Society / State / Nation

This issue of Arena examines how social life has been radically altered by technology and capital, and how attempts to address this by state policy work to exacerbate already-existing processes of alienation, hyper-individualization and the like. While the state withdraws from areas such as health and education, it intervenes in politics and the public sphere repressing speech and behaviour in the name of ‘social cohesion.’  We take a deeper look at what the social is, how it has changed, and what it might mean to reclaim it from the network, capital and the algorithm. Elsewhere we look at the deleterious impact of US foreign policy on Australia’s sovereignty, and fallout and blowback in Iran and Afghanistan.  The issue covers shifts in the political landscape; elections in France, while contradictions between technologised climate mitigation and ecology challenge green movements. We look at First Nations’ politics after the referendum and there’s more on Barron Field. Plus reviews of contemporary art, the Julia Gillard play, the erasure of the lesbian, technomodernism, Fatphobia and more!