Ben Pitcher

Nasra Ahmed, a 23-year-old US citizen, was arrested and detained by ICE. She was held for TWO DAYS.

ICE agents handcuffed her, called her a racial slur, and she was knocked to the ground so hard she got a concussion.

This cannot continue happening. ICE needs to leave.

Imagining ‘Our Ancestors’ — Theory, Culture & Society | Global Public Life Ben Pitcher In a culture where we worry about ecological ruin and feel cut off from the natural world, it’s not difficult to understand the appeal of the distant past. Stone circles, foraging, rewil...

In this blog for @theoryculturesociety.org I parody the hand-crafted woodcut style of popular books on nature, folklore, and the distant past 'decorated with fluttering leaves, distant hills, perhaps a Morris troupe or a charismatic megalith or two'.

www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/imagini...

Cheers Graeme!

Imagining ‘Our Ancestors’ — Theory, Culture & Society | Global Public Life Ben Pitcher In a culture where we worry about ecological ruin and feel cut off from the natural world, it’s not difficult to understand the appeal of the distant past. Stone circles, foraging, rewil...

In this blog for @theoryculturesociety.org I parody the hand-crafted woodcut style of popular books on nature, folklore, and the distant past 'decorated with fluttering leaves, distant hills, perhaps a Morris troupe or a charismatic megalith or two'.

www.theoryculturesociety.org/blog/imagini...

Imagining ‘Our Ancestors’: Liberal Indigeneity and the Repudiation of Colonialism in Postimperial Britain - Ben Pitcher, 2025 This article examines imaginative connections to an indigenous ancestry in popular British nonfiction writing on nature, landscape, and environment. It coins th...

How does race figure in writing on nature, landscape, and environment? This new open-access article in @theoryculturesociety.org charts the rise of ‘liberal indigeneity’ as an expression of nativism in postimperial Britain. 1/2 doi.org/10.1177/0263...

Distinct from the opportunistic ‘indigenous’ claims of the far right, and informed by the struggles of colonised Indigenous peoples, I read ‘liberal indigeneity’ as a white fantasy of ancestral belonging that attempts to negotiate the racial legacies of empire. 2/2

Imagining ‘Our Ancestors’: Liberal Indigeneity and the Repudiation of Colonialism in Postimperial Britain - Ben Pitcher, 2025 This article examines imaginative connections to an indigenous ancestry in popular British nonfiction writing on nature, landscape, and environment. It coins th...

How does race figure in writing on nature, landscape, and environment? This new open-access article in @theoryculturesociety.org charts the rise of ‘liberal indigeneity’ as an expression of nativism in postimperial Britain. 1/2 doi.org/10.1177/0263...

Will witter on about this more when I’m back at work but this one tries to get to grips with the racial politics of stone circles, folk, foraging, and weird walks.

Will witter on about this more when I’m back at work but this one tries to get to grips with the racial politics of stone circles, folk, foraging, and weird walks.

I certainly am. Watch this space, etc., etc.

#ICYMI: “Why are the soldiers hurting Palestinian children?” Parenthood, identity and culture during #genocide.

Ala Sirriyeh’s look at how the war on Gaza has affected children and parents across the Palestinian diaspora is among the Magazine’s #2024mostread.

https://buff.ly/3VlVH3S

UCU Westminster notes with dismay that two senior professors from the University of Westminster delivered keynote addresses to a conference at Tel Aviv University last November.

Read out full statement on Instagram: www.instagram.com/p/DGK3ZMStqYU/
or here: westminsterucu.craft.me/YTKHiJYOa8r0OG

The most depressing thing about University Ranking Days is that it ignores the fundamental truth about UKHE:

Every department in every university is full of outstanding and original scholars.

Every. Single. One.

What distinguishes between them are the systemic inequalities in which they work.

Black text on a yellow page - article 'Thinking with Prehistory'

'Thinking with Prehistory' is now out in Epoch issue 3.

'Across contemporary Europe there is a renewed interest in engaging with the ancient earthworks and megalithic artefacts of the prehistoric landscape'

Read or download here www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m55zr...

Still from Mary Poppins featuring Mary, the children and Bert the chimneysweep on a rooftop

Today's story about the BFI's reclassification of Mary Poppins on account of its reference to 'Hottentots' reminds me of this thing I wrote about the way that cultural change around race undermines the legitimacy of our own pasts sociologyatwestminster.wordpress.com/2018/01/01/m...