February 02, 2012
Southbank Centre
Paul Mason: Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere
This event has sold out but the main panel discussion of the first part of the evening will be screened live into the foyer where the (unticketed) second session will take place.
PART 1, 7-8.15pm:
An evening with Paul Mason and guests will start in the Purcell Room with a conversation between Paul, economist Costas Lapavitsas, journalist and union organiser Ewa Jasiewicz and author and theorist Mark Fisher. Katharine Viner, deputy editor of the Guardian, will be chairing this discussion.
This part of the evening has sold out but will be screened into the foyer where Part 2 will take place.
PART 2, 8.30-9.30pm:
The second session will involve two conversations, one focusing on protest and the other on the Arab Spring and women.
Talking about protest will be journalist Dan Hancox, author of Kettled Youth, writer James Butler and Mark Fisher. Chaired by writer and campaigner Eleanor Mae O'Hagan.
Meanwhile Paul Mason will be in conversation with academic Emma Dowling and journalist Rachel Shabi. Chaired by Bidisha, author of the forthcoming Beyond the Wall: Writing a Path Through Palestine.
Please note that due to personal reasons, Costas Lapavitsas has not been able to take part in the second session, so there will now be no discussion on the economy.
Tickets are £10, available from the Southbank Centre website, with a 50% concession for students.
In association with New Left Project, Resonance FM and Book Bloc.
Blog
"A loss of fear and a loss of apathy": Paul Mason appears on Frost Over The World
Is Paul Mason "an old testament, doom-laden prophet"? That was the impression Sir David Frost got from Mason's new book, Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere, but the BBC economics editor begs to differ. Rather, he has been inspired by seeing a young generation "unplug the earbuds of the iPod and listen to what's going on", taking to the streets in the cause of social, political and economic change. In an interview with Sir David for Frost over the World on Al-Jazeera, Mason said that "a loss of fear and a loss of apathy" amongst protestors—particularly a core of educated, networked young graduates—who have "had their future cancelled" was what has stimulated anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political protests across the world.
Sharp ideas skewed by ideology: Ian Birrell finds Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere hard to swallow
Paul Mason is straightjacketed by his own ideological leanings, according to Ian Birrell in the Observer, and this leads him to seriously misattribute the causes of the Arab Spring and the "amazing events" of the last year.
Despite his "undoubted reporting skills" and "sharp ideas", Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere is, according to Birrell, fatally flawed in its failure to acknowledge that the legacies of neo-liberal market reforms worldwide are not precarious economic uncertainties and the impoverishment of workforces in the west, but "global rises in living standards, health and lifestyles unmatched in history."
Euphoria and doom: Andy Beckett reviews Paul Mason's Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere
Paul Mason's new book offers a ambitious tour around the uprisings and revolutions that have followed the global financial crisis, according the Andy Beckett's review of Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere. But despite the difficulties of accurately summarising such a fast pace of political change — "Revolutions ... can make fools of excited writers as well as complacent politicians", according to Beckett — the book offers a strong analysis, avoiding truisms and examining the "paradox" of a technologically advanced anti-capitalist revolt.
How do you write an instant book about something as fast-moving and diffuse, as half-finished and unpredictable, as historically pivotal or, possibly, trivial, as the sudden surge of protest around the world since 2010? The most up-to-date pages of this slim, ambitious volume are dated 26 October 2011 – almost three months ago; a small eternity in some of the feverish and ongoing political stories it covers ...
Is there much value in describing again the demonstrations, encampments and activist movements already covered, seemingly exhaustively, by the traditional and new media over the last two years? The quality of Mason's observation and storytelling quickly dispels any such doubts.