by Chomsky to date. In a much discussed chapter on Cambodia, Chomsky and Herman questioned official Western narratives on the Khmer Rouge and suggested that the evidence ...

A fundamental fear

eurocentrism and the emergence of islamism

The fear and anxiety aroused by Islamism is not a myth, nor is it simply a consequence of terrorism or fundamentalism. Writing in 1997, before 9/11 and before the austerity that has bred a new generation of far right groups across Europe and the ...

Co-Operatives in post-growth era

creating co-operative economics

For the past three decades, neoclassical doctrine has dominated economic theory and policy. The balance of power has shifted to protect private interests, resulting in unprecedented damage to the environment and society, with no solution in sight as more austerity and less government continues to ...

Europe on the brink

debt crisis and dissent in the european perophery

Europe is suffering from a bipolar economic disorder. Financial journalists divide the continent into two groups of nations - centre and periphery - not by geography but by credit rating. Europe on the Brink is a critical investigation of the root causes of this sovereign debt crisis ...

Killing hope

US military and CIA interventions since World War II

In Killing Hope, William Blum, author of the bestselling Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, provides a devastating and comprehensive account of America's covert and overt military actions in the world, all the way from China in the 1940s to ...

Land and freedom

The MST, the zapatistas and peasant alternatives to neoliberalism

The Zapatistas of Chiapas and the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST) of Brazil are often celebrated as shining examples in the global struggle against neoliberalism. But what have these movements achieved for their members in more than two decades of resistance and can any of ...

Capitalism and its alternatives

The global economic crisis has catalysed debates about the merits of capitalism as a system for organizing production, distribution and exchange. Political elites have argued that capitalism is not fundamentally pernicious or crisis-prone and can be successfully reformed with the right set of policies. Conversely ...

The radical imagination

social movement research in the age of austerity

The idea of the imagination is as evocative as it is elusive. Not only does the imagination allow us to project ourselves beyond our own immediate space and time, it also allows us to envision the future, as individuals and as collectives. The radical imagination ...

Crises of imagination, crises of power

capitalism, creativity and the commons

Today, when it seems like everything has been privatized, when austerity is too often seen as an economic or political problem that can be solved through better policy, and when the idea of moral values has been commandeered by the right, how can we re-imagine ...

Languages of the unheard

why militant protest is good for democracy

Martin Luther King once insisted that 'a riot is the language of the unheard.' Since 2011 swathes of protest, rebellion, and rioting have covered the globe. A new, disenfranchised generation is fighting for its voice as once again scores of police line the streets and ...