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Sad by Design
On Platform Nihilism
Geert Lovink
Pluto Press, 2019
Melancholy has always been with us. Nowadays, though, it’s a design problem—its highs and lows coded into the social media platforms on which we spend so much of our lives. We click, we scroll; we swipe, we like. And after it all, we wonder where the time went, and what, other than a flat and empty feeling, we got for it.
            Sad by Design offers a critical analysis of our social media environment and what it’s doing to us. Geert Lovink analyzes the problems of toxic viral memes, online addiction, and the lure of fake news. He shows how attempts to design sites to solve these problems have, in their studied efforts to be apolitical, been unable to generate either a serious critique or legitimate alternatives. But there is an answer: Lovink calls for us to acknowledge the engineered intimacy of these sites—because boredom, he argues, is the first stage of overcoming “platform nihilism,” which can free us to organize to stop the data harvesting industries that run them.
 
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Salvador Allende
Revolutionary Democrat
Victor Figueroa Clark
Pluto Press, 2013

This is a political biography of one of the 20th century’s most emblematic left-wing figures - Salvador Allende, who was president of Chile until he was ousted by General Pinochet in a US-supported coup in 1973.

Victor Figueroa Clark guides us through Allende's life and political project, answering some of the most frequently asked questions. Was he a revolutionary or a reformist? A bureaucrat or inspirational democrat? Clark argues that Allende and the Popular Unity Party created a unique fusion which was both revolutionary and democratic.

The process led by Allende was a symbol of hope for the left during his short time in power. Forty years on, and with left governments back in power across Latin America, this book looks back at the man and the process in order to draw vital lessons for the left in Latin America and around the world today.

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Sans Papiers
The Social and Economic Lives of Young Undocumented Migrants
Alice Bloch, Nando Sigona, and Roger Zetter
Pluto Press, 2014

Undocumented migration is a huge global phenomenon, yet little is known about the reality of life for those involved. Sans Papiers combines a contemporary account of the theoretical and policy debates with an in-depth exploration of the lived experiences of undocumented migrants in the UK from Zimbabwe, China, Brazil, Ukraine and Turkish Kurdistan.

Built around their voices, the book provides a unique understanding of migratory processes, gendered experiences and migrant aspirations. Moving between the uniqueness of individual experience and the search for commonalities, the book explores the ambiguities and contradictions of being an undocumented migrant.

With its insights into personal experiences alongside analysis of wider policy issues, Sans Papiers will have wide appeal for students, academics, policy-makers and practitioners.

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Sara
My Whole Life Was a Struggle
Sakine Cansiz
Pluto Press, 2018
The bitter struggle of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) against the Turkish state has endured for decades in the face of major setbacks and violence. This memoir tells that story through the experience of one person, Sakine Cansiz—codenamed “Sara”—a cofounder of the PKK who dedicated her life to its cause—until she was assassinated in 2013.
            This memoir, available for the first time in English, tells the story of the first chapter of Cansiz’s life, from the founding of the PKK in 1974 through her arrest in 1979. She writes here about the excitement of entering the movement as a young woman—and discovering quickly that she would have to challenge traditional gender roles as she rose among its ranks. And she succeeded: total gender equality is now one of the central tenets of the PKK.
            Today, Sara lives on, an inspiration to women fighting for liberation around the world. Her story, told in her own words, is by turns shocking, violent, and groundbreaking.
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Sara
Prison Memoir of a Kurdish Revolutionary
Sakine Cansiz
Pluto Press, 2019
The second instalment in a gripping memoir by Sakine Cansiz (codenamed 'Sara') chronicles the Kurdish revolutionary's harrowing years in a Turkish prison, following her arrest in 1979 at the age of 21. Jailed for more than a decade for her activities as a founder and leader of the Kurdish freedom movement, she faced brutal conditions and was subjected to interrogation and torture. Remarkably, the story she tells here is foremost one of resistance, with courageous episodes of collective struggle behind bars including hunger strikes and attempts at escape. Along the way she also presents vivid portraits of her fellow prisoners and militants, a snapshot of the Turkish left in the 1980s, a scathing indictment of Turkey's war on Kurdish people - and even an unlikely love story. The first prison memoir by a Kurdish woman to be published in English, this is an extraordinary document of an extraordinary life. Translated by Janet Biehl.
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Scenes from the Revolution
Making Political Theatre 1968-2019
Edited by Kim Wiltshire, Billy Cowan and James Harkar
Pluto Press, 2018
Political theater thrives on turbulence. Transmuting Brexit, Trump, and impending ecological disaster into a potent, dramatic art form, its practitioners hold a mirror up to our society, wielding the power to entertain, shock, and discomfit.
            Scenes from the Revolution is a celebration of fifty years of radical theater in Britain. Beginning with a short history of pre-1968 political theater—covering Brecht, Joan Littlewood, and Ewan McColl—the editors move on to explore agit-prop, working-class, youth, community, POC, women’s, and LGBTQ theater. Comprehensive in scope, and featuring many of the leading voices in the field today, as well as “lost” scripts from the radical theater companies of the past, Scenes from the Revolution is a must-read for anyone interested in politics in the arts.
 
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Scotland Rising
The Case for Independence
Gerry
Pluto Press, 2022

A systematic exploration of the arguments for Scottish independence from a sympathetic angle.

The Scottish independence question is one of the pivotal questions facing British politics and the future of the United Kingdom. It is also one of the most contentious and misunderstood.

In Scotland Rising, Gerry Hassan addresses the fundamental questions covering the Scottish independence debate so that people can better understand the case for independence and the nuances, contours, and implications for the whole country. Looking beyond the merits and shortcomings of the SNP and the Conservative government in Westminster, Hassan tackles the larger driving dynamics of 'the Scottish Question' - a growing desire amongst many Scots for an explicit discussion about society, public policy choices, and wider values.

Addressing the constitutional framework, and questions about the role of government and democracy, the nature of the British state, society, and capitalism, Scotland Rising makes an urgent and intelligent contribution to one of the defining political questions of our time.

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The Scramble for African Oil
Oppression, Corruption and War for Control of Africa's Natural Resources
Douglas A. Yates
Pluto Press, 2012

Africa is often seen as a place to be pitied or feared as an area of instability. This book challenges these complacent assumptions, showing how our demand for oil contributes to the chronic problems plaguing the continent.

Douglas A. Yates shows how the 'scramble' by the great powers for African oil has fed corruption and undermined democracy. Yates documents how Africans have refused to remain passive in the face of such developments, forming movements to challenge this new attempt at domination.

This book is an urgent challenge to our understanding of Africa, raising questions about the consequences of our reliance on foreign resources. It will be vital reading for all those studying development and global political economy.

