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.

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?

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

"Reflections on the social form of the scientific age. The fear of the power of…

Informit: New worlds and the nuclear age

Arena Magazine no. 158

John Hinkson

Feb 2019

PDF available from Informit

Reflections on the social form of the scientific age. The fear of the power of nuclear weapons since 1945 has been widely shared by publics everywhere. Suddenly, after the unrelenting horrors of six years of world war, people were confronted by destructive powers they had no way of comprehending: previous forms of warfare were not comparable and this new power seemed to come from nowhere - it was entirely mysterious, except for the known fact…
"The drama of the GFC is unforgettable for those who lived through it. It was…

Informit: Financial fictions

Arena Magazine no. 156

John Hinkson

Oct 2018

PDF available from Informit

The drama of the GFC is unforgettable for those who lived through it. It was as though the whole world was on a precipice, not for a day or a week but for months, with radical uncertainty about who and what could be trusted financially, an issue that remains to this day. Globally, some of the largest banks were closing. In the United States property prices were falling dramatically. Exporters and importers could not get…