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Dark Academia
How Universities Die
Peter Fleming
Pluto Press, 2021
'Fleming's books are sparklingly sardonic and hilariously angry' - Guardian

There is a strong link between the neoliberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years and the psychological hell now endured by its staff and students. While academia was once thought of as the best job in the world - one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal - you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now.

Peter Fleming delves into this new metrics-obsessed, overly hierarchical world to bring out the hidden underbelly of the neoliberal university. He examines commercialisation, mental illness and self-harm, the rise of managerialism, students as consumers and evaluators, and the competitive individualism which casts a dark sheen of alienation over departments.

Arguing that time has almost run out to reverse this decline, this book shows how academics and students need to act now if they are to begin to fix this broken system.
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Dark Matter
Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture
Gregory Sholette
Pluto Press, 2011
Art is big business, with some artists able to command huge sums of money for their works, while the vast majority are ignored or dismissed by critics. This book shows that these marginalised artists, the 'dark matter' of the art world, are essential to the survival of the mainstream and that they frequently organize in opposition to it.

Gregory Sholette, a politically engaged artist, argues that imagination and creativity in the art world originate thrive in the non-commercial sector shut off from prestigious galleries and champagne receptions. This broader creative culture feeds the mainstream with new forms and styles that can be commodified and used to sustain the few artists admitted into the elite.

This dependency, and the advent of inexpensive communication, audio and video technology, has allowed this 'dark matter' of the alternative art world to increasingly subvert the mainstream and intervene politically as both new and old forms of non-capitalist, public art. This book is essential for anyone interested in interventionist art, collectivism, and the political economy of the art world.
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The Dark Sahara
America's War on Terror in Africa
Jeremy Keenan
Pluto Press, 2009

The US is keen to build a substantial military presence in Africa, citing the need to combat the growth of Al-Qaeda in Somalia, Algeria and other countries on the continent. This book reveals the secret US agenda behind the 'war on terror' in Africa and the shocking methods used to perpetuate the myth that the region is a hot-bed of Islamic terrorism.

Africa expert Jeremy Keenan points to overwhelming evidence suggesting that, from 2003, the Bush administration and Algerian government were responsible for hostage takings blamed on Islamic militants. This created a permissive public attitude, allowing the US to establish military bases in the region and pursue multiple imperial objectives in the name of security.

The shocking revelations in this book seriously undermine the mainstream view of Africa as a legitimate 'second front' in the 'war on terror'.

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Dark Victory
The United States and Global Poverty
Walden Bello
Pluto Press, 1999

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Data Power
Radical Geographies of Control and Resistance
Jim E. Thatcher
Pluto Press, 2021

In recent years, popular media has inundated audiences with sensationalized headlines recounting data breaches, new forms of surveillance and other dangers of our digital age. Despite their regularity, such accounts treat each case as unprecedented and unique. This book proposes a radical rethinking of the history, present and future of our relations with the digital, spatial technologies that increasingly mediate our everyday lives.

From smartphones to surveillance cameras, to navigational satellites, these new technologies offer visions of integrated, smooth and efficient societies, even as they directly conflict with the ways users experience them. Recognizing the potential for both control and liberation, the authors argue against both acquiescence to and rejection of these technologies.

Through intentional use of the very systems that monitor them, activists from Charlottesville to Hong Kong are subverting, resisting and repurposing geographic technologies. Using examples as varied as writings on the first telephones to the experiences of a feminist collective for migrant women in Spain, the authors present a revolution of everyday technologies. In the face of the seemingly inevitable circumstances, these technologies allow us to create new spaces of affinity, and a new politics of change.

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Death of Dignity
Angola's Civil War
Victoria Brittain
Pluto Press, 1998

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The Death of Homo Economicus
Work, Debt and the Myth of Endless Accumulation
Peter Fleming
Pluto Press, 2017
For neoclassical economists, Homo economicus, or economic human, represents the ideal employee: an energetic worker bee that is a rational yet competitive decision-maker. Alternatively, one could view the concept as a cold and selfish workaholic endlessly seeking the accumulation of money and advancement—a chilling representation of capitalism. Or perhaps, as Peter Fleming argues, Homo economicus does not actually exist at all.
 
