Global Thinker Research Articles

Wygnaniec: 21 scen z życia Zygmunta Baumana [An outcast: 21 scenes from Zygmunt Bauman's life

<i>Wygnaniec: 21 scen z życia Zygmunta Baumana</i> [An outcast: 21 scenes from Zygmunt Bauman's life

Mészáros and Chávez: "The Point from Which to Move the World Today"

István Mészáros was a global thinker strongly committed to anti-imperialist struggles. In this respect, he allied himself with those fighting for socialist transformation in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Brazil, and elsewhere. He argued that in the descending phase of capitalism there was a "downward equalization of the rate of exploitation," by which he meant a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions, enforced by a global system of monopolistic competition.

Cerita on Calonarang Dance Drama

Cerita on <i>Calonarang</i> Dance Drama

March 28, 2021

The first time I met Nawal—at least I think it was the first time—was at a women’s studies conference here in the United States sometime in the early 1980s. All I remember about that conference today was a conversation between Nawal and the woman who had invited her there, a conversation that, for some reason, I was party to. In the course of it, Nawal’s host—I’ll call her Ms. A.—was telling Nawal that she was not to speak about such and such issues. Nawal’s instant response was astonished outrage. “You’re telling me, Nawal El Saadawi,” she said, “what I can and cannot speak about?” This, obviously, was absurd, given that Nawal was famous for having gone to prison for saying and writing exactly what she thought. I joined her in her protest and Ms. A. soon backed down.The author of more than forty books, Nawal was a dynamo of intellectual and imaginative creativity, forever generating new ideas, new books, new novels, new forms of writing. She was an innovator as a writer, too, and had the gift, among other things, of being able to write—often compellingly, even mesmerizingly—in both her fiction and her nonfiction.In addition, she continually challenged not only patriarchy but all systems of power and oppression, wherever she saw them. Her primary targets were often, at least through the first decades of her career, the cultural practices and beliefs of Egypt, the Arab world, and Islam. More recently she was often also incisively critical of problems elsewhere, and her work consequently is of relevance well beyond the region from which she hailed. It would be a mistake to ghettoize her as relevant only to Islam and the Arab world.Nawal was a force of nature, a global figure and global thinker. Her thought and body of work, consistently critical of systems of power, raise questions about many aspects of our lives and world today, in whatever culture or country we find ourselves.Am I therefore also saying that I always agreed with Nawal about everything, or even that one should always agree with her about everything? Of course not. In fact, one doesn’t typically agree or disagree with forces of nature—the wind, the sea, or people of the extraordinary vision, creativity, and imagination of Nawal El Saadawi.My sense of loss at this moment, with Nawal’s living presence and living voice now gone from this world, is acute and personal. We’ve been colleagues and fellow workers in relation to women in Islam, as well as warm and cordial friends, over these many decades. I will miss her voice, and miss learning from her typically insightful perspectives on whatever is going on in our world. It was a great honor and privilege to have known her, as well as a wonderful gift and a pleasure.

Truncated 21st-Century Trajectories of Progressive International Solidarity

Patrick Bond provides a biography of Amin’s work as a global political thinker and leader on the left. From his early days building the Third World Forum and establishing “origins of a South-centric organic intelligentsia with global visions” to his work with the World Social Forum process, Amin dedicated his life to trying to lay the foundations for a Fifth International. Bond notes Amin’s frustration with the extreme fragmentation and limited policy impacts of left struggles. Yet he points out some recent exceptions here in the successes of global South campaigns around the right to water, access to medicines and the right to health, and Via Campesina and MST’s success in building global resistance to corporate land grabbing.

Perspectives on Rosa Luxemburg 1

In this brief exchange, Evelin Wittich reflects on the contemporary significance of Rosa Luxemburg. In particular, Wittich addresses ways of situating Luxemburg as a European and global thinker, considering Luxemburg's stance on the national question and internationalism. This exchange testifies to Luxemburg's continuing relevance in a time of populist politics in Europe. Wittich explores the links between Luxemburg's analysis of nationalism and national autonomy, and her engagement with the global remit of the accumulation of capital, imperialism and neo-colonialism. In the conclusion, Wittich also comments on Luxemburg's interest in plants and animals and reflects on how Luxemburg's personal life cannot be detached from her restless fight for social justice.

