Culture and Ideas
-
“What’s missing?”
|
Conflating both strands in the term “utopia”, No Other Planet: Utopian Visions of a Climate-Changed World argues that this yearning for an alternative world operates as a valuable foil to console, critique or even change the status quo.
-
The Utopia of Democratic Socialism: An Alternative to Capitalism
|
Without a positive vision of utopia, capitalism seems insurmountable, and the Left will remain unable to present a coherent counterpoint to the current market system. In fact, it might be said that the lived reality of oppression is what necessitates utopian theory: to offer respite from the otherwise seemingly inescapable present.
-
Against ‘Postliberalism’
|
In contrast with the postliberal mind and its Romantic obsession with self-deceptive ideas about the ‘recovery’ of past ages, liberalism must ask itself such complicated questions. It requires empathy, solidarity, thought, and action, independent from the great power structures of the modern world.
-
Resistance in the Black Box Society
|
The role that algorithms have increasingly taken on as intermediaries between humankind and the world not only highlights their transformative potential, but also brings to the forefront the social, political and ethical implications of these systems.
-
Lessons for Utopians from Anthropologists
|
With its emphasis on the importance of the residents’ collective action in the creation of their community, The Good Enough Life provides a necessary corrective for utopian theorising that consistently ignores the foundational role of agency within a given utopia.
-
Towards Humane Utopias
|
Protopian thinking represents a careful and reasoned approach to changing the world: it focuses on tomorrow and looks into the far future without prescribing what the future is.
-
Climate COPs and the Art of ‘Muddling Through’ the Ecological Crisis
|
While an incremental approach to global climate governance is surely frustrating and limited, it is not an absurd and blind ‘everything-is-fine’ way of dealing with the current ecological crisis.
-
The Temporal Turn in Historiography
|
Review of Time, History, and Political Thought by John Robertson (ed.) This article was originally published in OPR’s Issue 11: Time. Among the many ‘turns’ by which historians like to signify developments within their discipline, one of the most significant is the rise of ‘time’ or ‘temporality’ as a subject unto itself. Its viability as…
-
Algeria and Palestine: Parallels and Differences
|
As demands for a ceasefire in Gaza gain global political momentum, it is worth critically exploring Albert Camus’s thoughts on the French colonial history in Algeria for parallels and breaking points with the present moment.
-
China’s Quest for Blockbuster Soft Power
|
With mounting pressures domestically, a lot of thought goes into ensuring the right films for domestic audiences are produced, rather than considering global viewership. Only time will tell if they can break America’s hold on global hegemony through their own soft power, even if it is done a blockbuster at a time.