Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark

Corporate and Police Spying on Activists

Eveline Lubbers

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… (more information)

Cuba and Its Neighbours

Democracy in Motion

Arnold August

In this groundbreaking book, Arnold August explores Cuba’s unique form of democracy, presenting a detailed and balanced analysis of Cuba’s electoral process and the state’s functioning between elections. By comparing it with practices in the U.S., Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, August shows that people’s participation in politics and society is not limited to a singular Eurocentric understanding of democracy. For example, democracy as practised in the U.S. is largely… (more information)

Hungry for Change

Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question

A. Haroon Akram-Lodhi

Hunger and obesity sit side by side in the world today because a food system dominated by money, markets and profits allows those with money to obtain above and beyond their needs while those without cannot get the fundamentals of life. The result is a growing polarization of global agriculture, between a small number of haves and an ever-increasing number of have-nots. In Hungry for Change, Haroon Akram-Lodhi explains how capitalism was introduced into farming and how it transformed the terms and… (more information)

Critical Inquiries

A Reader in Studies of Canada

Edited by Lynn Caldwell, Darryl Leroux, Carrianne Leung

This book takes a bold, critical approach to Canadian studies, framing Canada as an ongoing colonial project. The contributors assess how policy programs, such as multiculturalism and national arts funding and cultural monuments and symbols, such as the Famous Five Monument, the Tunnels of Moose Jaw and Saskatchewan’s Centennial, are all shaped within this colonial matrix. Furthermore, the contributors in this collection argue that the making of Canada as an extension of British–European… (more information)

America’s Deadliest Export

Democracy–The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else

William Blum

Since World War II we have been conditioned to believe that U.S. foreign policy means well, that America’s motives in “exporting” democracy are honourable, even noble. In this startling and provocative book, William Blum argues that nothing could be further from the truth. Unless this fallacy is unlearned, we will never be able to stop the monster. /*… (more information)

Breathing Life into the Stone Fort Treaty

An Anishinabe Understanding of Treaty One

Aimeé Craft

The author relates the negotiations leading to the signing of Treaty One and argues that to truly understand the treaties with First Nations it is essential to understand First Nations perspective of treaties. This perspective is informed by First Nations law, in the case of Treaty One the Anishinabe inaakonigewin, passed from generation to generation and related to kinship and land. The author provides examples of how that law shaped Treaty One negotiations. This title is related to our titles… (more information)

Continental Crucible

Big Business, Workers and Unions in the Transformation of North America

Richard Roman, Edur Velasco Arregui

The crucible of North American neo-liberal transformation is heating up, but its outcome is far from clear. Continental Crucible examines the clash between the corporate offensive and the forces of resistance from both a pan-continental and a class struggle perspective. This book also illustrates the ways in which the capitalist classes in Canada, Mexico and the United States used free trade agreements to consolidate their agendas and organize themselves continentally. The failure of traditional… (more information)

Global Minotaur

America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the future of the World Economy

Yanis Varoufakis

In this remarkable and provocative book, Yanis Varoufakis explodes the myth that financialization, ineffectual regulation of banks, greed and globalization were the root causes of the global economic crisis. Rather, they are symptoms of a much deeper malaise which can be traced all the way back to the Great Crash of 1929, then on through to the 1970s: the time when a ‘Global Minotaur’ was born. Just as the Athenians maintained a steady flow of tributes to the Cretan beast, so the &lsquo… (more information)

Television and the Earth

Not a Love Story

Jennifer Ellen Good

Habitat loss, the extinction of species, severe draughts, rapidly diminishing polar ice, hugely powerful and destructive storms — how have we arrived at such a precarious point in the environmental history of our planet? In Television and the Earth: Not a Love Story, Jennifer Ellen Good argues that one of the fundamental reasons for the wholesale neglect and destruction of our environment is television — or, more precisely, the stories told on television. Stories have always been vital… (more information)

Unlikely Radicals

The Story of the Adams Mine Dump War

Charlie Angus, MP

For twenty-two years politicians and businessmen pushed for the Adams Mine landfill as a solution to Ontario’s garbage disposal crisis. This plan to dump millions of tonnes of waste into the fractured pits of the Adams Mine prompted five separate civil resistance campaigns by a rural region of 35,000 in Northern Ontario. Unlikely Radicals traces the compelling history of the First Nations people and farmers, environmentalists and miners, retirees and volunteers, Anglophones and Francophones… (more information)