In The Death of Homo Economicus, Fleming presents this controversial claim with the same fierce logic and perception that launched his Guardian column into popularity. Fleming argues that as an invented model of a human being, Homo economicus is, in reality, a tool used by economists and capitalists to manage our social world through the state, business, and even family. As workers, we are barraged with constant reminders that we should always strive toward this ideal persona. It’s implied—and sometimes directly stated—that if we don’t then we are failures. Ironically, the people most often encouraged to emulate this model are those most predisposed to fail due to their socioeconomic circumstances: the poor, the unemployed, students, and prisoners.
 
Fleming illuminates why a peculiar proactive negativity now marks everyday life in capitalist societies, and he explores how this warped, unattainable model for workers would cause chaos if enacted to the letter. Timely and revelatory, The Death of Homo Economicus offers a sharp, scathing critique of who we are supposed to be in the workplace and beyond.
 
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A Death-Dealing Famine
The Great Hunger in Ireland
Christine Kinealy
Pluto Press, 1997

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Death's Dream Kingdom
The American Psyche Since 9-11
Walter A. Davis
Pluto Press, 2006
"Davis writes with fervor, vision, and keen moral appreciation of our condition. He encourages us to see what we fear to see, to say what we fear to say. This book is illuminating, challenging, fierce." Michael Eigen, author of The Sensitive Self, Rage, Ecstasy, Toxic Nourishment, Damaged Bonds andThe Psychoanalytic Mystic

Why is fear a dominant emotion in contemporary society? Why are politicians using words like 'terror', 'evil' and 'fundamentalism', and what effect is it having on public consciousness?

Answering these questions, Walter A. Davis taps into the cultural psyche to explore the link between ideology and emotional and psychological manipulation. Starting with the three topics that have preoccupied social discourse since 9-11 -- terror, evil and fundamentalism -- he shows that the Bush administration has been hugely successful in controlling and developing a new political climate through the creation of an almost hypnotic mass consciousness.

Davis's findings take us to the heart of the ideological paralysis of the Left, while offering an innovative approach to understanding contemporary history.

Davis fuses a psychoanalytic and philosophical framework to explain the relation between culture and political events, from the sado-masochist hysteria of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ' to the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison; and from the genocidal use of depleted uranium in Iraq to the apocalyptic language driving the Christian Right's assault on basic human rights.

He exposes the motives and belief-systems of this new American psyche and shows how it sustains the Bush administration's agenda. Illuminating how psychological needs govern political action, Davis reveals why the relationship between politics and public consciousness has massive implications for all of us beyond America's borders.

Walter A. Davis is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at Ohio State University. He is the author of six previous books, including Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and Freud (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989) and Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative (SUNY Press, 2001).
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Debt or Democracy
Public Money for Sustainability and Social Justice
Mary Mellor
Pluto Press, 2015
In the wake of the global financial crisis, most of the discussion has been focused on questions of debt. And the response, almost uniformly, has been austerity and privatization: cuts to services that have been painted as forms of reckless spending by a bloated public sector. In Debt or Democracy, Mary Mellor turns the whole conversation upside down, showing that the important question is not who owes what, but who controls the creation and circulation of money in the first place. When the problem is examined from that angle, it becomes clear that privatization, far from being the answer to our problem, is the very source of it—the subordination of public finance to private interest.
 
A direct challenge to conventional economic thinking, Debt or Democracy offers a bracing new analysis of our economic crisis and offers cogent, radical alternatives to create a more just and sustainable economic future.
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Decent Capitalism
A Blueprint for Reforming our Economies
Sebastian Dullien, Hansjorg Herr, and Christian Kellermann
Pluto Press, 2011

The recent crisis, created by finance capitalism, has brought us to the economic abyss. The excessive freedom of international markets has rapidly transformed into international panic, with states struggling to rescue and bail out a globalised financial sector. Reform is promised by our leaders, but in governments dominated by financial interests there is little hope of meaningful change.

