Why, despite good intentions, do people trying to do good sometimes end up recreating the problems they’re trying to tackle?

The Entangled Activist is the story of how activism is entangled in the problems it seeks to solve, told by a hard-hitting campaigner who learns to see the task very differently. After years of thinking that her task was to ‘get the bastards,’ campaigner, writer and reporter Anthea Lawson came to see that activism often emerges from the same troubles it is trying to fix.

​Drawing on her own experience, critical analysis and interviews with leading activists, Lawson probes our attempts to change the world to offer a timely, eye-opening vision for transformative work. By considering how unexamined shadows and assumptions impede well-intentioned goals, and how campaigners are caught up in the very systems and ideologies they seek to alter, she dismantles hierarchies that have shaped the field for too long.

  • "This book is medicine."

    Bayo Akomolafe, Ph.D., author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home

  • "An essential manual for getting better both at activism and being human."

    Oliver Burkeman, author of The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

  • "‘A book of liberating honesty."

    Alastair McIntosh, co-author of Spiritual Activism and Riders on the Storm

  • "Please read this book for your own sake and for all of us."

    Dr Gail Bradbrook, co-founder, Extinction Rebellion

  • "A manifesto for reflective activism."

    John Ashton, independent activist and former British diplomat

  • "Compelling reading… an outstanding contribution.

    Satish Kumar, Editor Emeritus, Resurgence & Ecologist

  • "A first step into a hugely neglected area."

    Paul Hoggett, Climate Psychology Alliance