The New Futures of Exclusion

Reviews / Votes

"The multiple award-winning authors of this short and accessible text demand that we confront reality square on and utilize our provisionally best methods and concepts in our efforts to understand its events, processes and human reactions. In this book, they apply this to the Covid 19 pandemic and the subsequent residue that now coats our lives. The ultra-realist approach adopted in this book can help us to break out of liberalism's tunnel, clear our heads and take a few steps towards that goal."-Professor Emeritus Steve Hall, UK.

"For those on the left who saw the corona policies as the final try out for the ultimate play of the energy transition, Briggs et al. have a sobering lesson: it was more disaster capitalism than moonshot and only deepened the societal fractures caused by four decades of mindless neoliberalism. Patiently and thoughtfully exploring the lived experience of lockdowns and vaccine mandates, the authors look for common ground between proponentsand opponents. For every citizen looking for the beginning of a conversation on what we have experienced and which lessons to draw from it, this is the book to turn to."

-Ewald Engelen, Professor of Financial Geography, University of Amsterdam.

"A remarkable aspect of the post-pandemic period is how quickly the unprecedented policy responses to the pandemic receded from the headlines and even from memory. Given their enduring social, economic, cultural, and political costs, Briggs et al.'s The New Futures of Exclusion provides an essential and timely account of an extraordinary period, which in many ways is still with us. The authors have long made a central contribution towards studying the impacts of pandemic management policies, notably on social exclusion and division. Here, they turn their attention to one of the most fraught - vaccine mandates and passports. They have produced a nuanced, well-evidenced and strongly argued book that would be of interest to specialists and general readers alike."

-Professor Shahar Hameiri, University of Queensland, Australia.

"Briggs et al have already contributed enormously to our understanding of the Covid pandemic and its effects. Here, they explore how the crisis unfolded and its influence upon political economy, social policy, work, leisure and, most importantly, the ways we relate to one another as we construct and maintain vital affective relationships. The picture they paint is not a happy one, but it is vital that we inspect it closely and absorb what it has to teach us about this crucial world event."

-Professor Simon Winlow, Northumbria University, UK.

"A sober, thorough overview of the three main pillars of the Covid response: lockdowns, digital surveillance, and vaccination. The analysis is greatly enriched by ample quotations from the authors' surveys of citizens in many countries. This book is a milestone on the necessary, painful journey towards making sense of the Covid response."

-Dr Daniel Hadas, Lecturer in Medieval Latin, Kings College London.

"This book is a fundamental contribution to the academic literature on the Covid-19 pandemic, offering a much-needed critical counterbalancing to the orthodox view. But, even more importantly, it is a dramatic appeal: as much as we all just want to move on, we need to collectively confront the global trauma of 2020-2022, as difficult as it may be, or we will pay an even higher price down the road."

-Thomas Fazi, Journalist, and author of 'The Covid Consensus'.

"Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand - rather than merely sneer at - the millions of people who found lockdowns and vaccine mandates harmful, coercive and sinister. All the more powerful for being so measured, this is critical social science at its finest."

-Professor Lee Jones, Professor of Political Economy & International Relations, Queen Mary University of London.

"This is an invaluable book that records the covid policy choices, framed in terms of TINA, that were adopted as a method of statecraft by many contemporary neo-liberal states. The work looks in detail at the way in which vaccines and vaccine mandates became part of this new method of statecraft by dividing citizens into moral and immoral groups. The central concern of the book is not simply to document three years of social divisions and exclusions, vital as this is, but to consider what this new method of statecraft tells us about our potential future. Today medical treatment has been used by the TINA emergency state to divide and manage citizens, but this is essentially a hollow system that can and will be filled up with the next choice of emergency."

-Dr Tara McCormack, Lecturer in International Politics, Leicester University.

"This is a brave, rigorous and important book which tackles the dangerous global authoritarianism engendered in the exclusionary narratives and vaccine mandates that dominated the latter stages of the Covid-19 pandemic."

-Dr Ellen Townsend, Professor of Psychology, Nottingham University.