The Global Edge: An Agenda for Chicago's Future

Examines the challenges the city faces in sustaining economic vitality, and lays out the priorities for the next two decades: improve transportation and infrastructure, build human capital, and increase global engagement

SOME REFLECTIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE, GREEN GROWTH ILLUSIONS AND DEVELOPMENT SPACE

Many economists and policy makers advocate a fundamental shift towards “green growth” as the new, qualitatively-different growth paradigm, based on enhanced material/resource/energy efficiency and drastic changes in the energy mix. “Green growth” may work well in creating new growth impulses with reduced environmental load and facilitating related technological and structural change. But can it also mitigate climate change at the required scale (i.e. significant, absolute and permanent decline of GHG emissions at global level) and pace? This paper argues that growth, technological, population-expansion and governance constraints as well as some key systemic issues cast a very long shadow on the “green growth” hopes. One should not deceive oneself into believing that such evolutionary (and often reductionist) approach will be sufficient to cope with the complexities of climate change. It may rather give much false hope and excuses to do nothing really fundamental that can bring about a U-turn of global GHG emissions. The proponents of a resource efficiency revolution and a drastic change in the energy mix need to scrutinize the historical evidence, in particular the arithmetic of economic and population growth. Furthermore, they need to realize that the required transformation goes beyond innovation and structural changes to include democratization of the economy and cultural change. Climate change calls into question the global equality of opportunity for prosperity (i.e. ecological justice and development space) and is thus a huge developmental challenge for the South and a question of life and death for some developing countries (who increasingly resist the framing of climate protection versus equity).

Pathways: A Concept, Field Site and Methodological Approach to Study Remoteness and Connectivity

Martin Saxer was a Clarendon scholar at Oxford and received his doctorate in 2010. He conducted extensive fieldwork in Siberia, Tibet and Nepal. He currently leads a 5-year research project under the title ‘Remoteness & Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World’, funded by the European Research Council. Martin also directed two feature length documentary films and runs the visual ethnography blog theotherimage.com

Spartan Daily August 29, 2011

Volume 137, Issue 2https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1056/thumbnail.jp

Tradition, Modernity, and the Enmeshing of Home and Away: The Shipping News and Proulx’s 1990s Newfoundland

In its portrait of coastal Newfoundland, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News both exploits and subverts an idealized and romanticized notion of the quirky and close-to-nature “Folk.” Its depiction of island realities also emphasizes the challenging effects of postmodernity on the fictional outport community of Killick-Claw (although Lasse Halström’s film version largely omits this theme). Proulx’s exploration of the tension between tradition and modernity also addresses questions of ecology: the novel gains force from its descriptions of the wild and coastal landscapes that are the foundation of its appeal to tourists, and forces affecting Killick-Claw include big commercial and government interests, ecological decline, and the lack of sustainable work. Tensions between Home and Away and between tradition and modernity are explored through the complex trope of the sea, and the novel stresses the ways in which increased outside influences on Newfoundland force the community to deal with change

Neosublime, Reframing the Philosophical

Why have the sunsets and sunrises become so amazingly colorful and awe inspiring recently? Eighteenth century philosophers said such events were examples of the sublime. They defined the sublime as that which is the most absolutely great combined with an underlying element of fear usually caused by the actions of God. This infers that the sublime is something that you can’t fully understand or wrap your head around and leaves you speechless and spell bound. Contemporary art critics say that the sublime is no longer applicable to art because it has been overused. I disagree, and in my art, I look for examples of the sublime in present day events. The slow, insidious, imperceptible, disastrous effects of global warming is one example of the contemporary sublime that I call the Neosublime. The brilliantly red sunrises and sunsets are awesomely great but the realization that they are caused by air pollutants brings a fearful reminder of how global warming is destroying the world. Other examples of the Neosublime are the COVID pandemic and worldwide political turmoil. The most frightening part of the Neosublime is that it is the result of the actions of humans and not God. Like global warming my paintings show beautiful sunsets and giant ocean waves from sea level rise, and yet the impending disaster is not readily apparent. So far humans have not responded to the outcries of climate activists and scientists, but perhaps the warnings within my paintings will be a catalyst for action

Tradition, Modernity, and the Enmeshing of Home and Away: The Shipping News and Proulx’s 1990s Newfoundland

In its portrait of coastal Newfoundland, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News both exploits and subverts an idealized and romanticized notion of the quirky and close-to-nature “Folk.” Its depiction of island realities also emphasizes the challenging effects of postmodernity on the fictional outport community of Killick-Claw (although Lasse Halström’s film version largely omits this theme). Proulx’s exploration of the tension between tradition and modernity also addresses questions of ecology: the novel gains force from its descriptions of the wild and coastal landscapes that are the foundation of its appeal to tourists, and forces affecting Killick-Claw include big commercial and government interests, ecological decline, and the lack of sustainable work. Tensions between Home and Away and between tradition and modernity are explored through the complex trope of the sea, and the novel stresses the ways in which increased outside influences on Newfoundland force the community to deal with change