Featured image for “Breaking the Class Ceiling”

Breaking the Class Ceiling

October 6, 2021
My Oxfam colleague and regular FP2P contributor Max Lawson (right) sends out a weekly summary of his reading on inequality (he leads Oxfam’s advocacy work on it). They’re great, and Max has opened his mailing list up to the anyone who’s interested – just email max.lawson@oxfam.org, with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line. Here’s his latest effort (and thanks to Rakesh Rajani for suggesting the
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Featured image for “Book Review: From Anger to Action Inside the Global Movements for Social Justice, Peace, and a Sustainable Planet, by Harriet Lamb and Ben Jackson”

Book Review: From Anger to Action Inside the Global Movements for Social Justice, Peace, and a Sustainable Planet, by Harriet Lamb and Ben Jackson

September 23, 2021
I’ve come to recognize a certain format for ‘inspirational books for activists’: big sweeping statement about What Needs to Happen, then what I call ‘thousand points of light’ – breathless accounts of some activist-led efforts to achieve those goals. On to the call to arms, invoking political will. Job Done. I must be getting (even more) jaded. What’s wrong with
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Featured image for “Inequality is the most powerful explanation for different Covid death rates – a summary of the evidence from The Economist”

Inequality is the most powerful explanation for different Covid death rates – a summary of the evidence from The Economist

August 3, 2021
Powerful piece in this week’s Economist. I’ve added links to the various pieces of research it cites ‘Seventeen months into the COVID-19 pandemic, plenty of questions about the catastrophe remain unanswered. It is still unclear how SARS-COV-2 originated, for instance. Another puzzle is why some areas have had less destructive epidemics than others. Why has Florida had fewer deaths per person from
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Why Oxfam is talking about race

July 28, 2021
Guest post by Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive, Oxfam GB In the past few weeks Oxfam’s work on anti-racism has attracted some criticism. Various commentators have characterised it as “woke posturing” or “anti-white.”   I think they have got it wrong. Let me explain why tackling racism is an integral part of Oxfam’s mission.   It is almost 80 years since a small group of volunteers,
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Featured image for “Not All in This Together: How Covid has driven up inequality in Supermarket Supply Chains”

Not All in This Together: How Covid has driven up inequality in Supermarket Supply Chains

July 20, 2021
I was speaking on a UN panel on Decent Work last week, so thought I’d better catch up with the latest Oxfam report, Not in This Together, written by Anouk Franck and Art Prapha. It provides a great case study of Covid as an ‘engine of inequality’ (and of how to write a research-based advocacy report – killer facts galore,
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Featured image for “What is happening in Colombia? New roots and familiar responses to national protests”

What is happening in Colombia? New roots and familiar responses to national protests

May 13, 2021
One of my LSE activism students asked if she could highlight the horrible response to popular protests currently going on in her native Colombia. Guest post by Daniela Duran  and Lorenzo Uribe   Colombia is entering its third week of protests and, although a lot of what is happening is new to the country, the political response to it has
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Is the UK diverting Covid vaccines from poorer countries?

March 25, 2021
Guest post by Rory Horner (University of Manchester) and Ken Shadlen (LSE) Various UK media reports have blamed lower than expected supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine from India for a slowing of the UK’s vaccination programme, especially delaying immunisation of the under-50s. Although five million doses of vaccines produced by the Serum Institute of India were dispatched from India to
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Featured image for “‘El desarrollo’: un recorrido por el arte de desafiar al poder”

‘El desarrollo’: un recorrido por el arte de desafiar al poder

March 24, 2021
Read this in English here. Desafiar al poder fundamentalmente implica cambiar nuestra mirada. La manera en que actuamos en nuestros mundos depende de cómo los vemos, por lo tanto cambiar nuestra forma de ver se convierte en un paso esencial para transformar nuestro actuar. Si no exploramos diversas formas de expresar(nos), de ver(nos) y de (re)crear(nos), limitamos nuestras posibilidades colectivas.
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Featured image for “What can we learn from 200 case studies of ’emergent agency in a time of Covid’?”

What can we learn from 200 case studies of ’emergent agency in a time of Covid’?

March 17, 2021
The ‘Emergent Agency in a Time of Covid-19‘ research project is churning out some interesting findings and a flurry of webinars. Here Niranjan Nampoothiri and Filippo Artuso give some headline findings on the 200 case studies Niranjan has analysed and coded. We aim to publish the database later this year. Niranjan will present his findings on 6th April, 12.30 UTC
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Featured image for “Is Campaigning on Inequality harder? Here’s what some of the world’s inequality activists said”

Is Campaigning on Inequality harder? Here’s what some of the world’s inequality activists said

February 10, 2021
In the run up to digital Davos this year, I got into a conversation with Jenny Ricks of the Fight Inequality Alliance about the huge growth in campaigning on inequality. On the one hand, inequality is clearly an important and pressing issue (I won’t rehearse the arguments here). But it’s also really multi-faceted – wealth, income, but also gender, ethnicity,
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Featured image for “Imagining the world anew: gender equality and women’s rights – Part 2”

Imagining the world anew: gender equality and women’s rights – Part 2

February 1, 2021
On Friday Nikki van der Gaag analysed the disastrous impact of the pandemic on women’s rights. Today she asks what would it mean to build an economy that centres care, not carelessness? Back in August last year, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the only way viruses have been vanquished is via “permanent adjustments” to economics and societies, and added:  ‘We
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Why the Inequality Virus should be the talk of Davos this week

January 26, 2021
Survey results
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