The Infrastructures of Liberation at the End of the World

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Leniqueca A. Welcome
Keyword(s):  
Homo Oeconomicus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Crisis Events ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Political Economic

Looking ethnographically at the 2018 flooding of Greenvale Park, Trinidad, and in conversation with disasters and their aftershocks throughout the region, this essay explores the entanglements of crisis, loss, and liberation. Drawing on the grassroot responses to recent not-so-natural crisis events as evidence, it shows that repetitive states of coconstituted ecological and political-economic devastation create vivid spaces of loss that make clear to the affected that repeating states of dystopia cannot be ruptured by the reiteration of the past political visions of nation-states. Finally, the essay suggests that our apocalyptic present makes the case for an abolitionist praxis to intentionally end this world that singularly values Man2/homo oeconomicus to save ourselves as a species.

That West meant to be declining

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 149 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Aleksandra Kania
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
The West ◽  
Zygmunt Bauman ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World

This conversation between Zygmunt Bauman and Aleksandra Kania picks up on the themes of crisis, interregnum and the decline of the West. Decline of the West is first of all decline of western civilization. This easily leads to panic about the end of the world; what it really indicates is the limits and constraints of a world system based on nation-states. Spengler and Elias are introduced as interlocutors, in order to open these issues, and those of capitalism, socialism and caesarism. Trump here appears as a wilfully decisionist leader. Populism plays its part, but illiberalism now overpowers neoliberalism. Bauman and Kania engage in this text as interlocutors; this is a record of their own dialogue, and a reminder of its possibilities.

All Societies Die

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Cohn
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Common Features ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Drug Cartels ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
The French Revolution

The author of this book asks us to prepare for the inevitable. Our society is going to die. What are you going to do about it? But the author also wants us to know that there's still reason for hope. In an immersive and mesmerizing discussion, this book considers what makes societies (throughout history) collapse. It points us to the historical examples of the Byzantine empire, the collapse of Somalia, the rise of Middle Eastern terrorism, the rise of drug cartels in Latin America, and the French Revolution, to explain how societal decline has common features and themes. While unveiling the past, the message to us about the present is searing. Through an assessment of past and current societies, the book offers us a new way of looking at societal growth and decline. With a broad panorama of bloody stories, unexpected historical riches, crime waves, corruption, and disasters, the reader is shown that although our society will, inevitably, die at some point, there's still a lot we can do to make it better and live a little longer. This inventive approach to an “end-of-the-world” scenario should be a warning. We're not there yet. The book concludes with a strategy of preserving and rebuilding so that we don't have to give a eulogy anytime soon.

What can we learn from the Past about Future Technological Trends in Adult Education?

2011 ◽  
pp. 333-353
Author(s):  
John K. Hope
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Pedagogical Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Economic

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the past two decades of technology use in adult education with the intention of providing a critical lens with which to view future technological trends in adult education. The article begins with a brief summary of technological trends, such as the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web, that have influenced adult education over the past two decades. Political, economic, social, and pedagogical issues that have influenced the use of technology in adult education are also discussed and possible solutions to these issues are outlined. The article concludes with an attempt to extrapolate future technological trends that could influence the direction of adult education in the decade to come.

Killing God to Find Palestine ‘after the End of the World’ in Adania Shibli, Mahmoud Amer, and Maya Abu al-Hayyat

2021 ◽  
pp. 155-172
Author(s):  
Nora Parr
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Production ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
New Words ◽  
Existing Structures ◽  
Oslo Accords ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
New Framework

While imagery and ideas from the past remain significant across much of Palestinian cultural production, there is an increasing push against a quagmire of language, where meaning is stuck in a past paradigm. Focusing on the work of Adania Shibli, Maya Abu al-Hayyat, and Mahmoud Amer, this chapter looks at contemporary writers who use their art to forge new words—a new language, a new framework for language—that better responds to life as they live it. In the process, existing structures of representation are forcefully discarded, though not entirely left behind. The chapter contends that the stories demand repudiation; a reckoning with the fact that somewhere between the Oslo Accords and the new millennium Palestine’s symbolic order and its lived world ceased to cohere.