Decent Capitalism argues for a response that addresses capitalism’s systemic tendency towards crisis, a tendency which is completely absent from the mainstream debate. The authors develop a concept of a moderated capitalism that keeps its core strengths intact while reducing its inherent destructive political force in our societies. This book argues that reforming the capitalist system will have to be far more radical than the current political discourse suggests.

Decent Capitalism is a concept and a slogan that will inspire political activists, trade unionists and policy makers to get behind a package of reforms that finally allows the majority to master capitalism.

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Deception in High Places
A History of Bribery in Britain's Arms Trade
Nicholas Gilby
Pluto Press, 2014
Deception in High Places reveals the corruption endemic in Britain's biggest arms deals over the last fifty years.

Based on painstaking research in government archives, collections of private and court papers and documents won by the author in a landmark Freedom of Information Tribunal against the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the book illuminates a shadow world of bribery and elite enrichment.

Deception in High Places charts British government involvement in arms trade corruption and presents the fullest history yet of bribery in Britain’s arms deals with Saudi Arabia. It includes the backstory of the controversial termination of a Serious Fraud Office corruption investigation following pressure by the Saudi Royal Family and the British establishment.
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A Decolonial Feminism
Francoise Verges
Pluto Press, 2021
For too long feminism has been co-opted by the forces they seek to dismantle. In this powerful manifesto, Francoise Verges argues that feminists should no longer be accomplices of capitalism, racism, colonialism and imperialism: it is time to fight the system that created the boss, built the prisons and polices women’s bodies. A Decolonial Feminism grapples with the central issues in feminist debates today: from Eurocentrism and whiteness, to power, inclusion and exclusion. Delving into feminist and anti-racist histories, Verges also assesses contemporary activism, movements and struggles, including #MeToo and the Women's Strike. Centring anticolonialism and anti-racism within an intersectional Marxist feminism, the book puts forward an urgent demand to free ourselves from the capitalist, imperialist forces that oppress us.
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Decolonisation and Criticism
The Construction of Irish Literature
Gerry Smyth
Pluto Press, 1998

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Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine
Zionism, Settler Colonialism, and the Case for One Democratic State
Jeff Halper
Pluto Press, 2021
'Extremely convincing' - Electronic Intifada

For decades we have spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine conflict', but what if our understanding of the issue has been wrong all along? This book explores how the concept of settler colonialism provides a clearer understanding of the Zionist movement's project to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, displacing the Palestinian Arab population and marginalizing its cultural presence.

Jeff Halper argues that the only way out of a colonial situation is decolonization: the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community.

To show how this can be done, Halper uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its post-colonial conclusion. Halper's unflinching reframing will empower activists fighting for the rights of the Palestinians and democracy for all.
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Decolonizing the University
Edited by Gurminder K. Bhambra, Kerem Nisancioglu and Dalia Gebrial
Pluto Press, 2018
"A must-read for anyone interested in enhancing a historical understanding of our present through a consideration of what it means to decolonize."—Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge

In 2015, students at the University of Cape Town demanded the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist, racist business magnate, from their campus. Their battle cry, #RhodesMustFall, sparked an international movement calling for the decolonization of universities all over the world.
 
Today, as the movement develops beyond the picket line, how might it go on to radically transform the terms upon which universities exist? In this book, students, activists, and scholars discuss the possibilities and the pitfalls of doing decolonial work in the heart of the establishment. Subverting curricula, demanding diversity, and destroying old boundaries, this is a radical call for a new era of education. Chapters include:
 
*Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change (Dalia Febrial)
*Race and the Neoliberal University ((John Holmwood)
*Black/Academia (Robbie Shilliam)
*The Challenge for Black Studies in the Neoliberal University (Kehinde Andrews)
*Open Initiatives for Decolonising the Curriculum (Pat Lockley)
*Decolonising Education: A Pedagogic Intervention (Carol Azumah Dennis)
*Understanding Eurocentrism as a Structural Problem of Undone Science (William Jamal Richardson)
 
As the book’s insightful Introduction states, "Taking colonialism as a global project as a starting point, it becomes difficult to turn away from the Western university as a key site through which colonialism—and colonial knowledge in particular—is produced, consecrated, institutionalized and naturalized." Offering resources for students and academics to challenge and resist colonialism inside and outside the classroom, Decolonizing the University provides the tools for radical change in educational disciplines, pedagogies, and institutions.  
 
