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Arabica Robusta

The time of the nation: negotiating global modernity | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...n-negotiating-global-modernity

neoliberalism globalization corporate-led foucault postmodernism social movements

shared by Arabica Robusta on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • This depoliticised nature of the contemporary, seen as the conceptual and experiential embodiment of globalised capitalism, consequently poses problems far more significant than the mere survival of the nation-state.
  • Undoubtedly, since the demise of the postmodern epoch in the popular and academic imagination, the acceleration of technological forces in commerce and communication - that have paved the way for increased capital accumulation, exchange and crisis - have only heightened what Foucault and Jameson gesture towards as a lived sensation of pure simultaneity.
  • In opposition to the crisis of the political generated by the false amalgamation of coeval living experiences, we might propose the concept of modernity; a concept that the nation-state might be perfectly situated to help elucidate. On this model, I would argue, modernity can be seen as linked to a increased self-consciousness of a secular conception of one's individual finitude (in the form of mortality but also one's personal and societal limits), and the collective negotiation of this issue via a democratic politics.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Undoubtedly some of the impotence of movements such as Occupy can be attributed to the same false utopianism of a borderless world of cyber-communities and multinational companies, whose liberating effects have been a far cry from lived reality.
  • However, the heterotopian potential of the nation-state is vividly problematised through the realisation that twentieth or twenty-first century globalisation, divorced and independent of the influence of varying nation-states, is in fact a fallacy.
  • The question then becomes: how to conceive of the self-determining impulse of modernity - here encapsulated in nationalism - in the form of a  socio-political body that would be capable of maintaining that impulse through preserving the logic of democracy, and foster the requisite representative power in opposition to the power of transnational capitalism?
  • Borders are no longer simply dotted lines between nation-states, but often manifest themselves as ‘spontaneous’ entities such as security and health check zones all over major social and transit spaces, particularly in Europe and the West.
  • But how to conceive of a democratic entity powerful enough to appropriate the multiplicity and heterogeneity of globalised borders, that would also be able to withstand, what Balibar outlines as "the risk of being a mere arena for the unfettered domination of the private centres of power, which monopolise capital, communications and, perhaps also, arms"?
  • If this modern or modernist kernel is latent within the nation-state, then a significant reconfiguration is required since the language of nationhood and nationalism is certainly not one of contingent universality. Rather it is one of mythology: mythologies of ethnicity, of genealogy, of autochthony.
  • If we cannot do away with borders, then they must remain out of necessity. This necessity is discrimination. As Nairn rightly argues, "cultures...depend upon conflicts unsustainable without borders". Contrasts and distinctions are internal to any logic of identity, as Balibar similarly suggests; "the very representation of the border is the precondition for any definition". Once identity is philosophically understood as differential and not self-sufficient, globalisation raises a very modernist dilemma. How to make the very diversity (of choices, cultures, of the new) that modernisation and globalisation make possible, resist the paralysing repetitive logic of what Walter Benjamin terms the 'ever-same' (i.e. the temporality of the contemporary)?
  • The mythological language of nationalism asserts an enduring order, paradoxically so inasmuch as the precise origin or origins of any nationalist discourse remain a shrouded mystery. Myth, as structurally detached from historical or circumstantial origin, becomes a vehicle of interpretation and pathos, splitting into a potentially infinite number of manifestations in each 'national' subject (where each standardised narrative is appropriated as a personal one).
  • By arguing the case for global modernity in the form of the nation-state, however, one faces the immediate problem that modernity is almost unthinkable without capitalism (despite any such attempt to render modernity as a democratising force tied to a conception and experience of time).
  • Although the European tradition has established laws and institutions (including the nation-state) that remain significantly flawed, these still provide a democratic logic that guarantees the possibility of revision, of perfectibility, of the future. If the nation-state can embody a heterotopic space that permits identification through processes of willed negotiation and division, guaranteeing the possibility of the present to always be changed, then it might still serve as a tool for resistance.
tony curzon price

Britain's future: Labour candidates respond | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/ture_labour_candidates_respond

shared by tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Britain’s future: Labour candidates’s view
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      Anthony - nice to see this was picked up by the observer - see: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/constitution/story/0,,2099735,00.html
    • Anthony Barnett
      Anthony Barnett on 10 Jun 07
       
