William Coperthwaite is a teacher, builder, designer, and writer who for many years has explored the possibilities of true simplicity on a homestead on the north coast of Maine. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness-buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being."A Handmade Life" carries Coperthwaite's ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life.

Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has had a major impact on social life and, in turn, research in the social sciences. Emerging from the crisis of the Keynesian welfare state, neoliberalism describes a social transformation that has impacted relationships between citizens and the state, consumers and the market, and individuals and groups. Neoliberal Contentions offers original essays that explore neoliberalism in its various guises. It includes chapters on economic policy and restructuring, resource extraction, multiculturalism and equality, migration and citizenship, health reform, housing policy, and 2SLGBTQ communities. Drawing on the work of influential Canadian political economist Janine Brodie, the contributors use Brodie's scholarship as a springboard for their own distinct analyses of pressing political and social issues. Acknowledging neoliberalism's crises, failures, and contradictions, this collection contends with neoliberalism by "diagnosing the present," situating the phenomenon within a broader historical and political-economic context and observing instances in which neoliberal rationality is reinforced as well as resisted.

In Spain, on May 15, 2011, a movement against austerity measures began. In a time when representative democracies were under threat, 15M came to life as a virtuous and democratic response to the slide into far-right populism and authoritarianism. More than a social movement, 15M became a mode of being with transformative, democratizing potential. In Democracy Here and Now, Pablo Ouziel offers a grounded analysis of 15M. At the time of the movement and during the ensuing encampments, Ouziel travelled extensively, speaking to participants, and keeping an ongoing record of his conversations. Presenting an original participatory mode of research, the book reveals six types of intersubjective, "joining hands" relationships that 15M has brought into being and works to carry on in creative ways. The book shows how the movement's way of being and temporality persists in Spain following the square occupations, while 15M citizens continue to learn and move forward in less perceptible ways. Democracy Here and Now sheds light on a deeply relational, intersectional, and eco-social mode of democracy, and shows how 15M's ongoing democratization practices are exemplary of similar grassroots movements around the world, broadening our understandings of what it means to be democratic in the here and now.

"About The Half That Was Never Told"

by John Williams ISBN 13: 978 1 84747 004 1
Published: 2006
Pages: 147

Description

Skinheads, Rastas and Hippies reflects John's involvement in the alternative culture of the 1970s through to the 1990s. He saw a common denominator between the different ethnic and sub-culture groups i.e. Rastas mixing with hippies/ skinheads etc. It was these experiences coupled with his own diagnosis of schzophrenia that lead John to put pen to paper. A truly entertaining read the story reflects John's upbringing and youth in the mixed and sometimes volatile Brixton in South London.

About the Author

John was born in Jamaica in 1955, he currently lives in Brixton, South London. John has had various jobs but has struggled to find employment since becoming ill with schizophrenia. His interests include reading, football and meeting people. He has two children - Adrian aged 16 and Samantha who is 12 years of age. John wrote his book in order to share his perception of his experiences and interpretation of his life issues and tribulations. He believes that the seventies and early eighties were key years in defining the issues of today.

Book Extract

" I have been hanging around and it looks like I am wasting time. You should know that good drop out hang about smoking dope and not ever get a bad day but when you hear of down and out they are even worst. Sometimes I wonder if I would get back on my feet. So far the smoking seems to be all right. Now I am ripe again, big up dropouts.

The truth is that you are trying to be wild and free, as you would like to be without problems, like sunshine after the rain, big up drop out big up and have a better day. Or is it sunshine in the rain. Can you see how much, right on and look how it recurs, at least have a good look. Look as I was saying to a good friend not knowing how she got to be my friend. At first we could not see each other's way, but look how now we see thing like the same.

The Steampunk User's Manual features beautiful images and entertaining text about the incredibly popular Science Fiction subgenre that imagines future technology and fashion via a 19th century perspective and toolbox. The Steampunk User's Manual provides a conceptual how-to guide across all aspects of Steampunk that motivates and awes both the armchair enthusiast and the committed creator. The idea here is to give readers points of reference that are both refreshingly down-to-earth and completely over-the-top-that utterly doable jewellery project juxtaposed with that stunningly crazy and jaw-dropping art installation. The book features sections on fashion, art, crafts, music, large-scale installations, fiction, filmmaking, etc. By combining the functional and the delightfully out-there, The Steampunk User's Manual not only satisfies readers-it also entertains and inspires them at a very high level and provides an updated look at the world of Steampunk, which has already changed since the publication of The Steampunk Bible.

