Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias – serie

This book looks at how young people get attracted to the Far Right, especially young white men. We may never know why a young individual ends up there, yet two things are obvious. First, Far Right propaganda appeals to the fantasy imagination and to the emotions. Second, supporting the Far Right is a decision often made by digitally-networked 15-25 year olds looking for answers and wanting to express their anger. However, many later become aware of a yawning gulf between the ideal future they envisioned, and what happens in the here and now. Accounts of the Far Right often focus on terrorist events, plots or extreme acts of violence. However, the emphasis here is on rather ordinary young people and how they get involved in a social movement that promises adventure and belonging. The aim is to better understand how their hate practices are framed and channeled by the persuasive discourse of the Far Right.

This book looks at how young people get attracted to the Far Right, especially young white men. We may never know why a young individual ends up there, yet two things are obvious. First, Far Right propaganda appeals to the fantasy imagination and to the emotions. Second, supporting the Far Right is a decision often made by digitally-networked 15-25 year olds looking for answers and wanting to express their anger. However, many later become aware of a yawning gulf between the ideal future they envisioned, and what happens in the here and now. Accounts of the Far Right often focus on terrorist events, plots or extreme acts of violence. However, the emphasis here is on rather ordinary young people and how they get involved in a social movement that promises adventure and belonging. The aim is to better understand how their hate practices are framed and channeled by the persuasive discourse of the Far Right.

This book explores contemporary challenges of housing movement organizations, looking specifically at the case of Rome, Italy. The work identifies conditions that allow the re-composition of a class of housing dispossessed and, consequently, the features of its action in urban spaces. The book offers fresh analytical perspectives to understanding contemporary urban transformation via new spatial and strategic approaches. In striking detail, Carlotta Caciagli shows how space is a crucial variable in shaping the strategies that allow for the politicisation of a movement’s social base. She illustrates how new spatial configurations of urban space result from unique struggles of the recomposed collective subject. Most notably, three main conceptual tools are introduced to disentangle the relationship between the recomposed precarious class and space: “the spatial opportunity structure”, “configurations of strategies” and “educational sites of resistance”.

This book explores contemporary challenges of housing movement organizations, looking specifically at the case of Rome, Italy. The work identifies conditions that allow the re-composition of a class of housing dispossessed and, consequently, the features of its action in urban spaces. The book offers fresh analytical perspectives to understanding contemporary urban transformation via new spatial and strategic approaches. In striking detail, Carlotta Caciagli shows how space is a crucial variable in shaping the strategies that allow for the politicisation of a movement’s social base. She illustrates how new spatial configurations of urban space result from unique struggles of the recomposed collective subject. Most notably, three main conceptual tools are introduced to disentangle the relationship between the recomposed precarious class and space: “the spatial opportunity structure”, “configurations of strategies” and “educational sites of resistance”.

As the crises of capitalism continue to intensify, radical thinkers must conjure realistic and inspirational alternative futures beyond this failing social order. This book presents a stimulating array of essays exploring such post-capitalist futures. With contributions and perspectives from the Global North and Global South, central topics include ecosocialism, ecofeminism, degrowth, community economies, and the Green New Deal. There are also chapters offering analyses of land, energy, technology, universal basic services, and (re)localisation of economies. The book is in three parts. The first presents various alternative paradigms for thinking about – and working toward – post-capitalist futures. The second section offers perspectives on alternative governance strategies and approaches for post-capitalist futures. The closing section gathers various analyses of post-capitalist geographies and resistance. Going beyond critique and instead envisioning alternative imaginaries, this collection should challenge and inspire readers to think and act upon the range of possibilities immanent in our crisis-ridden present.

As the crises of capitalism continue to intensify, radical thinkers must conjure realistic and inspirational alternative futures beyond this failing social order. This book presents a stimulating array of essays exploring such post-capitalist futures. With contributions and perspectives from the Global North and Global South, central topics include ecosocialism, ecofeminism, degrowth, community economies, and the Green New Deal. There are also chapters offering analyses of land, energy, technology, universal basic services, and (re)localisation of economies. The book is in three parts. The first presents various alternative paradigms for thinking about – and working toward – post-capitalist futures. The second section offers perspectives on alternative governance strategies and approaches for post-capitalist futures. The closing section gathers various analyses of post-capitalist geographies and resistance. Going beyond critique and instead envisioning alternative imaginaries, this collection should challenge and inspire readers to think and act upon the range of possibilities immanent in our crisis-ridden present.

This book examines food resistance movements as a form of alternative food network, charting the author’s journey as a cultural anthropologist through three food resistance movements.In Australia, freegans’ consumption of ‘garbage’ in the food waste movement of the early 2000s reveals the extent of food going to waste from commercial sources while people go hungry. In contrast, Venezuela’s food sovereignty movement is part of a national transition from a capitalist to socialist economy, highlighting processes of decentralisation, collectivisation, and government-grassroots’ coalitions. The study of autonomous spaces in Catalonia illuminates how food sharing can enable people to live their politics, as well as the centrality of issues around urban governance, consumption, technology and use of space to food resistance efforts. This engaging volume brings an important and engaging contribution to current discussions around the transition to just and sustainable food systems.

This book is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn.

This book is the first study of the processes and structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement, written from the perspective of a core organizer who was involved from the inception to the end. While much has been written on OWS, few books have focused on how the movement was organized. Marisa Holmes, an organizer of OWS in New York City, aims to fill this gap by deriving the theory from the practice and analyzing a broad range of original primary sources, from collective statements, structure documents, meeting minutes, and live tweets, to hundreds of hours of footage from the OWS Media Working Group archive. In doing so, she reveals how the movement was organized in practice, which experiments were most successful, and what future generations can learn.

The historic centre of the southern European city of Naples has been shaped by opposing urban processes throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s. On the one hand, touristification has led to the financialisation of housing, the displacement of inhabitants and everyday commerce, and the enclosure of public space. On the other, the proliferation of commoning practices by the Liberated Spaces or Beni Comuni—and the parallel experimentation with a distinctive form of new municipalism—has reclaimed urban space for collective use and social functions. The Liberated Spaces are a network of communities that have emerged since 2012 through the occupation and reappropriation of abandoned public buildings. Today, they are self-governed by inhabitants through assemblies.Through in-depth ethnographic research with these communities, this book explores the everyday production of liberated spaces in the heart of the tourist zone. Moving from the bodies of activists to the body of the city and back, and with an eye to its past histories as recalled through the memories of its inhabitants, it traces the emergence of urban bodies contested between diverging trajectories and possible futures for Naples.

This book provides a timely study of community-based activism in contemporary South Africa. Grounded in oral history, the book examines the acquired expertise and life experiences of an impactful South African activist, Mandla Majola, within the context of the people, circumstances, and affiliations that have shaped his strategic thinking and practice. The authors situate Mandla Majola’s activist and everyday experiences within histories of the complex connections between post-apartheid political and social movements and human rights discourse as they emerged after 1994. The book illuminates the relationship of state power to public health activism for HIV, tuberculosis and COVID-19 and for a life of basic human dignity, including access to sanitation and housing. Mandla Majola’s life spotlights the inspiring, sometimes grueling, and tireless quotidian work of thousands of “invisible” community-based activists whose collective actions have impacted the entire spectrum of social and economic rights of untold numbers of people in South Africa and beyond.