Articles by: Paul James

31 Jan 2023

This means that the best way that we can honour Tom Nairn is to read his work and ponder what it means to think and act outside of the taken-for-granted ideologies that currently claim our attention.

The President Decides Who Should Die: Another Assassination in the ‘Forever War’

5 Aug 2022

The United States has taken it upon itself the authority, without trial, to kill anyone it deems to be a threat anywhere in the world.

How Many Ways Can We Say ‘Sorry’ Without Consequence?: Scott Morrison refines the art of non-apologising

5 Aug 2021

The big general point here is that in contemporary social life, non-apologising…has become a political art form, while responding to wicked problems at the heart of our crisis is reduced to minor policy changes and some funding injections.

Against Resilience

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Sep 2020

In our topsy-turvy world...the ‘abnormal’ has become ‘normal’, to be resilient is now to be relatively comfortable with unsustainable degrees of madness and change.

"The world faces horrendous challenges over coming generations. We as humans have become witnesses to…

Informit: Against resilience

Arena Quarterly no. 3

Sep 2020

The world faces horrendous challenges over coming generations. We as humans have become witnesses to the upheaval of the planet, very gradually coming to realise that we are the main agents of this convulsion. Life on earth, at least as we have known it, is slowly becoming untenable, with increasingly intense storm surges, inundations, heat-island effects, fires, droughts and floods. While picture postcards from various places around the globe, snapshots taken at the right angle…

Cruel Irony or Structural Cruelty? How Good People are Destroying Our Universities

13 Aug 2020

Here, the cruel irony (of destroying people’s working lives in order to balance the budget) shifts into a further phase: what might be called ‘structural cruelty’.

"Introduction to Arena Journal no. 49/50, June 2018. By Stephen Ames, Ian Barns, John Hinkson,…

Whither Religion in a World of Compounding Crises?

Arena Journal no. 49/50

Gordon Preece, Ian Barns, John Hinkson, Paul James, Stephen Ames

Jun 2018

Introduction to Arena Journal no. 49/50, June 2018. By Stephen Ames, Ian Barns, John Hinkson, Paul James and Gordon Preece

"Though a significant minority across the world enjoy the gross material benefits of a prodigiously…

Informit: Whither religion in a world of compounding crises?

Arena Journal no. 49/50

Gordon Preece, Ian Barns, John Hinkson, Paul James, Stephen Ames

Jun 2018

Though a significant minority across the world enjoy the gross material benefits of a prodigiously productive global economy, our planet is at the same time beset by escalating system-level crises. Deep economic inequality is intensifying both between and within national polities. Ecological degradation is calling into question the future of the earth as we know it, with disruptive climate change only the most prominent issue. Global (dis)order is stoking increased militarisation, including the possession of…

"What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? This simple…

Informit: What does it mean ontologically to be religious?

Arena Journal no. 49/50

Jun 2018

What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age? This simple question, the first sentence of Charles Taylor's extraordinary book 'A Secular Age', is deceptively complex - and a bad place to start. Any approach that begins with a question that presumes so much, and then continues without changing the terms of that question, is bound to reach an impasse. Even when developed with sophistication, such an approach is limited either…

"Food is basic to human existence. Across the entire period that humans have lived on…

Informit: Food, and the unsettling of the human condition

Arena Journal no. 47/48

Nick Rose, Paul James

Jan 2017

Food is basic to human existence. Across the entire period that humans have lived on this planet, food has been central to our social being. The production, exchange, consumption and narrating of the meaning of food has been, and continues to be, fundamental to every family, community, ethnic grouping, religion, nation and civilisation. Food nourishes us - body and soul. It gives us energy - material and social. Eating together is a focus of personal…

"This is the ‘unthinkable’ threat that Philip Roth foretold in his novel The Plot Against…

Trump: Yes, Fascist, by Paul James

21 Jan 2017

This is the ‘unthinkable’ threat that Philip Roth foretold in his novel The Plot Against America.

"Four articles by Paul James (one with Freya Carkeek), from the eighties and early nineties:…

Foundation Arena Articles: Paul James