Social & Political Reform

Sometimes vilified, often misunderstood, rarely taught in universities, anarchism is a political philosophy and social movement that's far removed from today's mainstream politics. But it was and remains a powerful motivator. Political theorist Ruth Kinna talks us through the best books to read to get a better understanding of anarchism.

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same," wrote Michel Foucault; a brilliant transdisciplinarian whose work spanned philosophy, history, social theory and literary criticism. He mined past ways of thinking so as to see present-day assumptions and practices afresh, explains the philosopher Gary Gutting.

Utopia is out of fashion because efforts to set one up normally end disastrously, says author Ellen Wayland-Smith, whose forefathers set up a utopian religious community in the 1840s in Oneida, New York. And yet, they offer a critique of society that, even today, can't be ignored. She recommends four books on literary utopias and one on real-life attempts to set up idealized communities in the United States.

The futurist says work in futures is about patterns, not predictions. He recommends five books about the future that look backwards as well as forwards.

The feminist author chooses liberating literature for women, from Virginia Woolf to Erica Jong. She says that men still don’t share equal responsibility in the home, and that life after divorce can be easier.

Andy Beckett’s choices point to a welcome reassessment of the 1970s, that much-maligned 'gothic' decade, and sweep from London to Los Angeles by way of Malcolm Bradbury and John le Carré

The late China specialist and UCLA professor Richard Baum said that he sometimes felt genuine admiration for China’s technocratic leaders. Other days, he shook his head at their obsessive intransigence and China's endemic political insecurity

As American congressman Keith Ellison—the first Muslim elected to Congress—enters the race to chair the Democratic National Committee, reread this interview on the cause he stands for: progressivism — and the best books to read to fully understand it.

Paul Kingsnorth, co-founder of the Dark Mountain project, urges the need for uncivilisation: the process of getting beyond our human assumptions, such as the myth of unfailing linear progress. It is about looking at humanity in the wider context of the whole planet, and the imminent ecological crisis.

For thousands of years, human societies have tried to regulate sexual activity. The author of Sex and Punishment tells us why this should be so, and how what’s permissible has varied according to time and place.