• In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times

In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times

by James Cairns

June 10, 2025 | ISBN 978-1-998408-19-1 | 250 Pages

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In 2022, the Collins Dictionary announced that its word of the year was “permacrisis,” which it defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity, especially one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.” Have we reached a breaking point, arrived at the moment of truth? If so, what now? If not, why do so many people say we’re living through a period of unprecedented crises? Drawing on social research, pop culture and literature, as well as on his experience as an activist, father and teacher, James Cairns explores the ecological crisis, Trump’s return to power amid the so-called crisis of… Read more
Events with James Cairns

    • ★In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times (Matthew Behrens, Quill & Quire, July 2025)
      “Despite the heavy subject matter, Cairns is a reassuring voice who, while admitting he possesses no magic bullets, nevertheless finds cause for hope in the sudden outbreaks of democracy that remind him of the innate capacity of humans who’ve had enough to push back and assert their right to a better world.”
    • Review of In Crisis, On Crisis (Farzana Doctor, Facebook, 08/07/2025)
      I’m grateful for books like James’ that help make meaning and bring context to troubled times. What is the shape of the future we want and how will we build a better collective future?
    • In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times, by James Cairns (Kerry Clare, Pickle Me This, 26/06/2025)
      "How do we live knowing that bad things can happen? How do we live knowing that bad things will happen? In these essays—which delve into Trumpism, apocalyptic reading, whether we are in fact living through a crisis of democracy, midlife crises and Karl Ove Knausgaard, fatalism and Sylvia Plath, the experience of moving during a pandemic, if now is a “post-truth” moment, fears and anxieties about his children and their futures in the face of the climate crisis—Cairns delves deep into these questions and urges the reader to leave room for possibility."

    A review of James Cairns’ “In Crisis, On Crisis: Essays in Troubled Times” (Alex Medley, Spring Magazine, 03/07/2025)
    "For readers willing to wrestle with contradiction and ambiguity, Cairns offers not a roadmap, but a mirror – one that reflects the fractured, uncertain terrain of our times and the radical potential buried within it."

  • James Cairns lives with his family in Paris, Ontario, on territory that the Haldimand Treaty of 1784 recognizes as belonging to the Six Nations of the Grand River in perpetuity. He is a professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies, Law and Social Justice at Wilfrid Laurier University, where his courses and research focus on political theory and social movements. James is a staff writer at the Hamilton Review of Books, and the community relations director for the Paris-based Riverside Reading Series. James has published three books with the University of Toronto Press, most recently, The Myth of the Age of Entitlement: Millennials, Austerity, and Hope (2017), as well as numerous essays in periodicals such as Canadian Notes & Queries, the Montreal Review of Books, Briarpatch, TOPIA, Rethinking Marxism and the Journal of Canadian Studies. James’ essay “My Struggle and My Struggle,” originally published in CNQ, appeared in Biblioasis’s Best Canadian Essays, 2025 anthology.