Search Result for “the social condition”

In 1943 Hannah Arendt published a short essay in the Jewish periodical “The Menorah Journal” entitled We Refugees. She described in it a widespread refusal among Jews who had escaped the Nazis to call themselves “refugees.” Having lost everything — their occupation, their language, their family — they were eager to adapt to their new country as quickly as possible and to become “normal” citizens. Arendt thought that this assimilation strategy was doomed to failure, because it ignored the fact that the European model of the nation state is structurally dependent upon the fabrication of stateless and displaced persons. Instead, Jews should remember what made them special precisely as refugees. Refugees, she wrote, are “the vanguard of their peoples,” since for them history was no longer “a sealed book.” They have already experienced and recognized what to others has only become obvious today, in the era of globalization: the violence, fragility, and historical obsolescence of a territorial understanding of citizenship. …

According to the 2014 United Nations World Urbanization Prospects report, some two-thirds of the world’s population is expected to reside in cities by 2050, more than double the percentage of urban dwellers that existed across the globe in 1950. To manage this growth, policymakers have embraced the notion that cities need to become ‘smart’, …

Anwar Shaikh has been teaching economics at The New School for 42 years. One of the world’s leading heterodox economists, he argues that the neoclassical models taught at most universities are bad tools for analyzing capitalism. He hopes that his recent book, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict and Crisis, can be the foundation for an alternate economic theory and pedagogy. He recently sat down with New School student Ebba Boye to talk about this work.

Why did you write this book? When I first entered economics it was with a wish to understand how the world works. I am from Pakistan, I grew up in a part of the world where disparity in wealth was enormous and growth was slow. My father was a diplomat who was posted in many countries so growing up I observed a diversity of peoples, cultures and economies. In Kuwait I observed how they had more money than they could count,  …

In Brazil, police officers are rarely held accountable for murderous attacks on citizens. Whenever a member of the police shoots someone, the agent responsible can easily claim that he was counteracting resistance. An “act of resistance” is then written and immediately filed. This institutional and legal justification — which needs only to be unilaterally asserted by the agent — automatically exempts the police from any kind of formal responsibility, ultimately limiting the possibility of an official investigation.The fact that these acts of resistance most often concern a specific population — black poor youth from peripheral areas who are nevertheless formally protected by civil rights — poses the question of how control and repression of different people within the homogenous category of citizenship can vary. Even though they are fully recognized as Brazilian citizens, and thus entitled to all rights formally guaranteed by the state, …

These days the entire world is trying hard to make sense of Donald Trump’s surprising march towards the Republican convention in Cleveland. Like it or not, he is possibly also on his way to becoming America’s next president. Trump seems hard to place within any of our available categories: Is he a conservative populist? Is he a revolutionary? Is he left or right wing Republican — or is he both, or is he neither? Is he a demagogue? Is he a “charismatic” figure? Or is Trump really just a (bad) joke?

When bewildered, we search for historical analogies. To many observers, Trump resembles Silvio Berlusconi, the (in)famous tycoon who was prime Minister of Italy on and off from 1994 to 2011. Rula Jebreal was quick to point out such similarities in a Washington Post …

An exhibition now touring several cities in Europe is worth visiting and thinking about, as it reflects both the political and cultural sensibility of Europe. PIGS is curated by Blanca de la Torre, a Spanish art curator who develops projects throughout the world and understands art as a social tool to disclose political injustices and prejudices. The “pigs” to which this exhibition refers are not simply the four countries (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain) …