Geopolitical Economy

After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire

Radhika Desai

Geopolitical Economy traces the historical evolution of today’s multi-polar world, as it emerges from the dust of the financial and economic crisis. Radhika Desai offers a radical critique of the theories of U.S. hegemony, globalization and empire which dominate academic international political economy and international relations, revealing their ideological origins in successive failed U.S. attempts at dominance. Desai recovers and revitalizes notions of national self-determination and… (more information)

Socialist Register 2013

The Question of Strategy

Greg Albo, Vivek Chibber, Leo Panitch

Socialists today have to confront two realities — that they cannot avoid the question of reforms and a gradualist path out of capitalism; and that the organizational vehicles for socialism will most likely have to abide by different structures and principles than those that dominated left politics in the twentieth century. Which features of past organizational models should be retained? And which discarded? Socialist Register 2013 seeks to explore and clarify strategy for the Left, in… (more information)

Everyday Revolutions

Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina

Marina Sitrin

In the wake of the global financial crisis, new forms of social organization are beginning to take shape. Disparate groups of people are coming together in order to resist corporate globalization and seek a more positive way forward. These movements are not based on hierarchy, rather than looking to those in power to solve their problems participants are looking to one another. In certain countries in the West, this has been demonstrated by the recent and remarkable rise of the Occupy movement.… (more information)

Tweets and the Street

Social Media and Contemporary Activism

Paolo Gerbaudo

Tweets and the Streets analyses the culture of the new protest movements of the 21st century. From the Arab Spring to the ‘indignados’ protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest. Gerbaudo argues that activists’ use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a ‘cyberspace’ detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used… (more information)

Making Peace with the Earth

Vandana Shiva

In this compelling and rigorously documented exposition, Vandana Shiva demolishes the myths propagated by corporate globalization in its pursuit of profit and power and shows its devastating environmental impact. Shiva argues that consumerism lubricates the war against the earth and that corporate control violates all ethical and ecological limits. She takes the reader on a journey through the world’s devastated eco-landscape, one of genetic engineering, industrial development and land-… (more information)

Great Recession-Proof?

Shattering the Myth of Canadian Exceptionalism (Alternative Routes 2013)

Edited by Bryan Evans, Carlo Fanelli

The articles and interviews collected here problematize prevailing characterizations of recession and recovery. Rather than focusing on narrowly economistic measures, the contributors challenge standard explanations of the Great Recession drawing attention to the classed, ethno-racial and gendered dimensions of austerity and retrenchment. Collectively, the book debunks the myth of Canadian exceptionalism by demonstrating that the aftershocks of the recession are far from over. ”...a… (more information)

Girl Trouble

Panic and Progress in the History of Young Women

Carol Dyhouse

The history of young women is a history of trouble. Arguments about whether girls have been the victims or the beneficiaries of social change have raged through modern history. This sparkling, panoramic social history takes a close look at the anxieties, horror stories and moral unease that have accompanied changes in girls’ lives since the late nineteenth century. It shows the importance of disentangling panic from progress if we are to understand the true story of twentieth century girls… (more information)

Organize!

Building from the Local for Global Justice

Edited by Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley, Eric Shragge

How do we organize for progressive social change in an era of unprecedented economic, social, and ecological crises? How do political activists build power and critical analysis into their daily work for change? Grounded in struggles in Canada, the USA, and Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as transnational activist networks, Organize! links local organizing with global struggles for social justice. From organizing immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism… (more information)

Demonstrations

Olivier Fillieule, Danielle Tartakowsky

Demonstrations are without a doubt the most common form of political expression, more so in democratic nations — where its legitimacy competes, relatively happily, with more conventional forms of participation such as the vote — than in non-democratic countries, where demonstration accompanies attempts to revolt and overthrow. In this book, which includes updated information from the original French version, the authors offer a sociological and historical analysis of this political… (more information)

Marxist History of the World

From Neanderthals to Neoliberals

Neil Faulkner

This magisterial analysis of human history–from ‘Lucy’, the first hominid, to the current Great Recession–combines the insights of earlier generations of Marxist historians with radical new ideas about the historical process. Reading history against the grain, Neil Faulkner reveals that what happened in the past was not predetermined. Choices were frequent and numerous. Different outcomes–liberation or barbarism–were often possible. Rejecting the top-down approach… (more information)