Making Surveillance States: Transnational Histories opens up new and exciting perspectives on how systems of state surveillance developed over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Taking a transnational approach, the book challenges us to rethink the presumed novelty of contemporary surveillance practices, while developing critical analyses of the ways in which state surveillance has profoundly shaped the emergence of contemporary societies. Contributors engage with a range of surveillance practices, including medical and disease surveillance, systems of documentation and identification, and policing and security. These approaches enable us to understand how surveillance has underpinned the emergence of modern states, sustained systems of state security, enabled practices of colonial rule, perpetuated racist and gendered forms of identification and classification, regulated and policed migration, shaped the eugenically inflected medicalization of disability and sexuality, and contained dissent. While surveillance is thus bound up with complex relations of power, it is also contested. Emerging from the book is a sense of how state actors understood and legitimized their own surveillance practices, as well as how these practices have been implemented in different times and places. At the same time, contributors explore the myriad ways in which these systems of surveillance have been resisted, challenged, and subverted.

Living Off-grid in Wales examines the new policy context for off-grid rural development by contrasting the policy approach with the activist version of going off-grid. The examples examined in the book feed into much broader debates about the possibility of planning for sustainable development. This book brings clarity to the notion of off-grid by examining two main case studies (supplemented by other ethnographic data) that do off-grid very differently to each other. The policy context that is examined in the book is distinctive to Wales - it is novel to see a planning policy that not only incorporates, but insists on off-grid. The book pivots on this contradiction: if planning (as is thought) is about the spatial reproduction of society, then why should it encourage autonomy from these systems? The ethnographic case studies also comprise an ethnography of rural Wales, and the book's focus on alternative communities brings a fresh perspective to the anthropological literature on community by considering off-grid as a new form of radical social assemblage.

'Helps you keep achieving - and find peace and happiness in the process' Amy Edmondson We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment align with an overarching purpose in our lives, regardless of the eventual outcome. In his most personal and powerful work to date, world-renowned leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith offers a better way to approach fulfilment that goes against everything we're taught about achievement. Taking inspiration from Buddhism, Goldsmith reveals that the key to living the earned life, unbound by regret, requires connecting the habit of earning rewards to something greater than our personal successes. Goldsmith implores readers to avoid the Great Western Disease of "I'll be happy when...." He offers practical advice and exercises aimed at helping us shed the obstacles that prevent us from creating fulfilling lives. From learning to privilege your future over your present, knowing how to weigh up opportunity and risk accurately, honing your 'one-trick genius' and needing to earn credibility twice, the book is packed with transformative insights and tools that will help readers close the gap between what they plan to achieve and what they actually get done-and avoid the trap of existential regret, the kind that reroutes destinies and persecutes our memories. Full of illuminating stories from Goldsmith's legendary career as a coach to some of the world's highest-achieving leaders and reflections on his own life, The Earned Life is a roadmap for ambitious people seeking a higher purpose. 'Inspiring insight from the world's top coach. Goldsmith left me tingling from the journey of reflection I'd been taken on' Bruce Daisley

'Emine and Paul live and breathe Ayurveda every day, and I love their gentle, intuitive, conscious approach to life.' - Jasmine Hemsley, author of East by West and co-author of the Hemsley + Hemsley books Sattva is one of the three basic life forces outlined in Ayurvedic teachings. Among the beautiful qualities it embodies - unity, harmony, purity, vitality, clarity, gentleness and serenity - are essences of nature that we're craving more than ever in our busy lives. In this book, you'll find a complete lifestyle prescription for balance and peace in our hectic Western world. Sattva offers a simple guide to living in harmony with seasonal cycles, resources for conscious living and nourishment for body and soul. A celebration of ancient, holistic wisdom for intuitive modern living, Sattva has the power to help us move from chaos into consciousness. Let it remind you of your natural state of being.

Despite acute labour shortages during the Second World War, Canadian employers--with the complicity of state officials--discriminated against workers of African, Asian, and Eastern and Southern European origin, excluding them from both white collar and skilled jobs. Jobs and Justice argues that, while the war intensified hostility and suspicion toward minority workers, the urgent need for their contributions and the egalitarian rhetoric used to mobilize the war effort also created an opportunity for minority activists and their English Canadian allies to challenge discrimination.Juxtaposing a discussion of state policy with ideas of race and citizenship in Canadian civil society, Carmela K. Patrias shows how minority activists were able to bring national attention to racist employment discrimination and obtain official condemnation of such discrimination. Extensively researched and engagingly written, Jobs and Justice offers a new perspective on the Second World War, the racist dimensions of state policy, and the origins of human rights campaigns in Canada.

