Search results for ""Pluto Press""

A detailed ethnographic and historical study of Orange Order parades

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From Egypt to Guantanamo, we open the doors to the experiences of incarcerated Muslims

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Extrajudicial execution, enforced disappearance and torture – these are the tools used by death squads across South Asia. Across the region, human rights abuses are perpetrated behind the closed doors by the 'jallad', or hangmen, of secret detention facilities, while death squads roam the streets with impunity. By using first-hand experience and newly discovered sources, Tasneem Khalil connects these abuses to a disturbing fact - that Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are national security states connected to an international system of state terror, patronised by sponsors like the United States, the United Kingdom, China and Israel. Looking at infamous 'enforcers' such as The Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh, the 'encounter specialists' of India, army units of Nepal, the Frontier Corps of Pakistan and 'the men in white vans' of Sri Lanka, Khalil reveals a huge system of specialists in violence deployed by the state in campaigns of state terror, a bloody logic of domination and repression that lies at the very core of statecraft in South Asia.

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These are the essential writings of a man who inspired a new, egalitarian socialist regime in the Middle East, which is currently fighting for survival against religious extremism and state violence. Abdullah Ocalan led the struggle for Kurdish liberation for more than 20 years until his capture in 1999. Now, writing from prison in Turkey, he has inspired a new political movement. Called Democratic Confederalism, this revolutionary model is developing on the ground in parts of Syria and Turkey; it represents an alternative to religious sectarianism, patriarchy, capitalism and chauvinistic nationalism, providing the blueprint for a burgeoning radical democratic society. This selection of Ocalan's writings is an indispensable introduction for anyone wanting to engage with his political ideas. His central concepts address the Kurdish question, gender, Democratic Confederalism and the future of the nation. With The Political Thought of Abdullah Ocalan, his most influential ideas can now be considered and debated in the light of his continuing legacy, most notably in the ongoing revolution in Rojava.

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This groundbreaking collection explores the profound power of Social Reproduction Theory to deepen our understanding of everyday life under capitalism. While many Marxists tend to focus on the productive economy, this book focuses on issues such as child care, health care, education, family life and the roles of gender, race and sexuality, all of which are central to understanding the relationship between economic exploitation and social oppression. In this book, leading writers such as Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, David McNally and Susan Ferguson reveal the ways in which daily and generational reproductive labour, found in households, schools, hospitals and prisons, also sustains the drive for accumulation. Presenting a more sophisticated alternative to intersectionality, these essays provide ideas which have important strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists and feminists attempting to find a path through the seemingly ever more complex world we live in.

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This book lays bare the global propaganda war waged by the South African government in the attempt to bolster support for their apartheid regime. The world-wide campaign consisted of the government burnishing its image overseas, selling apartheid to the US and the UK in particular. Costing around $100 million annually, and run with vigourous efficiency for fifty years, the campaign drew in an elaborate network of supporters, including global corporations with business operations in South Africa, conservative religious organisations, and an unlikely coalition of liberal black clergy and anti-communist black conservatives aligned with right-wing Cold War politicians. Journalist Ron Nixon brings together interviews with key players, and thousands of previously unreleased records from US, British and South African archives, to provide a fast-paced and historically rich account of a little-known history.

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Elinor Ostrom was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Economics. Her theorising of the commons has been celebrated as groundbreaking and opening the way for non-capitalist economic alternatives, yet, many radicals know little about her. This book redresses this, revealing the indispensability of her work for green politics, left economics and radical democracy. Ostrom has often been viewed as a conservative or managerial thinker; but Derek Wall’s analysis of her work reveals a how it is invaluable for developing a left political programme in the twenty-first century. Central to Ostrom’s work was the move ‘beyond panaceas’; transforming institutions to widen participation, promote diversity and favour cooperation over competition. She regularly challenged academia as individualist, narrow and elitist and promoted a radical take on education, based on participation. Her investigations into how we share finite resources has radical implications for the Green movement and her rubric for a functioning collective ownership is highly relevant in order in achieving radical social change. As activists continue to reject traditional models of centralised power, Ostrom’s work will become even more vital, offering a guide to creating economics that exists beyond markets and states.