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Seamus Heaney
Searches For Answers
Eugene O'Brien
Pluto Press, 2003

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Seasons of Hunger
Fighting Cycles of Starvation Among the World's Rural Poor
Stephen Devereux, Samuel Hauenstein Swan, and Bapu Vaitla
Pluto Press, 2008

Every year, millions of the rural poor suffer from predictable and preventable seasonal hunger. This hunger is less dramatic but no less damaging than the starvation associated with famines, wars and natural disasters. Seasons of Hunger explores why the world does not react to a crisis that we know will continue year after year.

Seasonal hunger is caused by annual cycles of shrinking food stocks, rising prices, and lack of income. This hidden hunger pushes millions of children to the brink of starvation every year, permanently stunting their physical and cognitive development, weakening their immune systems and opening the door for killer diseases. Action Against Hunger argue that ending seasonal hunger could save millions of young lives and is key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This book documents seasonal hunger in four countries - India, Malawi, Mali and Myanmar - including personal stories and country-wide data which shows the magnitude of the problem.

The authors also find encouraging examples of interventions designed to address seasonality - initiatives led by governments, donors and NGOs, and poor people themselves - and propose a package of advocacy messages that could contribute to the global eradication of seasonal hunger. This book will be a valuable resource for journalists, policy makers, NGO members and students of development studies.

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The Second World War
A Marxist History
Chris Bambery
Pluto Press, 2014

The Second World War casts a long shadow, portrayed as a necessary and paradigmatic war that defeated fascism. During recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, US presidents and British prime ministers have tried to claim they were following in the footsteps of Winston Churchill by standing up to dictators.

In The Second World War Chris Bambery tests this position in a thorough account of the war and tries to understand why it still dominates TV history channels and school history books.

Bambery argues that the conflict ultimately was about a division of the world between the great powers, as well as a rising of ordinary people against fascism. He offers a complex and radical analysis, that is unique when compared to many modern and conventional histories of the war.

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Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark
Corporate and Police Spying on Activists
Eveline Lubbers
Pluto Press, 2012

The exposure of undercover policeman Mark Kennedy in the eco-activist movement revealed how the state monitors and undermines political activism. This book shows the other grave threat to our political freedoms - undercover activities by corporations.

Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark documents how corporations are halting legitimate action and investigation by activists. Using exclusive access to previously confidential sources, Eveline Lubbers shows how companies such as Nestlé, Shell and McDonalds use covert methods to evade accountability. She argues that corporate intelligence gathering has shifted from being reactive to pro-active, with important implications for democracy itself.

Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark will be vital reading for activists, investigative and citizen journalists, and all who care about freedom and democracy in the 21st century.

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Secret Power
WikiLeaks and Its Enemies
Stefania Maurizi
Pluto Press, 2022
An uncovering of the terrifying depths of authoritarian power that hide behind the infamous story of WikiLeaks

*Winner of the European Award for Investigative And Judicial Journalism 2021*
*Winner of the Premio Alessandro Leogrande Award for Investigative Journalism 2022*
*Winner of the Premio Angelo Vassallo Award 2022*

'I want to live in a society where secret power is accountable to the law and to public opinion for its atrocities, where it is the war criminals who go to jail, not those who have the conscience and courage to expose them.'

It is 2008, and Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist with a growing interest in cryptography, starts looking into the little-known organisation WikiLeaks. Through hushed meetings, encrypted files and explosive documents, what she discovers sets her on a life-long journey that takes her deep into the realm of secret power.

Working closely with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and his organisation for her newspaper, Maurizi has spent over a decade investigating state criminality protected by thick layers of secrecy, while also embarking on a solitary trench warfare to unearth the facts underpinning the cruel persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks.

With complex and disturbing insights, Maurizi’s tireless journalism exposes atrocities, the shameful treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, on up to the present persecution of WikiLeaks: a terrifying web of impunity and cover-ups.

At the heart of the book is the brutality of secret power and the unbearable price paid by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and truthtellers.
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The Secure and the Dispossessed
How the Military and Corporations Are Shaping a Climate-Changed World
Edited by Nick Buxton and Ben Hayes
Pluto Press, 2015
While ecologists and environmentalists view the melting of the polar ice caps as a dire and threatening effect of climate change, many business and political leaders see emerging opportunity, as a result of newly accessible oil and gas fields. As the contributors to The Secure and the Dispossessed reveal, the ongoing environmental transitions raise a host of complicated questions about global assets and resources as well as dangerous opportunism.
 
The Secure and the Dispossessed gathers together essays by high-profile journalists, academics, and activists, including Christian Parenti, Nafeez Ahmed, and policy analyst Oscar Reyes. They offer a close and critical guide to questions about climate change, showing how they converge with questions about international security and global economic power, as new natural resources become available. This book is an essential guide to the key environmental and political debates which will shape future policies and elections: how managing the world’s supply of oil and gas can be squared with the environmental impact of our continued reliance on those very same fossil fuels.
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Seeing Like a Smuggler
Borders from Below
Shahram
Pluto Press, 2022

Stories of smuggling as acts of resistance and decolonization.

'This conceptually vivid book refreshes our vision' - Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The word smuggler often unleashes a simplified, negative image painted by the media and the authorities. Such state-centric perspectives hide many social, political, and economic relations generated by smuggling. This book looks at the practice through the eyes of the smugglers, revealing how their work can be productive, subversive, and deeply sociopolitical.

By tracing the illegalized movement of people and goods across borders, Seeing Like a Smuggler shows smuggling as a contradiction within the nation-state system, and in a dialectical relation with the national order of things. It raises questions about how smuggling engages and unsettles the ethics, materialities, visualities, histories, and the colonial power relations that form borders and bordering.

Covering a wide spectrum of approaches from personal reflections and ethnographies to historical accounts, cultural analysis, and visual essays, the book spans the globe from Colombia to Ethiopia, Singapore to Guatemala, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and from Kurdistan to Bangladesh, to show how people deal with global inequalities and the restrictions of poverty and immobility.

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The Serge Trotsky Papers
Correspondence and Other Writings Between Victor Serge and Leon Trotsky
David Cotterill
Pluto Press, 1994

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Settler Colonialism
An Introduction
Sai
Pluto Press, 2022

Sai Englert offers readers an accessible and global account of settler colonialism, taking in its history, some of its main characteristics, and its continued relevance today. 

From the Palestinian struggle against Israel occupation to the First Nations' mass opposition to pipeline construction in North America, indigenous peoples are at the forefront of some of the most important struggles of our age. Rich with their own unique histories, characteristics, and social relations, these different struggles are connected by the enemy they face: settler colonialism.

While settler-colonial regimes differ, Englert explains how they are all defined by a fundamental conflict between themselves and the indigenous people they aim to dispossess, exploit and/or eliminate. 

