If the twentieth century was, in the language of the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, the “age of extremes”, then the twenty-first century may well be the age of democracy. And yet a profound sense of disconnect has emerged.
On religion, EU and UN 'dialogue' with civil society is distinguished by egregious bias; far from serving democracy, it serves conservative religious voices and abjectly fails to address the consequences of ideological intransigence.
Neoliberal logics are increasingly being applied to the ways in which we talk about ‘creativity’. The new dogma of ‘creativity’, far from ushering in an age of horizontalised power structures, masks powerful processes of elite capture and capitalist development.
The social centre of Can Vies in Barcelona, occupied by squatters since 1997, achieved global recognition when plans for demolition were met by forceful protest. The attention on rioting has masked the hard work of reconstruction by the people of Sants, in a site of urban struggle against austerit
This statutory nature of the Sharia begins to emerge, paradoxically, in the colonial British courts. It is this legacy that led to a reimagining of the role of Sharia, that now plagues the modern Muslim nation state.
Whilst there are many apparent similarities between the rhetoric of ‘Localism’ in England and that of ‘Community Empowerment’ in Scotland, a closer look reveals striking contrasts in the ways that these policies have been developed and what they mean in practice.
The strategy of gender sensitisation encourages critical reflection on prevalent assumptions to mount a challenge to gender stereotypes. Can it undermine embedded beliefs? The success of gender sensitisation programmes in contexts such as Zambia is an urgent question.
The education system, recovering from economic crisis, increasingly obsesses itself with downsizing and rationalising, with “student learning outcomes” determined by test scores and the job market. Now, more than ever, we need to return to Adorno.
In 1999, the EU embarked on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, not recognising that, left to their own devices, the judges would ultimately be overcome by the material forces and zeitgeist that put the interests of the markets before the rights of individuals.
Ending forced marriage and FGM within a generation cannot be done without addressing the harder issues, such as the impact of austerity measures, immigration controls and religious fundamentalisms. Hannana Siddiqui reports on the concerns of BME groups for women following the GIRL Summit last week