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'Exhilarating and immensely valuable' Priyamvada Gopal, Professor at the University of Cambridge Rosa Luxemburg, Claudia Jones and Leila Khaled may have joined Lenin, Mao and Che in the pantheon of twentieth-century revolutionaries, but the histories in which they figure remain unjustly dominated by men. She Who Struggles sets the record straight, revealing how women have contributed to revolutionary movements across the world in endless ways: as leaders, rebels, trailblazers, guerrillas and writers; revolutionaries who also navigated their gendered roles as women, mothers, wives and daughters. Through exclusive interviews and original historical research, including primary sources never before translated into English, readers are introduced to largely unknown revolutionary women from across the globe. The collection presents a hidden history of revolutionary internationalism that will be a must read for activists and anyone interested in feminist, anticolonial and anti-racist struggle today.

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'A highly original thinker' - New York Times David Graeber (1961-2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist who left us with new ways to understand humankind. His writings picked apart political power and social hierarchy to reveal what makes human society tick. As If Already Free collects his most important insights in one book, showing how his writing resonates today for activists looking to shake things up, and explaining how his powerful and accessible ideas can be applied to a wide range of topics, from birth to banking. In today's neoliberal world, we can turn to Graeber's legacy to provide a way for us to understand what went wrong, and how to fix it. This collection is both an introduction to his life and works, a guide to his key ideas, and an inspiring example of how anthropologists are continuing to use his work today.

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Silencing and punishing critical voices is a project that lies at the heart of Narendra Modi's authoritarian regime in India. The BJP's political dream is clear: to achieve the ethno-nationalist aim of an exclusively 'Hindu' India, while targeting anyone who dares to question or dissent. In this unique book, Suchitra Vijayan and Francesca Recchia look at the present of India through the lived experiences of political prisoners. Combining political and legal analysis with firsthand testimonies, the book explores the small gestures that constitute resistance inside and outside jail for the prisoners and their families, telling a story of destruction of institutions and erosion of rights. How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? includes visual testimonies and prison writings from those falsely accused of inciting the Bhima Koregaon violence, by student leaders opposing the new discriminatory citizenship law passed in 2020, and by activists from the Pinjra Tod's movement. In bringing together these voices, the book celebrates the courage, humanity and moral integrity of those jailed for standing in solidarity with marginalised and oppressed communities.

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*Selected by Emma Watson for her Ultimate Book List* Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes. Fashion brands entice us to consume more by manipulating us to feel ugly, poor and worthless, sentiments that line the pockets of billionaires exploiting colonial supply chains. Garment workers on poverty pay risk their lives in dangerous factories, animals are tortured, fossil fuels extracted and toxic chemicals spread just to keep this season’s collections fresh. We can do better than this. Moving between Karl Lagerfeld and Karl Marx, The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion goes beyond ethical fashion and consumer responsibility showing that if we want to feel comfortable in our clothes, we need to reshape the system and ensure this is not our last season.

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Ranging from the terrifying embrace of the slave ship's hold to the racist encoding of 'cuddly' toys, On Cuddling is a unique combination of essay and poetry that contends with the way racial violence is enacted through intimacy. Informed by Black feminist and queer poetics, Phanuel Antwi focuses his lens on the suffering of Black people at the hands of state violence and racial capitalism. As radical movements grow to advance Black liberation, so too must our ways of understanding how racial capitalism embraces us all. Antwi turns to cuddling, an act we imagine as devoid of violence, and explores it as a tense transfer point of power. Through archival documents and multiple genres of writing, it becomes clear that the racial violence of the state and economy has always been about the (mis)management of intimacies, and we should face it with resistance and solidarity.

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'This magnificent book is the best recent treatment we have of the great Black Radical Tradition' - Cornel West Of Black Study explores how the ideas of Black intellectuals generated different ways of thinking and knowing in their pursuit of conceptual and epistemological freedom. Joshua Myers explores the work of thinkers who broke with the racial and colonial logics of academic disciplinarity. Bookended by meditations with June Jordan and Toni Cade Bambara, the book focuses on how W.E.B. Du Bois, Sylvia Wynter, Jacob Carruthers and Cedric Robinson contributed to Black Studies approaches to knowledge production within and beyond Western structures of knowledge. Especially geared toward understanding the contemporary evolution of Black Studies in the neoliberal university, Of Black Study allows us to consider the stakes of intellectual freedom and the path toward a new world.