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Deconstructing Disney
Martin McQuillan and Eleanor Byrne
Pluto Press, 1999

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Deepening Divides
How Physical Borders and Social Boundaries Delineate our World
Didier Fassin
Pluto Press, 2019
At a glance, 'borders' and 'boundaries' may seem synonymous. But in the real (geopolitical) world, they coexist as distinct, albeit overlapping entities: the former a state's delimitation of territory; the latter the social delineation of differences. The refugee crisis in Europe showed how racial and ethnic boundaries are often instrumentalised to justify the strengthening of state borders - regardless of the cost in human life. But there are other, less tragic, examples that illustrate this overlapping as well, and ultimately demonstrate that the oft-differentiated spheres of borders and boundaries are best understood through their relationship to one another. Deepening Divides explores this relationship from many distinct perspectives and national contexts, with case studies covering five continents and drawing on anthropology, gender studies, law, political science and sociology for a truly interdisciplinary collection.
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Democracy and Regulation
How the Public Can Govern Essential Services
Greg Palast, Theo MacGregor, and Jerrold Oppenheim
Pluto Press, 2002

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Democracy and Revolution
Latin America and Socialism Today
D. L. Raby
Pluto Press, 2006
Is socialism dead since the fall of the Soviet Union? What is the way forward for the Left? D. L. Raby argues that Cuba and, above all, Venezuela provide inspiration for antiglobalization and anticapitalist movements across the world. Another World Is Possible, but only through an effective political strategy to win power on a popular and democratic basis.



Raby argues passionately that the way forward for progressives is not the dogmatic formulae of the Old Left, nor in the spontaneous autonomism of Antonio Negri. Instead, it is to be found in broad popular movements with bold leadership. Examining key leaders, including Hugo Chávez and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, Raby shows that it is more necessary than ever to take power, peacefully where possible, but in all cases with the strength that comes from popular unity backed by force where necessary. In this way it is possible to build democratic power, which may or may not be socialist depending on one's definition, but which represent the real anti-capitalist alternative for the twenty-first century.

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The Democratisation of Disempowerment
The Problem of Democracy in the Third World
Jochen Hippler
Pluto Press, 1995

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The Development Practitioners' Handbook
Allan Kaplan
Pluto Press, 1996

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A Different Hunger
Writings on Black Resistance
A. Sivanandan
Pluto Press, 1991

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Digital Demagogue
Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter
Christian Fuchs
Pluto Press, 2018
We’re all familiar by now with the ways that Donald Trump uses digital media to communicate, from the ridiculous to the terrifying. This book digs deeper into the use of those tools in politics to show how they have facilitated the rise of authoritarianism, nationalism, and right-wing ideologies around the world. Christian Fuchs here applies an updated Marxist frame, along with insights drawn from the Frankfurt School, to show the pernicious role of social media in the hands of nationalist politicians, and the ways in which it has been used to spread right-wing ideology far and wide, and make it seem like an ordinary part of contemporary political discourse. Fuchs diagnoses this problem in stark terms, but he doesn’t stop there: he also lays out ways to fight it, and analyzes the prospects for pushing past capitalism and renewing the left.
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The Digital Party
Political Organisation and Online Democracy
Paolo Gerbaudo
Pluto Press, 2018
From the Pirate Parties in Northern Europe to Podemos in Spain and the 5-Star Movement in Italy, from the movements behind Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom, to Jean-Luc Melenchon's presidential bid in France, the last decade has witnessed the rise of a new blueprint for political organization: the digital party.

