Society featured Archives

The global village and the surveillance society

April 23, 2018April 22, 2018 by Kurt Cobb

The global village has many similarities to an actual village or small town. Fellow villagers and small town neighbors are much more likely to know about each other’s personal lives (often including many of the intimate details) than those who live in a large city. As McLuhan wrote in 1962: “unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”

What Can Public Spaces Offer to the Globally Displaced?

April 20, 2018 by PPS Staff

While there is no one park or town square that can accommodate 22.5 million people, which is the global refugee population according to recent UN estimates, public spaces can still play a key role in addressing today’s global refugee crisis.

The Mobility Maze

April 18, 2018 by Bart Hawkins Kreps

Mobility, after all, is generally less important to people than accessibility. When we go somewhere it’s not the movement that’s valuable, it’s the access to something – a school, shopping, a workplace, a friend’s house or a park – that really counts.

Frida Berrigan, Growing Up With the Threat of Pervasive Violence

April 17, 2018 by Frida Berrigan

Don’t you think that true security lies not in our arming ourselves to the teeth against other people — that is, in our disconnection from them — but in our connection to them, to the web of mutuality that has bound societies, small and large, for millennia?

Hitch-Hiking, Ivan Illich and Degrowth

April 16, 2018 by Corinna Burkhart

When hitch-hiking, a certain irony is common: Time and time again, the authors’ of this post have been picked up by drivers who immediately instruct them that hitch-hiking used to work, but now is impossible.

Rebel Cities 1: Marielle Franco Presente!

April 13, 2018 by Steve Rushton

Marielle was a leading light in Brazil’s Feminist Spring, a new generation of Afro-Brazilian and indigenous women fighting back against Brazil’s intensifying attacks against people of color, women, LGBT people and other oppressed communities.

What Standing Rock Gave the World

April 12, 2018 by Jenni Monet

Jannie Staffansson, a representative of the Saami Council, wants what Chief Deskaheh had petitioned to the League of Nations nearly a century earlier: sovereign recognition for Indigenous Peoples on an international scale. It would allow equity at the negotiating table—a level playing field to fairly deal with the consequences of a warming planet in the face of land grabs and natural resource extraction.

Martin Luther King’s Critique of Capitalism is More Relevant than Ever

April 11, 2018 by David Ragland

As we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s life and assassination 50 years ago, there is much to reflect upon considering the current events, ranging from increased militarism from this administration to gun violence that includes police violence, mass shootings and the protests that have responded and pushed for deep freedom and liberation.

The Courage to Jump

April 10, 2018 by Jody Tishmack

Misogyny is contempt and ingrained prejudice against women, the extreme version of sexism. Misogyny is also the warping of masculinity and strength into dominance and aggression. Boys are taught that to be a man they must be hard and unfeeling, that being sensitive makes you inherently weak.

What If London Were a National Park City?

April 9, 2018 by Rob Hopkins

And so the question of “what if London were to become a National Park City?” was born. What a great question. But not content to have just come up with a great “what if?” question, he has spent the last 4 years trying to make it happen. W

Whatever Happened to Civil Society?

April 6, 2018 by Vern Hughes

Our experience of love, care and belonging are formed by our relationships in the civil sphere, not by the state or the market. Our lives are subsequently shaped, battered and sometimes improved by the state and the market, but the primary formation of our unique selves and our values is the work of civil society.

3 Cheers for A2Bism: a Review of ‘Copenhagenize’

April 5, 2018 by Bart Hawkins Kreps

How do we get beyond the dependency-inducing trap of car culture? After 100 years in which auto-oriented infrastructure has dominated public works spending and reshaped civic life, how can we make our streets safe and healthy spaces?