The End of the World is Nigh!

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-57
Author(s):  
Nicholas Mee
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
World History ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Outer Planets ◽  
Johannes Kepler ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
End Of The World

Astronomy was the first science. Even in the fourteenth century, astronomers could accurately predict the date and time of an eclipse that lay one hundred years in the future. But early astronomers also developed some strange ideas which still resound today. Astrologers of the past identified conjunctions of the planets, especially the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn, with disastrous events such as floods, schisms, and pestilence. These ideas were related to the notion that world history can be understood as a series of 1,000-year cycles. This idea dates back to ancient Persian and Babylonian astrologers, but it has been perpetuated within Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity and is known today as ‘millennialism’. It is quite remarkable that the sequence of conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn was also the key that led Johannes Kepler to dedicate himself to astronomy and ultimately to transform astronomy into a modern science.

WORLD SYSTEM, GLOBALIZATION AND RUSSIA NATIONAL INTERESTS

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vadim Nedorezov ◽  
Leonid Pisarchik
Keyword(s):  
World System ◽  
National Interests ◽  
End Of History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Neoliberal Reforms ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Original Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Values ◽  
Widespread Dissemination

The authors of the article analyze the view of the World-system of I. Wallerstein, the F. Fukuyama concept of the “end of history” and the W. Beck concept of globalization. The authors focus not only on the concept and essence of globalization, but also on the problem of opposition of modern nation states to globalization processes that negatively affect the statehood and culture of sovereign states. The process of globalization is objective, but the loss of the country's sovereignty threatens to destroy its original culture. The authors show that globalization also carries threats that must be neutralized if we want to survive as a country and as a people. These are threats associated with the widespread dissemination of Western values (Westernization), models of upbringing and education, with Western sanctions against Russia. The neoliberal reforms of the 90s brought our country to its knees. Over the past twenty years, something has been corrected. The authors show that in the current situation it is necessary to make efforts to ensure the sovereignty and defense of the country, its economic growth and protection of the original values of our civilization.

Halfway there: the transition from 1968 to 2068 in tourism and hospitality

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Webster
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Service Industries ◽  
Energy Depletion ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Tourism And Hospitality ◽  
Political Economic

Summary Objectives The intention of this paper is to discuss the changes that have taken place in the past fifty years and the changes that we expect in the next fifty years. We will look into the political and economic changes in the global economy and see what some of the trends that are predictable will lead to (population decreases in developed countries and difficulties funding pension schemes in developed countries…). We will also investigate some of the major issues with which humanity will have to deal with in the next fifty years for which the end is less predictable (energy depletion, resource depletion, economic integration…). We will discuss the changes that have gone on and the changes that we can expect, explaining how the tourism and hospitality industries have responded and will have to respond to the major and impactful changes that will come. Methodology The methodology is an investigation of the economic and political trends of the past fifty years and a discussion of the probable continuation of some of the trends and probability of major shifts in the next fifty years. Main Results and Contributions In 1968, the world was different from now and the tourism industry has undergone a transformation as a response to major social, political, and economic changes. Fifty years on, we have transitioned from the world of the Cold War and are well into the digital age with a globalized political economy. Here, we take the time to discuss the ways that the great political, economic, and social transformations of the last 50 years have impacted upon the social practice of tourism. We will look at the trends and their trajectory to make an assessment of how tourism will have to adjust to the new world of tourism in the next 50 years. Key in this discussion are some social changes, such as demographic changes in wealthy countries, petroleum dependency, the shift in production to Asia, the trajectory of the fiat currency system, and the increasing use of robotic technologies and artificial intelligence, among other things. We end a discussion with a discussion of how the travel and tourism industries will have to adjust to the new political, economic, and social realities of 2068. Limitations The chief limitation is that there are many salient variables to investigate in terms of coming to terms with critical changes of the past and the critical ones that will be drivers to the future. Conclusions There will be many changes in the next fifty years that we can expect such as increasing stress on the pension systems in developed countries, negative population growths in the developed countries, the increasingly critical roles of robots and artificial intelligence in service industries and resource/energy depletion. The major geopolitical reorientation of the world towards Asia is also a key variable to consider, as well as whether the long-term trend towards economic liberalization and globalization of the world economy will continue.

