Books in the Provocations series

In the wake of recent scandals concerning charities such as Kids Company and BeatBullying, as well as the wave of suspicion they have generated about the third sector as a whole, celebrated restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab offers a scathing critique of the cosiness between government and charity, and proposes that the solution lies in business.Indeed, he believes we are entering a post-philanthropy age, where social entrepreneurs are better placed to sustainably solve our problems than the outdated and ineffective donations model. With social mobility on the wane and inequalities widening, he argues, the convention of paying taxes to provide a welfare state that fixes the problems of the poor and infirm is now considered a myth.The problem is that charities aren't evolving in the way businesses have to. They expand by the amount of hope and faith by which they can convince largely uninformed, if well-meaning, donors and philanthropists to finance them. Businesses expand through success, and success wins over hope.Put simply, Wahhab argues, charity sucks because business does it better.

New, updated edition of the acclaimed polemic by the celebrated libertarian broadcaster and the originator of the term `Snowflake' to describe a perceived lack of resilience in millennials. Previous edition ISBN 9781849549813 sold 4,500 copies.

This topic divides people - and it will divide readers of this book too. Many Muslims worldwide either support or adopt religious veiling, and those who argue against it are often criticised, or worse. But, according to Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the veil throws up a number of concerns, from questions of health and freedom of choice to issues of gender and personal identity. She argues that veiling conceals abuse, propagates eating disorders and restricts access to sunlight and exercise. It is imposed on babies and young girls, allows women to be shamed for not covering up, and has become associated with extremist factions. It demonises men, oppresses feminism and presents obstacles to performance and success. It even encourages racism, distorts Muslim values and strips women of autonomy and individuality. Written from a unique perspective and packed with personal experiences as well as public examples, Yasmin addresses the ultimate question of why Muslim women everywhere should refuse the veil.

Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege.The quest for truth, freedom and the sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics. Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative self-expression and honest criticism.Sohrab Ahmari's book is a passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of identity politics.The degree of politicisation means that art no longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository of the human spirit - something that should alarm not just art lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal civilisation.

John Sutherland examines the intergenerational conflict as a new kind of 'war' in which institutional neglect and universal indifference to the old has reached aggressive, and routinely lethal, levels.

Rethinks the historical relationship between money and aesthetics in an effort to make critical theory newly answerable to politics. Scott Ferguson regrounds critical theory in the alternative conception of money articulated by the contemporary heterodox school of political economy known as Modern Monetary Theory.

Questions the long-accepted notion that translation reproduces or transfers an invariant contained in or caused by the source text. Contra Instrumentalism aims to end the dominance of instrumentalism by showing how it grossly oversimplifies translation practice and fosters an illusion of immediate access to source texts.

Gregg Lambert offers an unprecedented inquiry into the evolution of Deleuze's hopes for the revolutionary goals of minor literature and the related notion of the missing people in the conjuncture of contemporary critical theory.

This important book argues that the real elites escape scrutinywhile everything that makes our lives worth living becomesworthy and diluted.