Mag 106 Text 5P

1 06–07 2010 .............. Nº 106 .................................................................................... .................. .................. EDITORIAL ESSAY Where to find us Postal address: John Hinkson Matthew Sharpe Arena Magazine 2 TWO WORLDS 1 THOUGHTS OF AN ANTIPODEAN IN HELLAS New divisions as some seek prosperity without growth An ancient commentary on democracy and hubris PO Box 18 North Carlton 3054 .................. .................. LEAD GRAPHIC COOPER’S LAST Web: www.arena.org.au 4 Fiona Katauskas Simon Cooper Tel: (03) 9416 0232 .................. 54 CULTURE, NIHILISM AND THE MARKET Barbarism beneath the new university Fax: (03) 9416 0684 AGAINST THE CURRENT .................. Nonie Sharp ARTS AND CULTURE Submissions 5 ‘TWISTED ARE THE HEARTS OF MEN …’ Arena Magazine Reflections on life on a new Earth David Melzer accepts unsolicited 44 THE FUTURE OF COMMUNITY RADIO submissions for Guy Rundle How local is your radio? Community radio at a each of its sections: 7 GAZA AND THE WEST crossroads The flotilla and identity politics in Israel commentaries & debate .................. up to 1200 words; Gerhard Hoffstaedter REVIEWS essays up to 4000 9 BOAT PEOPLE IN THE MAKING? words; features up to What future? Refugees in Malaysia Kate Harper 3000 words; reviews of Jon Altman 50 TEARING THE FAMILY APART Recognisable perversions of the crime family books, film, art, theatre, 11 WILD RIVERS music and dance up A case for Aboriginal resources rights Sean Cubitt to 1200 words; photo Alison Caddick 51 INSPIRED CRITICISM essays; and poetry. Democracy, neo-liberalism and ‘communicative 14 GREEN FUTURES? capitalism’ A recent conference on greening the Left Please provide a brief Gillian Terzis biographical note. .................. LETTERS AND COMMENT 52 A NATION IN FREEFALL Send to: Neo-Keynesian solutions to the GFC [email protected] Ted Trainer .................. 15 WILL THE GREENS EVER GET IT? STORY Agreeing with Ariel Salleh: some green delusions Style Roger Rees We follow the AGPS Dennis Altman 49 MEMORY FLAGS Style Manual. 15 RESPONSE TO VALERIE KRIPS A young man exhorts his damaged brain to ‘work as A Serious Man misread well as you can’ The editors reserve Aurélien Mondon the right to change .................. titles and edit for space. 1 A FREE UNIVERSITY FOR MELBOURNE POETRY The emancipatory potential of education Refereeing .................. Susan Fealy 48 A SMALL TREATISE ON CAPTIVITY We formally referee any FEATURES TRANSLATION published article as Rod Beecham .................. requested by academic 17 MY UNIVERSITY authors. When education means increasing your individual PHOTO ESSAY Payment brand equity Jessie Boylan Arena Magazine does Taegen Edwards and Pablo Brait 27 A SELECTION FROM THE YOUTH OF GAZA not receive government 20 EVO, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE C-WORD SERIES funding. Published Bolivia’s exuberant alternative to Copenhagen .................. contributors are Carmel Budiardjo CARTOONS offered a half-year 24 PAPUA’S FALLEN LEADERS Matt Bissett-Johnson gift subscription to The terrible cost of leading your people Arena Magazine. Roland Boer 31 RED TORIES Beware the roots of this version of community Tom Nairn 35 GREAT BRITAIN TO LITTLE ENGLAND? The UK elections and democracy 2 EDITORIAL • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Two Worlds The packed hall gathered to hear Tim Jackson—a leading of state indebtedness has flown out of control. Arguably UK researcher on sustainable economies—on the such indebtedness can be managed over time with a regime question of ‘Prosperity without Growth’ (also the title of of economic growth. But in our times at best this could his recent book). His lively presentation and general only be a solution at great cost. The powerful states of the grasp of the issues enthralled an expectant audience. It capitalist heartlands stand vulnerable and could not sustain is hard to convey what seemed a deep emotional need themselves in the face of another shock. But we have among audience members, as reflected in their entered an era where shocks are the order of the day. questions, concerns and statements on the night. When The shock of debt crisis in Greece in past months is one joined with the fact that an earlier talk was booked out kind of experience. The Greek government was forced by some days in advance, this seems to be evidence that the institutions of the EU and the IMF to slash welfare, Jackson is engaging a profound need for at least some public spending and workers conditions generally to reduce publics. Can one reasonably see in this a gathering deficits and maintain EU membership. This association of momentum related to a crisis of the most fundamental Greece and the EU had mostly generated positive kind in our social institutions, related to how we live? consumption benefits until the crash. Suddenly, in the Tim Jackson asks, through a critique of the core aftermath of the GFC, expansion and consumption growth commitments of society to economic growth, how it had inverted into debt, unemployment and the collapse of might be possible