Resisting a Carceral World: Abolitionism and Gender-Based Violence
by Baljit Kaur and Radhika Pradhan
This working paper reflects on Resisting a Carceral World, a five-part workshop series (April–May 2025) organised through the Abolitionist Book Club to explore abolitionist responses to gender-based violence. The paper considers the limits of criminal justice approaches and introduces transformative justice as a community-based alternative. Drawing on participant discussions, the facilitators of the workshops present recurring questions and concerns about accountability, survivor safety, power dynamics, and the burden of care within communities. While acknowledging the tensions and uncertainties surrounding non-carceral responses, it argues that creating collective spaces for dialogue, critical reflection, and small-scale action is a necessary step toward building sustainable, transformative approaches to ending gender-based violence.
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Giornata contro 41 bis: Activism, Resistance, and the ARCI Network
by Dr Nadia (Nedia) Buyse and Dr David Deacon
This paper surveys the actions undertaken by Circola Arci, an Italian anti-fascist network of cultural venues and practitioners, during a day of action against the ‘41bis’ supermax prisons. This day of action was undertaken in solidarity with imprisoned anarchist Alfredo Cospito. The authors interviewed Arci organisers, venues and artists about how solidarity with Cospito aligned to their own ethos and ideologies. They outline some of the factors influencing Arci’s renewed cultural and political importance in the 2020s.
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The Alternative and the Planetary as Told Through La Janda Wetland (Cádiz,
Spain)
by Malcolm James
This paper develops the concepts of the ‘alternative’, from Raymond Williams, and the ‘planetary’, from Édouard Glissant, to help attune the former towards the ecological. It takes La Janda wetland, in the south of Spain, as a case study and extends that study through the story of a local wildlife expert, Paco Jimenez. James understands Jimenez’s sustained knowledge and care for the wetland as a form of alternative ecological knowledge. He argues that it is vital to cultivate such knowledge alongside activist campaigns to restore La Janda.
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