There’s a time-tested ‘law’ in the history of modern self-government: when a bounded nation-state democracy prosecutes war abroad, the spirit and institutions of its democracy are usually vandalised at home. The Life and Death of Democracy analyses many historical instances of...
Read More[caption id="attachment_8881" align="alignnone" width="800"] Image: Fumarole near the base of Mount Erebus, Ross Island, Antarctica nexttriptourism.com[/caption] The following field notes grapple with the problem of how to understand the emergent polity of Antarctica, and why its break with the language and...
Read MoreManus Island camp Refugee Action Coalition The following commentary on the Abbott government’s policy of forcibly preventing people from seeking asylum within Australia has aroused considerable controversy. Several thousand public and private comments, from a wide variety of sources, have so far...
Read More20 April, 2014 Readers interested in the emerging politics of the human/non-human and the deep and difficult tensions between capitalism and democracy are bound to find stimulating a recent public lecture by one of the world’s leading social scientists, Bruno Latour. Delivered...
Read MoreThe future shape of Thailand is up for grabs, and if democracy survives, it won't resemble the 'Washminster' system that the West is used to, writes John Keane. [caption id="attachment_7792" align="alignnone" width="700"] Anti-government protesters march in Bangkok on January 17, 2014....
Read MoreVibrant democracies need sharp-angled and unceremonious characters like Lou Reed who can rail against imperiousness and conformity, writes John Keane. [caption id="attachment_9170" align="alignnone" width="741"] PHOTO: Lou Reed embodied detached cool and passionate anger. (Tracey Nearmy: AAP)[/caption] It's said often that democracy requires...
Read More[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="742"] A sign in New York in 1913 (click to enlarge). Flickr Commons/The Library of Congress. Public domain.[/caption] The following reflection on the subject of banks and democracy has been prepared for a forthcoming OECD meeting in Paris,...
Read MoreEverybody warned this would be no ordinary invitation, and they were right. Three hundred metres from Knightsbridge underground station, just a stone’s throw from fashion-conscious Harrods, I suddenly encounter a wall of police. I try to remember my instructions. Look...
Read MoreNew Reasons Why Politics Matters in the Early Years of the Twenty-first Century. Bernard Crick was revered and respected for his writing against anti-politics and his dislike of intellectual timidity. So he might well have found the following risqué observation both...
Read MoreRethinking the history of the impact of representative democracy upon Indigenous peoples. Although the first Australian association of self-declared democrats was formed in Sydney only in 1848, the year of revolutions in Europe, the political tides flowing in their favour were...
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