The need to produce food without the destructive chemical horrors of much modern farming, for an intelligent use of dwindling natural resources and for humane forms of production is universal, the practice is limited. This book is an account of one, large, instance of success in practice. Twenty-five years ago, Winin Pereira, a nuclear physicist abandoned academia to start a co-operative farm at Alonde in a tribal area north of Bombay. The group experienced, and finally discarded, all the false hopes and promises of Western originated forms of development: ploughs that ploughed too deep, irrigation systems that lowered water tables, fertilizers and pesticides which managed the earth and became so expensive that poorer farmers were dispossessed. Instead they learnt from the adivasai, or tribal people, who have nurtured or been nurtured by foresets for millennia, ways of applying popular knowledge to contemporary problems. This book is a combination of Pereira's record of achievement of sustainable livelihoods and an account of the farm and its effect on the India around it by a leading British journalist. Originally published in 1991

'All profound relationships have the quality of being a folie a deux; an intimate departure from reality, an imaginative creation of a world apart; perhaps this is a way of calling forth meaning – the merging of senseless subjectivities.' In 1950s suburban England, a friendship bloomed between Jeremy Seabrook and Michael O’Neill - both gay men coming of age during a time when homosexuality was still a crime. Their relationship was inflected by secrecy and fear; the shadows that had distorted their adolescent years were never wholly dispelled, long into their adult life. Lyrical, candid and poignant, this is a tale of sexual identity, working-class history and family drama. A memoir of unparalleled authenticity, Private Worlds is an elegy for a doomed friendship.

Through the words of sex workers and their clients, Jeremy Seabrook reconsiders the popular conception of sex tourism in Asia. Through its examination of the many paradoxes surrounding this controversial subject, Travels in the Skin Trade also sheds new light on the wider and problematic relationship between the North and the South. Press coverage of the sex trade routinely consists of ill-informed, moralising and sensationalist denunciations of the 'industry'. Through the words of sex workers and their clients, Seabrook reconsiders the popular conception of the sex industry and explores the complex relationship between sex and tourism. In so doing he presents an objective, sensitive view of the industry. Through its examination of the many paradoxes surrounding this controversial subject, Travels in the Skin Trade also sheds new light on the wider and problematic relationship between the North and the South.

Britain's welfare state, one of the greatest achievements of our post-war reconstruction, was regarded as the cornerstone of modern society. Today, that cornerstone is wilfully being dismantled by a succession of governments, with horrifying consequences. The establishment paints pictures of so-called 'benefit scroungers', the disabled, the sickly and the old. In Cut Out: Living Without Welfare, Jeremy Seabrook speaks to people whose support from the state - for whatever reason - is now being withdrawn, rendering their lives unsustainable. In turns disturbing, eye-opening, and ultimately humanistic, these accounts reveal the reality behind the headlines, and the true nature of British politics today. Published in partnership with the Left Book Club.

In 1797 Jeremy Bentham prepared a map of poverty in Britain, which he called 'Pauperland.' More than two hundred years later, poverty and social deprivation remain widespread in Britain.Yet despite the investigations into poverty by Mayhew, Booth, and in the 20th century, Townsend, it remains largely unknown to, or often hidden from, those who are not poor. Pauperland is Jeremy Seabrook's account of the mutations of poverty over time, historical attitudes to the poor, and the lives of the impoverished themselves, from early Poor Laws till today. He explains how in the medieval world, wealth was regarded as the greatest moral danger to society, yet by the industrial era, poverty was the most significant threat to social order. How did this change come about, and how did the poor, rather than the rich, find themselves blamed for much of what is wrong with Britain, including such familiar-and ancient-scourges as crime, family breakdown and addictions? How did it become the fate of the poor to be condemned to perpetual punishment and public opprobrium, the useful scapegoat of politicians and the media?Pauperland charts how such attitudes were shaped by ill-conceived and ill-executed private and state intervention, and how these are likely to frame ongoing discussions of and responses to poverty in Britain.

Orphans have often been beneficiaries of charity and compassion--but society has also punished, abused and ill-treated them. Attitudes behind this maltreatment are rooted in ideas that those without parents are disruptive, malevolent, and in need of discipline. Drawing on historic documents, interviews and memoirs, Jeremy Seabrook charts history's changing and often loose definitions of 'orphans', and explores their many 'makers'--from natural or man-made catastrophes to the State, charity, and other social forces that have separated children, especially the poor, from their close kin. But this history is not only one of suffering: Orphans also reveals the uncounted millions taken in and loved by relatives, neighbours or strangers. Freed from constraints and driven by insecurity, many orphans--including Nelson Mandela, Marilyn Monroe and Steve Jobs--have led remarkable lives.

The world's population is ageing. Decade by decade, people are living longer than they ever have before. For rich countries in the west, the problems are obvious - economies rely on youthful populations to provide for those who have retired. As the population ages, we face a profound economic and social crisis - how do we care for the elderly when pensions and social security systems are under threat, housing is short and fewer young people are entering the workplace? There are anxieties at the highest level in the US, that an ageing population may make the country forfeit its image of youthful dynamism, as new creative generations come of ageing in the South.Yet this is only half the story. Populations in the poorer countries of the South are also ageing. Life-expectancy has increased due to the availability of life-saving medicine. Child mortality has decreased, so people are having smaller families. India will soon have one fo the largest populations of over-sixties. The one-child policy in China will similarly lead to a severe imbalance in the age-profile of the people.Here, Jeremy Seabrook examines the real implications of the ageing phenomenon and challenges our preconcepti

Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives! It is not linen you re wearing out, But human creatures lives! Stitch stitch stitch, In poverty, hunger and dirt, Sewing at once, with a double thread, A Shroud as well as a Shirt. --from The Song of the Shirt by Thomas Hood (1843) Labour in Bangladesh flows like its rivers -- in excess of what is required. Often, both take a huge toll. Labour that costs $1.66 an hour in China and 52 cents in India can be had for a song in Bangladesh -- 18 cents. It is mostly women and children working in fragile, flammable buildings who bring in 70 per cent of the country s foreign exchange. Bangladesh today does not clothe the nakedness of the world, but provides it with limitless cheap garments -- through Primark, Walmart, Benetton, Gap. In elegiac prose, Jeremy Seabrook dwells upon the disproportionate sacrifices demanded by the manufacture of such throwaway items as baseball caps. He shows us how Bengal and Lancashire offer mirror images of impoverishment and affluence. In the eighteenth century, the people of Bengal were dispossessed of ancient skills and the workers of Lancashire forced into labour settlements.In a ghostly replay of traffic in the other direction, the decline of the British textile industry coincided with Bangladesh becoming one of the world s major clothing exporters. With capital becoming more protean than ever, it wouldn t be long before the global imperium readies to shift its sites of exploitation in its nomadic cultivation of profit.

This is an account of life in the vast and ever-expanding cities of South Asia. From Bangkok, Bombay, Dhaka, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur, Jeremy Seabrook brings stories of survival and uncelebrated heroism, stories with uncanny echoes of life in Britain in the early-industrial era. At the same time, he provides an analysis of the restructuring of urban life in South Asia, as the world moves towards a single integrated economy.