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The climate crisis is the greatest existential threat humanity faces today. The need for a radical societal transformation in the interests of social justice and ecological sustainability has never been greater. But where can we turn to find systemic alternatives? From India, Turkey and Bolivia, to Venezuela, Canada and Lebanon, Just Transformations looks to local environmental struggles for the answers. With each case study grounded in the social movements and specific politics of the region in question, this volume investigates the role that resistance movements play in bringing about sustainable transformations, the strategies and tools they utilise to overcome barriers, and how academics and grassroots activists can collaborate effectively. The book provides a toolkit for scholar-activists who want to build transformative visions with communities. Interrogating each case study for valuable lessons, the contributors develop a conceptualisation of a just transformation that focuses on the changes that communities themselves are trying to produce.

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'Extremely convincing' - Electronic Intifada For decades we have spoken of the ‘Israel-Palestine conflict’, but what if our understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence. Jeff Halper argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community. To show how this can be done, Halper uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its post-colonial conclusion. Halper’s unflinching reframing will empower activists fighting for the rights of the Palestinians and democracy for all.

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In an era when capitalism leaves so many to suffer and to die, with neoliberal 'self-care' offering little more than a bandaid, how can we take health and care back into our hands? In The Hologram, Cassie Thornton puts forward a bold vision for revolutionary care: a viral, peer-to-peer feminist health network. The premise is simple: three people - a 'triangle' - meet on a regular basis, digitally or in person, to focus on the physical, mental and social health of a fourth - the 'hologram'. The hologram, in turn, teaches their caregivers how to give and also receive care; each member of their triangle becomes a hologram for another, different triangle, and so the system expands. Drawing on radical models developed in the Greek solidarity clinics during a decade of crisis, and directly engaging with discussions around mutual aid and the coronavirus pandemic, The Hologram develops the skills and relationships we desperately need for the anti-capitalist struggles of the present, and the post-capitalist society of the future. One part art, one part activism, one part science fiction, this book offers the reader a guide to establishing a Hologram network as well as reflections on this cooperative work in progress.

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Can people who live in shantytowns, shacks and favelas teach us anything about democracy? About how to govern society in a way that is inclusive, participatory and addresses popular needs? This book argues that they can. In a study conducted in dozens of South Africa's shack settlements, where more than 9 million people live, Trevor Ngwane finds thriving shack dwellers' committees that govern local life, are responsive to popular needs and provide a voice for the community. These committees, called 'amakomiti' in the Zulu language, organise the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation, public works and crime prevention especially during settlement establishment. Amakomiti argues that, contrary to common perception, slum dwellers are in fact an essential part of the urban population, whose political agency must be recognised and respected. In a world searching for democratic alternatives that serve the many and not the few, it is to the shantytowns, rather than the seats of political power, that we should turn.

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The first collection of its kind, Transgender Marxism is a provocative and groundbreaking union of transgender studies and Marxist theory. Exploring trans lives and movements, the authors delve into the experience of surviving as transgender under capitalism. They explore the pressures, oppression and state persecution faced by trans people living in capitalist societies, their tenuous positions in the workplace and the home, and give a powerful response to right-wing scaremongering against ‘gender ideology’. Reflecting on the relations between gender and labour, these essays reveal the structure of antagonisms faced by gender non-conforming people within society. Looking at the history of transgender movements, Marxist interventions into developmental theory, psychoanalysis and workplace ethnography, the authors conclude that for trans liberation, capitalism must be abolished.

