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The case for a predominantly materialist approach to addressing the welfare needs of citizens has come under scrutiny in recent psychological and neurological research, demonstrating the central role of subjective accounts that help to delimit the capacity of the market to deliver the good life. Kasser (SDC 2009) has found that the intrinsic aims for… Continue reading Wellbeing – Part 5

In contrast with the negotiations leading up to the 1997 agreement on the Kyoto Protocol, the ambition of binding targets to be undertaken by OECD countries after the Copenhagen (COP/MOP 2009) process will be largely ‘evidence based’ and more closely reflect the urgency and scope of ambition conveyed in the latest IPCC science[i]. The architecture… Continue reading Neogitiating Climate – Part Four

In an essay calling upon artists to pursue the truths of the times we live in through honest, socio-politically responsive work, Scottish playwright David Greig argues that one of the key roles of theatre in our times is to resist ‘the management of the imagination by power’. Here, Greig paints a picture of the influence… Continue reading Re-negotiating Freedom in an Age of Limits – Part Three

In this chapter I will explore the genealogy of the psychic investment of ‘capitalism’ through the process of capitalization[i], which I describe as a ‘technology of micropractices’. These practices are most visible in the outworkings of the operation of mass media, advertising and the culture of consumerism and represent the culmination of a deeply ambivalent… Continue reading UNDERSTANDING OUR DILEMMA: CAPITALISM’S PSYCHIC INVESTMENT – PART TWO

[i]A call for a new political economy of attention: mindfulness as a new commons   Peter Doran   Our corporate culture has effectively severed us from human imagination. Our electronic devices intrude deeper and deeper into spaces that were once reserved for solitude, reflection and privacy. Our airwaves are filled with the tawdry and the… Continue reading A call for a new political economy of attention – Part One

22 September 2015 Nobody gets up in the morning and says to herself: ‘That’s a fine day to accelerate climate change and put the world on course for concentrations that are unprecedented in human history.’ Nobody – at least I hope – gets up in the morning and celebrates the fact that we are living… Continue reading ADDRESS TO THE ENVIRONMENT WEEK SESSION AT PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS – OPEN GOVERNMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL GOVERNANCE

Nipun Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace (formerly CharityFocus), an incubator of projects that works at the intersection of volunteerism, technology and gift-economy.Writing in Open Democracy (28.01.15) he – characteristically – puts his finger on the tensions invoked by the new langauge of the ‘gift economy’ once it becomes embedded within the discourses of the… Continue reading An Ecology of Peace Building – The Politics of Emergence