Introduction

This book is about making change. The market has been deluged with such books, not least since times became much tougher for most people. Nevertheless, although the shelves are full of them and bookshops even now have whole sections devoted to the subject, with headings like ‘Self Help’ and ‘Mind, Body and Spirit’, the topic is generally the narrow one of trying to change yourself. Trying to change one person is likely to be a lot easier than trying to change the world! However, since the main reason most people seek change in themselves is to make their stay in this world more comfortable and positive, it's open to question how successful their efforts will ever be in isolation. In addition, most of these books tend to be based on one or another individualistic approach to self-development, so the sub-text is really more one of how you can improve your position in the unequal competition of life, rather than let's make things better for everyone. We may also wonder how helpful such a quest is in the context of the fundamental human desire at the heart of this book to ‘connect’. Even beyond that, as Colin Ward reminds us at the beginning of this chapter, we may even have to subject taken-for-granted concepts like ‘the state’ to radical review (Ward, 2004).