These new political formations tap into the potential of social media to gain consensus, and use online participatory platforms to include the rank-and-file. Paolo Gerbaudo looks at the restructuring of political parties and campaigns in the time of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and big data. Drawing on interviews with key political leaders and digital organizers, he argues that the digital party is very different from the class-based “mass party” of the industrial era, and offers promising new solutions to social polarization and the failures of liberal democracy today.
 
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Disarming Doomsday
The Human Impact of Nuclear Weapons since Hiroshima
Becky Alexis-Martin
Pluto Press, 2019
Since before the first atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima, the history of nuclear warfare has been tangled with the spaces and places of scientific research and weapons testing, armament and disarmament, pacifism and proliferation. Nuclear geography gives us the tools to understand these events as well as the extraordinary human cost of nuclear weapons. Disarming Doomsday explores the secret history of nuclear weapons by studying the places they build and tear apart, from Los Alamos to Hiroshima. It looks at the legacy of nuclear imperialism from weapons testing on Christmas Island and across the South Pacific, as well as the lasting harm this has caused to both indigenous communities and the soldiers that were ordered to conduct tests. Tying these complex geographies together for the first time, Disarming Doomsday takes us forward, describing how geographers and geotechnology continue to shape nuclear war and imagining ways to help prevent it in the future.
 
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Disaster Anarchy
Mutual Aid and Radical Action
Rhiannon
Pluto Press, 2022

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.

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Disasters and Social Reproduction
Crisis Response between the State and Community
Peer Illner
Pluto Press, 2020
Reductions in state spending have put significant strain on communities during disasters. When hurricanes, floods and earthquakes hit, the responsibility for emergency relief is shifted from the state onto civil society. Disasters and Social Reproduction builds upon Marxist-Feminist elaborations of unwaged forms of labor, arguing that social reproduction theory is best understood as a dynamic between the state, the market and civil society.

Following the long economic crisis of the 1970s, disaster relief has become increasingly reliant on the unwaged reproductive labor of ordinary people, allowing the US state to cut back on social spending, a shift that has fundamentally reconfigured the responsibilities of the state and civil society. As sea levels rise, climate change worsens and we see an increase in disaster relief led by communities, this analysis of the interrelations between state, society and grassroots initiatives, including Occupy Sandy and the American Black Cross, will prove indispensable.
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Discordant Development
Global Capitalism and the Struggle for Connection in Bangladesh
Katy Gardner
Pluto Press, 2012

What happens when a vast multinational mining company operates a gas plant situated close to four densely populated villages in rural Bangladesh? How does its presence contribute to local processes of ‘development’? And what do corporate claims of ‘community engagement’ involve? Drawing from author Katy Gardner’s longstanding relationship with the area, Discordant Development reveals the complex and contradictory ways that local people attempt to connect to, and are disconnected by, foreign capital.

Everyone has a story to tell: whether of dispossession and scarcity, the success of Corporate Social Responsibility, or imperialist exploitation and corruption. Yet as Gardner argues, what really matters in the struggles over resources is which of these stories are heard, and the power of those who tell them.

Based around the discordant narratives of dispossessed land owners, urban activists, mining officials and the rural landless, Discordant Development touches on some of the most urgent economic and political questions of our time, including resource ownership and scarcity, and the impact of foreign investment and industrialisation on global development.

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Discovering the Scottish Revolution 1692-1746
Neil Davidson
Pluto Press, 2003
This major new work of historical scholarship offers a groundbreaking reassessment of Scottish politics and society in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century that is set to become a standard work on the subject. Neil Davidson argues that Scotland experienced a revolution during this period that has rarely been recognised in the existing historiography.

Davidson explores the political and economic changes of these years, revealing how social and economic power was transferred from one class to another. He describes how Scotland was transformed from a backward and feudal economy to a new centre of emergent capitalism. He traces the economic and social crisis that led to Scotland's incorporation into the Union in 1707, but argues that the Union did not lead to the transformation of Scottish society. The decisive period was instead the aftermath of the last Jacobite revolt in 1746, whose failure was integral to the survival and consolidation of British, and ultimately global capitalism.