To understand settler colonialism as a distinct, structural, and contemporary process, is also to start engaging with a number of international social movements, political struggles, and solidarity campaigns differently. It is to start asking how decolonization – as a material struggle for freedom – might be possible.

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Sex-Life
A Critical Commentary on the History of Sexuality
Don Milligan
Pluto Press, 1993

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Shadow Lives
The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror
Victoria Brittain
Pluto Press, 2013

Shadow Lives reveals the unseen side of the '9/11 wars': their impact on the wives and families of men incarcerated in Guantanamo, or in prison or under house arrest in Britain and the US. Victoria Brittain shows how these families have been made socially invisible and a convenient scapegoat for the state in order to exercise arbitrary powers under the cover of the 'War on Terror'.

A disturbing exposé of the perilous state of freedom and democracy in our society, the book reveals how a culture of intolerance and cruelty has left individuals at the mercy of the security services’ unverifiable accusations and punitive punishments.

Both a j'accuse and a testament to the strength and humanity of the families, Shadow Lives shows the methods of incarceration and social control being used by the British state and gives a voice to the families whose lives have been turned upside down. In doing so it raises urgent questions about civil liberties which no one can afford to ignore.

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Sharing the Land of Canaan
Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle
Mazin B. Qumsiyeh
Pluto Press, 2004

There is no more compelling and dramatic unfolding story, with more profound international ramifications, than the conflict in the Middle East.

Sharing the Land of Canaan is a critical examination of the core issues of the conflict that dares to put forward a radical but logical solution: that a shared state is the best way to achieve justice and peace for Israelis and Palestinians.

Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, a human rights activist based at Yale University, offers an overview of the issues at stake, and outlines his vision for a lasting peace based on upholding the principles of human rights for all. Tackling taboo subjects, myths and obstacles, he argues convincingly that apartheid in the form of a two-state solution is no longer a feasible way to achieve enduring peace.

At this critical time, when the 'road map' to peace looks more uncertain than ever, this book provides a refreshing counterpoint to the failed strategies of the past. It is a direct and accessible account of the history - and mythology - of the fabled 'Land of Canaan', which lays out hopeful ideas for the future of this truly multiethnic and multicultural region.

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Shooting a Revolution
Visual Media and Warfare in Syria
Donatella Della Ratta
Pluto Press, 2018
From ISIS propaganda videos to popular regime-backed soap operas and digital activism, the Syrian conflict has been profoundly affected by visual media. But what are the aesthetic, political, and material implications of this disturbing collusion between war and digital culture?
            Drawing on a decade of ethnographic research conducted in Syria and neighboring countries, Donatella Della Ratta examines here how the networked age shapes contemporary warfare, from conflict on the ground to the performance of violence on the screen. Her findings present a stark parallel to the digital democracy offered by techno-utopians, delving into the dark side of web 2.0 practices, where visual regimes of representation and media production are put in service of modes of destruction.
            A vivid account of the politics of Syria’s visual media, from commercial television to citizen journalism and Daesh propaganda, Shooting a Revolution offers fascinating insight into the media’s role in transforming conflict zones in the digital age. 
 
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Shut Down the Business School
What's Wrong with Management Education
Martin Parker
Pluto Press, 2018
Even as higher education is under attack, one area is thriving: business schools. Shut Down the Business School explains why—and builds a convincing case that they are pernicious and should be closed. Martin Parker writes his polemic from the inside, drawing on his experience as a professor of management, and showing us that business schools are little more than loudspeakers for neoliberal capitalism, designed to produce unreflective managers whose primary focus is on their own personal rewards. If we believe that universities have responsibilities to society, Parker argues, then we must challenge the very foundation of the business school and its emphasis on the market above all else.
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Sick Planet
Corporate Food and Medicine
Stan Cox
Pluto Press, 2008

Neoliberals often point to improvements in public health and nutrition as examples of globalisation's success, but this book argues that the corporate food and medicine industries are destroying environments and ruining living conditions across the world.

Scientist Stan Cox expertly draws out the strong link between Western big business and environmental destruction. This is a shocking account of the huge damage that drug manufacturers and large food corporations are inflicting on the health of people and crops worldwide. Companies discussed include Wal-Mart, GlaxoSmithKline, Tyson Foods and Monsanto. On issues ranging from the poisoning of water supplies in South Asia to natural gas depletion and how it threatens global food supplies, Cox shows how the demand for profits is always put above the public interest.

While individual efforts to "shop for a better world" and conserve energy are laudable, Cox explains that they need to be accompanied by an economic system that is grounded in ecological sustainability if we are to find a cure for our Sick Planet.

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The Silent War
Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race
Frank Furedi
Pluto Press, 1998

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Sinn Fein and the Politics of Left Republicanism
Eoin O'Broin
Pluto Press, 2009

Sinn Féin is a growing force in Irish politics. Now the country's third largest party, Sinn Féin have been one of the central architects of the peace process and are increasingly setting the terms of political debate in Ireland north and south. Despite this, the party remains much misunderstood and often misrepresented.

In Sinn Féin & The Politics of Left Republicanism, Sinn Féin activist Eoin Ó Broin explores the ideological and organisational origins of the party, charts their history and recent political development and assesses their possible futures.

He argues that Sinn Féin is part of a distinct left-republican tradition in Irish society whose future lies in the globally resurgent radical democratic left.

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The Situationist International
A Critical Handbook
Alastair Hemmens
Pluto Press, 2020
Formed amidst the incendiary violence and political turmoil of the 1960s, beyond the barricades, the Situationist International (SI) remains to this day influential in anti-capitalist cultural, political and philosophical debates. 

Looking at philosophy, sociology, critical theory, art, architecture and literature, The Situationist International is an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the SI and its thought. Leading thinkers analyze the SI's interdisciplinary challenges, its roots in the artistic avant-garde and the traditional workers' movements, its engagement with the problems of postcolonialism and issues of gender and sexuality.

Including contributions from key thinkers, including Anselm Jappe and Michael Lowy, as well as new and upcoming scholars, The Situationist International unpacks the complexity of a group that has come to define radical politics and culture in the postwar period. 
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Slave of Allah
Zacarias Moussaoui Vs the USA
Katherine C. Donahue
Pluto Press, 2007
In 2006, Zacarias Moussaoui became the first person to stand trial for the events of September 11, 2001. This timely book provides a close insight into the Moussaoui trial from an anthropological perspective. Katherine C. Donahue was present at the trial. Based on first-hand evidence, this book provides a unique picture of an al Quaeda convert in the process of forming his identity just when he is calling the death sentence upon himself. It is the story of an extra-national opposition to western democracy, seen through the experience of a man who calls himself a "slave of Allah."