Given the importance that entrepreneurship and start-up businesses in technology-intensive sectors like life sciences, renewable energy, artificial intelligence, financial technologies, software and others have come to assume in economic development, the access of entrepreneurs to appropriate levels of finance has become a major focus of policymakers in recent decades. Yet, this prominence has led to a variety of policy models across countries and even within countries, as different levels of government have adapted to new challenges by refining or transforming pre-existing institutions and crafting new policy tools. Small Nations, High Ambitions investigates the roots of such policy diversity at the "subnational" level, offering in-depth accounts of the evolution of Quebec's and Scotland's policy strategies in the entrepreneurial finance sector and venture capital more specifically. As compared to other regions and provinces in the United Kingdom and Canada, Quebec and Scottish venture capital ecosystems rely on a high degree of state intervention, either direct (through public investment funds) or indirect (through government-backed, hybrid, or tax-advantaged funds). These two regions can thus be described as "sponsor states," heavily involved in the strategic backing of innovative businesses. Whereas most of the literature on venture capital has focused on economic variables to explain variations in policy models, this book seeks to explain policy divergence in Quebec and Scotland through political and ideological lenses. Its main argument is that the development of venture capital ecosystems in these regions was underpinned by Quebecois and Scottish nationalisms, which induced preferences for policy asymmetry and state intervention.

In Skeef deel mediapersoonlikheid Renaldo Schwarp op sy kenmerkend spitvondige manier praktiese advies en verhale oor alle aspekte van gay-wees.

Uitkom, boelies, liefdesverhoudings, skooldae, universiteitsjare, ouers, verteenwoordiging, seksualiteit, geloof - geen onderwerp is taboe nie. Schwarp fokus op die leefwêreld van LGBTIQ+-Suid-Afrikaners, plaas dit in internasionale en historiese kontekste en bied 'n woordeskat. Schwarp vertel sy eie storie. Hy klop ook aan by bekendes soos Rian van Heerden, Marc Lottering, Charl-Johan Lingenfelder, Boer Damian en Joe Foster om 'n genuanseerde beeld van eietydse gay-wees te skets.

In 'n onthutsend eerlike hoofstuk vertel sy ma, Verenia, van die uitdagings van gaykindgrootmaak. Die raakvatters agter die gewilde Mannetjiesvrou-podsending verwelkom jou ook in die voorkamer van die lesbiër.

Selfs al is dinge soms moeiliker vir LGBTIQ-mense, dra Skeef 'n boodskap van hoop oor vir gay mense, hul ouers en bondgenote. Selfaanvaarding, outentisiteit, gesonde verhoudings en geluk is gays beskore - hierdie boek vertel hoe.

There is a growing need for public buy-in if democratic processes are to run smoothly. But who exactly is "the public"? What does their engagement in policy-making processes look like? How can our understanding of "the public" be expanded to include - or be led by - diverse voices and experiences, particularly of those who have been historically marginalized? And what does this expansion mean not only for public policies and their development, but for how we teach policy? Drawing upon public engagement case studies, sites of inquiry, and vignettes, this volume raises and responds to these and other questions while advancing policy justice as a framework for public engagement and public policy. Stretching the boundaries of deliberative democracy in theory and practice, Creating Spaces of Engagement offers critical reflections on how diverse publics are engaged in policy processes.

The senses are made, not given. This revolutionary realization has come as of late to inform research across the social sciences and humanities, and is currently inspiring groundbreaking experimentation in the world of art and design, where the focus is now on mixing and manipulating the senses. The Sensory Studies Manifesto tracks these transformations and opens multiple lines of investigation into the diverse ways in which human beings sense and make sense of the world. This unique volume treats the human sensorium as a dynamic whole that is best approached from historical, anthropological, geographic, and sociological perspectives. In doing so, it has altered our understanding of sense perception by directing attention to the sociality of sensation and the cultural mediation of sense experience and expression. David Howes challenges the assumptions of mainstream Western psychology by foregrounding the agency, interactivity, creativity, and wisdom of the senses as shaped by culture. The Sensory Studies Manifesto sets the stage for a radical reorientation of research in the human sciences and artistic practice.