'His opinions are bound to cause controversy and discussion ... a good thing as Scottish history desperately needs the airing and voicing of new approaches.'
John R Young, Albion.

‘What is so good about Neil Davidson’s brave study is that he brings a Marxist perspective to bear on Scottish history in very clear and readable prose. Quotations and statistics drawn from uncannily wide reading will make this book of great value even to those who disagree with it.’
Angus Calder, author of Revolutionary Empire and Revolving Culture: Notes from the Scottish Republic
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Dispatches From Palestine
The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process
Graham Usher
Pluto Press, 1999

‘Usher ... does the best foreign on-the-spot reporting from Palestine.’ Edward Said, London Review of Books

‘The reader vicariously experiences what will become great moments of popular oral history that official historians will forget in the great scheme of things.’ Middle East International

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Do It Yourself
A Handbook For Changing Our World
Edited by Trapese Trapese
Pluto Press, 2007
Do you really want to change the world? If the answer is YES, then this book shows you how.



Leading a sustainable and truly radical life encompasses a whole variety of things that challenge the mainstream. This book shows how we can make real changes to the way we live. In simple steps, it describes how you can create sustainable and equitable ways of living that can help transform not just your own life, but the society around you.



The book weaves together analysis, stories, experiences, and practical guides, examining nine different areas where people are transforming their lives and society---right here and now.



Accessible and informative, this DIY handbook brings alive the rich potential of grassroots activism and shows how we can work together to create just, equitable, and sustainable societies.



Covering everything from cultural activism to health, autonomous spaces, food, alternative media, popular education, and direct action, it shows you how to:

set up a housing cooperative do a workshop on climate change build a passive solar heating system start an independent media project set up a social center make interventions in the urban landscape that are funny and inspiring and lots more!
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A Doctor in Galilee
The Life and Struggle of a Palestinian in Israel
Jonathan Cook
Pluto Press, 2008

Hatim Kanaaneh is a Palestinian doctor who has struggled for over 35 years to bring medical care to Palestinians in Galilee, against a culture of anti-Arab discrimination. This is the story of how he fought for the human rights of his patients and overcame the Israeli authorities' cruel indifference to their suffering.

Kanaaneh is a native of Galilee, born before the creation of Israel. He left to study medicine at Harvard, before returning to work as a public health physician with the intention of helping his own people. He discovered a shocking level of disease and malnutrition in his community and a shameful lack of support from the Israeli authorities. After doing all he could for his patients by working from inside the system, Kanaaneh set up The Galilee Society, an NGO working for equitable health, environmental and socio-economic conditions for Palestinian Arabs in Israel.

This is a brilliant memoir that shows how grass roots organisations can loosen the Zionist grip upon Palestinian lives.

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Don't Mention the War
Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media
David Miller
Pluto Press, 1994

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Dread Poetry and Freedom
Linton Kwesi Johnson and the Unfinished Revolution
David Austin
Pluto Press, 2018
In the 1970s and ’80s, Linton Kwesi Johnson was fighting neo-fascism and promoting socialism, and putting pen to paper to refute W. H. Auden’s claim that “poetry makes nothing happen.” Dread Poetry and Freedom explores Johnson’s work through the radical political and poetic traditions he engaged, reflecting poetry’s potential to bring about social transformation.
            Through an examination of the violence, musicality, and revolution of his poetry, David Austin brings Johnson’s cultural and philosophical influences alive. Encompassing reggae music, the Bible, Rastafari, and surrealism, socialism, and feminism, as well as the radical politics of Aimé Césaire, John La Rose, Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, and W. E. B. Du Bois, Johnson’s poetry reveals itself as an important site of diaspora politics and struggle.
            Probing the juncture at which Johnson’s poetry meets his politics, Dread Poetry and Freedom shows the significant role art can play in bringing about social change in times of dread.
 
