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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Lifestyle Revolution: How taste changed class in late 20th-century Britain, Manchester
University Press, 21 February 2023
by Ben Highmore
This paper gives an account of the ideas, moods, and archival material that influenced the author’s recent monograph on taste and class. Rather than approaching taste as the fixed expression of a pre-decided class category, Highmore approaches it as something productive of class experience. He explains how his approach to the work – reading the material culture of the 1960s and 70s alongside contemporary novels and sociological journalism – reveals a self-consciousness about consumerism, wealth, and class that emerged in that period and is still with us today.
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Japanese Folk Toys in (different) times of crisis. A cultural studies approach to Gangu
from Japan
by Silvina Silva Aras
This paper examines the histories of Japanese folk toys and their place in contemporary Japanese culture. The author details her personal interest in the toys, the scarcity of English- language materials about them – which led to her choice to learn Japanese – and the process of contacting artisanal designers to learn more about them during a trip to Japan. The piece outlines the symbolism of a number of Japanese toys, in particular Kokeshis and Darumas, and reviews the existing literature on their conceptual attributes and uses. Through conversation with artisanal designers, Silva Aras draws out a number of challenges facing craftmanship today and posits avenues for further research on the topic.
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