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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

not-for-profit - a workers'co-op - committed to social justice | 96 Bold Street, Liverpool L1 4HY - 0151 708 7270

The Radical Bookstore: Counterspace for Social Movements

by Kimberley Kinder - £20.99  University of Minnesota Press (2021)
paperback    ISBN 13: 9781517909185 | ISBN 10: 151790918x

How does social change happen? It requires an identified problem, an impassioned and committed group, a catalyst, and a plan.
 
In this deeply researched consideration of seventy-seven stores and establishments, Kimberley Kinder argues that activists also need autonomous space for organizing, and that these spaces are made, not found. She explores the remarkably enduring presence of radical bookstores in America and how they provide infrastructure for organizing-gathering places, retail offerings that draw new people into what she calls "counterspaces."
 
Kinder focuses on brick-and-mortar venues where owners approach their businesses primarily as social movement tools. These may be bookstores, infoshops, libraries, knowledge cafes, community centers, publishing collectives, thrift stores, or art installations. They are run by activist-entrepreneurs who create centers for organizing and selling books to pay the rent. These spaces allow radical and contentious ideas to be explored and percolate through to actual social movements, and serve as crucibles for activists to challenge capitalism, imperialism, white privilege, patriarchy, and homophobia.
 
They also exist within a central paradox: participating in the marketplace creates tensions, contradictions, and shortfalls. Activist retail does not end capitalism; collective ownership does not enable a retreat from civic requirements like zoning; and donations, no matter how generous, do not offset the enormous power of corporations and governments.
 
In this timely and relevant book, Kinder presents a necessary, novel, and apt analysis of the role these retail spaces play in radical organizing, one that demonstrates how such durable hubs manage to persist, often for decades, between the spikes of public protest.

(Price & availability last checked: May 2021)

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In booklists: Books About Bookshops, Booksellers and Publishers, Activism & Resistance, Books About Books!,
In categories: Humour, Gifts & Seasonal, Poetry & Writing, Politics & Philosophy, Anti-Capitalism & Global Inequality, Fiction,

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