When Roosevelt insisted that photographers and writers document the Great Depression, they produced lasting, iconic work that allowed America to doubt its myths but also to get back on track. So where, asks Alice Béja, are today’s Dorothea Langes and John Steinbecks?
Paralysed by predictable stand-offs between developing nations and the West, the Rio+20 Earth Summit failed to produce anything but vague commitments. Faced with the impossibility of consensus, governments and corporations opted for a go-it-alone approach. Reporting from Rio, Claudia Ciobanu discerns opportunities nonetheless.
Taking its criteria from the corporate sector, the UK Arts Council demands from the cultural organizations to whom it allocates public money compliance with indicators such as impact, effectiveness and financial viability. The publisher of “Mute” magazine, whose grant ran out this year, discusses the implications of a purely instrumental view of culture in policy-making.
“Triumphant historical unidirectionality is not only simplistic, it may also be extremely dangerous.” Rein Müllerson critiques both classical Marxism and free-market capitalism, with their faith in ineluctable progress, at the same time asking how far universal claims for social justice are reconcilable with the multipolar global system.
American priest, politician and social activist Bob Massie talks about how the writings of Ernst Friedrich Schumacher can inform a transition to an alternative economy and why the author of Small is Beautiful still has something to say to a secularized, European audience.
A psychology degree from Columbia, a career at Radio Liberty and a penchant for “alternative rock”, Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves is the image of the modern statesman. In interview with Ieva Lesinska, he enthuses about progressive online healthcare systems, citizens data rights and NATO military bases.
The revival of the parliamentary Left in France, Italy and Greece brings hope for an egalitarian turn in a European crisis management until now dominated by the precepts of austerity. Yet many citizens also fear that the zig zag course will nullify their previous sacrifices, warns Roland Benedikter.
The Greek media “failed completely” to predict the consequences of debt-fuelled reality loss, says journalist Stelios Kouloglou in interview with Intellectum editor Victor Tsilonis. The very sector whose job it was to burst the bubble played a major role in creating and preserving it, he argues.
With the growth of the financial sector, the creditor-debtor relationship has become the dominant force in society. Yet, as David Graeber has demonstrated, debt as an instrument of power has been around since time immemorial. Remi Nilsen draws conclusions for a post-crisis order.
From Scandinavian democracy to target of British anti-terror laws: the whole world knows about the Icelandic crash, but how did the country get itself into such a mess? Andri Snaer Magnason tells a saga of privatizations, overreaching and astronomical pay checks.
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, says “climate change sceptics” also enjoy the right to free speech yet advises the media to take more care in identifying the credentials of “experts”.
A new EU data regulation directive fails to relax unduly tight restrictions on collecting and distributing data, writes David Erdos. Despite exemptions for use of private data in journalistic, artistic and research contexts, freedom of expression is still downgraded in European legislation.
Literary and cultural magazines carry far fewer essays by women than by men. This has to do with the essay form itself as well as engrained male dominance in editorial processes, argues Lena Brandauer. Quotas for women in literary and cultural publishing are a feasible solution.
Thrift represented an underlying drive shaping cultural priorities of men and women of different social classes in Britain from 1600 onwards, writes Beverly Lemire. In the nineteenth century, profound economic and social changes gave rise to institutional innovations that intersected with long established strategies of housewifery.
Differences between the Czech and Slovak national cultures begin with language and range from newspaper circulation to attitudes to corruption. Yet they don’t justify seeing the Czecho-Slovak split as blueprint for dismantling the EU, writes Martin Simecka.
Responding to Tony Judt’s appeal to the lost values of social democracy, Michael Ignatieff makes a strong argument for solidarity amidst recession, at the same time developing a version of progressive politics that emphasizes equality of opportunity and individual empowerment over both corporate and state-sector self-privileging.