From COVID to climate-change-induced wildfires and hurricanes, we live in an era when catastrophes have become the new normal. But even though these events affect us all, some members of society are more vulnerable to harm than others.This essay collection explores how the definition of catastrophe might be expanded to include many forms of large-scale structural violence on communities, species, and ecosystems. Using feminist methodologies, the contributors to Public Catastrop...

This book offers a transnational feminist response to the gender politics of torture and terror from the viewpoint of populations of color who have come to be associated with acts of terror. Using the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Iraq, this book revisits other such racialized wars in Palestine, Guatemala, India, Algeria, and South Africa. It draws widely on postcolonial literature, photography, films, music, interdisciplinary arts, media/new media, and activism, joining the larger conv...

On the eve of the democratic elections scheduled in South Africa in 2009, this collection of essays analyses the many ways in which South Africans have been trying to heal the wounds of apartheid, as advocated in Nelson Mandela’s famous 1994 speech, delivered at the dawn of the ‘ new ’ South Africa. The articles encompass such diverse fields as politics, literature, cinema, welfare policies or education, and they all seek to explore the sea change which totally reshaped South African ident...

***A BEST BOOK OF 2018 SELECTION***NPR * The Washington Post * Book Riot * Autostraddle * Psychology Today***A BEST FEMINIST BOOK SELECTION***Refinery 29, Book Riot, Autostraddle, BITCHRage Becomes Her is an “utterly eye opening” (Bustle) book that gives voice to the causes, expressions, and possibilities o...

National bestselling author of APOCALYPSE NEVER skewers progressives for the mishandling of America’s faltering cities.Progressives claimed they knew how to solve the homelessness crisis, inequality, and crime. But in cities they control, from San Francisco to Seattle, progressives made those problems worse.Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirty years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing, an...

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • "A stunning exposé of why Black people in our society 'live sicker and die quicker'—an eye-opening game changer."—Oprah DailyFrom an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation.In 2018, Lin...

**From the author of Race After Technology, an inspiring vision of how we can build a more just world—one small change at a time“A true gift to our movements for justice.”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow**Long before the pandemic, Ruha Benjamin was doing groundbreaking research on race, technology, and justice, focusing on big, structural changes. But the twin plagues of COVID-19 and anti-Black police violence inspired her to rethink the imp...

An urgent rethinking of the Western approach to mental health, which treats the symptoms rather than the exploitative systems causing our distress—by a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Medical School physician-anthropologist—offering lessons from the rest of the world.What if the mainstay of mental health care involved cancelling onerous debt, giving poor people free housing, and paying reparations to the descendants of slavery and colonialism? In Empire of Madness

A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices--from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment--help perpetuate global inequities.In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices--from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference--play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial theory, medical a...

Rethinking Who We Are takes a non-conventional approach to understanding human difference in Canada. Contributors to this volume critically re-examine Canadian identity by rethinking who we are and what we are becoming by scrutinizing the “totality” of difference. Included are analyses on the macro differences among Canadians, such as the disparities produced from unequal treatment under Canadian law, human rights legislation and health care. Contributors also explore the diversit...

From internationally renowned sociologist Michèle Lamont, a game-changing argument about what we value and whyHow do we measure our self-worth?For many of us, it signifies accomplishment, self-reliance, and wealth. Decades of neoliberalism have driven our definition of success. Yet, as we have amassed more achievements, we have been overwhelmed and overworked in a world of growing inequality. Should we start judging others, and ourselves, differently?

A novel and scientific approach to creating transformative social change—and the surprising ways that each of us can help make a real difference.Changing the world is difficult. One reason is that the most important problems, like climate change, racism, and poverty, are structural. They emerge from our collective practices: laws, economies, history, culture, norms, and built environments. The dilemma is that there is no way to make structural change witho...