OG Kush. Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. Marijuana has come a long way since its seedy days in the back parking lots of our culture. So has Howard S. Becker, the eminent sociologist, jazz musician, expert on "deviant" culture, and founding NORML board member. When he published Becoming a Marihuana User more than sixty years ago, hardly anyone paid attention-because few people smoked pot. Decades of Cheech and Chong films, Grateful Dead shows, and Cannabis Cups later, and it's clear-marijuana isn't just an established commodity, it's an entire culture. And that's just the thing-Becker totally called it: pot has everything to do with culture. It's not a blight on culture, but a culture itself-in fact, you'll see in this book the first use of the term "users," rather than "abusers" or "addicts." Come along on this short little study-now a famous timestamp in weed studies-and you will be astonished at how relevant it is to us today. Becker doesn't judge, but neither does he holler for legalization, tell you how to grow it in a hollowed-out dresser, or anything else like that for which there are plenty of other books you can buy. Instead, he looks at marijuana with a clear sociological lens-as a substance that some people enjoy, and that some others have decided none of us should. From there he asks: so how do people decide to get high, and what kind of experience do they have as a result of being part of the marijuana world? What he discovers will bother some, especially those who proselytize the irrefutably stunning effects of the latest strain: chemistry isn't everything-the important thing about pot is how we interact with it. We learn to be high. We learn to like it. And from there, we teach others, passing the pipe in a circle that begins to resemble a bona fide community, defined by shared norms, values, and definitions just like any other community. All throughout this book, you'll see the intimate moments when this transformation takes place. You'll see people doing it for the first time and those with considerable experience. You'll see the early signs of the truths that have come to define the marijuana experience: that you probably won't get high at first, that you have to hold the hit in, and that there are other people here who are going to smoke that, too.

PHOEBE GREEN is an anti-war activist in an alternate 2003 where Tony Blair held a referendum to determine whether the UK should go to war with Iraq. The pro-war side won by 52% to the anti-war side's 48%. The nation is split. Political tensions are running high with accusations that the Yes side manipulated the referendum. Phoebe is at a protest with her fellow activists CASSIE, XIA, VINCE, PAULA, GUS, LIAM, her ex-boyfriend SEFU and her sister MEL, when they are all arrested except Cassie and Paula. Hours later, Phoebe is interrogated by the police and is informed that Cassie has been murdered. Phoebe has trouble coping and decides to try to solve Cassie's murder in order to maintain some sense of control. The activists tidy up in the wake of a police raid, and Liam tells Phoebe that malicious gossip will be emerging about him soon. Phoebe calls a friendly lawyer, ERYL, who offers to follow up with some of her contacts about Cassie's murder. Phoebe and Mel clean out Cassie's room. Phoebe finds a strange piece of paper containing the addresses of several men named RICHARD LAMPART. Phoebe goes to the pub where Cassie was murdered, where she learns the attack was far from random, as the police claimed. On her return, Sefu tells Phoebe that he spotted strangers on the farm, away from the house. Phoebe and Sefu see Vince being attacked by a right-wing agitator who they recognise from PATRIOT'S UNITE, a far-right organisation. Phoebe and Sefu run to help Vince but he's been killed by the time they arrive. Phoebe comforts Mel, who was dating Vince. Phoebe and Sefu decide to find Vince's attackers and bring them to justice. Xia is unhappy with this - she wants the activists to go on another action to ground some American B-52s at a nearby airbase before they can bomb Iraq. Phoebe and Sefu locate one of the attackers in a barn and trap him. The attacker, who Phoebe dubs COWARDLY WINSTON, tells them that he saw Vince and the other attacker being stabbed by a third party. Sefu and Phoebe return to the house and find a sword belonging to Sefu covered in blood. The investigators establish that it is possible for Vince to have been attacked in the way Cowardly Winston described. They can only conclude one of their friends is the murderer. Phoebe and Sefu used to think that the only people could they trust were inside the house. They now know they're wrong. One of their own is a murdered. But why would one of them kill Vince? And what does that have to do with the murder of young Cassie. And who is next to die?

In the 1980s, Erika Bornman’s family join, and ultimately move to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission based in KwaZulu-Natal, which is touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks beneath ‘the place where people are helped’.

Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged. Isolated and alone, Erika lives in constant fear of eternal damnation.

At 17, her grooming at the hands of a senior mission counsellor begins. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu wages emotional, psychological and sexual warfare on her, until, finally, she manages to break free and walk away at the age of 21.

Escaping a restrictive religious community is difficult, but rehabilitation into ‘normal’ life after a decade of ritual humiliation, brainwashing and abuse is much more painful, as Erika soon discovers. She cannot ignore her knowledge of the grievous human-rights abuses being committed at KwaSizabantu, and so she embarks on a quest to expose the atrocities. With her help, News24 launches a seven-month investigation, culminating in a podcast that will go on to win the internationally renowned One World Media Award for Radio and Podcast in 2021.

In Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika chronicles her journey from a fearful young girl to a fierce activist determined to do whatever it takes to save future generations and find personal redemption and self-acceptance.