The book begins with his arrest and moves to the courtroom, telling the tale of Moussaoui's struggle with his defense lawyers and raising questions about his ability to be "represented" given his national and personal identity. Donahue explores his background in France as the son of Moroccan immigrants and follows him to London, Afghanistan, and Malaysia as he joins the growing fraternity of an Islam without borders. He acquires an extra-national identity in which his loyalty is no longer constituted by his national identity, but by his allegiance to fundamental Islam.

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Slavoj Zizek
A Critical Introduction
Ian Parker
Pluto Press, 2004
Since the publication of his first book in English in 1989, Slavoj Zizek has quickly become one of the most widely read and contentious intellectuals alive today. With dazzling wit and tremendous creativity he has produced innovative and challenging explorations of Lacan, Hegel and Marx, and used his insights to exhilarating effect in analyses of popular culture. While Zizek is always engaging, he is also elusive and even contradictory. It can be very hard to finally determine where he stands on a particular issue. Is Zizek Marxist or Post-Marxist? How seriously should we take his recent turn to Christianity? Slavoj Zizek: A Critical Introduction shows the reader a clear path through the twists and turns of Zizek's writings. Ian Parker takes Zizek's treatment of Hegel, Lacan and Marx in turn and outlines and assesses Zizek's interpretation and extension of these thinkers' theories. While Parker is never hastily dismissive of Zizek's innovations, he remains critical throughout, aware that the energy of Zizek's writing can be bewitching and beguiling as well as engaging and profound.
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The Slow Food Story
Politics and Pleasure
Geoff Andrews
Pluto Press, 2008

The Slow Food movement was set up in Italy as a response to the dominance of fast food chains, supermarkets and large-scale agribusiness. It seeks to defend what it calls 'the universal right to pleasure' and promotes an alternative approach to food production and consumption based on the promotion of 'good, clean and fair' local products.

This is the first in-depth study of the fascinating politics of Slow Food, which in twenty years has grown into an international organisation with more than 80,000 members in over 100 countries. With its roots in the 1960s and 1970s counter-culture, Slow Food's distinctive politics lie in the unity between gastronomic pleasure and environmental responsibility. The movement crosses the left-right divide to embrace both the conservative desire to preserve traditional rural communities and an alternative 'virtuous' idea of globalisation.

Geoff Andrews shows that the alternative future embodied in Slow Food extends to all aspects of modern life. The Slow Food Story presents an extensive new critique of fast-moving, work-obsessed contemporary capitalist culture.

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Small Is Necessary
Shared Living on a Shared Planet
Anitra Nelson
Pluto Press, 2018
Does small mean less? Not necessarily. In an era of housing crises, environmental unsustainability and social fragmentation, the need for more sociable, affordable and sustainable housing is vital. The answer? Shared living - from joint households to land-sharing, cohousing and ecovillages.

Using successful examples from a range of countries, Anitra Nelson shows how 'eco-collaborative housing' - resident-driven low impact living with shared facilities and activities - can address the great social, economic and sustainability challenges that householders and capitalist societies face today. Sharing living spaces and facilities results in householders having more amenities and opportunities for neighbourly interaction.

Small is Necessary places contemporary models of 'alternative' housing and living at centre stage arguing that they are outward-looking, culturally rich, with low ecological footprints and offer governance techniques for a more equitable and sustainable future.
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Small Places, Large Issues
An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Pluto Press, 2015
This concise introduction to social and cultural anthropology has become a modern classic, introducing countless students to the field and the tools it offers for exploring some of the most complicated questions of human life and interaction. This fourth edition is fully updated, incorporating recent debates and controversies in the field, ranging from globalization and migration research to problems of cultural translation and the challenges of interdisciplinarity. Effortlessly bridging the gap between classic and contemporary anthropology, Small Places, Large Issues remains an essential text for undergraduates embarking on the study of this field.
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Social Mobility in Kerala
Modernity and Identity in Conflict
Filippo Osella and Caroline Osella
Pluto Press, 2000

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Social Policy and Welfare
A Clear Guide
Tom Burden
Pluto Press, 1998

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Social Reproduction Theory and the Socialist Horizon
Work, Power and Political Strategy
Aaron Jaffe
Pluto Press, 2020
How do we integrate the theoretical underpinnings of social reproduction theory (SRT) into our understanding of the social harms inflicted upon us? How can we use it to inform our struggles and affect societal change under capitalism? Integrating our understanding of productive and reproductive spheres and exploring the connection between identity-based oppression and class exploitation, SRT has emerged as a powerful Marxist frame for social analysis and political practice. In this book, Aaron Jaffe extracts SRT's radical potential, relying on recent struggles, including the International Women's Strike and the teachers' strikes, showing how we can use SRT to motivate socialist politics and strategy. Using social reproduction theory to appreciate distinct forms of social domination, this unique and necessary book will have vital strategic implications for anti-capitalists, anti-racists, LGBT activists, disability activists and feminists.
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Social Reproduction Theory
Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression
Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya
Pluto Press, 2017
“A marvelous new collection.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Every socialist needs to read it now.”—Socialist Action
 
Social Reproduction Theory is probably the first book to draw on the recent resurgent interest in developing a coherent Marxist-Feminist understanding of everyday life under capitalism. The ten essays here address a range of questions, with each contributor tackling the thorny problem of explaining just what social reproduction theory is. Though they do not always agree, each wrestles with the new and old questions that continue to be raised by feminists and theorists.
 
Readers new to the issues will learn much from the variety of points of view offered here. Those who have lived through previous women’s liberation debates will find novel answer to old questions and examples that illustrate new points and previous points of view.
 
Crystallizing the essential principles of social reproductive theory, this anthology provides long-overdue analysis of everyday life under capitalism. It focuses on issues such as childcare, healthcare, education, family life, and the roles of gender, race, and sexuality—all of which are central to understanding the relationship between exploitation and social oppression. Chapters include:
 
*Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory by Tithi Bhattacharya
*Crisis of Care? On the Social-Reproductive Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism by Nancy Fraser
*Without Reserves by Salar Mohandesi and Emma Teitelman
*How Not to Skip Class: Social Reproduction of Labor and the Global Working Class by Tithi Bhattacharya
* Children, Childhood and Capitalism: A Social Reproduction Perspective by Susan Ferguson
*Mostly Work, Little Play: Social Reproduction, Migration, and Paid Domestic Work Montreal by Carmen Teeple Hopkins
*Pensions and Social Reproduction by Serap Saritas Oran
*Body Politics: The Social Reproduction by Alan Sears
rom Social Reproduction Feminism to the Women's Strike by Cinzia Arruzza  
 
Tithi Bhattacharya brings together some of the leading writers and theorists, including Lise Vogel, Nancy Fraser, and Susan Ferguson, in order for us to better understand social relations and how to improve them in the fight against structural oppression.
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Socialism
Past and Future
Michael Harrington
Pluto Press, 1993

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Socialism
What Went Wrong
Irwin Silber
Pluto Press, 1994

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Socialist Feminism
A New Approach
Frieda Afary
Pluto Press, 2022

What is socialist feminism and why is it needed to fight the global rise of authoritarianism and fascism?