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Dream Lovers
The Gamification of Relationships
Alfie Bown
Pluto Press, 2022

'An exciting, astute analysis of how our capacity for desire has been slotted into the grooves of digital capitalism, and made to work for profit - from porn to Pokémon' - Richard Seymour

We are in the middle of a 'desirevolution' - a fundamental and political transformation of the way we desire as human beings. Perhaps as always, new technologies - with their associated and inherited political biases - are organizing and mapping the future. What we don't seem to notice is that the primary way in which our lives are being transformed is through the manipulation and control of desire itself.

Our very impulses, drives and urges are 'gamified' to suit particular economic and political agendas, changing the way we relate to everything from lovers and friends to food and politicians. Digital technologies are transforming the subject at the deepest level of desire - re-mapping its libidinal economy - in ways never before imagined possible.

From sexbots to smart condoms, fitbits to VR simulators and AI to dating algorithms, the 'love industries' are at the heart of the future smart city and the social fabric of everyday life. This book considers these emergent technologies and what they mean for the future of love, desire, work and capitalism.

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Dream Zones
Anticipating Capitalism and Development in India
Jamie Cross
Pluto Press, 2014

Dream Zones explores the dreamed of and desired futures that constitute, sustain and disrupt capitalism in contemporary India.

Drawing on five years of research in and around India's Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the book follows the stories of regional politicians, corporate executives, rural farmers, industrial workers and social activists to show how the pursuit of growth, profit and development shapes the politics of industrialisation and liberalisation.

This book offers a timely reminder that the global economy is shaped by sentiment as much as reason and that un-realised expectations are the grounds on which new hopes for the future are sown.

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Dreams, Questions, Struggles
South Asian Women in Britain
Amrit Wilson
Pluto Press, 2006
From schoolgirls to matriarchs, single mothers to extended families, and businesswomen to factory workers, the experience of Asian women in Britain today is polarised by class and religion.

This book explores the lives and struggles of two generations of British Asian women to present a political account of their experiences: personal and public, individual and collective, their struggles take on power structures within the family, the community and, on occasion, the British state.

Combining their personal testimony within a theoretical framework, Amrit Wilson locates their experiences in the wider context of global and regional politics. She examines what impact the feminist movement has had on their lives, and explores issues such as domestic violence, Asian marriages, representations of Asian women, mental disturbance and suicide.
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Drugs in Afghanistan
Opium, Outlaws and Scorpion Tales
David Macdonald
Pluto Press, 2007

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and heroin. This book explores the devastating impact that the drugs trade has had on the Afghan people.

Author David Macdonald has worked as a drugs advisor to the UN. Based on his extensive experience, this book breaks down the myths surrounding the cultivation and consumption of drugs, providing a detailed analysis of the history of drug use within the country. He examines the impact of over 25 years of continuous conflict, and shows how poverty and instability has led to an increase in drugs consumption. He also considers the recent rise in the use of pharmaceutical drugs, resulting in dangerous chemical cocktails and analyses the effect of Afghanistan's drug trade on neighbouring countries.

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The Dutch Atlantic
Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation
Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen
Pluto Press, 2011

The Dutch Atlantic interrogates the Dutch involvement in Atlantic slavery and assesses the historical consequences of this for contemporary European society.

Kwame Nimako and Glenn Willemsen show how the slave trade and slavery intertwined economic, social and cultural elements, including nation-state formation in the Netherlands and across Europe. They explore the mobilisation of European populations in the implementation of policies that facilitated Atlantic slavery and examine how European countries created and expanded laws that perpetuated colonisation.

Addressing key themes such as the incorporation of the formerly enslaved into post-slavery states and contemporary collective efforts to forget and/or remember slavery and its legacy in the Netherlands, this is an essential text for students of European history and postcolonial studies.

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front cover of Dying for an iPhone
Dying for an iPhone
Apple, Foxconn and the Lives of China's Workers
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Pluto Press, 2020


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