      Yes, they wanted exclusive first right and I gave it them. What you can see in the paper edition but not on the web, it that they put the story at the top of the page on the right hand column. Positioning is much more than half the story in a newspaper. Its layout tells people what to read. Is it the same onthe web?
  • I am agnostic on the need for a written constitution, because of the power it hands to the judges.
  • so I let's have a national debate.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      "let's have a national debate" ... this seems to be a today-program, motherhood-apple-pie mantra. what is this national debate? where is it to be had? on radio4?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      see Cruddas below - getting a bit more specific on what a "national debate" might mean
    • Anthony Barnett
      Anthony Barnett on 10 Jun 07
       
      Benn's remark is rhetoric. Harmann above has thought about the need for mechanisms for ensuring public respect. The issue is a defining one. A wonderful constitution produced from Brown's inside pocket will be scorned as the gimmick of a 'Scot'. A less well worded one that emerges from a South African style process which people feel they 'own' could initiate a democratic process. What matters is not that it is written but how it is written!
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • It needs to be relevant to the man or woman in the street as a way of restoring trust in politics.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      is the constitution being asked to do too much. the mistrust of politics has many sources; the real powerlessness of national governments over many of the areas they pretend to rule is one. there is a whole process of resetting expectations that a consittuional convention is unlikely to do. in fact, there is the risk that a constitution will raise hopes that _it_ cannot fulfill, and contribute to the mistrust.
  • Gordon Brown has spoken of the need to empower communities at a local level. Should the decentralization of power and money to local authorities form part of any new ‘constitutional settlement’?
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      not one of the candidates raises the BIG RED FLAG of localism: how do you continue to operate redistributive policies when income, wealth and opportunity differences are geographical?
  • evise but not block
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      I wonder what "revise but not block" actually means ... if you can revise a piece of legislation out of all shape, that is tantamount to blocking, no? and once the body is elected, does equal legitimacy not entail equal power?
  • We need a public debate
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 10 Jun 07
       
      another public debate ... see above. again - who with? how? and what is the outcome of a "public debate" worth looking at this article: http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-edemocracy/idcard_2537.jsp by sara forsstrom, about the Swedish database ... that goes back to the 17th century. Trustworthy states can have databases; so how do we make the state trustworthy? maybe exchanging access to our personal information with access to its private information?
tony curzon price

Debtor Nation  (July-August 2007) - 0 views

www.harvardmagazine.com/...p2-debtor-nation.html

economy free-trade us

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07 - Cached
  • All of the countries that do this are better off than they would be without international trade. But even though it is possible to prove mathematically that this is true for nations, it is not true for every group of people within nations.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07
       
      only under the right assumptions of competition is this true
Dripa B

A Basic Income for All | Philippe Van Parijs (2000) - 0 views

bostonreview.net/...vanparijs.html

basic.income freedom economics HumanRights

shared by Dripa B on 28 Jun 09 - Cached
  • productivity, wealth, and national incomes have advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted, a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice: it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.
  • in 1999, the Alaska Permanent Fund paid each person of whatever age who had been living in Alaska for at least one year an annual UBI of $1,680.
  • By universal basic income I mean an income paid by a government, at a uniform level and at regular intervals, to each adult member of society. The grant is paid, and its level is fixed, irrespective of whether the person is rich or poor, lives alone or with others, is willing to work or not. In most versions–certainly in mine–it is granted not only to citizens, but to all permanent residents.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The idea of the UBI is at least 150 years old. Its two earliest known formulations were inspired by Charles Fourier, the prolific French utopian socialist. In 1848, while Karl Marx was finishing off the Communist Manifesto around the corner, the Brussels-based Fourierist author Joseph Charlier published Solution of the Social Problem, in which he argued for a "territorial dividend" owed to each citizen by virtue of our equal ownership of the nation’s territory. The following year, John Stuart Mill published a new edition of his Principles of Political Economy, which contains a sympathetic presentation of Fourierism ("the most skillfully combined, and with the greatest foresight of objections, of all the forms of Socialism") rephrased so as to yield an unambiguous UBI proposal: "In the distribution, a certain minimum is first assigned for the subsistence of every member of the community, whether capable or not of labour. The remainder of the produce is shared in certain proportions, to be determined beforehand, among the three elements, Labour, Capital, and Talent."
  • It was seriously discussed by left-wing academics such as G. D. H. Cole and James Meade in England between the World Wars and, via Abba Lerner, it seems to have inspired Milton Friedman’s proposal for a "negative income tax."6 But only since the late-1970s has the idea gained real political currency in a number of European countries, starting with the Netherlands and Denmark.
  • Dripa B on 28 Jun 09
     