Frieda Afary brings the insights gained through her study of feminist philosophy, her international activism, and her work in community education as a public librarian in Los Angeles, offering a bold new vision of an alternative to capitalism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and alienation.

Socialist Feminism: A New Approach reclaims theories of women’s oppression through a return to humanism, enriched by social reproduction theories, Black feminist intersectionality, abolitionism, queer theories, Marxist-Humanism, and the author’s own experiences as an Iranian American feminist, scholar, and activist.

She looks at global developments in gender relations since the 1980s, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the distinct features of twenty-first-century authoritarianism, and current struggles against it, drawing out lessons for revolutionary theorizing, organizing, and international solidarity including the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.

This book also contains a study guide that transforms it into a useful pedagogical tool for teachers and activists.

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A Socialist History of the French Revolution
Jean Jaurés
Pluto Press, 2021
One of the most influential accounts of the French Revolution ever published, now available for the first time in paperback.

Jean Jaurès was the celebrated French Socialist Party leader, assassinated in 1914 for trying to use diplomacy and industrial action to prevent the outbreak of war. Published just a few years before his death, his magisterial A Socialist History of the French Revolution has endured for over a century.

Written in the midst of his activities as leader of the Socialist Party and editor of its newspaper, L'Humanite, Jaurès intended the book to serve as both a guide and an inspiration to political activity; even now it can serve to do just that.

Jaurès's verve, originality, and willingness to criticize all players in this epic drama make this a truly moving addition to the shelf of great books on the French Revolution. Mitchell Abidor's abridged translation of Jaurès's original six volumes makes this exceptional work truly accessible to an Anglophone audience.
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Socialist States and the Environment
Lessons for Eco-Socialist Futures
Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro
Pluto Press, 2021

More than thirty years after the collapse of the USSR, the critique of state socialism is still used to deny alternatives to capitalism, irrespective of global capitalist ecological and social devastation. There is seemingly nothing worthwhile salvaging from decades of state socialist experiences.

As the climate crisis deepens, Engel-Di Mauro argues that we need to re-evaluate the environmental practices and policies of state socialism, especially as they had more environmentally beneficial than destructive effects. Rather than dismissing state socialism’s heritage out of hand, we should reclaim it for contemporary eco-socialist ends.

By means of a comparative and multiple-scaled approach, Engel-Di Mauro points to highly diverse and environmentally constructive state socialist experiences. Taking the reader from the USSR to China and Cuba, this is a fiery and contentious look at what worked, what didn’t, and how we can move towards an eco-socialist future.

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Solidarity
Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights
Steve Striffler
Pluto Press, 2018
How and why has solidarity changed over time? Why have particular strategies, tactics, and strands of internationalism emerged or re-emerged at particular moments? And how has solidarity shaped the history of the US left in particular?

In Solidarity, Steve Striffler addresses these key questions, offering the first history of US-Latin American solidarity from the Haitian Revolution to the present day. Striffler traces the history of internationalism through the Cold War, exploring the rise of human rights as the dominant current of international solidarity. He also considers the limitations of a solidarity movement today that inherited its organisational infrastructure from the human rights movements.

Moving beyond conventionally ahistorical analyses of solidarity, here Striffler provides a distinctive intervention in the history of progressive politics in both the US and Latin America, the past and present of US imperialism and anti-imperialism, and the history of human rights and labour internationalism.
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Solidarity without Borders
Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society
Edited by Óscar García Agustín and Martin Bak Jørgensen
Pluto Press, 2016
Solidarity without Borders examines the politics of migration at the ground-level, considering migrants not as an issue to be solved but as individual political agents, exploring the possibilities raised by alliances between migrants and trade unions, worker organizations, and other constituencies. Applying Gramsci’s theories of modern resistance and taking up the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey, social movements in Ireland, and the Lampedusan Libyan migrant group as case studies, Solidarity without Borders demonstrates how new solidarity relations are shaped and how these may construct a new common ground for developing political alternatives.  
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Solidarity without Borders
Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society
Óscar García Agustín
Pluto Press, 2016

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The Solutions are Already Here
Strategies of Ecological Revolution from Below
Peter Gelderloos
Pluto Press, 2022
Are alternative energies and Green New Deals enough to deliver environmental justice? Peter Gelderloos argues that international governmental responses to the climate emergency are structurally incapable of solving the crisis. But there is hope.

Across the world, grassroots networks of local communities are working to realize their visions of an alternative revolutionary response to planetary destruction, often pitted against the new megaprojects promoted by greenwashed alternative energy infrastructures and the neocolonialist, technocratic policies that are the forerunners of the Green New Deal.

Gelderloos interviews food sovereignty activists in Venezuela, Indigenous communities reforesting their lands in Brazil and anarchists fighting biofuel plantations in Indonesia, looking at the battles that have cancelled airports, stopped pipelines, and helped the most marginalized to fight borders and environmental racism, to transform their cities, to win a dignified survival.
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Somalia - the Untold Story
The War Through the Eyes of Somali Women
Edited by Judith Gardner and Judy El Bushra
Pluto Press, 2004
Somalia came to the world's attention in 1992 when television and newspapers began to report on the terrifyingly violent war and the famine that resulted. Half a million Somalis died that year, and over a million fled the country. Cameras followed US troops as they landed on the beaches at Mogadishu to lead what became an ill-fated UN intervention to end hunger and restore peace.

In this book, Somali women write and talk about the war, their experiences and the unacceptable choices they often faced. They explain clearly, in their own words, the changes, challenges – and sometimes the opportunities – that war brought, and how they coped with them.

Key themes include the slaughter and loss of men, who were the prime target for killings; rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war; changing roles in the family and within the pastoralist economy; women mobilising for peace; and leading social recovery in a war-torn society.

This book is not only an important record of women's experience of war, but also provides researchers and students of gender and conflict with rare first hand accounts highlighting the impact of war on gender relations, and women's struggle for equal political rights in a situation of state collapse.
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Songs At the River's Edge
Stories From a Bangladeshi Village
Katy Gardner
Pluto Press, 1997

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Southern Insurgency
The Coming of the Global Working Class
Immanuel Ness
Pluto Press, 2015
Even as labor in the developed world seems to be in retreat, industrial struggle continues elsewhere—and with particular force in the Global South. In Southern Insurgency, Immanuel Ness provides a thorough and expert perspective of three key countries where workers are fighting the spread of unchecked industrial capitalism: China, India, and South Africa. In each case, he considers the broader historical forces in play, such as the effects of imperialism, the decline of the international union movement, class struggle, and the growing reserve of available labor. He then narrows his focus in each case on the specifics of the current grassroots insurgency: the militancy of miners in South Africa, new labor organizations in India, and the rise of worker insurgencies in China.
 
