Social forecasting, future studies Books

Book SynopsisThis book features a comprehensive foresight assessment, exploring the pressures — threats as well as opportunities — on the global agriculture & food systems between now and 2050. The overarching aim is to help readers understand the context, by analyzing global trends and anticipating change for better planning and constructing pathways from the present to the future by focusing on the right questions and problems. The book contextualizes the role of international agricultural research in addressing the complex challenges posed by UN 2030 Agenda and beyond, and identifies the decisions that scientific leaders, donors and policy makers need to take today, and in the years ahead, to ensure that a global population rising to nine billion or more combined with rising incomes and changing diets can be fed sustainably and equitably, in the face of the growing climate threats.

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Book SynopsisA scintillating futurist sprawl through and within the Southeast Asian ecological apocalypse of the year 2050Destination: SEA 2050 A.D. is the first Southeast Asian fiction anthology that imagines—based on scientific projections—the world of the year 2050, the same year when ninety per cent of the planet’s coral reefs are expected to decline, when plastic is found inside ninety-nine per cent of all the world’s seabirds, when there is severe water shortage in Asia, when growth in the world’s populations stops, and when the elderly outnumber children in most places on Earth. Short stories and graphic narratives from Duanwad Pimwana, Vincent Lapuz, Sokunthary Svay, Mui Poopoksakul, Kathrina Mohd Daud, Tunku Halim, Rio Johan, Tr?n Th? NgH, Paul Christiansen, Nguy?n L m Th?o Thi, Julius Villanueva, Edgar Calabia Samar, Francezca Kwe, Bryan Thao Worra—a veritable literary supergroup from all over Southeast Asia and with each story painstakingly annotated—will paint a vivid, often disquieting but at times hopeful, vision of an environmental futurist spread.

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Book SynopsisNew York Times Bestseller “Organizing is both science and art. It is thinking through a vision, a strategy, and then figuring out who your targets are, always being concerned about power, always being concerned about how you’re going to actually build power in order to be able to push your issues, in order to be able to get the target to actually move in the way that you want to.” What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. With a foreword by Naomi Murakawa and chapters on seeking justice beyond the punishment system, transforming how we deal with harm and accountability, and finding hope in collective struggle for abolition, Kaba’s work is deeply rooted in the relentless belief that we can fundamentally change the world. As Kaba writes, “Nothing that we do that is worthwhile is done alone.”Trade Review"Mariame Kaba is a humble phenom in the most important of traditions - abolition. What we have in these pages is a wide ranging account of abolitionist theory in action - and that is no easy feat. Through Kaba’s rigorous commitment to humanity, we are reminded that another future is possible. We are fortunate that Kaba’s praxis is accounted for in this compelling and incisive text. For those of us who are eager to bring about a world where Black lives matter, this is required reading."— Opal Tometi, Co-Founder #BlackLivesMatter and founder Diaspora Rising “I want to say this is a ‘generation-defining’ book, but that feels wrong because I know it will be shaping political imaginations for a century or more. It's generations-defining. This is a classic in the vein of Sister Outsider, a book that will spark countless radical imaginations.” — Eve L. Ewing, author, 1919 “Mariame Kaba’s clarity, firm-but-gentle guidance, embracing spirit, deep creativity, and love of laughter, demonstrate how abolition is, in deed, presence. Thank goodness for this urgent book.” —Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author, Change Everything "One of the most fascinating developments during this age of Black Lives Matter is how ‘abolition' has been integrated into mainstream debates on how to change the United States. Yet there is still so much not known or understood about the history, politics and practice of abolition-informed politics. Longtime organizer and educator, Mariame Kaba, is one of the most important voices in the emergent abolitionist movement. We have all been waiting on this book! Kaba and her collaborators write with urgency, while imbuing critical insights with clarifying analyses into what it means to demand an end to the reflexive impulse toward punishment that defines much of our society." —Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation “Much of the vast living archive that is Mariame Kaba’s amazing career as an abolitionist-feminist organizer, people’s intellectual, movement strategist, and Black freedom fighter, is not in written form. It is inscribed in her praxis: the many campaigns she has crafted, the young people she has mentored, and the organizations she has founded. But in this unique collection of essays, interviews and transcribed speeches, we get a glimpse of that brilliant and powerful body of work, and it is awe-inspiring and instructive: a must-read for anyone serious about the struggle for freedom and justice in the 21st century.”— Barbara Ransby, historian, author, activist “This book writes a political genealogy of one of our movement era’s most significant intellectuals and community organizers and her people into the record of a feminist and abolitionist Black Radical Tradition. Kaba invites us all into a 500-year clock through reflection, assessment, and celebration of the people who dedicate their lives to social change. Yet again, she teaches us to praise the choir, appreciate vulnerability and be disciplined in service of transforming ourselves and the world in which we live.”— Charlene A. Carruthers, author, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements "This is a long awaited book. For the throngs of people who have been inspired by Mariame Kaba’s work, we now have – in one place – her words, her keen analysis of criminalization, her relentless critique of the carceral state and seemingly limitless optimism about the possibilities of social transformation. For anyone who has not yet been moved by her work, the search for a serious discussion of abolitionists organizing is over. At once an urgent call to action, a step-by-step guide to the practice of transformative justice, a collection of inspirational interviews and a few lighthearted reflections, this book will significantly advance radical justice work. We Do This ‘Til We Free Us is just what we need and it has arrived right on time." — Beth Richie, author, Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America's Prison Nation

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