Editorial: On Falling

Abstract

Fall away, fall apart, fall on, fall in, fall back, fall behind. Falling is a movement between one place and another, a process of uncertainty, of risk and exhilaration. With each breath out, with every step we take, falling is so much part of our ongoing daily lives as to go almost unnoticed. The consequences of falling can be devastating, destroying lives, communities and infrastructures. The earthquakes in Hawaii, the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh, the fall of the Twin Towers, reveal the stark honest reality of gravity, a fundamental natural phenomenon that is mocked or disregarded only at our peril, asking us to beware, notice, respect and to accept. Western culture, for the most part, continues in its endeavour to resist falling, striving towards verticality, linearity and steadfast uprightness with all its moral underpinnings. Political and economic successes depend on rising, not falling and a persistent binary of positive/negative flourishes between the two terms. Not surprisingly the etymology of the term follows two routes, the Latin cado, cadera (I fall, to fall) and the Germanic fall, (fail). So falling becomes associated with shame and failure