John Torpey teaches sociology, history, and European studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He is at work writing a book about the global spread of demands for reparations for historical injustices, to be published by Harvard University Press.

Recent articles

Does the worldwide concern with public apology represent a turning of society’s face towards the past, one that closes the possibility of imagining a better future?

At this stage in globalising history “America” has come to be seen by many as a stand-in for the “cosmopolitanism” that was once associated with Jews. “America” represents some kind of soulless, materialistic, rootless way of life that they detest.

As grand visions of national and social freedom have collapsed, the losers of history compete to seek recompense for past injustice. This tidal wave of “memory” and “reparation” is also a turning away from the hope of progress. Can our engagement with the past be connected to the imagining of a better future?