Counterpoint held a two day conference in Brussels, Febraury 25-26 2010, as part of its Inner Lives of Cultures project. You can find the full biographies of the contributing speakers here.
A podcast of the launch of Counterpoint's publication: Cloud Culture: the future of global cultural relations, by Charles Leadbeater. Speakers on the night were Charles Leadbeater, Catherine Fieschi, Ekow Eshun (ICA), and Paul Hilder (avaaz.org).
In our highly interconnected, and simultaneously de-centered world, cultural relations need to be thought of as a reciprocal process, whose aim is a deeper and richer mutual understanding. How do we gain insight into the matrix of symbolic meanings, visions of society and self, forms of private and public discourse which constitute the “inner life” of each society and culture? And how can we conduct meaningful cross-cultural dialogue across sometimes deep and subtle cultural differences?
Tzvetan Todorov, historian, essayist and Directeur de Recherche Honoraire at the CNRS in Paris, spoke at the RSA in December 2009 on his recent book, In Defence of the Enlightenment. A lucid critique of the central ideals of the enlightenment, it is designed to re-invogorate those ideals so that they might be of the greatest possible use to us today. Tzvetan Todorov is keynote speaker at Counterpoint's The Inner Lives of Cultures Conference, taking place in Brussels, February 25-26.
"You can endure differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, custom and costume, consonant for that matter, and still rally around a consensus."
Shashi Tharoor, author, activist, and Indian minister of state for external affairs, recently gave a TED talk discussing soft power from India's perspective. From measures of soft power as esoteric as increased burglary rates in certain Afghan cities at 8.30 pm, the time when a madly popular Indian soap opera is broadcast on Afghan television and property is left unguarded so everyone can watch, to the extraordinary meld of cultures at the heart of Indian democracy, Tharoor's thoughts provide a vibrant angle on Joseph Nye's concept.
Ed Husain of the Quilliam Foundation, author of the big selling book The Islamist, talks to Catherine Fieschi and Mark Erbel of Counterpoint about Islamism, British identity, and strategies to counter violent extremism in the UK and beyond.
NATIONALIST EXTREMISM
The English Defence League has not had a good week. On Saturday a large rally by the EDL took place in Stoke, an area not known for its high concentration of ethnic minorities or Muslims even. So what was the point? Most likely, an effort to boost their membership and morale given that the area is relatively successful for the BNP (it has 8 local BNP councillors)
And evidence of those close links were obvious when hooligans from the EDL rally started chanting: BNP, BNP, BNP!. 17 people were arrested after six police officers were hurt.
With the publication of Charles Leadbeater's pamphlet on Cloud Culture, Counterpoint is leading a debate on the rise of Cloud computing and it's impact on social and cultural identities across the world. Here you can access and get involved in the various strands of this debate online.
It may be a case of collective narcissism, but the past couple of years have seen us all enthralled by the extraordinary insights of neuroscience. Stem-cell research and human enhancement drugs may revolutionise what we can be and do in the near future, but neuroscience makes a special play for our affections by promising to revolutionise our self-understanding. But we must be careful about abstracting the neurological from the cultural and social context in which it occurs.
MUSLIM COMMUNITIES
One of Britain’s oldest established Muslim communities is launching a campaign to win hearts and minds of Britons.
It is being launched by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association of UK, who represent a small sect of Islam, and will include ads on buses as well as doorstep leafleting.
