Tag: democracy

Alan Roberts Prize: What if Ivan Illich Were Elected Mayor?

The winning essay for 2021 in Arena’s annual Alan Roberts Prize.

Citizens, Arise!

The first and last defence of democracy is in the street where we live.

The divided citizen: Robo-debt was just the beginning

What does a citizen look like in the eyes of the state when she is constructed from multiple databases and how does she respond to the resultant kaleidoscopic rendition of her?

The Little Girl who stood up for Peace

Decades after its original run, Mafalda, the adored comic strip created by the late Argentinian cartoonist Quino, remains timely and potent.

There’s No Time Left Not To Do Everything

…continuing a supplicant politics, where we beg or demand of governments that they act, is both destined to fail and underplaying our hand.

The Democratic University

There is an alternative... centred on concepts of faculty and student democracy with strong, sometimes generations-deep, social ties to the many communities that they engage with…

Technocratic Urban Governance and the Need to Localise Computing Infrastructure (Part II)

Whoever controls the computer-based infrastructure of the city can determine the type of future the city has... ‘Smart city’ vendors and their platforms will immediately lock-in governments and citizens and limit their development, shaping the way we relate to the city while programming citizens’ behaviour.

Technocratic Urban Governance and the Need to Localise Computing Infrastructure (Part I)

The ‘smart city’ agenda follows a logic of neoliberal platformisation of the city and its urban infrastructures, where wealth is transferred to private corporations that structurally cannot prioritise public benefit or citizens’ well-being above their own profit-maximising drive, or work to strengthen democratic governments and their institutions.

Participative Platforms and Alternative Tech Regimes

After COVID, it is possible that participatory democracy will become more mediatised, and public and cooperative initiatives will rise as alternatives to recover technological infrastructure as a public good.

‘Nativist’ Social Movement to ‘Postcolonial’ Democratisation

Myths of history and identity leading to the Hong Kong protests

The Tip of the Democracy-Sinking Iceberg

There is a curious and seldom-told backstory and parallel story to the high-profile Cambridge Analytica scandal, one that makes the notorious firm seem like the tip of the democracy-sinking iceberg.

That Liability, Democracy, by Alison Caddick

What will happen when it is fully revealed in the operation of the corporate state that the needs of the people are not its concern?