Rhiannon Firth

Due to the devastating effects of global warming, natural disasters have been increasing at a brutal pace all around the globe. Shockingly poor state-led relief efforts have been cause for much misery among those affected. In fact, the most successful disaster responses have come from anarchist-inspired social movements. These have been the target of both repression and intense curiosity on part of governmental entities looking to co-opt these autonomous movement practices.In this groundbreaking and timely book, Rhiannon Firth provides a comprehensive anarchist approach to understanding and responding to natural disasters, drawing on historical and contemporary sources as well as empirical case studies. Offering a new framework to address one of the 21st century's most pressing problems, Firth introduces disaster anarchism as a powerful tool to provide a break from capitalism and the state even beyond the scope of disaster relief.

Mutual Aid and Radical Action

Disaster Anarchy

Theory, Social Movements and Utopia

In the context of global problems such as the economic downturn, escalating inequality, terrorism, resource depletion and climate change, cynicism prevails in contemporary politics, which need not be the case. Utopian Politics confronts a world intensely aware of the problems that we face and sadly lacking in solutions, positing a utopian articulation of citizenship focused on community participation at a grassroots level. By re-examining central concepts and thinkers in political theory, this book re-casts the concepts of utopia and citizenship both as part of the classical philosophical tradition and simultaneously as part of the cutting edge of radical alternatives. This book includes never-before published ethnographic research, interviews and photographs from a range of autonomous UK communities, to show how the boundaries of politics and citizenship can be questioned and proposes an innovative methodology inspired by classical and post-structural anarchism. By considering ideas and practices that are generally considered to be marginal to mainstream political theory and practice, the book encourages readers to think about longstanding and central political debates in an entirely new, and creative way. Utopian Politics will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, ethics and citizenship.

Citizenship and Practice

Utopian Politics

John Preston

This book considers how the UK government’s response to the recent COVID-19 pandemic disadvantages the working class, and how mutual aid, based on anarchist principles, can be used as a force for social change. The authors draw on Marxist and anarchist thought in class theory and social movement analysis to demonstrate that the virus and its material and discursive consequences are an active part of continuing class struggle and class interpolation. Preston and Firth examine how plans for quarantine and social isolation systematically work against the needs of the working class, and rely on classed assumptions about how markets and altruism operate. In the face of neoliberal methods of dealing with a pandemic, ranging from marketization, disaster capitalism, to a strengthening of the State, Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom explains how radical alternatives such as social movements and mutual aid can be implemented to better cope with current and future crises.

Rhiannon Firth

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