‘The Jungle’ was the name given to a refugee and migrant encampment near Calais. It is an emotional and cathartic experience to hear at last what it was like for the residents in their own words and pictures, rather than from journalists and volunteers, however sensitive.
Just before its demolition by the French authorities in October 2016, when riot police were closing down businesses and residents were being dispersed to ‘welcome centres’ across France, I was lucky enough to meet Babak Inaloo, a writer and resident of the camp…
Reviews
John Perceval, son of the only British prime minister to have been assassinated, was committed to a lunatic asylum in 1830. Perceval’s Quest is an exploration of the circumstances and consequences of that incarceration, using as a basis Perceval’s own fascinating account of his experiences.
At the core of Perceval’s writings are modern concerns about mental health, and how a family and society interacts compassionately with an individual having very different perceptions of reality. Robin Holtom, with his background as…
The scope of Covering Conflict cannot be overstated. Drawing from a dizzying array of sources throughout – interviews with journalists, theoretical approaches, autobiographies, biographies, histories, academic journals, newspapers, magazines and mainstream and alternative websites – it is well-written, well-argued and meticulously referenced. For PN readers it is an extremely valuable resource, and should be a compulsory read for all journalists.
In this book, Richard Keeble draws on over 25 years of research to…
As a young man in the USA in the 1960s, Jonathan Lerner left university and became part of a radical group, Weatherman, a faction of the organisation Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Eventually forced underground, Weatherman (later renamed the Weather Underground Organisation) managed to not only destroy SDS but also many of its own members’ lives.
As a 13-year-old, Lerner had joined a picket line at a local apartment building so he could get to know ‘the cool kids’. While at university, he staged a guerilla…
Over the years, many writers and scholars have challenged the view that the British empire was, in Winston Churchill’s words, a ‘valiant and benignant force in the history of mankind’. Shashi Tharoor’s latest book on British rule in India aims to combat what he calls Britain’s ‘historical amnesia’ over its past atrocities.
Drawing on an impressive array of historical sources, Tharoor claims that, prior to British rule, India was one of the richest countries in the world, with a 23 percent share of the global economy, as large as…
As a non-motorist by choice, I found much to like in this slim book, once I’d got past its very dull title. It’s written by a Swedish group whose name – Planka.nu – translates roughly as ‘fare dodge now’. To my mind this would have been a very much snappier title.
According to Wikipedia, ‘Planka Nu is a network of organisations promoting tax-financed zero-fare public transport...The campaign has received much attention because [it] encourages people to fare-dodge, aiding its members in paying penalty fares through the insurance…
If you’ve ever heard, or read, people saying: ‘Oh, women have equality now, there’s no need for feminism’, then this little book will give you some of the facts and figures you need to be able to say: ‘Well, actually, there’s still lots to do’.
This book probably won’t make a feminist of most people who don’t already consider themselves feminists – indeed, they’re unlikely to pick up a copy – but there’s plenty here to help those who are already interested, particularly anyone who is already committed to feminism.
It’s…
First published in 2006, with a new edition last year, this is an engaging memoir of the mid-’90s anti-roads movement – one of the most successful UK nonviolent campaigns of recent times.
Jim Hindle tells the story of his time camping at Newbury, Fairmile in Devon, and Stanworth in Lancashire, resisting what the Thatcher government called ‘the biggest road-building programme since the Romans’.
While the activists lost the battles – each road was eventually built – arguably they won the war when the vast majority of the…
At the heart of this book lies the unresolvable dilemma between economic growth and ecological sustainability. Its key contribution is to combine a global study of the Anthropocene (the ‘proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems’ – Wikipedia) with an anthropological analysis of how it is perceived locally. The result is an informative, multi-scaled account of our fast-paced times.
Over five chapters, Eriksen explores the different forms of accelerated modernity…
You could be forgiven for thinking that you already know what’s so controversial about genetically-modified (GM) food.
After all, doesn’t GM food represent a radical break with earlier methods of crop development, producing weird transgenic species (containing genes from different species) that could never occur in nature, posing a dire threat to human health? And hasn’t the introduction of GM crops in the Global South been wholly negative, leading to a dramatic rise in suicides among Indian farmers, for example?
The…
The idea that we have entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene – an era characterised by humanity’s impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and wildlife – involves a drastic re-evaluation of humankind’s relationship with the natural world.However, the authors of this book insist that we have not just woken up to this fact in the last few decades. Indeed, far from being ignorant of the human imprint on the earth’s ‘living tissue’ – including the other species that occupy it – we have known about this from the dawn of industry.
…
‘But what about Nazi Germany?’ No doubt many Peace News readers have been asked this question when they have voiced support for nonviolence.
Summarising a range of published material, George Paxton shows that nonviolent resistance to Adolf Hitler’s government was widespread. And though it is often poorly-referenced and somewhat repetitive, this feels like one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time.
From underground newspapers, open letters, graffiti, and socially ostracising the occupiers, to slow…
Those who support the arms industry often seem to forget that its business is to manufacture items intended to harm and kill. It’s therefore validating for activists to read the evidence for the claims that the arms trade involves practices that are illegal, unjust, absurd and wasteful of tax payers money – including causing instability in developing countries.
This book also explains how defence spending since the Cold War has contributed negatively to economic growth, and examines the factors that keep the arms trade going, such as…
How do children learn to follow societal norms and how do state institutions mould young people into citizens? In documenting how children are brought up in Denmark, this book makes a valuable contribution to the anthropological study of childhood.
Drawing on extensive fieldwork – including interviews and observations in pre-school daycare – the authors also bring together a range of material from pre-existing literature in the field, all of which is meticulously referenced.
Adapted, rather than directly translated, from a…
We are halfway through Nonviolence Ain’t What It Used to Be before Shon Meckfessel clarifies what his title is about.
Along the way, he refers to postmodernists such as Deleuze and Althusser and sprinkles in words like ‘materiality’, ‘imaginary’ (as a noun) and ‘profanation’.
The main purpose of the book is to justify ‘counterhegemonic’ rioting. There are chapters on the ‘eloquence’ of public property destruction and of clashing with the police.
Meckfessel writes, finally, that US authors Chris Hedges, Rebecca…