    If you really care about freedom, give people an unconditional income at a level sufficient for subsistence. Productivity, wealth, and national incomes have advanced sufficiently far to support an adequate UBI. And if enacted, a basic income would serve as a powerful instrument of social justice: it would promote real freedom for all by providing the material resources that people need to pursue their aims. At the same time, it would help to solve the policy dilemmas of poverty and unemployment, and serve ideals associated with both the feminist and green movements.
Susan Thur

YouTube - Oil Spill 2010 Heartbreak in Paradise - 0 views

www.youtube.com/watch

news youtube oil spill

shared by Susan Thur on 12 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Susan Thur on 12 Jun 10
     
    "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al98OOF43I8" This is what I made with my time tonight. Just so sad these heartbreaking photos. I grabbed them off the net and set them to music. The last part of the video are photos of our world, where we live, reminding us never to forget the beauty we sometimes take for granted. Oil Spill 2010 Heartbreak in Paradise Oil spill photos set to music (While the Nation Mourns) The Beauty of our World photos set to music (Moody Blues-Running Water)
tony curzon price

Debtor Nation  (July-August 2007) - 0 views

www.harvardmagazine.com/...debtor-nation.html

consumerism debt economics us

shared by tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07 - Cached
  • The global imbalances created by this dynamic of American borrowing and foreign lending appear stable for now, but if they slip suddenly, that could pose serious dangers for middle- and working-class Americans through soaring interest rates, a crash in the housing market, and sharply higher prices for anything no longer made domestically.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 14 Aug 07
       
      the disaster scenario for the US - and world - economies
  • was a run on the pound sterling and he blocked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from stabilizing the currency. With sterling on the verge of collapse, says Frankel, “Eisenhower told them, ‘We are not going to bail out the pound unless you pull out of Suez.’” Facing bankruptcy, the British withdrew. This incident, notes Frankel, “marked the end of Great Britain’s ability to conduct an independent foreign policy.”
tony curzon price

should we have gone to war in iraq - Google Search - 0 views

www.google.com/search

search-credibility

shared by tony curzon price on 04 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Should we have gone to war? from National Review in Array provided free by LookSmart
argh2xxx lala

U.S. Says It Can Kidnap British Citizens - 0 views

www.blogmyway.org/entry.php

british citizens kidnap us

shared by argh2xxx lala on 02 Dec 07 - Cached
  • I'm living in the United States and I'm loving this country, but I'm fearing that this country has going beyond arrogance.  Some US officials say the US has rights to kidnap British citizens.  Is this something sort of like the bounty hunters portraying in doses of action movies?  As long the U.S. acting like it is a master of the world and not a member of the world, it is encouraging other nations to be on guards and viewing the U.S. as their soon to be enemy.  The real story is at http://www.timesonline.co.uk.
tony curzon price

FT.com / Comment & analysis / Comment - The centre-ground's shift to the left - 0 views

www.ft.com/...f7-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac.html

liberalism libertarianism

shared by tony curzon price on 28 Nov 07 - Cached
  • You can hear the change in what prominent would-be centrists are saying. In the 1990s, when neoliberalism was the centre, the line was: we must slash middle-class entitlements in order to be more competitive in the global free market. Now the line is: in order to save free-market globalism from populists preying on middle-class economic anxieties, we must expand the middle-class welfare state.The winners – at least for now – are welfare state liberals such as old-fashioned New Dealers in the US and their equivalents in other countries. The position of the original “third way” of 1932-68 always made sense. Middle-class social insurance programmes, by guaranteeing economic security, reduce the appeal of populism, socialism and other kinds of ­radical statism, and make possible broad political support for open and competitive national and global markets. You will hear much more of this line as politicians rush to occupy the new centre in the years ahead.
Patrick Müller

Byzantium: always an Empire, never a Nation | openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...lways_an_empire_never_a_nation

byzantium opendemocracy

shared by Patrick Müller on 14 May 08 - Cached
    • Patrick Müller
      Patrick Müller on 14 May 08
       
      It does indeed sound a lot like the European Union, and not by accident. But actually it makes more sense to compare the Union to the Holy Roman Empire than to Byzantinium as in contrast to the later, they both lack an imperial center, a metropolis like Rome for the Roman Empire or Constantinople for Byzantinium, but are federal political structures. A comparison that has actually been made in the political science, for example by Jan Zielonka (Europe as Empire. The Nature of the Enlarged European Union). For some reason I cannot comment on the article ... ("please specify a valid author)
tony curzon price

