GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
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Finding the cracks in globalisation
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends an outstanding analysis of global elites that punctures the illusion of their international immutability
PEAS IN A POD: El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, of Palestinian extraction, with, at the time, US national security advisor John Bolton ‘eager to identify new opportunities for foreign investment, improve security, counter Chinese predatory practices and increase support for Interim Venezuelan president Guaido,’ March 2019
[Office of US National Security Advisor/CC]
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
HENRY BELL is fascinated by the underlying curiosities and contradictions of one of the great poets of the Mediterranean
DAVID RENTON recommends a books that explores the ways in which disabled people are made to feel both of and not part of this world
Rooted Globalism: Arab-Latin American Business Elites and the Politics of Global Imaginaries
Kevin Funk, Indiana University Press, £27
WHY do we care so much about the poor? Why do we obsess about inequality from our privileged, superior positions of scholarship and journalism by wallowing in their misery?
It is of course a form of absolution, penance if you will, from within a liberal caste that has clearly lost its grip on the bedrock of sociology, namely: an analysis based on class struggle.
As author Kevin Funk notes, postmodern and postcolonial approaches with their focus on subaltern agency have largely displaced Marxist-inspired analysis as the standard-bearer for “radical” critique in the social sciences.
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GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes, and recommends a a candid, evidence-based record of Britain’s role in the slaughter visited by Israel upon the Palestinians
RICHARD CLARKE recommends a hugely valuable text for those seeking theoretical analysis and practical action to defend public services
CARLOS MARTINEZ welcomes the publication of the writings of the great Palestinian author, political theorist and spokesman for the PFLP
GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a book that examines the ‘invisible’ cultural cross-fertilisation that has bypassed the globalisation peddled by the West