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***Winner of an English PEN Award 2021*** 'A vibrant and compelling framework for feminism in our times' - Judith Butler For too long feminism has been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. In this powerful manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be accomplices of capitalism, racism, colonialism and imperialism: it is time to fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women’s bodies. A Decolonial Feminism grapples with the central issues in feminist debates today: from Eurocentrism and whiteness, to power, inclusion and exclusion. Delving into feminist and anti-racist histories, Verges also assesses contemporary activism, movements and struggles, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike. Centring anticolonialism and anti-racism within an intersectional Marxist feminism, the book puts forward an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.

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'I was blown away' - Angela Davis Plastered over t-shirts and tote bags, the word 'feminist' has entered the mainstream and is fast becoming a popular slogan for our generation. But feminism isn't a commodity up for purchase; it's a weapon for fighting against injustice. This revolutionary book reclaims feminism from consumerism through exploring state violence against women, reproductive justice, transmisogyny, sex work, gendered Islamophobia and much more, showing that the struggle for gendered liberation is a struggle for justice, one that can transform the world for everybody.

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In the field of 'climate change', no terrain goes uncontested. The terminological tug of war between activists and corporations, scientists and governments, has seen radical notions of 'sustainability' emptied of urgency and subordinated to the interests of capital. 'Just Transition' is the latest such battleground, and the conceptual keystone of the post-COP21 climate policy world. But what does it really mean? Just Transition emerged as a framework developed within the trade union movement to encompass a range of social interventions needed to secure workers' and frontline communities' jobs and livelihoods as economies shift to sustainable production. Just Transitions draws on a range of perspectives from the global North and South to interrogate the overlaps, synergies and tensions between various understandings of the Just Transition approach. As the concept is entering the mainstream, has it lost its radical edge, and if so, can it be recovered? Written by academics and activists from around the globe, this unique edited collection is the first book entirely devoted to Just Transition.

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First published in 1971, How to Read Donald Duck shocked readers by revealing how capitalist ideology operates in our most beloved cartoons. Having survived bonfires, impounding and being dumped into the ocean by the Chilean army, this controversial book is once again back on our shelves. Written and published during the blossoming of Salvador Allende's revolutionary socialism, the book examines how Disney comics not only reflect capitalist ideology, but are active agents working in this ideology's favour. Focusing on the hapless mice and ducks of Disney, curiously parentless, marginalised and always short of cash, Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart expose how these characters established hegemonic ideas about capital, race, gender and the relationship between developed countries and the Third World. A devastating indictment of a media giant, a document of twentieth-century political upheaval, and a reminder of the dark undercurrent of pop culture, How to Read Donald Duck is once again available, together with a new introduction by Ariel Dorfman.

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Europe has long imagined itself as the centre of the universe, although its precise geographical, cultural and social terrains have always been amorphous. Exploring the fear and fascination associated with the continent as an allegory, Hamid Dabashi considers Europe to be a historically formed barricade against the world. Frantz Fanon’s assessment that 'Europe is literally the creation of the Third World' is still true today; but in more than one sense for the colonial has always been embedded in the capital, and the capital within the colonial. As the condition of coloniality shifts, so have the dividing lines between coloniser and colonised, and this shift calls for a reappraisal of our understanding of nationalism, xenophobia and sectarianism as the dangerous indices of the emerging worlds. As the far-right populists captivate minds across Europe and Brexit upsets the balance of power in the European Union, this book, from a major scholar of postcolonial thought, is a timely and transformative intervention.

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With an extended new preface by the author. 'One of the most important intellectuals alive' Independent One of Noam Chomsky's most important and renowed works, Fateful Triangle, is a devastating indictment of American and Israeli foreign policy which covers a sustained period of Middle East history from the formation of the State of Israeli to the Oslo Peace Accords. With a foreword by the late Edward Said, this powerful book belongs in the hands of anyone who wants a deep understanding of Israel and its relationship to Western power.

