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Maria Mies

The Lace Makers of Narsapur is a sensitive and groundbreaking study of women at the beginning of the process of globalisation. Maria Mies in this book, first published in 1982, looks at the way in which women are dispossessed by producing luxury goods for the Western market and simultaneously not counted as workers or producers in their fragmented workplaces. Instead they are defined as ‘non-working housewives’ and their work as ‘leisure-time activity’. The rates of pay are far below acceptable levels resulting in accelerating pauperisation and a rapid deterioration in their position in Indian society.

Before the latest ‘economic boom’ in India were a number of processes of dispossession. The dispossession of farmers through the ‘green revolution’ and alongside it, the dispossession of women, the lace makers of Narsapur in the state of Andhra Pradesh.

2012 | ISBN 9781742198149 | Paperback | 215 x 136 mm | 244 pp

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Maria Mies

In this autobiography, Maria Mies packs in seventy-seven years of life: from the small German village of her childhood, to the world of the Indian subcontinent. Sociologist and Women’s Studies researcher, scholar, ecofeminist, and international activist, Maria Mies is one of the world’s original thinkers.

Maria Mies’ achievements include developing groundbreaking praxis and theory around the concept of “housewifisation”, the violence of colonisation and profound writings about ecofeminism. She fights the Multilateral Agreement of Investment, she fights the General Agreement on Trade in Services, she fights against the patenting of life and tackles reproductive and genetic engineering as well as food security, but she never gives up hope that there is an alternative to present day injustice and exploitation; that “the good life” is possible.

And Maria Mies never forgets her origins:

Despite all my travels around the world, I have never forgotten where I came from: from a peasant family in a small village. This not only helped me keep my feet on the ground, but also protected me from excessive romanticism and quixotic idealism. I know that the food doesn’t come from the supermarket but from the soil.

2010 | ISBN 9781876756826 | Paperback | 227 x 151 mm | 380 pages

Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen

Maria Mies

A product of twenty years of analysis and activism, this unique book poses a radical alternative to the current free-market industrial system. A book of history, theory and polemic, the authors show how, if we are to survive, economies must become needs-based, environmentally sustainable, co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalised groups, particularly women, and of the environment.

2000 | ISBN 9781875559930 | Paperback | 215 x 135 mm | 246 pp