to build a sustainable economy that social security. The resulting turmoil on the streets made can avoid climate catastrophe. Among a large range of headlines around the world. But one would be hard put to concerns, he pursues this question by asking how we portray these events as those of a public seeking to live might come to radically different concepts of another way. No doubt there are sectors of the Greek polity ‘flourishing’ for individuals and communities, notions of that would take up this concern. And there are other flourishing that contrast with those offered by the features of the situation in Greece that are quite specific. apparently limitless consumption lifestyles of Nevertheless expressions of consumer frustration were to contemporary global social institutions. His portrayal of the fore in these events. the utter disaster that awaits us if we proceed down the Where people have been drawn into the world of the road of what is now called ‘Recovery’ is comprehensive consumer oriented to commodities and have lost their and disturbing. He knows any answer will take time and sense of mutuality with others—or think mutuality can be emerge out of practical endeavour, but a visceral need to found on Facebook—they respond in ways consistent with commence a process urgently is in the foreground of his that hyper-individual formation. We can expect similar thinking. For those who attended, this is where it is at. responses over the coming period in many a city in the In Perth in the same week our leading mineral West. As Mark Lilla argues in The New York Review of Books entrepreneurs led demonstrations against a resource tax (May–June 2010) in a discussion of the rise of the ‘Tea proposed by Kevin Rudd, a tax that would be used to Party Jacobins’, there is a new populism at large. Quite help reduce government deficits resulting from the unlike the populisms of the past, it is based in the new Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and related stimulus individualism which is constituted in the experience of the programs introduced to ensure Recovery. Neither the consumption lifestyle. entrepreneurs nor any of our political leaders—other But the loss of mutuality is more complex than this. than Bob Brown—would seem to be on the same planet ‘Facebook mutuality’ is real but it cannot distinguish as Jackson’s Melbourne audience. At the centre of their between technologically facilitated presence and presence political and entrepreneurial concerns is the pursuit of based in place, the senses and tangibility. And this economic growth and profit—and more generally the distinction lies at the core of the emerging ‘two worlds’. For core assumption that expansion is good—the same way the importance of locality, regional economy, generational of life that Tim Jackson convincingly tells us is doomed knowledge of others, together with the critique of the and can have no medium-term future. Rather, the global transport of people and commodities, compose some official political debate in Australia, excitedly promoted core elements of the emerging critique of global by the media, is a stoush between combatants over the development. To see this as an advocacy of a return to distribution of the spoils from toxic economic forms of domination and hierarchy embedded in history—a expansion. What might be sustainable over time could return, say, to an aristocratic conservatism—is to not be further from their thoughts. misunderstand the nature of the contradiction that now The tunnel vision that characterises mainstream faces us, one that has been discussed for many years in Australia takes a different form in Europe and the Arena Magazine and Arena Journal. United States, where Recovery is far from certain. In On the other side of the world another drama is shockingly Australia the dependence on China, and to a lesser underlining the contradictions of our times—the massive extent India, is stark and anxiety provoking, but for the eruption of oil 1500 metres below the surface of the ocean time being makes Australia look ordered and relatively off the coast of Louisiana. Far larger than the Exxon-Valdez prosperous. In Europe and the United States the levels spill and still not controlled, it will foul the fisheries and 3 • the coastline of the immediate East Coast— in the first instance is not especially socially • possibly much of the East Coast—of the United oriented. Rather it expresses profound dismay at Two Worlds • States. Ways of life and pristine environment will the implications of what has been discovered • be ruined on a monumental scale. Various causes about the environment and climate change under John Hinkson • • have been identified: corruption and cost-saving the impact of growth-oriented Homo sapiens. inside the corporations, poor technology and • The second thing to say is that while this could inadequate regulation. But most parties, and • support a more general ferment in the arts, • especially the media, ignore the dependence of humanities and social sciences, it has not done so • the global economy and way of life intimately, in as yet.

Load more