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ethical transformation of societies. 57 In sum, we need a new economic system because our economies are unjust, illegitimate, and destructive, particularly for the most historically excluded but ultimately for all of us and for future generations. This is not to imply that the global economy is run by evil, racist, sexist and classist people. That would be to make the mistake of
view that justice claims are all it involves. For instance, in a brief discussion of environmentalism, Fraser argues that the dispute between ecologists and anti-ecologists can be resolved with reference to the needs of future generations, needs of which only a Kantian, deontological approach can conceptualise. But, as I will argue in Chapter 7, although deontology is the most useful starting point for discussing future generations, any such discussion has to take account of the contingencies of the present and near future. Our conception of future generations will
-shock therapy also serves to conjure an institutional desire to eradicate the memory of revolt, both correcting the logic that sought to question the reigning political order while also preventing transmission to future generations. In this respect, the dialogue between Serge and the young man embodies an act of resistance to the erasure of memory. A further layer of signification to the sequence emerges from the fact that the inquisitive young man in conversation with Serge is played by the film-maker Xavier Beauvois. Born just prior to the outbreak of May 68, Beauvois
Today, in many countries what is viewed as ‘credible’ economic knowledge stems from academic economics. The discipline of academic economics is based in universities across the world that employ economists who produce research that is published in academic journals and educate students who then go into government, businesses, and think tanks. Through the book’s authors’ and contributors’ experiences of economics education, and as part of the international student movement Rethinking Economics, it argues that academic economics in its current state does not provide people with the knowledge that we need to build thriving economies that allows everyone to flourish wherever they are from in the world, and whatever their racialised identity, gender or socioeconomic background. The consequences of this inadequate education links to modern economies being a root cause of systemic racism and sexism, socioeconomic inequality, and the ecological crisis. When economies are rooted in a set of principles that values whiteness, maleness and wealth, we should not be surprised by the inequalities that show up. Structural inequalities need systemic change, change that infiltrates through every level of the system, otherwise we risk reproducing and deepening them. This book makes the case that in order to reclaim economics it is necessary to diversify, decolonise and democratise how economics is taught and practised, and by whom. It calls on everyone to do what we can to reclaim economics for racial justice, gender equality and future generations.
Social democracy has made a political comeback in recent years, especially under the influence of the ‘Third Way’. Not everyone is convinced, however, that ‘Third Way’ social democracy is the best means of reviving the Left's project. This book considers this dissent and offers an alternative approach. Bringing together a range of social and political theories, it engages with some contemporary debates regarding the present direction and future of the Left. Drawing upon egalitarian, feminist and environmental ideas, the book proposes that the social democratic tradition can be renewed but only if the dominance of conservative ideas is challenged more effectively. It explores a number of issues with this aim in mind, including justice, the state, democracy, new technologies, future generations and the advances in genetics.
This essay addresses the socio-cultural potential of phreno-mesmerism in the mid-nineteenth century and how its good intentions were frustrated by its uncanny discourse. Supporters of phreno-mesmerisms social agency dreamed that the physiological make-up of future generations could be determined by engineering sexual partnerships. But the more earnestly the new hybrid science was advanced as a tool of social change, the more the discourse of phreno-magnetism proved unwieldy. In effect, the discourse represents a double-bind, intertwining sex and gender, essentialism and constructionism, science and the occult, materialism and Gothic. The article focuses of Elliotson‘s enthusiasm for uniting phrenology and mesmerism in his notorious Letter On Mesmeric Phrenology and Materialism (1843).
In Wieland, Charles Brockden Brown attempted to negotiate varying forces confronting contemporary American religious and political life. Through the transformation of the temple into a Gothic zone Brown injects questions of epistemological uncertainty, clashing forces of rational Enlightenment and supernatural faith. Brown outlines the religiously motivated founding of the nation reacting to European oppression as allegorical to the Wieland patriarchs journey from the Old to New World, and his construction of the temple demonstrates the establishment of new institutions in the American landscape. Religious liberty turns into extremism, producing Gothic violence that transforms the temple into a site of horror and destruction. His children attempt to re-transform the temple along rational Enlightenment lines much the same as Brown perceived the need for America to distance itself from its revolutionary and religious extremist origins. Yet the failure of rationalism to expunge the supernatural aura from the temple allows for the tragic events to transpire that comprise the bulk of the novel. Ultimately, Brown‘s Gothic novel evinces the critical nature of the epistemological clash he sees taking place for the direction America will take, and his concerns that Gothic violence will reverberate throughout future generations find their expression in Wieland‘s temple.
be used for private domestic houses, where the cash-strapped family has difficult choices to make. Moreover, there is a difficult balance to be met between responding to the priorities of the family within their means, their duty of care to their neighbours, wider family and future generations and the important consideration of not undermining national building codes. Again, the need for good information is paramount, to ensure that families are aware of the consequences of the choices they make and don’t compromise the safety and welfare of neighbours and family
studied, it will be possible to give advice with greater confidence than at present . . . Even with our present knowledge it is, however, unquestionable that great benefits might be conferred on future generations by the voluntary renunciation of parenthood by the diseased and by such as are very likely to be the carriers of the hidden seeds of disease. (1929: 25, 33) It takes little imagination to identify faulty mitochondria as one of the hidden seeds of disease, and women with faulty mitochondria as carriers. Renunciation of parenthood has always been an option for
years. Ideally, art would reconstruct the memory of the war for a future society that would be the beneficiary of that war, and lead it confidently to a cultural sanity that could only have been brought about by the baptism of fire that was the war itself. Though it was as yet unclear how this was to be done, and what this investment might result in, it was certain that this was no time to demobilise the artists of the nation. Whether they were creating historical records of events, warning future generations, consoling those who were bereaved or highlighting the