Laurie Parsons – författare

Rising levels of global inequality and migrant flows are both critical global challenges. Set within the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia, Going Nowhere Fast sets out to answer a question of global importance: how does inequality persist in our increasingly mobile world? Inequality is often referred to as the greatest threat to democracy, society, and economy, and yet opportunity has apparently never been more accessible. Long and short distance transport - from motorbikes to aeroplanes - are available to more people than ever before and telecommunications have transformed our lives, ushering in an era of translocality in which the behaviour of people and communities is influenced from hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. Yet amidst these complex flows of people, ideas, and capital, persistent inequality cuts a jarringly static figure. Going Nowhere Fast brings together a decade of research to examine this uneven development in Cambodia, making a case for inequality as a 'total social fact' rather than an economic phenomenon, in which stories, stigma, obligation and assets combine to lock social structures in place.Going Nowhere Fast: Inequality in the Age of Translocality speaks from an in-depth perspective to an issue of global relevance: how inequality persists in our hypermobile world. Focusing on pressing issues in Cambodia that resonate beyond, it investigates how human movement within and across the nation's borders are intertwined with societal threats and challenges, including of precarious labour and agricultural livelihoods; climate and environmental change; the phenomenon of land grabbing; and the rise of popular nationalism.

This book offers a timely exploration of how climate change manifests in the global workplace. It draws together accounts of workers, their work, and the politics of resistance in order to enable us to better understand how the impacts of climate change are structured by the economic and social processes of labour. Focusing on nine empirically grounded cases of labour under climate change, this volume links the tools and methods of critical labour studies to key debates over climate change adaptation and mitigation in order to highlight the active nature of struggles in the climate-impacted workplace. Spanning cases including commercial agriculture in Turkey, labour unions in the UK, and brick kilns in Cambodia, this collection offers a novel lens on the changing climate, showing how both the impacts of climate change and adaptations to it emerge through the prism of working lives.Drawing together scholars from anthropology, political economy, geography, and development studies, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change adaptation, labour studies, and environmental justice. More generally, it will be of interest to anybody seeking to understand how the changing climate is changing the terms, conditions, and politics of the global workplace.

This book offers a timely exploration of how climate change manifests in the global workplace. It draws together accounts of workers, their work, and the politics of resistance in order to enable us to better understand how the impacts of climate change are structured by the economic and social processes of labour. Focusing on nine empirically grounded cases of labour under climate change, this volume links the tools and methods of critical labour studies to key debates over climate change adaptation and mitigation in order to highlight the active nature of struggles in the climate-impacted workplace. Spanning cases including commercial agriculture in Turkey, labour unions in the UK, and brick kilns in Cambodia, this collection offers a novel lens on the changing climate, showing how both the impacts of climate change and adaptations to it emerge through the prism of working lives.Drawing together scholars from anthropology, political economy, geography, and development studies, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change adaptation, labour studies, and environmental justice. More generally, it will be of interest to anybody seeking to understand how the changing climate is changing the terms, conditions, and politics of the global workplace.

Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant progress on climate change. World leaders are queuing up to proclaim their commitment to tackling the climate crisis, pointing to data that shows the progress they have made. Yet the atmosphere is still warming at a record rate, with devastating effects on poverty and precarity in the world’s most vulnerable communities. Are we being deceived?Climate change is devastating the planet, and globalisation is hiding it. This book opens our eyes.Carbon colonialism explores the murky practices of outsourcing a country’s environmental impact, where emissions and waste are exported from rich countries to poorer ones; a world in which corporations and countries are allowed to maintain a clean, green image while landfills in the world’s poorest countries continue to expand, and droughts and floods intensify under the auspices of globalisation, deregulation and economic growth.Taking a wide-ranging, culturally engaged approach to the topic, the book shows how this is not only a technical problem, but a problem of cultural and political systems and structures – from nationalism to economic logic – deeply embedded in our society.

A hard-hitting exposé that reveals how rich countries outsource the climate crisis to poor ones.Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant success in the struggle against climate change. Heads of government proclaim their commitment to tackling the crisis, pointing to data that shows the progress they have made. Yet the atmosphere is still warming at a record rate. Are we being deceived?In Carbon colonialism, Laurie Parsons exposes how rich countries cook the books on climate change – by outsourcing it to the global South. Conducting first-hand research across Asia, he reveals how exporting emissions and waste allows states and corporations to maintain a clean, green image. Meanwhile, landfills expand and droughts and floods intensify, with devastating effects on the world’s most vulnerable communities.Technical fixes and creative accounting are a mirage. The real obstacles to effective action are deeply embedded in the political systems and structures of our society. Parsons calls on readers to wake up from the fairy tales of greenwashing and ethical consumerism and end carbon colonialism now.

This book offers an exploration of key sociological themes and debates via film and literature. Film and literature (fiction, not fiction and poetry) capture and reflect long-term social processes, document social transformation and change and, as such, offer sociologists and researchers an alternative data source when exploring the social world – a data source which does not often feature in sociological research or in the sociology curriculum. Literature can be used to challenge us to think sociologically via 'real-world' application. The sociological imagination can be stimulated by film as sociologists can 'use films as a lens for exploring the complexities of social class, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and to propel our analysis of these inequalities in the past and in contemporary life' (Higgenbotham, 2013). Focusing on a wide range of films and texts, this book will (re-) position such forms of writing/film as referents of social change and transformation and explore the extent to which these materials can be used as an evidential base for contemporary sociological analysis. The book will include links to further reading and reflective activities for the reader to self-evaluate understanding and to begin to apply their learning.

In Climate Hegemony, Laurie Parsons brings us a human's-eye view of the climate crisis, drawing on two decades of frontline research in Cambodia. He sets out how, if we were to rethink the perspective from which we understand climate change, we can build knowledge from and for marginalised communities, and so challenge the climate impasse.