Resistance in the Age of Austerity

Nationalism, the Failure of the Left and the Return of God

Owen Worth

In November 1999 the first protests associated with the anti-globalization movement took place in Seattle, and came to be seen as the starting point for globalized resistance to neoliberal capitalism. Despite initial optimism, the following years have seen little progress in formulating a coherent alternative to neo-liberalism, a failure that has become particularly poignant in the aftermath of the recent credit crisis. Now, the neoliberal mandate that appeared to be in crisis in just 2008 has reinvented… (more information)

Gross Domestic Problem

The Politics Behind the World’s Most Powerful Number

Lorenzo Fioramonti

Gross domestic product is arguably the best-known statistic in the contemporary world, and certainly amongst the most powerful. It drives government policy and sets priorities in a variety of vital social fields–from schooling to healthcare. Yet for perhaps the first time since it was invented in the 1930s, this popular icon of economic growth has come to be regarded by a wide range of people as a ‘problem’. After all, does our quality of life really improve when our economy grows… (more information)

Speaking Up

A History of Language and Politics in Canada and Quebec

Marcel Martel, Martin Pâquet

Speaking Up presents a wide overview of the history of the relationship between language and politics in Canada and Quebec from 1539 to the present. Language issues have always been subject to debate in Canada. From the Conquest to the Quiet Revolution to the crisis of Regulation 17 to the various judgments of the Supreme Court, these often virulent debates have mobilized citizens—deeply concerned about recognition of their language and their rights—in the street, in the media… (more information)

Endless Crisis

How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China

John Bellamy Foster, Robert W. McChesney

The days of boom and bubble are over, and the time has come to understand the long-term economic reality. Although the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009, hopes for a new phase of rapid economic expansion were quickly dashed. Instead, growth has been slow, unemployment has remained high, wages and benefits have seen little improvement, poverty has increased, and the trend toward more inequality of incomes and wealth has continued. It appears that the Great Recession has given way… (more information)

To Live and Die in America

Class, Power, Health and Health Care

Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson

To Live and Die in America details how the United States has among the worst indicators of health in the industrialized world and at the same time spends significantly more on its health care system than any other industrial nation. The authors explain this phenomenon as the product of the unique brand of capitalism that has developed in the U.S. It is this particular form of capitalism that created both the social and economic conditions that largely influence health outcomes and the inefficient… (more information)

Race, Racism and Development

Interrogating history, discourse and practice

Kalpana Wilson

Race, Racism and Development places racism and constructions of race at the centre of an exploration of the dominant discourses, structures and practices of development. Combining insights from postcolonial and race critical theory with a political economy framework, it puts forward provocative theoretical analyses of the relationships between development, race, capital, embodiment and resistance in historical and contemporary contexts. Exposing how race is central to development policies… (more information)

Moving Forward, Giving Back

Transformative Aboriginal Adult Education

Edited by Jim Silver

Aboriginal people who choose to improve their education as adults often face many challenges, most of which arise from the ongoing impact of colonialism and of racialized poverty. Yet in Winnipeg’s low-income inner city, a variety of innovative and effective Aboriginal adult education initiatives have emerged. Drawing upon the voices and experiences of Aboriginal adult learners themselves, this book describes the initiatives and strategies that have proven successful and transformative for… (more information)

Climate@Work

Edited by Carla Lipsig-Mumme

Climate change is having an increasingly significant impact on work in Canada, and the effect climate change has, and will continue to have, on work concerns many Canadians. However, this fact has not been seriously considered either in academic circles, in the labour movement nor especially by the Canadian government. Climate@Work addresses this deficit by systematically tackling the question of the impact of climate change on work and employment and by analyzing Canada’s conservative silence… (more information)

Failure to Protect

Moving Beyond Gendered Responses

Edited by Rosemary Carlton, Julia Krane, Simon Lapierre, Cathy Richardson, Susan Strega

Failure-to-protect policies and practices are intended to better ensure the safety and protection of children. But as this book demonstrates, these policies actually increase danger for children — and for their mothers. While failure to protect is not always encoded in policy documents, practices that engage mothers and hold them responsible for violence in the home, while excusing or ignoring the male offender, are common. Moreover, these actions most often play out on the shoulders of marginalized… (more information)

