500 Years of Indigenous Resistance

Gord Hill

The history of the colonization of the Americas by Europeans is often portrayed as a mutually beneficial process, in which ”civilization” was brought to the Natives, who in return shared their land and cultures. A more critical history might present it as a genocide in which Indigenous peoples were helpless victims, overwhelmed by European military power. In reality, neither of these views is correct. This book is more than a history of European colonization of the Americas. In this… (more information)

A Legacy of Love

Remembering Muriel Duckworth, Her Later Years, 1996-2009

Marion Douglas Kerans

Muriel Duckworth passed away August 22, 2009 in her one hundred and first year. In the weeks that followed memorial services were held in Austin Quebec, Halifax, Montréal, Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. People from across Canada recognized that her passing marked the end of an era and they wanted to not only remember her but to come together to be a part of her ongoing legacy of love. This book brings together stories from Muriel’s family and close friends from the past dozen years… (more information)

A New Notion: Two Works by C.L.R. James

The Invading Socialist Society and Every Cook Can Govern

Noel Ignatiev, C.L.R. James

C.L.R. James was a leading figure in the independence movement in the West Indies, and the black and working-class movements in both Britain and the United States. As a major contributor to Marxist and revolutionary theory, his project was to discover, document, and elaborate the aspects of working-class activity that constitute the revolution in today’s world. In this volume, Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White, provides an extensive introduction to James’ life and thought… (more information)

About Canada: Health & Illness

Dennis Raphael

Most Canadians believe that their experiences of health and illness are shaped by luck, treatment options and lifestyle choices. Government, public health units and various disease associations all reinforce this perception by continually extolling lifestyle choices and genetic research as the solution to our illnesses. About Canada: Health and Illness tells a different story. This book argues that it is the social determinants of health, imposed on us by the ‘market’, that dictate the… (more information)

Beyond the Profits System

Possibilities for the Post-Capitalist Era

Harry Shutt

While many have claimed that no one could have foreseen the financial crisis, Harry Shutt was predicting just such a collapse as far back as 1998 in his book, The Trouble With Capitalism. In Beyond the Profits System, Shutt offers a radically different analysis to the mainstream, establishment commentators who have struggled to come to terms with the crisis. Arguing that we need to move away from a system based on compulsive addiction to growth and obsession with the profit motive, towards a collectivist… (more information)

Class Dynamics of Agrarian Change

Henry Bernstein

Agrarian political economy investigates the social relations of production and reproduction, property and power in agrarian formations, and how they change. Using Marx’s theory of capitalism the book argues that class dynamics should be the starting point of any analysis of agrarian change. As an introduction to agrarian political economy, this book includes explanations and applications of its key concepts, a glossary of analytical terms, and a historical approach and framework for examining… (more information)

Drive-by Saviours

Chris Benjamin

Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference. He wanted to help people; he’d always believed that as social worker he would be able to make a difference in people’s lives. But after six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime… (more information)

Great Multicultural North

A Canadian Primer for Hosers, Immigrants and Socialists

Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow

Canada is a funny place, with funny people and an even funnier system of government. In fact, according to ComCan, a division of the Intellectual Property branch of the Department of Trade, Industry and Digging Deep Holes into the Earth, about 4.16536356 per cent of our GDP is a direct or indirect result of our sense of humour. In addition, the ability of Canadians to laugh at themselves is one reason this country could lead the planet past ethnic, political and economic divisions, according to… (more information)

In and Out of Crisis

The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, Leo Panitch

While many are wondering if another world is possible, few are mapping out avenues to a post-capitalist future. In this groundbreaking analysis of the meltdown, renowned political economists Albo, Gindin and Panitch locate the roots of the crisis in the inner logic of capitalism itself and illuminate how the era of neoliberal free markets has been undergirded by massive state intervention. The authors argue that it’s time to start thinking about transformative alternatives to capitalism &mdash… (more information)

Islamophobia and the Question of Muslim Identity

The Politics of Difference and Solidarity

Evelyn Leslie Hamdon

This book is a critical analysis of a Muslim group in Canada that has been working to challenge Islamophobia in their community. An important part of their anti-racist work involves dealing with the internal conflicts and dilemmas created by the differences among the members of the group. The coalition has been successful in developing several educational initiatives, in part, because they have been able to negotiate internal differences in ways that do not fragment the group. Through discussions… (more information)

Leaving the Streets

Stories of Canadian Youth

Alexa Carson, Phillip Clement, Katie Crane, Jeff Karabanow

Youth between sixteen and twenty-four are considered the fastest growing segment of the homeless population in Canada. While much has been written about street engagement and street culture, little attention has been paid to how youth move away from the street. Giving prominence to the voices of the street youth themselves, Voices from the Street explores the attempts of street youth to exit street life, examining the motivations and challenges, as well as the supports and barriers that aid and… (more information)

Maternity Rolls

Pregnancy, Childbirth and Disability

Heather Kuttai

Heather Kuttai is a 40-year-old white, heterosexual woman. She is married and is the mother of two children. Living in a quiet, middle-class neighbourhood, her life is, in many ways, seemingly the quintessential picture of what many consider to be traditional. However, her life is not as conventional as it appears: she is a paraplegic and uses a wheelchair for mobility. Her disability dramatically changes the picture. Much of the writing about the experiences of women and mothers excludes the stories… (more information)

Missing Women, Missing News

Covering Crisis in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

David Hugill

Missing Women, Missing News examines newspaper coverage of the arrest and trial of Robert Pickton, the man charged with murdering 26 street-level sex workers from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It demonstrates how news narratives obscured the complex matrix of social and political conditions that made it possible for so many women to simply ‘disappear’ from a densely populated urban neighborhood without provoking an aggressive response by the state. Grounded in a theory of ideology… (more information)

