Progressive Geographies

Chris Philo, Adorno and the Antifascist Geographical Imagination – Edinburgh University Press, July 2025; paperback January 2027

Pleased to see a paperback of this important book listed for early next year.

A pioneering excavation of Adorno’s geography which engages fascism and antifascism in the terrain of geographical theorising

• Brings fascism and antifascism into the heart of geographical theorising
• Argues that thinking geographically is indispensable to thinking antifascistically
• Argues that thinking antifascistically should be at the core of thinking geographically
• The first staging of a sustained engagement between Adorno and geography
• A systematic disclosure of how Adorno’s writings – on diverse matters from philosophy to music – entangle a critical-geographical sensibility

To think antifascistically is necessarily to think geographically; to think geographically ought to be to think antifascistically. This aphorism sets the compass for this book’s ambitious attempt to fold questions of fascism and antifascism into the remit of Geotheory (the focus of the host book series). Alert to fascism’s pernicious haunting of our contemporary moment, it reaches for intellectual resources through which to fashion constellations of antifascist thought hinging on attentiveness to space, place, landscape and nature.

Specifically, the book offers the first attempt to systematically explore the ‘geographies’ integral to the thinking of Theodor W. Adorno, premier exponent of the Frankfurt School of critical theory whose writings – on philosophy and sociology, politics and culture, literature and music – were often framed precisely against the threat of fascistic regression. By disclosing Adorno’s geographies, the shape of a geographical antifascism comes into view as a transformational restatement of critical geography’s spirit and purpose.

I was part of an online discussion of the book with Chris Philo and Felicitas Kübler for the London Group of Historical Geographers on 27 May 2025. The papers are appearing in Dialogues in Human Geography – mine is already online.

Tiffany Fairey, Imaging Peace: Transforming Conflict, Resisting Violence and Building Community through Photography – Edinburgh University Press, August 2026

Examines diverse forms of peace photography by and with conflict-affected communities

• The first multi-country empirical study of peace photography
• Original case studies from Rwanda, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Ireland, Mexico and Nepal explore how photography is being used to disrupt conflict and to foster peace
• Richly illustrated with over 75 images
• Speaks directly to themes of de-colonisation and co-production
• Presents interdisciplinary and practice-based research that will appeal to researchers, practitioners, photographers and artists in peace and conflict studies, post conflict and community development, socially engaged arts practices and methods, and photographic theory

Imaging Peace explores how photography can move beyond documenting conflict to actively shaping peace. Drawing on projects from six countries dealing with legacies of war and ongoing violence and division, Tiffany Fairey examines how local photographers and communities are using the medium to resist violence, foster healing and reimagine peace. From Colombia and Rwanda to Nepal and Northern Ireland, these local image-makers reveal how visual practices can nurture agency and plural visions of just peace.

Expanding the emerging field of peace photography, Fairey develops a nuanced ethical and methodological framework for using photography intentionally as a tool of dialogue and transformation. Imaging Peace is grounded in collaborative research that interweaves theory and practice and, featuring over 75 photographs, it invites readers to rethink what photography can do – and what peace might look like.

John Preston, Apocalypse Capitalism: Economic Visions after Nuclear War – Bristol University Press, September 2026 (print and open access)

Is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism? 

Drawing on extensive archival research in the UK and the US, this book uncovers how Cold War planners planned to keep capitalism alive even after a nuclear apocalypse. 

Through scenario planning, US officials anticipated capitalist recovery, while UK strategies prioritised preserving elite power and restoring the class system. 

By tracing these contrasting imaginaries, the book reveals how capitalism is projected beyond the apocalypse and explores alternative economic futures that emerge when the unthinkable is taken seriously.

José Luis Romanillos, Speculative Earth: Geophilosophy and Ancient Geographical Thought – Edinburgh University Press, November 2026

See also his open access article ‘Geography and the Classics?‘ in Progress in Human Geography.

