• The Braid of the Landworker’s Alliance UK

    The Braid of the Landworker’s Alliance UK

    Once upon a time, simple bands of hunter-gatherers roamed the earth. But then BANG! Agriculture came onto the scene. A Revolution! With it the grain surpluses upon which Empires were built… So the story goes… We say our human ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Then came the farmers and ploughmen, enabling a surplus upon which new divisions…

  • Notes of Covid as approach end of 2021

    “The development of a safe, effective and cheap vaccine, however, is only a first step towards community-wide control. Epidemiological, economic and motivational issues are at least as important as technological ones.” Nature, 1985 Vaccine implementation defines the efficacy of vaccines role in influencing a pandemic. How, when, to whom, by whom, where, why, timescale are…

  • Europeans and Omicron: The Children of Hercules

    Europeans and Omicron: The Children of Hercules

    Published in Gods & Radicals Press: This pandemic isn’t a random mutation of Nature. It’s a living product of imperial imagination In Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, I combed through 12,000 years of evidence on how people have related to ‘Nature’. Notably, a key shift toward a binary between people and ‘Nature’ was the ‘othering’…

  • Sewage Scenarios

    The #SewageScandal (in the UK) is both entirely predictable and entirely unavoidable given the status quo. It’s the inevitable conclusion of the current scenario we are moving toward. Let me explain: A couple of years ago I was hired to empirically create long-term scenarios for water management in Southeast England, paid for by Southern Water…

  • Living with our (pre) histories

    Living with our (pre) histories

    Once upon a time, there were simple hunter gatherers who survived day-to-day. Then someone invented agriculture and humans became farmers. Farming allowed humans to become sedentary, store grains and accumulate a surplus. This enabled humans to urbanise, build cities and create states. Civilisation was born. Rulers were also born to protect this social evolution of…

  • To be or not to be a man

    To be or not to be a man

    When Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks to be or not be it is as part of a drama about the entanglement between politics and personal lived experience. When we use a categorising word, usually a noun, we imply we know something about what we are speaking of. For example if I were talking about my brother I…

  • Our Lives Pivot on Origin Stories – Reading Circle

    Our Lives Pivot on Origin Stories – Reading Circle

    I used to wonder why superhero franchises spend so much time on origin stories. The focus on an individual’s trauma at the expense of attending to the social context. The time spent on flashbacks. Entire movies given over to the dawn of a hero. The answer I think is that these origin stories create a…

  • Introduction to Regenerative Agriculture

    “In just over a decade regenerative agriculture has garnered a lot of attention with land-use stakeholders in the Global North. Especially in the food, farming, and environmental sectors. The concept of ‘regenerative’ has also grown beyond reference to agricultural systems and is seen as being the concept-in-waiting for upgrading ideas of sustainability and resilience (Wahl).…

  • How To Count

    How To Count

    A short extract from my thesis on Hunting in Northern Cyprus, pages 155-162. Whilst I talk here about counting hunters and hunting, the same approach to critical and analytical thinking used below can be used when counting populations of anything or anyone from potatoes to dragonflies, from patients to priests. I was sitting opposite Hasan,…

  • The Plutocratic Platform State

    The new concept needed is the Platform State. Take England. A year of pandemic lockdowns, exacerbated by a failed test and trace system and an underresourced NHS. For those of you who pay attention to the inherent logic of political narrative in England and how its plays out on the ground, you will be most…

  • Nayland Rock

    Nayland Rock

    It was the summer after the pandemic first hit. We had been told to only meet outside. I lived in Margate. A coastal town sprawling across the northern shores of the long lost Isle of Thanet. My friend Joe had responded to the news of needing to meet outside by inviting me to learn to…

  • After the Pandemic, A Living Nightmare?

    After the Pandemic, A Living Nightmare?

    In a posthumous essay David Graeber opens: “At some point in the next few months, the crisis will be declared over, and we will be able to return to our “nonessential” jobs. For many, this will be like waking from a dream. The media and political classes will definitely encourage us to think of it…

  • Capital 4 People: Dissolving Capitalism through Democratizing Capital

    Back in January 25, 2018 I published this blog on ‘How can everyone take over the world?’ and ‘Where can I ethically invest?’ An idea that emerged through conversation with Prof. Mike Fischer in 2017 and in reply to Laura BC’s questions. In light of the amazing developments of reddit users vs hedgefunds I thought…

  • The Futility and Power of Cleaning a Landscape

    The Futility and Power of Cleaning a Landscape

    Published in Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. This paper investigates why the culling of corvids in Northern Cyprus continues despite it being recognised by those that do it as ineffective. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews and archival research were conducted with a range of people involved in the management and practice of culling. The analysis…

  • Catchment Futures – Project Report

    Catchment Futures – Project Report

    The project was led by researchers at the Kent Interdisciplinary Centre for Spatial Studies, University of Kent working in conjunction with Southern Water Services Ltd – the project’s sponsor – and the Medway Catchment Partnership, a key beneficiary of this research. More generally, the research was intended to inform the development of integrated approaches to…