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Through mapping the rights discourse and the transformations in transnational finance capitalism since the world wars, and interrogating the connections between the two, Radha D'Souza examines contemporary rights in theory and practice through the lens of the struggles of the people of the Third World, their experiences of national liberation and socialism and their aspirations for emancipation and freedom. Social movements demand rights to remedy wrongs and injustices in society. But why do organisations like the World Bank and IMF, the G7 states and the World Economic Forum want to promote rights? Activists and activist scholars are critical of human rights in their diagnosis of problems. But in their prognosis, they reinstate human rights and bring back through the backdoor what they dismiss through the front. Why are activists and activist scholars unable to 'let go' of human rights? Why do indigenous peoples find the need to invoke the UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People to make their claims sound reasonable? Are rights in the 20th and 21st centuries the same as rights in the 17th and 18th centuries? This book examines what is entailed in reducing rights to 'human' rights and in the argument 'our understandings of rights are better than theirs' that is popular within social movements and in critical scholarship.

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Armed resistance, suicide bombings, and rocket attacks, populate the Western media's depiction of Palestinian resistance. Synthesising data from hundreds of original sources, Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh provides the most comprehensive study of the always creative, often peaceful, civil resistance in Palestine. Successes, failures, missed opportunities and challenges are chronicled through hundreds of stories from over 100 years of Palestinian resistance. The book critically and comparatively surveys uprisings under Ottoman rule, against the Balfour Declaration and the Oslo Accords, all the way up to the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions movement. The compelling human stories told in this book will inspire people of all faiths and political backgrounds to chart a better and more informed direction for a future of peace with justice.

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The crisis in Kosovo has excited passion and visionary exaltation of a kind rarely witnessed. The events have been portrayed as a 'new humanism', timed fortuitously with a new millennium, which will displace the crass and narrow interest politics of a mean-spirited past. But is this new humanism guided by power interests or by humanitarian concern? Is the resort to force undertaken 'in the name of principles and values', as professed? Or are we witnessing something more crass and familiar? The New Military Humanism is Chomsky at his best: a brilliant and revealing analysis, offering lessons for us all and sounding a clear alarm which none should ignore.

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Thirty years ago, a social movement helped bring down one of the most powerful British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century. For the 30th anniversary of the Poll Tax rebellion, Simon Hannah looks back on those tumultuous days of resistance, telling the story of the people that beat the bailiffs, rioted for their rights and defied a government. Starting in Scotland where the 'Community Charge' was first trialled, Can't Pay, Won't Pay immerses the reader in the gritty history of the rebellion. Amidst the drama of large scale protests and blockaded estates a number of key figures and groups emerge: Neil Kinnock and Tommy Sheridan; Militant, Class War and the Metropolitan Police. Assessing this legacy today, Hannah demonstrates the centrality of the Poll Tax resistance as a key chapter in the history of British popular uprisings, Labour Party factionalism, the anti-socialist agenda and failed Tory ideology.

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When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post 9/11 world, it’s accepted that corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies and corporations use computers to monitor our private lives. David H. Price pulls back the curtain to reveal how the FBI and other government agencies have always functioned as the secret police of American capitalism up to today, where they luxuriate in a near-limitless NSA surveillance of all. Price looks through a roster of campaigns by law enforcement, intelligence agencies and corporations to understand how we got here. Starting with J. Edgar Hoover and the early FBI’s alignment with business, his access to 15,000 pages of never-before-seen FBI files shines a light on the surveillance of Edward Said, Andre Gunder Frank and Alexander Cockburn, Native American communists and progressive factory owners. Price uncovers patterns of FBI monitoring and harassing of activists and public figures, providing the vital means for us to understanding how these new frightening surveillance operations are weaponised by powerful governmental agencies that remain largely shrouded in secrecy.

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While the world keeps its eyes riveted on Iran's nuclear programme, the Islamic Republic has gone through a crisis of its own. This book shows how soaring unemployment and poverty has given way to social protest. A new labour movement has come to the fore. Although strikes are banned, workers are beginning to organise and underground networks are challenging the rule of the mullahs from within. The authors offer a unique portrait of the social upheaval, why it is happening and where it may take the country. Following the fall of reformism, the rise of Ahmadinejad and the recent outbursts of ethnic violence, this book provides rare insights into the inner contradictions of the Islamic Republic. The second part of the book deals with the international issues facing Iran - in particular the nuclear question, Iran's oil reserves and the serious threat of invasion. It is a sobering account of the realities of life in Iran, and the threat that war poses to the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.

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