The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection that has been chosen by one of our Subject Consultants. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.

August’s book of the month was selected by Sarah Rhodes, Subject Consultant for International Development, Forced Migration, and African & Commonwealth Studies Subject Consultant.

No Go World: How fear is redrawing our maps and infecting our politics

Andersson, Ruben

University of California Press, 2019

Available as an eBook or a hard copy can be found in the SSL at JA76.AND 2019

Why was it chosen?

It was chosen as it explores ‘how risk, danger and fear are ‘remapping’ the world with dire ethical and practical consequences’ (Journal of Refugee Studies).

Book Overview

War-torn deserts, jihadist killings, trucks weighted down with contraband and migrants—from the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands to the Sahara, images of danger depict a new world disorder on the global margins. With vivid detail, Ruben Andersson traverses this terrain to provide a startling new understanding of what is happening in remote “danger zones.” Instead of buying into apocalyptic visions, Andersson takes aim at how Western states and international organizations conduct military, aid, and border interventions in a dangerously myopic fashion, further disconnecting the world’s rich and poor. Using drones, proxy forces, border reinforcement, and outsourced aid, risk-obsessed powers are helping to remap the world into zones of insecurity and danger. The result is a vision of chaos crashing into fortified borders, with national and global politics riven by fear. Andersson contends that we must reconnect and snap out of this dangerous spiral, which affects us whether we live in Texas or Timbuktu. Only by developing a new cartography of hope can we move beyond the political geography of fear that haunts us.

Reviews

‘This beautifully written book takes us on a journey through the distanced interventions of the war on terror showing how, in these global times, efforts to push risk ever further away end up bringing it closer creating the basis for a no go world. Full of ideas and stories, and with hope as well as pessimism, it is the sort of book that needs to be read slowly.’

Mary Kaldor, Professor of Global Governance, London School of Economics

‘One of the best books available on what is commonly perceived in the West as the refugee crisis but is in fact a world rent by fear and conflict, with refugees as one symptom.’

Craig Calhoun, University Professor of Social Sciences, Arizona State University, and former Director of the London School of Economic

How can I access it?

This title is available in hard copy at the SSL at shelfmark JA76.AND 2019. If you’ve booked a study space in the library you can find it on our shelves, alternatively, if you can borrow books from our library, place a Click & Collect request for it. It is also available on SOLO for Oxford University staff and students to access remotely using your SSO.

What would your SSL Book of the Month be? Do you have a favourite book in our collection? If so, we would love to know what it is. Add a comment below or email us.