Culture

Wednesday 17th March

Introducing the Discourses series

openDemocracy is launching a new quarterly series of live art events featuring art exhibitions and discussions on a wide array of social, cultural and political issues.
Tuesday 16th March

Arthur Koestler: 20th century man

Arthur Koestler, whose turbulent life charts the intellectual history of the 20thc in the West, has finally found a worthy biographer in Michael Scammell. A youthful communist and survivor of Franco’s prisons, Koestler developed into one of the West’s most persuasive crusaders against communism.
Monday 15th March

Moving Parts: Prajapati

In this excerpt from Ruchir Joshi's 'Moving Parts' series, Ruchir visits the silica quartz processing-plant in Godhra where many local workers claim that hazardous working conditions are resulting in serious health problems

From a culture of war to a culture of peace

The time has run out for traditional military answers. Ours is a culture of war, but cultures can change. We need education in peace and in international understanding, as so much more
Friday 12th March

The English: a people without a history?

Of all Britain's peoples, the English have traditionally been the centrepiece of 'British history'. Nonetheless, argues UCL historian Michael Collins, it is they who have the most to worry about when it comes to their sense of the past
Tuesday 9th March

Fiction as truth, not myth

openDemocracy author Heather McRobie speaks with Ollie Brock about her upcoming novel where she looks at both Radovan Karadzic – who is standing trial for war crimes during the Serbian genocide of 1994 – and 19th-century philologist Vuk Karadzic
Monday 8th March

Olympean blow at the Kremlin

Russian national pride has been badly dented by poor performance at the winter Olympics. It is being widely read as a political failure, reflecting the effects of corruption, and a regime which promotes PR over professionalism
Thursday 4th March
Monday 1st March

The Golden Bear and its six silver siblings

A film called Honey took top prize at the 60th Berlin Film festival, presided over by Werner Herzog, this year’s jury supremo. And there were six more prize-winners…
Friday 26th February
Thursday 25th February

Ethnic riots provoke arson in Bangladesh's troubled Chittagong Hill Tracts

Chittagong Hill Tracts shaken by riots and arson. India and Pakistan take steps to rebuild their relationship. Niger leaders rule themselves out of elections. Darfur rebels contradict president’s claim that the war is over. All this and more in today’s briefing.

A 'dishonesty of the conscientious': Gordon Brown’s tragedy

The literature of human fall and frailty illuminates the political fate of Britain’s prime minister.   
Friday 19th February

Remembering Chekhov in Yalta

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Chekhov’s birth, his English biographer Rosamund Bartlett celebrates the writer’s last days in Yalta, and leads the campaign to restore his house
Thursday 18th February

Beirut and contradiction: reading the World Press Photo award

The writer and Saqi publisher died on 17 February 2007. Her last article - on Beirut - is here. Plus: memory trio, and life journey
Friday 12th February

A Theory of Human Rights

Freedom is the goal rather than the ground of human rights. But freedom is also essentially dependent on others and other cultures. Achieving the conditions for freedom - human rights - is humanity's overriding moral obligation.
Thursday 11th February

Thinly veiled misogyny

As French President Nicolas Sarkozy attempts to drive through a ban on the niqab and burqa, Laurie Penny describes how the Islamic veil has become yet another item of women’s clothing for men to fight over for their own ends
Friday 5th February

Europe and its cannibals

A spell-binding history of cannibalism in the middle ages: its use as a propaganda tool, and place in Christendom's self-image; the cannibal as a philosophical hypothetical, and a justification for colonialism; and Richard the Lionheart's fondness for "Saracen's head's all hot"
Thursday 4th February

Who is Russia's top intellectual?

Throughout Russian and Soviet history, the intellectual has played a central and hugely influential role in society. Today, that has changed. A recent internet vote on the country’s most influential intellectual saw instead postmodern ambiguity emerge victorious, writes Lyubov Borusyak

Avatar blues and the hopelessness of Pandora

What's depressing is the film's theory of value
Monday 25th January

The politics of poppy day

Following the threatened demonstration of Islam4UK in Wootton Bassett, Lucy Noakes explores the fraught history of war remembrance. The article launches Lest we forget: remembering historic conflicts, openSecurity’s new editorial project in association with History & Policy, asking historians to reflect on wars gone by and the light they shed on present conflicts.
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