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Participating with objects
True names have existed for millennia and can be traced through many cultural histories. What is the relevance of this process of correctly naming to practices of empowerment?“…the name is the...
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Facilitation as creative bricolage: opening participatory democracy’s black box
With our Indian collaborators we embarked on a creative campaign to defend the integrity of a process that had provided a platform for the informed views of some of the most marginalised rural people...
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Is it politicians or the press creating anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain?
It is the main parties that are responsible for the public’s increasingly hardening attitude, not the Daily Mail and UKIP. Flickr/Icars. Some rights reserved. Two decades ago, in the midst...
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Asleep on the job - England's young doctors and the NHS reforms
Junior doctors were asleep while politicians tore down our NHS. It’s time to wake up again.Image Caption. Shutterstock/Luis Louro. All rights reserved.Great tides of people press against me, hands...
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War on wildlife: the truth about badger culling
The decision to initiate the badger culling scheme is not only ill-informed, but deliberately shallow. It is time to consider a positive and viable solution rather than scapegoating a...
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Forget empathy – it’s time for radical connection
In the struggle for social justice it’s not how much empathy we feel that makes the difference, but what we do with it in concrete situations. This is the third in our series of articles about empathy...
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"The Revolution begins with Rosia Montana"
A new law going through the Romanian parliament allowing a Canadian mining company forcefully expropriate citizens of their homes in order to construct Europe's biggest gold mine is inspiring the...
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The “new kind of debate on Global Human Rights” should take place at...
The new debate should be organised around concrete issues such as neglect, denial and marginalisation, which peopleon social margins of the world are facing on a daily basis. A response to James Ron...
View ArticleSyria, the path to new war
The United States's military preparations, and Israel's growing involvement, reveal the momentum to a dangerous escalation in the middle east. The previous column in this series outlined the evidence...
View ArticleParliament resists government attack on British justice (again)
MPs decry government proposals, in England and Wales, to destroy Legal Aid, one of the great achievements of the post-war settlement and a pillar of our democracy. See also: A victory for British...
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On visiting forgotten tombs
A good life, in this context, is not immortalised in either great poetry or grand monuments to heroic men, but is defined by how we go about our daily lives, our unremarkable habits and routines of...
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Futures of an unlived past: participation, Plymouth architecture and the...
Perhaps it is impossible to create a participatory democracy through participatory means. The solution developed here, in any case, was to draw on the external authority of a famous urban planner....
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Beyond crime and punishment: UK non-military options in Syria
As direct military intervention has been ruled out for the UK by the Commons, we must turn to our non-military options to see how the UK can now push for peace and make an impact for the good in...
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Left Unity and crisis
As Labour is in decline there is a chance for a new socialist party to establish itself, but can it avoid the same mistakes that compromised their predecessors?Flickr/*eddie. Some rights reserved. In...
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Roots of empathy: an interview with Mary Gordon
Empathy is central to education for democracy, and it can be “caught not taught” among children in schools. This is the the fourth in our series of articles about empathy and transformation.Credit:...
View ArticleA victory for British Justice, but so much more to do
The government's botched assault on Legal Aid is unravelling, with more concessions made today. The remaining proposals still threaten the rule of law in England and Wales. See also Parliament resists...
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A death in the Congo
On 18 August, Tjostolv Moland, a 32-year-old former officer of the Norwegian army, was found dead in his prison cell in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His strange case highlights the need to...
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Updating Europe's narrative: "It's the Citizen, stupid!"
The founding fathers of the European Union had the citizen in mind, which makes European citizenship a centrepiece of Europe’s narrative. However, in these days of crisis, the civilizing mission of the...
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In memoriam Tatyana Zaslavskaya, Perestroika's Grande Dame
Adviser to Gorbachev and inspiration behind his economic reforms, Tatyana Zaslavskaya has died in Moscow, aged 86. Zygmunt Dzieciolowski revisits a profile of the eminent sociologist and economist,...
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Welcome to Britain: 'Go Home or Face Arrest'
For decades racists have yelled "Go Home" at minority ethnic and Black people. Now the government is doing it in a reviled and provocative advertising campaign aimed, ostensibly, at 'illegal...
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