Develops a materialist history of philosophical conceptions of ‘earth’ in Greek thought

• Provides a cross-disciplinary engagement with geography, European philosophy, classics and cultural history
• Situates ancient Greek and premodern conceptions of ‘earth’ in the context of materialist histories of the longue durée
• Makes use of philosophical resources from Hegel, Heidegger and Husserl to Bataille, Freud and Sloterdijk to re-animate the archive of ancient geographical thought
• Develops critical readings of landmark figures and texts in the history and philosophy of geographical thought, including: Clarence Glacken, David Livingstone, Denis Cosgrove, David Harvey, Stuart Elden and Veronica della Dora
• Challenges the use of geometry by classicists and geographers to narrate the ‘origins’ of philosophy and geography, and questions the tendency towards geometrism in the history of geographical thought

What sorts of philosophical ideas, images and histories lie coiled in the prefix ‘geo’?

José Luis Romanillos turns to the archive of Greek philosophy, geography and religion to show how existential concern with the environment is not simply a modern preoccupation but a geographical theme of the longue durée.

Romanillos proposes a new kind of geophilosophy, one orientated towards understanding the ideas, beliefs and material practices that shaped ancient understandings of the earth. Engaging with a range of philosophical resources, from Hegel and Deleuze to Bataille and Sloterdijk, he explores the conceptual history of the prefix and develops a materialist reading of the physiological registers of earth in Greek thought.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, End Times Fascism: And the Fight for the Living World – Penguin, September 2026

The far right is on the march again – but this time it’s different from anything we’ve seen before. A new, apocalyptic alliance of religious fundamentalists, billionaire Silicon Valley tech kings and ethno-nationalists is on the move. They’re united in their belief that some kind of cleansing cataclysm is coming, and they welcome a future of shocks, scarcity and collapse, convinced they’ll be among the saved on the other side.
This is the world of End Times Fascism.

In this blistering reckoning with our age, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor take us deep into this man-made Armageddon complex – and show us how to resist it. Around the globe, they investigate how those who are making our world unliveable through climate chaos and job-consuming AI are preparing to protect themselves from the fallout, whether it’s by repairing to luxurious private islands for the super-rich, rocketing off to Mars or bunkering nations against a dehumanized ‘other’.

But, Klein and Taylor reveal, the new supremacist survivalists are far from impregnable. They have no vision of a shared future. All they offer are remixes of a bygone past: the nihilistic, sadistic pleasures of domination. If we’re to meet this critical moment and defend what’s left of democracy before it’s smashed up beyond repair, we must break the doom loop, and find a new way of living together, rooted in our existence on this earth, in the here and now. A story not of end times – but of better times. This book shows us how.

Robin M. LeBlanc, Proprietors for a Democratic City: Space and Political Voice in Italy – University of Minnesota Press, November 2026

Lessons from Bologna on how ordinary people take charge of urban spaces and make their cities more democratic

Proprietors for a Democratic City examines how nonelite individuals politically engage with urban spaces—even when they do not formally own them. Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork throughout Bologna, Italy, Robin M. LeBlanc presents valuable models of democratic community-making through imaginative occupation, curation, and coalition-building projects, with critical implications for the study of cities and democracy.

Once a standard-bearer of progressive governance, contemporary Bologna now faces globally emergent challenges to its democratic functioning, from a lack of affordable housing to the rise of an authoritarian and xenophobic Far Right. But amid this precarity, everyday citizens employ the spaces around them to influence the political life of the city. Through interviews with a wide range of Bolognese, from urban planners and real estate developers to housing office staff, retirees in public gardening plots, and members of immigrant and youth squatter collectives, LeBlanc illuminates the humble origins of coalitional work that can meaningfully address today’s urban economic, environmental, and demographic crises.

Challenging both capitalistic and Marxist conventional wisdom, Proprietors for a Democratic City is a vivid portrait of the urban landscape and an inspiring call to empower regular people to create vibrant democratic spaces.