Murdoch’s Politics

How One Man’s Thirst For Wealth and Power Shapes our World

David McKnight

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the most powerful media organisation in the world. Murdoch’s commercial success is obvious, but less well understood is his successful pursuit of political goals, using News Corporation as his vehicle. In Murdoch’s Politics David McKnight tracks Murdoch’s influence, from his support for Reagan and Thatcher, his deal with Tony Blair and attacks on Barack Obama. He examines the secretive corporate culture of News Corporation: its private… (more information)

It’s the Political Economy, Stupid

The Global Financial Crisis in Art and Theory

Edited by Oliver Ressler, Gregory Sholette

It’s the Political Economy, Stupid brings together internationally acclaimed artists and thinkers, including Slavoj Žižek, David Graeber, Judith Butler and Brian Holmes, to focus on the current economic crisis in a sustained and critical manner. Following a unique format, images and text are integrated in a visually stunning bespoke production by activist designer Noel Douglas. What emerges is a powerful critique of the current capitalist crisis through an analytical and theoretical response… (more information)

Anti-porn

The Resurgence of Anti-porn Feminism

Julia Long

Anti-porn feminism is back. Countering the ongoing ‘pornification’ of Western culture and society, anti-porn movements are powerfully re-emerging among a new generation of feminist activists in the UK and worldwide. The Resurgence of Anti-Porn Feminism examines the ways in which the new feminist arguments and campaigns around pornography are articulated, deployed and received. Drawing on original, ethnographic research, it provides an in-depth analysis of the ideological stance, tactical… (more information)

Mind the Gaps

Canadian Perspectives on Gender and Politics

Edited by Roberta Lexier, Tamara Small

The gender gap refers to the differences in public opinion and political participation between men and women: the proportion of seats held by women in Canadian legislatures appears to have plateaued or even declined at all levels of government, and gendered differences in political behaviour and participation impact public policy, political outcomes and democratic fairness in Canada. Mind the Gaps provides a multifaceted examination of the role of gender in traditional politics, social movement… (more information)

Anarchist Turn

Edited by Jacob Blumenfeld, Chiara Bottici, Simon Critchley

The concept of anarchy is often presented as a recipe for pure disorder. The Anarchist Turn brings together innovative and fresh perspectives on anarchism to argue that in fact it represents a form of collective, truly democratic social organisation. The book shows how in the last decade the negative caricature of anarchy has begun to crack. Globalisation and the social movements it spawned have proved what anarchists have long been advocating: an anarchical order is not just desirable, but also… (more information)

Everything is so Political

A Collection of Short Fiction by Canadian Writers

Edited by Sandra McIntyre

The stories within Everything Is So Political explore the intersection between politics and the contemporary short story. From the overt to the subtle, this collection tackles a broad range of topics and themes, from women’s rights and Aboriginal culture to environmentalism, terrorism and totalitarianism. This is one of the few Canadian anthologies that focuses on political fiction, and it does so in a very powerful and artful way, flying in the face of readers, writers and critics alike who… (more information)

China’s Urban Billion

Tom Miller

By 2030, China’s cities will be home to 1 billion people—one in every eight people on earth. What kind of lives will China’s urban billion lead? And what will China’s cities be like? Over the past thirty years, China’s urban population expanded by 500 million people, and is on track to swell by a further 300 million by 2030. Hundreds of millions of these new urban residents are rural migrants, who lead second-class lives without access to urban benefits. Even… (more information)

Women in a Globalizing World

Equality, Development, Peace and Diversity

Edited by Angela Miles

An exciting Canadian collection of feminist articles that provide cutting-edge gender analysis for understanding diverse personal and political challenges and opportunities in our fast-changing global world. Canadian and international authors offer varied social justice, anti-racist, Indigenous, and subsistence perspectives on environmental, social, cultural, and political issues in women’s local and global struggles and visions for another world. The book combines articles by formative… (more information)

Tailings of Warren Peace

Stephen Law

A corrupt mining company, repossessed gravestones, a man’s fractured past, mysterious notes posted to lampposts and murder deep in the highlands of Guatemala. In Tailings of Warren Peace, Stephen Law effortlessly weaves these elements into a powerful story of love and memory, exploring how the past haunts us and how solidarity can save us all. Mysterious, passionate and powerful, Tailings of Warren Peace shows us the interconnections that exist between us, transcending social class, culture… (more information)