Hope from below: composing the commons in Iceland

Richard Bater 1 December 2011

Never again can the world be told by the custodians of the old that the people cannot be relied upon to write the contract between citizens and government, and write it well.

Occupy London and the unions: brothers in arms or a marriage made in hell?

Jamie Mackay 1 December 2011

Occupy London came out in support of the N30 public sector strike over pension reform - but there was disagreement among the ranks. Can Occupy support Britain's unions, and what can the unions learn from the movement?

Why can’t we have that? ‘Global civil disobedience’ and the European living laboratory

Luis Cabrera 1 December 2011
In a response to Daniele Archibugi and Patti Tamara Lenard, the author argues that unauthorized immigrants should be seen as offering a powerful normative challenge to the vast disparities in life chances that are the norm in the current global system. Rather than advocating the open borders approach rejected by both Archibugi and Lenard, however, he argues for more gradual transformations involving deeper, democratically accountable integration between states.

Fred Halliday was right: The LSE, Gaddafi money and what is missing from the Woolf Report

Anthony Barnett 1 December 2011

Fred Halliday has been vindicated in his long battle with the LSE over taking Gaddafi money. But the underlying reason - corporate and government pressure on the university is not addressed by the Woolf Report into the scandal.

The Museum of Neoliberalism: full or empty?

Niki Seth-Smith 29 November 2011
A new occupation has sprung up in a disused museum in London. The occupiers have turned one floor into a museum of neoliberalism. But will it be a space for transportation to a future better world, or an embodiment of the end of history?

Democracy put to the test

José Ignacio Torreblanca 28 November 2011
Just as the mechanisms that made democracy function in city states were not adequate for governing nation states, representative democracies today are showing themselves incapable of managing, effectively and democratically, the system that is emerging in Europe. Updated.

Will neuroscientific understanding undermine our sense of self?

Rachael Panizzo 28 November 2011
Reporting on more and more experiments that predict action before conscious intention, Nature, the leading science journal, ran the sensationalist headline: "Neuroscience vs philosophy: Taking aim at free will". But is there really such a stark distinction? What applies to an a quasi-automated actions in the laboratory may have nothing to do with complex, socially mediated choices

In search of brains

Jim Gabour 27 November 2011
What links Los Angeles and New Orleans? Zombies, of course, with tongues protruding through their cheeks. Enjoy your foretaste of Jim Gabour's Sunday Blog series ...

Where the devil can't go, an extract

Anya Lipska 27 November 2011
Londoners have mostly welcomed the recent Polish immigrant community in their midst, although most do not know them as a community. A new micro-published thriller, extracted here, brings that community to life and tells of its own relationship to pre-1989 life and power

Why we should resist the idea of student as consumer

Richard Scullion 27 November 2011
What are the consequences of the marketisation of higher education in England? Our consumerist society may get the education it deserves, but will it be the education it really wants or needs?

Britain's unacknowledged rulers (Oligarchy Watch Part 1)

David Beetham 23 November 2011
Last summer, Democratic Audit published an explosive paper on the growing influence of the corporate and financial sectors on British democracy. OurKingdom is publishing a series of updates on the paper, of which this is the first.

An arch-visionary of Canterbury

Theo Hobson 23 November 2011
The leading religious authority of the Church of England has disappointed many of the hopes invested in him. Rowan Williams has indeed failed to address the challenges facing the Church and the Anglican Communion, not least its historic entanglement with state power. This is the project that his successor must understand, says Theo Hobson.

Support a world-wide awakening

Anthony Barnett 22 November 2011
openDemocracy’s founder Anthony Barnett writes to you...

Goodbye Charter 88: a new epoch for democratic resistance has begun

Anthony Barnett 20 November 2011
A new epoch of democratic reform in Britain is needed to respond to the transformation of the British state, the disintegration of the old constitutional order and the rise of corporate power, now that hope of a Labour Lib Dem alliance for democracy is over. The pure but totalising strategy of the UK's Charter 88 conceived 25 years ago is buried by its first co-ordinator.

Feral savages: post-riot labelling of British Blacks

Carl Hylton and Bertha Ochieng 18 November 2011

'Underclass', 'feral', 'feckless': these terms have gained new currency after England's August riots. Although not explicitly racist, together they form a coded language that casts working class and Black communities as the 'enemies within'.

This week's editor

Heather McRobie


Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

More

Democratic Wealth

More

Nuclear non-proliferation

More

oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

More

Mali - the plot thickens

More

Remote control war

More

The media in Europe

More

Syndicate content