Six degrees – Our Future on a Hotter Planet, is the title of Mark Lynas’s 2007 book (this review is from the updated 2008 version) which seeks to give a broad overview of what mainstream scientific opinion (ie those which have appeared in reputable peer reviewed journals) suggests the world might look like over the [...]
Archive for the ‘book review’ Category
Mark Lynas – Six Degrees
Posted in book review, climate change, tagged climate, climate change, global warming, Lynas on September 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the edge of Chaos – Graeme Chesters and Ian Welsh
Posted in activism, book review, cultural criticism, environmentalism, media activism, tagged Chesters, complexity, ecology, globalization, media, politics, protest, Welsh, WTO on November 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
This book, published by Routledge in 2006, is a recent attempt at a sociological analysis of the alternative globalization movement (AGM) using a theoretical framework based on an almagamation of the works of Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri and Gregory Bateson, with complexity theory via D&G deployed to provide qualitative analysis of events such [...]
The Three Ecologies – Felix Guattari
Posted in Ecophilosophy, activism, book review, climate change, cultural criticism, environmentalism, media activism, tagged activism, book review, climate change, ecology, guattari, philosophy on October 7, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The Three Ecologies is one of the final works published by Felix Guattari (1930-1992), a French philosopher, political militant and institutional psychoanalyst. While Guattari is perhaps best known for his co-authored projects with Gilles Deleuze; Anti-Oedipus, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy; The Three Ecologies provides an excellent insight into Guattari’s stance on politics, [...]
The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
Posted in activism, book review, tagged activism, book review, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, shock doctrine on July 9, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Naomi Klein’s latest book features a review on the back which says ‘If you only read one non-ficition book this year, make it this one.’ While I’m normally suspicious of such superlative praise, this book may well justify it.
First things first. This is not a chirpy or upbeat book. The first [...]
Empire – Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
Posted in activism, book review, cultural criticism, tagged activism, book review, communism, Empire, Hardt, multitude, Negri, postmodernism on July 4, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Hardt and Negri’s much lauded text has been a major talking point amongst radical left wing theorists and activists since its release in 2000, being described by some as a Capital for the 21st century, taking its dual heritage from Karl Marx and the radical materialist poststructuralism of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
The departure point [...]
Bring on the Apocalypse – George Monbiot
Posted in activism, book review, tagged activism, book review, Monbiot on June 25, 2008 | 1 Comment »
The latest offering from one of Britain’s best known social and environmental activists is a compilation of over 50 of his newspaper articles written over the last few years. As such, for avid Monbiot fans there isn’t really any new material here, however for those seeking an easy to read introduction which demonstrates the breadth [...]
Violence – Slavoj Zizek
Posted in activism, book review, tagged activism, book review, violence, Zizek on June 9, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Slovenian cultural theorist Slavoj Zizek’s latest offering is a look at the way in which western societies understand, and importantly misunderstand violence.
Zizek’s central thesis is that the liberal conception of violence is limited to subjective forms of violence, violence which is performed by a clearly identifiable human agent. Zizek claims that what is required to [...]
