System Change Made Simple
A phrase often used at climate actions is ‘system change not climate change’. This podcast explores that idea. What kind of system are we living with now? How do systems of exploitation come about? What options for a new system make sense? How could we make system change happen? Join me as I explore these questions. Get excited as we work out how we might make a fresh start. It could be a good idea to start with the first of these podcasts 'Capitalism: A Ghost Story' from July 4th 2022 and go on from there.
Episodes
30 episodes
Shooting the Messenger: An Inconvenient Truth
While environmental activism is dominated by the middle class, there are large sections of the middle class that are very hostile to the environmentalist movement. These are people in positions most closely allied to the operations of business ...
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Season 5
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Episode 3
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51:54
Why the Working Class Hates Greenies
This podcast is based primarily on research conducted in the Hunter region of Australia. The working-class see environmentalists as members of a privileged middle class. They produce endless verbal exhortation but have no practical good sense. ...
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Season 5
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Episode 2
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36:48
How Class Works Today
This first podcast in series five is about the way social class is constructed in our society today. I look at two major sources. John and Barbara Ehrenreich on the professional managerial class. Pierre Bourdieu on the mapping of social space –...
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Season 5
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Episode 1
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43:34
Toxic Masculinity (second version)
The feminist psychoanalytic tradition provides an excellent account of ‘excessive’ aggression in human societies. In patriarchy, there's a particular pattern to how men are brought up as boys. From boys to men. It creates a psychology of ...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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22:09
The Struggle for Survival
Most conservatives believe the sociological view of aggression is naïve. The theory of evolution shows us that animals only survive that are fit for the struggle. They urge us to admit that humans have a basic desire to harm other people – just...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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23:08
What is Aggression
Conservatives believe that competitive aggression is part of human nature. Given this, they argue, no egalitarian society can be possible. Given how often people behave aggressively, it is hard to believe aggression is totally socially construc...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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23:27
We're Only Human
What is human nature? This question breaks down into two parts. One part is what people mean when they talk about human nature. Clearly people have different ideas about what human nature is in fact — or even if there is any such thing. I expla...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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24:04
Deconstructing Marx's Account of Class and Exploitation
This podcast considers central concepts of the Marxist account of class. Of systems of exploitation. Surplus, work, product, necessary labour, reproduction, use value. Marx and later Marxists give an account of class that relies on ideas ...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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30:14
Explaining Marx's Theory of Class Society
Marx’s theory of class society has had a huge influence on sociology and on my own thinking. This podcast explains the theory in the simplest way possible. What is the basic structure of all class societies in history? The ruling class owns the...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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19:48
Weber on Class and Status
Weber is famous as one of the founders of sociology. He sees history as broken into two key periods. Ancient societies where different ‘life chances’ were allocated on the basis of status. A social estimation of honour. And modernity where life...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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23:41
How class happens
Class is a unique phenomenon in world history. Like we could look at it as almost like a hoodoo that has been cast on humanity because it's been absolutely impossible to get rid of it. What we've seen in world history since the invention of cla...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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28:48
Origin Myths of Civilisation
Most of what you will hear and read about the birth of civilisation is just propaganda. I am calling these stories 'origin myths'. This podcast explores these origin myths and explains why they are completely bogus. You will never look at a Dis...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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32:12
Civilisation as a Vampire Death Cult
The term ‘civilisation’ is normally used when a society is being praised for glorious technical, social and cultural achievements. I want to turn that assessment on its head. I will use a sociological term for what are typically called ‘civilis...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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48:32
Capitalist Patriarchy and the Feminist Program
Continues the discussion of the previous podcast. The changes in the global south with capitalist colonial imperialism. Sylvia Federici’s viewpoint. Gender and the market economy in the majority world. Witches, north and south. Conclusions abou...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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41:56
Liberal Feminism and the Socialist Critique
Different strands of feminist thinking. Liberal feminism and the socialist critique. Radical feminism and dual systems theory. Feudal patriarchy and its replacement. A patriarchy adapted to capitalism. How this worked out in the rich countries....
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Season 2
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Episode 6
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31:23
Ecofeminism Now
Ecofeminism links gender politics to environmentalism. Ideas about gender are often relevant to the way people interpret environmental politics. This podcast explains what this means at the grass roots. How views of gender can link up to a conf...
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Season 2
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Episode 5
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30:36
Capitalism, Nature, Patriarchy
Summary of the analysis of patriarchy in the podcast series so far. The invention of social class. Patriarchy creates a set of psychological foundations for class society. Contempt for non-human nature can fit into these psychological patterns....
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Season 2
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Episode 4
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41:30
Toxic Masculinity
In patriarchal societies, there's a particular pattern to how men are brought up as boys. From boys to men. It creates a psychology of competitive striving to beat other men. It works against empathetic relationships with women. It fosters anxi...
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Season 2
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Episode 3
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21:38
Why Patriarchy?
Can the term ‘patriarchy’ be applied to other times and places? The Munduruçu, a horticultural society of the Amazon basin. How widespread is patriarchy? What are its basic causes? How patriarchy is also socially constructed. Why feminism is su...
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Season 2
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Episode 2
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24:47
What is Patriarchy?
Patriarchy is pretty-well universal in human societies so far. It is a regime of power and exploitation. We can describe this inequality using a theory of human nature. To explain this, I will begin with a well-known sociological study of ‘hous...
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Season 2
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Episode 1
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25:30
Am I Really an Anarchist?
Anarchism is defined in relation to ‘the state’. Anarchists oppose the state. I examine ideas about the state coming from Marx and Weber, founders of sociology. The state as it appears in class societies throughout history. Why the state is a s...
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Season 1
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Episode 10
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48:48
The Zapatistas: A State that is not a State
The region of Mexico controlled by the Zapatistas is a ‘temporary autonomous zone’. The podcast explains how the Zapatistas implement community control of economics and politics. The most thorough attempt to set up a gift economy in recent hist...
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Season 1
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Episode 9
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1:09:50
Prefiguring the Gift Economy - Part Two
This podcast continues the discussion of hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism. Three examples are Margaretta’s Belly Dancing school in an Australian town, the Chikukwa project in rural Zimbabwe and IDEP, an Indonesian permaculture organis...
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Season 1
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Episode 8
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39:26
Prefiguring the Gift Economy - Part One
Prefiguring a post-capitalist system through ‘hybrids of the gift economy and capitalism’. Hybrids embody some aspects of the gift economy that ‘prefigure’ a post capitalist system. For example, some control of production by workers or the comm...
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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46:05
The Transition to the Gift Economy
How would we actually get from where we are now to a gift economy? There is a range of possible strategies and options. A popular revolution supported by the armed forces. An act of parliament following a landslide election victory. A multiplic...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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33:31