The product of extensive firsthand field research, Southern Insurgency paints a picture of the new industrial proletariat in the Global South—a group that lives a precarious, frightening existence yet at the same time offers hope for new approaches to solidarity and the anti-capitalist struggle.
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Spectres of Fascism
Historical, Theoretical and International Perspectives
Samir Gandesha
Pluto Press, 2020
Concerns over the rise of fascism have been preoccupied with the Trump presidency and the Brexit vote in the UK, yet, globally, we are witnessing a turn towards anti-democratic and illiberal forces. From the tragic denouement of the Egyptian Revolution to the consolidation of the so-called Gujarat Model in India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the consolidation of the power of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, fascist ideology, aesthetics and fascist personalities appear across the globe. Spectres of Fascism makes a significant contribution to the unfolding discussion on whether what we are witnessing today is best understood as a return to classic twentieth-century ‘fascism,’ or some species of what has been called ‘post-fascism.’ Applying a uniquely global perspective, it combines analyses of historical contexts, theoretical approaches and contemporary geopolitics.
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Split
Class Divides Uncovered
Ben Tippet
Pluto Press, 2020
In 1990, John Major hailed 'the classless society'; in 1997, New Labour announced that 'we're all middle class now', yet we live in an age where food banks, pay day lenders and zero-hour contracts proliferate: it's clear that class matters. 

Foregrounding the economic nature of class, Split challenges the idea that class can be reduced to the cultural. From precarious labor to rising debt; from the housing crisis to environmental catastrophe; from an inflated prison population to the welfare state; Ben Tippet traces the class divide at the heart of all exploitation. Myth-busting meritocracy, he exposes the role that tax havens, colonialism and inheritance play in the wealth of the elite. 

Split highlights the potential for a diverse and eclectic working-class bloc to fight back in an age of austerity and uncertainty.
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The Squatters' Movement in Europe
Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalism
Edited by Squatting Europe Kollective
Pluto Press, 2014

The Squatters' Movement in Europe is the first definitive guide to squatting as an alternative to capitalism. It offers a unique insider's view on the movement – its ideals, actions and ways of life. At a time of growing crisis in Europe with high unemployment, dwindling social housing and declining living standards, squatting has become an increasingly popular option.

The book is written by an activist-scholar collective, whose members have direct experience of squatting: many are still squatters today. There are contributions from the Netherlands, Spain, the USA, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the UK.

In an age of austerity and precarity this book shows what has been achieved by this resilient social movement, which holds lessons for policy-makers, activists and academics alike.

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State Crime on the Margins of Empire
Rio Tinto, the War on Bougainville and Resistance to Mining
Kristian Lasslett
Pluto Press, 2014

This book offers a pioneering window into the elusive workings of state-corporate crime within the mining industry. It follows a campaign of resistance organised by indigenous activists on the island of Bougainville, who struggled to close a Rio Tinto owned copper mine, and investigates the subsequent state-corporate response, which led to the shocking loss of some 10,000 lives.

Drawing on internal records and interviews with senior officials, Kristian Lasslett examines how an articulation of capitalist growth mediated through patrimonial politics, imperial state-power, large-scale mining, and clan-based, rural society, prompted an ostensibly ‘responsible’ corporate citizen, and liberal state actors, to organise a counterinsurgency campaign punctuated with gross human rights abuses.

State Crime on the Margins of Empire represents a unique intervention rooted in a classical Marxist tradition that challenges positivist streams of criminological scholarship, in order to illuminate with greater detail the historical forces faced by communities in the global south caught in the increasingly violent dynamics of the extractive industries.

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State Formation
Anthropological Perspectives
Edited by Christian Krohn-Hansen and Knut G. Nustad
Pluto Press, 2005
What is the 'state' and how can we best study it? This book investigates new ways of analysing the state.



The contributors argue that the state is not a fixed and definite object. Our perceptions of it are constantly changing, and differ from person to person. What is your idea of the state if you are a refugee? Or if you are living in post-aparteid South Africa? Our perceptions are formed and sustained by evolving discourses and techniques---these come from institutions such as government, but are also made by communities and individuals.



The contributors examine how state structures are viewed from the inside, by official state bodies, composed of bureaucrats and politicians; and how these state manifestations are supported, reproduced or transformed at a local level. An outline of theoretical approaches is followed by nine case studies ranging from South Africa to Peru to Norway.



With a good range of contributors including Cris Shore, Clifton Crais, Ana Alonso and Bruce Kapferer, this is a comprehensive critical analysis of anthropological approaches to the study of state formation.

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The State of Islam
Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan
Saadia Toor
Pluto Press, 2011

The State of Islam tells the story of Pakistan through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the global rise of militant Islam.

Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined ‘political’ realm, Saadia Toor highlights the significance of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. This extra dimension allows Toor to explain how the struggle between Marxists and liberal nationalists was influenced and eventually engulfed by the agenda of the religious right.

Timely and unique, this book is a must for anyone who wants to understand the roots of modern Pakistan and the likely outcome of current power struggles in the country.

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State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles
Counter Insurgency, Government Deviance and Northern Ireland
Maurice Punch
Pluto Press, 2012

The period in Northern Ireland known as 'the Troubles' (1968-98) seemed to have been conclusively ended by the official peace process. But recent violence from dissident Republicans shows that tensions from the past remain unresolved.

State Violence, Collusion and the Troubles reveals disturbing unanswered questions about the use of state violence during this period. Maurice Punch documents in chilling detail how the British government turned to desperate, illegal measures in a time of crisis, disregarding domestic and international law. He broadens out his analysis to consider other cases of state violence against ‘insurgent groups’ in Spain and South Africa.

This is the story of how the British state collaborated with violent groups and directly participated in illegal violence. It also raises urgent questions about why states around the world continue to deploy such violence rather than seeking durable political settlements.

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Staying Power
The History of Black People in Britain
Peter Fryer
Pluto Press, 2018
Staying Power is a panoramic history of black Britons. First published in 1984 amid race riots and police brutality, Fryer’s history performed a deeply political act, revealing how Africans, Asians, and their descendants had been erased from British history.
            Stretching back to the Roman conquest, encompassing the court of Henry VIII, and following a host of characters from the pioneering nurse and war hero Mary Seacole to the abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, Peter Fryer paints a picture of two thousand years of black presence in Britain. By rewriting black Britons into British history, showing where they influenced political traditions, social institutions, and cultural life, Staying Power presented a radical challenge to racist and nationalist agendas. This edition includes a new foreword by Gary Younge examining the book’s continued significance in shaping black British identity today, alongside the now-classic introduction by Paul Gilroy.
 