Technological Trends in Adult Education

2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 82-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Hope
Keyword(s):  
Adult Education ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
World Wide ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Pedagogical Issues ◽  
The Past ◽  
Use Of Technology ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Economic

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical review of the past two decades of technology use in adult education. The article begins with a brief summary of technological trends, such as the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web, that have influenced adult education over the past two decades. Political, economic, social, and pedagogical issues that have influenced the use of technology in adult education are also discussed and possible solutions to these issues are outlined. The article concludes with an attempt to extrapolate future technological trends that could influence the direction of adult education in the decade to come.

scholarly journals A New Science for a Post-Frontier World

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-124
Author(s):  
Donald Worster
Keyword(s):  
Great Plains ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The World

The driving force behind the North American frontier were waves of economic migrants from Europe and their offspring, competing against the indigenous people and eventually replacing them. But those waves were backed up by the power of the American and Canadian nation states, with their well-armed military, their well funded railroads, and other technology and capital. Science too was initially on the side of the invaders. But after World War One that frontier began to run out of free, abundant land. Then began what I will call a “post-frontier” science, especially ecological in content, that represented a very different attitude toward the white man’s conquest. Scientists like Frederick Clements, John C. Weaver, Paul Sears, and Stan Rowe, all natives to the Great Plains, laid the foundations for what is now a powerful critique of frontier agriculture. This article aims to summarize that critique briefly but focus mainly on the more recent work of Wes Jackson, founder and longtime president of the Land Institute. He has strongly criticized the frontier ethos for its the lack of understanding of the native ecology of the grasslands. In its place he has offered a vision of “perennial polyculture,” using nature as a model for agriculture in an era of limits. That model has not only been making a growing impact on American thinking but has now spread to other continents. Will the end of this frontier cycle and scientific reappraisal turn out to be what Jackson calls a “new agriculture,” one based on learning from the past and one that can change farming all over the world?

scholarly journals An Evaluation of Massive Land Interventions for the Relocation of Capital Cities

Urban Science ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Tom X. Hackbarth ◽  
Walter T. de Vries
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Analytical Methodology ◽  
Capital Cities ◽  
The Past ◽  
East Kalimantan ◽  
Management Interventions ◽  
The World ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
Planning Approaches

Across the world, capital cities are being relocated. Such practices have existed almost as long as capitals themselves. Against the background of the relocation of Indonesia’s seat of government from Jakarta to East Kalimantan, it is clear that such processes will continue to take place in the future. Especially if one considers the reasons for the move: climate change is leading to an increasing inhabitability of the Indonesian capital. Therefore, it is important to understand the processes behind such megaprojects and their impacts on the surroundings in order to build new capitals sustainably. Hence, this paper deals with examples from the past seven decades and examines them from different perspectives, such as the underlying politics and economy, planning approaches, reasons for relocation, as well as cultural and ecological backgrounds. With an analytical methodology based on eight aspects of responsible land management interventions (the 8R-framework), it is possible to assess the degree to which these moves are responsible. Combined with a literature review of past documented evidence, we derived 8R-matrices, inferred recurring issues and constructed a database containing multiple aspects of capital relocations. This database allowed simple SQL-coding, which enabled describing commonalities among the different land interventions for the capital relocations. These results help to connect occurring sets of problems to particular political, economic and planning backgrounds and to identify different frameworks within which most new capitals are situated. These new insights make future capital relocations better manageable and can support the process of capital relocation in Indonesia.

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