Description
As disasters become more commonplace, we need to think of alternatives for relief.
'Commendable - a book that prepares us to think about and react to system failures' - Peter Gelderloos Anarchists have been central in helping communities ravaged by disasters, stepping in when governments wash their hands of the victims. Looking at Hurricane Sandy, Covid-19, and the social movements that mobilized relief in their wake, Disaster Anarchy is an inspiring and alarming book about collective solidarity in an increasingly dangerous world. As climate change and neoliberalism converge, mutual aid networks, grassroots direct action, occupations, and brigades have sprung up in response to this crisis with considerable success. Occupy Sandy was widely acknowledged to have organized relief more effectively than federal agencies or NGOs, and following Covid-19 the term 'mutual aid' entered common parlance. However, anarchist-inspired relief has not gone unnoticed by government agencies. Their responses include surveillance and co-option, extending at times to violent repression involving police brutality. Arguing that disaster anarchy is one of the most important political phenomena to emerge in the 21st century, Rhiannon Firth shows through her research on and within these movements that anarchist theory and practice are needed to protect ourselves from the disasters of our unequal and destructive economic system.Author: Rhiannon Firth
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
Published: 07/20/2022
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 8.41h x 5.55w x 0.68d
ISBN13: 9780745340463
ISBN10: 0745340466
BISAC Categories:
- Nature | Natural Disasters
- Political Science | Political Ideologies | Anarchism
- Political Science | Political Process | Political Advocacy
About the Author
Rhiannon Firth is currently a lecturer in Sociology at UCL. She is the author of two books Utopian Politics: Citizenship and Practice, and Coronavirus, Class and Mutual Aid in the UK. She is active in social movements and popular education projects in London.