Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation

Abolition Geography is a collection of Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work that offers a geographical perspective on how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an anti-state state that abandons people and environments. It challenges one-dimensional conceptions of liberation and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 512 pages
Publication date: 21 March 2023
Publisher: Verso Books

Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore's work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.

Abolition Geography moves us away from explanations of mass incarceration and racist violence focused on uninterrupted histories of prejudice or the dull compulsion of neoliberal economics. Instead, Gilmore offers a geographical grasp of how contemporary racial capitalism operates through an anti-state state that answers crises with the organized abandonment of people and environments deemed surplus to requirement. Gilmore escapes one-dimensional conceptions of what liberation demands, who demands liberation, or what indeed is to be abolished. Drawing on the lessons of grassroots organizing and internationalist imaginaries, Abolition Geography undoes the identification of abolition with mere decarceration, and reminds us that freedom is not a mere principle but a place.

Edited with an introduction by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano.

Weight: 650g
Dimension: 210 x 140 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781839761713