RECENT READING

I have to confess to some ennui – as will be obvious to the long delays in recent posts. These are the recent book downloadings

• Society Despite the State – reimagining geographies of order Anthony Ince 

and Geronimo de la Torre (2024)

The fall of the Soviet Union was hailed as the end of history. The onset of globalisation was hailed as the end of geography. The growth of artificial intelligence is being hailed as the end of human labour. The identification of the Anthropocene has become a warning for the end of humanity itself. When epochs are labelled and called into being, even if arbitrarily or retrospectively, it is always followed by claims of a crisis or death of something. Why, then, does the state seem to endure all these crises and deaths, sometimes coming out of them even stronger and more assured than before? The same state whose actions and inactions are at the very centre of so many crises and deaths, both literal and figurative? We live in a present era marked by a seemingly endless stream of crises that should, in principle, be solvable by states, but which are not; crises caused by economic crashes, environmental catastrophes, wars, famines, as well as everyday crises of culture, health or quality of life. The state is not singularly to blame for most of such crises, but it plays a central role in causing, exacerbating, or responding to them (often a combination of these roles).

That the state, with its vast resources and coercive power, seems unable or unwilling to substantially address the systemic problems that beset present society, yet still remains at the centre of our political imaginations, is evidence of its remarkable endurance and resilience. The many leftwing and decolonial projects that have attempted to reform the state across the globe in recent years are testament to the enchantment of the state as a space of political action, as well as its ability to quash radical change within its framework of ordering our worlds. This is not to say that they have not made positive material changes, but that those changes invariably fall far short of their intentions and very quickly become enveloped within its logics.

This is a book about how the idea of the state survives and maintains its ubiquity as the pivot of territorial organisation and order. However, it is also about how other stories of our world exist, and persist, in spite of it.

As anarchists have said for at least the last 150 years, we need a different imagination of how society could be governed if we are to save humanity and make our lives truly liveable, and the so-called ‘disaster anarchy’ of mutual aid and spontaneous self-organisation that erupts at times of crisis is testament to how this can feel so tantalisingly close. Even those who wish to reform the state, rather than overthrowing it, are already looking to new forms of governance that move beyond its limits. We therefore look to ‘other’ accounts of life that highlight ways of being and organising – forms of order amidst the disorder of state power – that can be used to decentre the state from our political and geographical imaginations and envision much wider future horizons that may include the state as one option but also vastly exceed it. We draw from otherwise very different disciplines – geography, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy and more – as well as multiple different cosmovisions and worldviews, some of which might even conflict or contrast with each other, to highlight the endurance and inventive resourcefulness of orders despite the state. The academic quest for perfect theoretical unity is rarely reflected in the messy realities of life.

Therefore, this book begins by asking: what if the state had never existed?

10

• Peak Oil – environmentalism and libertarian political culture Schneider-Mayerson (2015)

• Bestsellers of the Third Reich – readers, writers and the politics of literature 

Christian Adam (2021) 

• The World Turned Upside Down – a history of the Chinese cultural revolution 

Y Jisheng (2020)

• Strongmen – how they rise, why they succeed, how they fall Ruth Ben-Ghiat 

(2020)

9 

• Essays in honor of Nancy Fraser ed Bargu and Battici (2018)

• Rethinking Capitalism 2022

• What the Future Looks Like ed El-Khalilih 2017

• Nomad Century – how climate migration will reshape our world Gaia Vince 

• (2022)

With every degree of temperature increase, roughly a billion people will be 

pushed outside the zone in which humans have lived for thousands of years. 

We are running out of time to manage the coming upheaval before it becomes 

overwhelming and deadly. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution. 

8

• War and Power Philip O’brien 2026 sample

Yet, even then, at the height of its power, with the world seemingly at its feet, 

the ability of the US to achieve clearly stated goals at the end of the war, 

in countries that it thought were of vital interest, such as China, was shown to be 

shockingly weaker than expected. So, there was certainly no one standard of 

great power in World War II that might help us understand the power relationship 

between the states involved, and nor could the greatest of the   so-  called great 

powers in many   centuries –  the United   States –  achieve many of its goals.

6

• Labour Forces – from Ernest Bevin to Gordon Brown ed Kevin Jefferys (2002)

• Broken Vows – Tony Bliar, the tragedy of power Tom Bower (2016)

• Scottish Nationalism – history, ideology and the question of independence 

Richard Finlay (2022)

• Gordon Brown – power with purpose James Macintyre (2026)

• Another World is Possible – how to reignite social and political imagination 

Geoff Mulgan (2022)

• Big Mind – how collective intelligence can change our world Geoff Mulgan (2017)

• Political Advice – past, present and future Colin Kidd and Jackie Rose (2021)

• Governing in Turbulent Times Geoff Mulgan 2026  

• Words that Work – it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear you say  Frank Luntz (2007) 

This book is about the art and science of words that work. Examining the strategic and tactical use of language in politics, business, and everyday life, it shows how you can achieve better results by narrowing the gap between what you intend to convey and what your audiences actually interpret. The critical task, as I’ve suggested, is to go beyond your own understanding and to look at the world from your listener’s point of view. In essence, it is listener-centered; their perceptions trump whatever “objective” reality a given word or phrase you use might be presumed to have. Again, what matters isn’t what you say, it’s what people hear.

• Lying for Money – how legendary frauds reveals the workings of our world 

Dan Davies (2018)

• The Unaccountability Machine – why big systems make mistakes and how 

the world lost its mind Dan Davies (2024)

• Orwell’s Politics and the English Language in the age of pseudocracy 

Hans Ostrom and William Haltom (2019)

In our book as in this chapter we enter that meeting place to converse precisely, clearly, and honestly about “Politics and the English Language.”

To be honest, clear, and precise, we contend that the essay is a muddle—something its status and that of its author often obscure. In this chapter we show that most of the famed parts of the essay do not suit the whole as tightly as they might and that many parts entertain more than enlighten. The essay’s most momentous major claim is served poorly when it is served at all by such features as Orwell’s five “specimens,” by his catalogue of four “swindles and perversions,” by his six “rules,” and by his unnumbered gibes and gripes.

• Remoralising Britain – political, ethical and theological perspectives on New 

Labour Chris Baker et al (2009)

• Complicit – Britain’s role in the destruction of Gaza Peter Oborne (2025)

• March of the Moderates – Bill Clinton, Tony B liar and the rebirth(?) of 

progressive politics Richard Carr (2019)

• Open Democracy – reinventing popular rule for the 21st Century 

H Landemore (2020)

• Democracy without Politics A Oleart (2023)

• Thomas Merton’s Paradise – journey writings on contemplation 

Thomas Merton and William Shannon (2000)