“Ten Articles, Fifteen Images, and This is the Truth”: On Cristina de Middel's Photobook Publishing

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In 2014, Foreign Policy Magazine singled out Spanish photographer de as a Leading Global Thinker. She currently has more than 20,000 followers on Instagram and nearly 10,000 people have liked her page on Facebook. Google turns up about 150,000 results (0.44 seconds) when you search for Cristina de Middel and about 37,800 results (0.43 seconds) when you add to find her statistically most popular book, The Afronauts (2012). If you want to read an interview with her online--which I recommend doing, for she is refreshingly down to earth and speaks with uncommon clarity--you can choose from about 25,700 results. Having been invited by the Visual Studies Workshop (VSW) to reflect on de Middel's prolific publishing practice in view of her participation in the VSW PhotoBookworks Symposium in June 2016,1 was faced with the question: What could I possibly add that wouldn't be an entirely pointless exercise in creating more of the same, however brilliantly written? With this slightly unnerving prospect, I trawled interviews and articles online, hitting mostly on the known knowns. Disappointed and also bored with the repetitive iconography of photojournalism, de decided to employ the tools of fiction to convey a reality that felt closer to how the world manifests itself to us. Poly Spam (2014), de Middel's staged portraits of the shady characters promising astronomical amounts of money and relating larger-than-life stories of illness, death, and misfortune in email scams, is an early example of her fictional approach. It was by accident that she stumbled on the actual on which The Afronauts was based. Sparsely documented, this ignited her imagination to retell the tale of the short-lived Zambian space program from 1964, engendered by the euphoria over the country's newly gained independence. The book would jump-start her career, much to her own surprise, as she has expressed on numerous occasions. Since 2012, de has produced a steady trail of artist books: along with Poly Spam, there are Party. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Quitonasto Form Chanmair Mao Tungest) (2014), Snap Fingers and Whistle (2013), Man Jayen/Jan Mayen (2015), Las piedras jamas (2015), This is what hatred did (2015), and most recently, Sharkification (2015), in which she imagines the favelas of Brazil as a coral reef where the battle between the police and drug gangs is played out by sharks in pursuit of smaller fish. Surveying the reception of her work in the global press, I noticed that the main topics covered were her shooting star success and how she feels about it; the inspiration she derives from literature, cinema, and magic realism; her work process, with its strong performative elements and use of scripted storyboards; and her insistence on the need to experiment with narrative strategies in a bid to counter the tendency of press and media to simplify the world down to prescripted templates of Ten articles, 15 images, and this is the truth. (1) Broadly speaking, de is well regarded by the press for being entertaining, quirky, brilliant, inquisitive, likable, and outspoken. In other words, she is allowed to assert herself as an influential contemporary photographer under the guise of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl on a mission to teach photojournalism to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures, (2) doused with a sense of humor and enough joie de vivre to fill a pond with starlight. Few and far between are reviewers and conversation partners who have dug deeper, critically responding to the more substantial claims and ambitions de puts forward regarding the future and potential of photography. I would have imagined a Leading Global Thinker to be taken a little more seriously when trying to open up a debate on material issues such as postcolonial representations of Africa, the failing of corporate iconography to truly touch the lives of others, or the way history forgets about a sense of humor when it's actually everywhere. …

Remembering Florence Nightingale’s Panorama

Florence Nightingale lived and worked in response to her times--yet also ahead of her time. She insisted on pursuing a career even though her wealthy family could have provided her with a lifetime of leisure. Because she was a woman, this choice to work outside her home was all the more unusual. Nightingale was also a vanguard woman because she chose nursing, a role that was considered the work of desperate, impoverished women who lived on the street like prostitutes. In addition to these unusual choices, Nightingale's career was unique beyond anyone in her time. She was one of the most prolific authors of the 19th century. In addition to being an early role model for nursing, Nightingale was also a leader in several other fields emerging in her time, including social work, statistical analysis, and print journalism. As a global thinker, Nightingale would have loved 21st century. She noted cultural, social, and economic concerns, particularly in relation to health and to the discipline of nursing. She urged nurses to progress in their practice and to think outside their official domains. She responded to the culture of the 19th century by envisioning what could be changed. Working with her talents and available resources, she evolved the health care culture of the 20th century and beyond. She called all of this work "Health-Nursing." As we remember and further study the extraordinary panorama that is our Nightingale legacy, we are creating and shaping our relevant, emerging 21st century nursing practice.

Michel Serres

The work of Michel Serres has not found a great audience within Anglophone Social Science, despite his substantial influence on modern Science Studies. This article offers an introduction to his thought. Serres is a global thinker who describes his work as 'structuralist'. The notion of translation as a way of describing the communication and movements between different forms of knowledge and cultural practice is central. Serres offers a philosophy of science that is in stark opposition to the Bachelardian tradition of 'epistemic ruptures'. In order to make a break with 'breaks', Serres offers an account of science and cultural practice as multiplicities that are immersed within noise. Structure, when it emerges, comes about in acts of parasitism. Serres then explores how human relations obey a 'parasite logic' which contains an attendant risk of sacrifice. This risk is managed through the circulation of 'quasiobjects'. Serres' later work poses the question of what we can hope for when this circulation itself begins to falter