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Storming Heaven
Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism
Steve Wright
Pluto Press, 2017
The only comprehensive survey of Italian autonomist theory, Storming Heaven explores its origins in the anti-Stalinist left of the 1950s and traces it through its glory days twenty years later. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of class composition and struggle as the distinguishing feature of autonomist thought, Steve Wright documents how class politics developed alongside emerging social movements. A critical and historical exploration of autonomist Marxism in postwar Italy, Storming Heaven moves beyond traditional analytical frameworks and instead assesses the strengths and limitations of the theory and how it foreshadowed many of contemporary European social struggles, such as the refusal of work, self-organization, openness to non-militarized political violence, mass illegality, and the extension of revolutionary agency. This updated edition also offers a substantial new afterword looking at the recent debates around operaismo and autonomia in Italy.   
 
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Straight Power Concepts in the Middle East
US Foreign Policy, Israel and World History
Gregory Harms
Pluto Press, 2010

How did the US become a world power? How did it become involved in the Middle East? What is the history and nature of its 'special relationship' with Israel?

Given the increase in tensions in the Middle East, and the United States' involvement in them, news coverage is in abundance. Yet, the reportage and discussion of American foreign policy is often narrow in scope, offering little background or context. The subject is routinely treated with the vocabulary provided by government officials, presenting best intentions while conceding occasional mistakes and unfortunate incidents. As Gregory Harms demonstrates in Straight Power Concepts, the historical record bears out a different vocabulary and tells a story that sharply contrasts with the common assumptions.

In this brief and accessible account, the reader is guided through the panoramic sweep of world and American history, reviewing how the US became a world power, how the Middle East became 'modern' and how Israel became an American 'strategic asset.' In so doing, the book provides a broad frame of reference, illustrating that recent developments are closer to business-as-usual and nothing resembling the rhetoric commonly used by heads of state, press secretaries, news media, and commentators.

As in his highly successful book The Palestine-Israel Conflict, Harms makes complex subjects accessible to everyone, without sacrificing analytical rigour. This book should be the first port of call for students and anyone seeking clarity and a historical elucidation of current events involving the United States, Israel, and the Middle East.

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Struck Out
Why Employment Tribunals Fail Workers and What Can be Done
David Renton
Pluto Press, 2012

Every year, over a hundred thousand workers bring claims to an Employment Tribunal. The settling of disputes between employers and unions has been exchanged by many for individual litigation.

In Struck Out, barrister David Renton gives a practical and critical guide to the system. In doing so he punctures a number of media myths about the Tribunals. Far from bringing flimsy cases, two-thirds of claimants succeed at the hearing. And rather than paying lottery-size jackpots, average awards are just a few thousand pounds – scant consolation for a loss of employment and often serious psychological suffering. The book includes a critique of the present government’s proposals to reform the Tribunal system.

Employment Tribunals are often seen by workers as the last line of defence against unfairness in the workplace. Struck Out shows why we can't rely on the current system to deliver fairness and why big changes are needed.

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The Struggle for Food Sovereignty
Alternative Development and the Renewal of Peasant Societies Today
Edited by Remy Herrera and Kin Chi Lau
Pluto Press, 2015
Food sovereignty—or the right of a people to operate and control their own food and agricultural systems—has all but disappeared throughout much of the world, usurped by multinational corporations engaging in industrialized farming and global trade. The Struggle for Food Sovereignty examines the prospects and struggles of family farms, peasants, and others in the fight for control over local sustenance and rights of access to land and food. The authors examine the issues in both the global north and south, finding a common vision even amid apparently radically differing political and economic conditions.
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The Struggle for Hegemony in Pakistan
Fear, Desire and Revolutionary Horizons
Aasim Sajjad-Akhtar
Pluto Press, 2022
'A major analysis of our world's political crisis' - Joel Wainwright

The collapse of neoliberal hegemony in the western world following the financial crash of 2007-8 and subsequent rise of right-wing authoritarian personalities has been described as a crisis of 'the political' in western societies. But the crisis must be seen as global, rather than focusing on the west alone.

Pakistan is experiencing rapid financialization and rapacious capture of natural resources, overseen by the country's military establishment and state bureaucracy. Under their watch, trading and manufacturing interests, property developers and a plethora of mafias have monopolized the provision of basic needs like housing, water and food, whilst also feeding conspicuous consumption by a captive middle-class.

Aasim Sajjad-Akhtar explores neoliberal Pakistan, looking at digital technology in enhancing mass surveillance, commodification and atomization, as well as resistance to the state and capital. Presenting a new interpretation of our global political-economic moment, he argues for an emancipatory political horizon embodied by the 'classless' subject.
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Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy
Constructing the Political Subject
Massimo Modonesi
Pluto Press, 2013

In this bold and innovative book, Massimo Modonesi weaves together theory and political practice by relating the concepts of subalternity, antagonism and autonomy to contemporary movements in Latin America and elsewhere.

In a sophisticated account, Modonesi reconstructs the debates between Marxist authors and schools of thought in order to sketch out informed strategies of resistance. He reviews the works of Gramsci, Negri, Castoriadis and Lefort, and engages with the arguments made by E. P. Thompson, Spivak, Laclau and Mouffe.

Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy firmly roots key theoretical arguments from a range of critical thinkers within specific political movements in order to recover these concepts as analytical instruments which can help to guide contemporary struggles.

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A Suffragette in America
Reflections on Prisoners, Pickets and Political Change
Sylvia Pankhurst
Pluto Press, 2019
In 1911, leading English suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst visited America. Unlike other suffragette leaders, who spent their time in America among the social elite, Pankhurst wasted no time getting right to the heart of America’s social problems. She visited striking laundry workers in New York and female prisoners in Philadelphia and Chicago, and she grappled firsthand with shocking racism in Nashville.
            This book gathers Pankhurst’s writings from the year-long visit, in which she reveals her shock at the darkness hidden in American life, and draws parallels to her experiences of imprisonment and misogyny in her own country. Never before published, these writings mark an important stage in the development of the suffragette's thought, which she brought back to Britain to inform the burgeoning suffrage campaign there.
 
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Suicide Bombers
Allah's New Martyrs
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Pluto Press, 2005

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A Suitable Enemy
Racism, Migration and Islamophobia in Europe
Liz Fekete
Pluto Press, 2009

Liz Fekete is a leading authority on issues of racism, Islamophobia and national security legislation. A Suitable Enemy draws on sixteen years of research to present a comprehensive overview of EU immigration, asylum, race and security policies.

Fekete argues that at the same time as the EU introduces selective migration policies, it closes its borders against asylum seekers who were the first victims of the growth of the security state which now embraces Muslims. She explores the way in which anti-terrorist legislation has been used to evict undesirable migrants, how deportation policies commodify and de-humanise the most vulnerable and how these go hand in hand with evolving forms of racism, particularly Islamophobia.