Brown is transforming the meaning of citizenship « OurKingdom - 0 views

ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/...ing-the-meaning-of-citizenship

montpelerin

shared by tony curzon price on 07 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Transformational Government, dressed in the language of consumerism, is what NO2ID calls “the database state” – management of citizens’ lives through centralised computer systems; pooling and cross-referencing information about people gathered on any pretext for any purpose, amounting to mass surveillance. Once your relations with the state preserved your privacy, being limited to relationships with bodies that were separate from each other. A single department was powerful, but it did not judge you on your whole life. Transformational Government changes that. You will have a single permanent record, and your identity managed (or determined) by the state. That will be held together by cross-referencing databases – which is what a National Identity Register is needed for. ‘ID cards’ are the concrete expression of this register, but strictly speaking are not necessary: numbering you and making constant reference to the central file will do.
  • tony curzon price on 07 Nov 07
     
    UK ID database
tony curzon price

Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

shared by tony curzon price on 06 Apr 07 - Cached
  • To be sure, the desire to live in a modern society and to be free of tyranny is universal, or nearly so. This is demonstrated by the efforts of millions of people each year to move from the developing to the developed world, where they hope to find the political stability, job opportunities, health care, and education that they lack at home. But this is different from saying that there is a universal desire to live in a liberal society – that is, a political order characterized by a sphere of individual rights and the rule of law. The desire to live in a liberal democracy is, indeed, something acquired over time, often as a byproduct of successful modernization.
  • The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a “post-historical” world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 06 Apr 07
       
      EU vs. US - post-historical vs. historical.
  • Outside powers like the US can often help in this process by the example they set as politically and economically successful societies. They can also provide funding, advice, technical assistance, and yes, occasionally military force to help the process along.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 06 Apr 07
       
      How the West can help transition: example, technical assistance - and sometimes military force. But not violent regime change.
  • tony curzon price on 06 Apr 07
     
    Fukuyama: desire to live modern lives not same as desire to live under liberalism ... Yes. Indeed, desire to live under liberalism is _very_ weak. It is part of the phenomenon of liberalism not inspiring a passion, or a civic religion.
tony curzon price

Zygmunt Bauman: globalisation, politics and Europe Ian Varcoe - openDemocracy - 0 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...zygmunt_Bauman_4488.jsp

intellectuals self-knowledge

shared by tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07 - Cached
  • Reading Bauman helps people to insulate themselves from these false solutions to their difficulties.
  • might say that the problem for people today is how to resist consumer society, to find ways of caring for others, and to find a new politics that is above the nation-state. The globalisation phenomenon requires this if it is to be encountered by humanity in a more balanced form than at present when its negative side predominates over its positive side. The European integration project may offer some guidance.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      The european project as a hope for a better globalisation ... but does it have the right bottom-up legitimacy to be that? is it not too much of an elitist project?
  • The political institutions of this are parliamentary democracy and the public sphere; the former has been eroded and the latter hollowed out.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      This makes me think of Simon Zadek at AccounAbility, who believes that the future of democracy will be found in the accountability of non-state instituions, like business and NGOs. Davos and CSR, not EU and UN.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Bauman is a declared European
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
       
      a good description of the Scylla and Charibdys of the EU alternative - dialogue that paves the way between relativism and fundamentalisms
  • tony curzon price on 02 Apr 07
     
    How, I wonder ...
tony curzon price

Summary of Findings: Public More Critical of Press, But Goodwill Persists - 0 views

people-press.org/...display.php3

macarthur news od

shared by tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07 - Cached
  • People who read the newspaper online have a far less favorable opinion of network and local TV news programming than do people who read the print version, and also have a somewhat less favorable view of the daily newspaper they are most familiar with. But consumers of online newspapers feel far more favorably toward large nationally influential newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07
       
      online newspaper uers tend to prefer the "mega-brands"; they are often online because of lack of trust for old media.
  • And by more than three-to-one (73%-21%), the public feels that news organizations are "often influenced by powerful people and organizations," rather than "pretty independent."
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07
       
      media thought to be in hock to special interests by 3/4 of people
  • However, even two-thirds of liberal Democrats (67%) say the news media is more motivated by a desire to expand audience than informing the public. People who have attended college are more likely than high school graduates to say that the press mostly seeks to attract the biggest audience. And 85% of those who cite the internet as a main source believe that news organizations are mostly motivated by a desire to expand their audience, rather than to inform the public.
    • tony curzon price
      tony curzon price on 26 Jun 07
       
      press motives seen as being mainly about audience acquisition, not informing the public
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