Abandoned airports. Shipping containers. Squatted hotels. These are just three of the many unusual places that have housed refugees in the past decade. The story of international migration is often told through personal odysseys and dangerous journeys, but when people arrive at their destinations a more mundane task begins: refugees need a place to stay. Governments and charities have adopted a range of strategies in response to this need. Some have sequestered refugees in massive camps of...

On an Empty Stomach examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian "scientific" soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, Tom Scott-Smith argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement, but rather is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical p...

Questioning what shelter is and how we can define it, this volume brings together essays on different forms of refugee shelter, with a view to widening public understanding about the lives of forced migrants and developing theoretical understanding of this oft-neglected facet of the refugee experience. Drawing on a range of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, law, architecture, and history, each of the chapters describes a particular shelter and uses this to open up theoretical...

A Financial Times Best Book of the YearA Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year“Sharp, revealing, funny.”—The Guardian“An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again… [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.”—The EconomistArchitecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form...

*Selected by Emma Watson for her Ultimate Book List*Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes.Fashion brands entice us to consume more by manipulating us to feel ugly, poor and worthless, sentiments that line the pockets of bil...

Best known for its World Heritage program committed to "the identification, protection and preservation of cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity," the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded in 1945 as an intergovernmental agency aimed at fostering peace, humanitarianism, and intercultural understanding. Its mission was inspired by leading European intellectuals such as Henri Bergson, M...

In recent years, the far right has done everything in its power to accelerate the heating: an American president who believes it is a hoax has removed limits on fossil fuel production. The Brazilian president has opened the Amazon and watched it burn. In Europe, parties denying the crisis and insisting on maximum combustion have stormed into office, from Sweden to Spain. On the brink of breakdown, the forces most aggressively promoting business-as-usual have surged - always in defense of w...

Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares. Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery e...

Should artists be activists? Is activist art one of an artists primary responsibilities or a pointless sideshow on the fringes of serious politics? The philosopher, writer and art historian Lieven de Cauter, Ruben de Roo and Karel Vanhaesebrouck explore this theme in collaboration with other thinkers and doers in his new book Art and Activism in the Age of Globalization. In a time of globalization, populism, hypercapitalism, migration, War on Terror, and global warming, artistic engagement...

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of alternative approaches to architectural practice.At a time when many commentators are noting that alternative and richer approaches to architectural practice are required if the profession is to flourish, this book provides multiple examples from across the globe of how this has been achieved and how it might be achieved in the future.Particularly pertinent in the current economic climate, this book offers the reader new ...

Originally published in 2012 to wide acclaim, this updated edition, Why It's Still Kicking Off Everywhere, includes coverage of the most recent events in the wave of revolt and revolution sweeping the planet-riots in Athens, student occupations in the UK, Quebec and Moscow, the emergence of the Occupy Movement and the tumult of the Arab Spring. Economic crisis, social networking and a new political consciousness have come together to ignite a new generation of radicals.BBC ...

Looking at the globalization, urban regeneration, arts events and cultural spectacles, this book considers a city not until now included in the global city debate.Divided into five parts, each preceded by an editorial introduction, this book is an interdisciplinary study of an iconic city, a city facing conflicting social, political and cultural pressures in its search for a place in Europe and on the world stage in the twenty-first century.