At the heart of the book is an examination of xeno-racism -- a non-colour coded form of institutionalised racism -- where migrants who do not assimilate, or who are believed to be incapable of assimilation, are excluded.

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Super Imperialism
The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance
Michael Hudson
Pluto Press, 2003

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Surplus Citizens
Struggle and Nationalism in the Greek Crisis
Dimitra Kotouza
Pluto Press, 2018
The crisis in Greece has elicited the full spectrum of responses - from optimism for a left parliamentary politics inspired by Syriza's electoral victory, to pessimism about the intransigence of the EU and calls for the reinstatement of full national sovereignty in Europe. In Surplus Citizens, Dimitra Kotouza questions the terms of the debate by demonstrating how the national framing of social contestation posed obstacles to transformative collective action, but also how this framing has been challenged. Analysing the increasing superfluousness of subordinate classes in Greece as part of a global phenomenon with racialised and gendered dimensions, the book interrogates the strengths, contradictions and limits of collective action and identity in the crisis, from the movement of the squares and neighbourhood assemblies, to new forms of labour activism, environmental struggles, immigrant protests, anti-fascism and pro-refugee activism. Arguing against the strategic fixation on unified identities and pointing instead to the transformative potential of internal dispute within movements, Surplus Citizens highlights the relevance of a discussion of Greece to collective action beyond it, as we continue to traverse a global financial crisis that has provoked conflicts over nationalism, immigration and the rise of neo-fascism.
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Surrealism Against the Current
Tracts and Declarations
Edited by Michael Richardson and Krzysztof Fijalkowski
Pluto Press, 2001

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Surviving Climate Change
The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe
Edited by David Cromwell and Mark Levene
Pluto Press, 2007
Climate change is a pressing reality. From hurricane Katrina to melting polar ice, and from mass extinctions to increased threats to food and water security, the link between corporate globalization and planetary blowback is becoming all too evident.
Governments and business keep reassuring the public they are going to fix the problem. This book brings together some leading activists who disagree. They expose the inertia,denial,deception-even threats to our civil liberties-which comprise mainstream responses from civil and military policy makers,and from opinion formers in the media,corporations and academia.
An epochal change is called for in te way we all engage with the climate crisis. Key to that change is Aubrey Meyer's proposed "Contraction and Convergence" framework for limiting global carbon emissions,which he outlines in this book. Also included here are contributions from Mayer Hillman and George Marshall, making this a powerful and vital guide to how mass mobilization can avert the looming catastrophe.
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Suspect Community
People's Experiences of the Prevention of Terrorism Act
Paddy Hillyard
Pluto Press, 1993

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The Suspect
Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State
Rizwaan Sabir
Pluto Press, 2021
'An instant classic. Sabir is an inspiration' Arun Kundnani, author of The Muslims are Coming!

What impact has two decades' worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? The Suspect draws on the author's lived experiences of being suspected of terrorism to take the reader on a journey through British counterterrorism practices and the policing of Muslims.

Rizwaan Sabir describes what led to his arrest for suspected terrorism, his time in detention, and the surveillance he was subjected to on release from custody, including stop and frisk on the roadside, detentions at the border, and monitoring by police and government departments throughout his research.

Writing publicly for the first time about the traumatizing mental health effects of these experiences, he argues that these harmful outcomes are not the result of errors in government planning, but the consequences of using a counterinsurgency warfare approach to surveillance. If we are to break this injustice, we need to resist counterterrorism policy and practice.
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Sylvia Pankhurst
A Life in Radical Politics
Mary Davis
Pluto Press, 1999

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Sylvia Pankhurst
Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire
Katherine Connelly
Pluto Press, 2013

From militant suffragette at the beginning of the twentieth century to campaigner against colonialism in Africa after the Second World War, Sylvia Pankhurst dedicated her life to fighting oppression and injustice.

In this vivid biography Katherine Connelly examines Pankhurst’s role at the forefront of significant developments in the history of radical politics. She guides us through Pankhurst's construction of a suffragette militancy which put working-class women at the heart of the struggle, her championing of the Bolshevik Revolution and her clandestine attempts to sabotage the actions of the British state, as well as her early identification of the dangers of Fascism.

The book explores the dilemmas, debates and often painful personal consequences faced by Pankhurst which were played out in her art, writings and activism. It argues that far from being an advocate of disparate causes, Pankhurst’s campaigns were united by an essential continuity which hold vital lessons for achieving social change. This lively and accessible biography presents Pankhurst as a courageous and inspiring campaigner, of huge relevance to those engaged in social movements today.

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The Syrian Revolution
Between the Politics of Life and the Geopolitics of Death
Yasser Munif
Pluto Press, 2020
Understanding the Syrian revolution is unthinkable without an in-depth analysis from below. Paying attention to the complex activities of the grassroots resistance, this book demands we rethink the revolution.

Having lived in Syria for over fifteen years, Yasser Munif is expert in exploring the micropolitics of revolutionary forces. He uncovers how cities are managed, how precious food is distributed and how underground resistance thrives in regions controlled by regime forces. In contrast, the macropolitics of the elite Syrian regime are undemocratic, destructive and counter-revolutionary. Regional powers, Western elites, as well as international institutions choose this macropolitical lens to apprehend the Syrian conflict. By doing so, they also choose to ignore the revolutionaries' struggles.

By looking at the interplay between the two sides, case studies of Aleppo and Manbij and numerous firsthand interviews, Yasser Munif shows us that this macro and geopolitical authoritarianism only brings death, and that by looking at the smaller picture - the local, the grassroots, the revolutionaries - we can see the politics of life emerge.
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Systems of Suffering
Dispersal and the Denial of Asylum
Jonathan Darling
Pluto Press, 2021
'Elegant and disturbing. A brilliant analysis of the cruel biopolitics of care in contemporary Britain' - Ash Amin

Of the many state-enacted cruelties to which refugees and asylum seekers are subjected, detention and deportation loom largest in popular consciousness. But there is a third practice, perpetrating a slower violence, that remains hidden: dispersal.

Jonathan Darling provides the first detailed account of how dispersal - the system of accommodation and support for asylum seekers and refugees in Britain - both sustains and produces patterns of violence, suffering and social abjection. He explores the evolution of dispersal as a privatized process, from the first outsourced asylum accommodation contracts in 2012 to the renewed wave of outsourcing pursued by the Home Office today.

Drawing on six years of research into Britain's dispersal system, and foregrounding the voices and experiences of refugees and asylum seekers, Darling argues that dispersal has played a central role in the erasure of asylum from public concern. Systems of Suffering is a vital tool in the arsenal of those fighting to hold the government to account for the violence of its asylum policy and practice.
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