How are global capital and world politics linked under the smoke screen of attempts to “improve” the world? What role do exclusive meetings of the rich and powerful such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos play in this? On the occasion of Rimini Protokoll’s production Weltzustand Davos (State 4), which he helped shape as one of five “experts of the everyday”, the sociologist Ganga Jey Aratnam examines the history, background, and networks of the global players’ WEF. A contribution in excerpts. To article...
How could the nation state become the central form of political organization worldwide? Why is it so difficult to conceive alternatives to this relatively young classification system? The program “Now is the Time of Monsters. What Comes After Nations?” explored the challenges and limits of the nation state system, the historical connections of its genesis, and alternative models for the reorganization of the international order. To article in German...
The nation state has largely established itself as the international organizing principle of modernity. However, what do forms of resistance and alternative models to its conflict-laden demarcations and capitalist motivations look like? The political scientist James C. Scott examines “Zomia”, an upland region extending across South East Asia and the Tibetan Plateau whose indigenous population has resisted incorporation into empires and nation states since time immemorial. An excerpt from his groundbreaking book “The Art of Not Being Governed” (2009). To article...
The political theorist Sandro Mezzadra on “globalization from below,” labor mobility, and nations’ double-bind with capital. To article...
The writer Rana Dasgupta questions sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos about the state organizing its own erosion and the lack of alternatives to protect our societies from the consequences. To article...
The historian Cemil Aydin about the effects of breaking up multi-ethnic societies and the Ottoman Caliphate as a symbol for Cosmopolitanism. To article...
The First World War was by no means “the war to end all wars” it was conceived to be: Anonymous killing and the total removal of boundaries on a technological and bureaucratic war machine are mortgage debts that remain unpaid to this day. According to Jörn Leonhard in his contribution to the project Tatort Schlachtfeld “The victor wasn’t a nation, a state, or an empire, and the First World War’s result wasn’t a world without war. The real victor was war itself.” To article in German...