Mr. Big

Exposing Undercover Investigations in Canada

Joan Brockman, Kouri T. Keenan

”Mr. Big” is a sting operation designed to obtain a confession and other evidence from a suspect targeted by undercover police officers posing as members of the criminal underworld. In a typical scenario, undercover operatives convince the suspects that they are big-time criminals, offer them various amounts of money and other incentives to help make their legal problems go away. In order to evaluate the legitimacy of this police practice, Keenan and Brockman survey over 80 cases of… (more information)

My Baby Rides the Short Bus

The Unabashedly Human Experience of Raising Kids with Disabilities

Edited by Yantra Bertelli, Jennifer Silverman, Sarah Talbot

In lives where there is a new diagnosis or drama every day, the stories in this collection provide parents of “special needs” kids with a welcome chuckle, a rock to stand on, and a moment of reality held far enough from the heart to see clearly. Featuring works by “alternative” parents who have attempted to move away from mainstream thought—or remove its influence altogether—this anthology, taken as a whole, carefully considers the implications of parenting while… (more information)

Poverty, Regulation & Social Justice

Readings on the Criminalization of Poverty

Edited by Diane Crocker, Val Marie Johnson

Emerging from a public colloquium on the criminalization of poverty, this volume critically interrogates how state and private practices have increasingly come to over-regulate people with severely limited economic resources, and understands this regulation as part of the dynamics of liberal capitalism. Exploring issues such as homelessness, social assistance and single mothers, and written from a diversity of perspectives from academics to frontline workers, policy-makers and those affected first… (more information)

Race and Well-Being

The Lives, Hopes and Activism of African Canadians

Akua Benjamin, David Este, Carl James, Bethan Lloyd, Wanda Thomas Bernard, Tana Turner

Through in-depth qualitative and quantitative research with African Canadians in three Canadian cities — Calgary, Toronto and Halifax — this book explores how experiences of racism, combined with other social and economic factors, affect the health and well-being of African Canadians. With a special interest in how racial stereotyping impacts Black men and boys, this book shares stories of racism and violence and explores how experiences and interpretations of, and reactions to, racism… (more information)

Re:Imagining Change

How to Use Story-based Strategy to Win Campaigns, Build Movements, and Change the World

Doyle Canning, Patrick Reinsborough

Re:Imagining Change provides resources, theory, hands-on tools and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change makers. This unique book explores how culture, media, memes, and narrative intertwine with social change strategies, and offers practical methods to amplify progressive causes in the popular culture. Re:Imagining Change is an inspirational inside look at the trailblazing methodology developed by the non-profit strategy and training organization, smartMeme… (more information)

Rumours of a Moral Economy

Christopher Lind

Do economies have ethics? Bringing together the work of historians, economists, social theorists and ethicists, Christopher Lind explores the rise of the capitalist market system and its global spread, and details how and why the economy became separated from ethics. Lind convincingly argues that although economics and ethics are understood to be separate at the level of ideas, in practice, economies are deeply embedded in society, relationships and morality. Contrary to the dominant academic paradigm… (more information)

Socialist Register 2011

The Crisis This Time

Edited by Greg Albo, Vivek Chibber, Leo Panitch

The challenge for socialist analysis is to reveal both the nature of the contradictions of capitalism in the neo-liberal era of globalized finance, and their consequences in our time. Crises need to be understood as turning points that open up opportunities. What implications does the crisis this time have in terms of capitalist economic and political restructuring? What possibilities do these open up for the revival of capital accumulation and the renewal of its political forms? Does… (more information)

The Aid Triangle

Recognising the Human Dynamics of Dominance, Justice and Identity

Stuart C. Carr, Malcolm MacLachlan, Eilish McAuliffe

The Aid Triangle focuses on the human dynamics of international aid, from impoverished farmers to aid workers, donor diplomats to multilateral bureaucrats, celebrities to activists, and to the unconcerned and uninvolved. This timely work illustrates how the aid system incorporates power relationships, and therefore relationships of dominance. It explores how such dominance can be both a cause and a consequence of injustice and how the experience of injustice is both a challenge and a stimulus to… (more information)

The Economics Anti-Textbook

A Critical Thinker’s Guide to Microeconomics

Rod Hill, Tony Myatt

Mainstream textbooks present economics as an objective science free from value judgments. The Anti-Textbook argues that this is a myth–one that is not only dangerously misleading but also bland and boring. Challenging the mainstream textbooks’ assumptions, arguments, models and evidence, this book puts the controversy and excitement back into economics to reveal a fascinating and a vibrant field of study–one which is more an ‘art of persuasion’ than it is a science.… (more information)

The Nature of Human Brain Work

An Introduction to Dialectics

Joseph Dietzgen, Larry Gambone

Called by Marx “The Philosopher of Socialism,” Joseph Dietzgen was a pioneer of dialectical materialism and a fundamental influence on anarchist and socialist thought who we would do well not to forget. Dietzgen examines what we do when we think. He discovered that thinking is a process involving two opposing processes: generalization, and specialization. All thought is therefore a dialectical process. Our knowledge is inherently limited however, which makes truth relative and… (more information)

Zapatistas

Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global

Alex Khasnabish

In 1994 a guerilla army of Indigenous Mayan peasants in Southeast Mexico emerged and declared ‘Enough!’ to 500 years of colonialism, racism, exploitation, oppression and genocide. The effects of the Zapatista uprising were profound and would be felt beyond the borders of Mexico. At a time when state-sponsored socialism had all but vanished and other elements of the left appeared defeated in the face of neoliberalism’s ascendancy, the Zapatista uprising sparked a powerful new wave… (more information)