Articles by: John Hinkson

Author Biography:

John Hinkson is an Arena Publications Editor. He has written extensively for Arena on various topics and has ongoing research interests in contemporary culture and economy, social theory and theories of social transformation. He was a lecturer in the Education Faculty at La Trobe University for 25 years and since 1995 has been manager of Arena Printing.

Editorial, Arena no. 3: Defence After the Rise of China

Arena Quarterly no. 3

John Hinkson

Sep 2020

Rather than addressing the realities of our place in the region, the Morrison government’s emerging defence strategy is an attempt to hold the old assumptions in place. It is utopian conservatism at its worst.

A High-Tech Pandemic?

Arena Quarterly no. 2

John Hinkson

Jul 2020

Amplified by the powers of high technologies, capitalist expansion has moved to a new level, recalibrating the borders between humans and the natural world and producing effects across species.

Defence After the Pandemic

Arena Online

John Hinkson

14 Jul 2020

…we have to face the fact that the United States is in serious decline. It is powerful militarily, in the technical sense, but socially it is falling apart. What future is there for an empire-dependent outlier community in this circumstance?
"As lockdown restrictions begin to be lifted, do we have to remind ourselves that we…

Informit: A high-tech pandemic?

Arena Quarterly no. 2

John Hinkson, Louis Porter

Jul 2020

PDF available from Informit

As lockdown restrictions begin to be lifted, do we have to remind ourselves that we have become deeply committed over forty years to a global way of living, producing and distributing that has been expanding and cross-referencing in ways that have no comparison with the past?

Economy and the Pandemic

Arena Online

John Hinkson

7 Apr 2020

Economies across the globe were already in a parlous state in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis.
"Intellectual practice as social form, high-tech science as bearer of the Anthropocene There could hardly…

Informit: Social agency and the anthropocene

Arena Magazine no. 163

John Hinkson

Dec 2019

PDF available from Informit

Intellectual practice as social form, high-tech science as bearer of the Anthropocene There could hardly be a more dramatic development than is occurring today where the balance of powers between the natural world and one of its component species - 'Homo sapiens' - shifts, such that 'Homo sapiens' becomes a significant driver of changes that begin to shape, even unbalance, the natural world. This process is what is increasingly being called the Anthropocene.
"Consumers who are deep in debt may have become excited about recent talk of negative…

Informit: Going negative

Arena Magazine no. 162

John Hinkson

Oct 2019

PDF available from Informit

Consumers who are deep in debt may have become excited about recent talk of negative interest rates. If they were to materialise, debts would carry no cost and would decrease in value the longer they were held! But these negative rates, where they have already occurred, do not apply to consumer debt. They circulate at another level - between banks and central banks. All the same, negative interest rates are truly unprecedented. Indeed they defy…
"The global security emergency and its economic eruptions

A War Footing?, by John Hinkson

Arena Magazine no. 161

John Hinkson

Aug 2019

The global security emergency and its economic eruptions
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Informit: A war footing?

Arena Magazine no. 161

John Hinkson

Aug 2019

PDF available from Informit

"The 18 May election has ended any sense in which Australia can feel apart from…

Informit: After the loss, what country are we?

Arena Magazine no. 160

Guy Rundle, John Hinkson, Jon Altman, Josh Lourensz, Kay Cook, Maria Rae

Jun 2019

PDF available from Informit

The 18 May election has ended any sense in which Australia can feel apart from the political stresses and upheavals that over the past decade have come to characterise much of the West. Certainly what has been called the revolt against the elites has now been confirmed here. Of course it is a particular kind of leadership that is being rejected, one associated with globalisation, immigration, education and inner-city life-differentiated from, and a parallel universe…
"The effects of the GFC continue to play out in the novel processes of globalisation…

Renegotiating Our Place in the World, by John Hinkson

Arena Magazine no. 159

John Hinkson

Apr 2019

The effects of the GFC continue to play out in the novel processes of globalisation as linked to the power and reach of the techno-sciences
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Informit: Renegotiating: Our place in the world

Arena Magazine no. 159

John Hinkson

Apr 2019

PDF available from Informit