In summer 2020 we begin our third series of the year, looking at Geographies and Histories of Racial Capitalism. In August we take a break from this series for our annual fiction reading – Flights by Olga Tokarczuk.
Previously in 2020 we have hosted two series of events on “Praxis: activism, social movements, and revolution” (winter), and “Debates around Social Ecology” (spring). Details of individual events are below:
June 2020: We discussed “‘We have a once-in-century chance’: Naomi Klein on how we can fight the climate crisis“, a selection from Klein’s latest book “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal“, together with a critical review by Angela Mitropoulos, “Playing With Fire: Securing the Borders of a Green New Deal“.
May 2020: We discussed the introduction to “Defending the Earth: A Debate”. The book is based on a 1989 public debate between social ecology theorist Murray Bookchin and deep ecology activist Dave Foreman.
April 2020: We discussed “Ecological Marxism vs. environmental neo-Malthusianism: An old debate continues” – an online article by Brian Napoletano.
March 2020: Fat Activism by Charlotte Cooper. We explored what we can learn from the history of fat activism, and the ways we’ve been shaped by harmful, moralising discourses around food and weight that surround us.
February 2020: Revolution in Rojava – by by Michael Knapp, Anja Flach, and Ercan Ayboga (translated by Janet Biehl). Since a 2012 revolution, and following the wider civil uprising in Syria beginning in 2011, Rojava is an autonomous region in northeastern Syria with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic and libertarian socialist ideology – promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity.
January 2020: Why Social Movements Matter – by Laurence Cox. This book explains social movements for a general educated readership, shows how much social movements are part of our everyday lives, and how in many ways they have shaped the world we live in over centuries.
In 2019 we hosted three series on “Britain: Class, Race and Gender in past, present and future” (spring), Climate and Environmental Crisis (summer), and Culture, Memory, and Resistance (autumn). Links to details of individual events are collated below:
December 2019: end of year social at Stroud Brewery, where we discussed passages from our favourite texts of 2019, reflections about the format of the sessions and ideas for topics or texts people would like us to cover in 2020.
November 2019: Two texts to mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, as part of the Berliner Zeitgeist programme
October 2019: Gramsci on Working Class Education and Culture
September 2019: Insurgent Empire by Priyamvada Gopal
August 2019: Speculative Fiction
July 2019: The Challenge for Africa by Wangari Maathai
June 2019: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore
May 2019: Down to Earth by Bruno Latour
April 2019: The “Me And White Supremacy Workbook: A 28-day journey to kickstart your life-long anti-racism work” by Layla F. Saad
March 2019: “Why I’m No Longer Talking (to White People) About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge
February 2019: “Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire” by Akala
January 2019: Britannia Unchained?
Details for the events below, which occured before this website was created, will be added when we can find time:
December 2018: 2018 Review and Social
November 2018: “Emily Hobhouse – Feminist, Pacifist, Traitor” by Elsabe Brits
October 2018: “The Mushroom at the End of the World” by Anna Tsing
September 2018: “Citizen: an american lyric” by Claudia Rankine
August 2018: “Beloved” by Toni Morrison
July 2018: “In Place of Fear” by Aneurin Bevan
June 2018: “A Vindication of the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollstonecraft
May 2018: “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon
April 2018: “The Rights of Man” by Thomas Paine
March 2018: “Governmentality” by Michel Foucault
February 2018: Chartism, with Stuart Butler and Stroud Writers Group
January 2018: “Communal Luxury: the political imaginary of the Paris Commune” by Kristin Ross
December 2017: Winter social
November 2017: “No Is Not Enough” by Naomi Klein
October 2017: “Governing The Commons” by Elinor Ostrom
September 2017: “The English Revolution 1640” by Christopher Hill
August 2017: “The Dispossessed” by Ursula Le Guin
July 2017: “So You Think You Know About Britain?” by Danny Dorling
June 2017: “Hope in the Dark” by Rebecca Solnit
May 2017: “Radical Gardening” – George McKay
April 2017: “Homebrew Industrial Revolution” by Kevin Carson
March 2017: “Capitalist Realism” by Mark Fisher
February 2017: “Orwell’s Sense of Smell” by William Ian Miller (a chapter in The Anatomy of Disgust)
January 2017: “Liberation Ecology. Development, sustainability and environment in an age of market triumphalism” by Richard Peet and Michael Watts (Chapter 1 in Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, 1996).
December 2016: “Race, Class and the State: the political economy of immigration” – A. Sivanandan
November 2016: “The Right to be Lazy” by Paul Lafargue
October 2016: “World Economy in Word Economy” by Ruth Yarrow (2010)
July 2016: “The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism” by Georgi Dimitrov (1935)
June 2016: “The Commodity” – Chapter 1 of “Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume 1″, by Karl Marx (first published 1867)
May 2016: “Lean Out” by Dawn Foster (2016)
April 2016: “Exit Left: the Socialist case for Britain leaving the EU” by Thomas Barker
March 2016: “Vagabond Capitalism and the Necessity of Social Reproduction” by Cindi Katz
February 2016: “The Capitalocene Part I: On the Nature & Origins of Our Ecological Crisis” by Jason Moore
January 2016: “Reform or Revolution” by Rosa Luxemburg
