How ‘ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm -After they’ve seen Paree

Abstract

Change is abroad across the land, as often destructive as constructive. No one is immune. The financial crisis is perhaps the most obvious wave of change, but as the title of this paper (and also the title of a song popular in America between World I and World War II1) suggests, the most pervasive, seductive, and subversive changes are fueled by the view of the wider world provided by the internet with its blogs and social networks. How ‘ya gonna keep‘em satisfied with a second-class life (or worse) after they have seen the luxuries and freedoms of the wider world? Knowledge is power, and frightening amounts of people-power can be marshaled via the internet. Tyrants fall and royal families quake in the face of so much focused intentionality. But even as freedoms are recovered, what are all the unemployed to do with that freedom, especially in those countries in which the average age is between late teens and early twenties – kids, really, with no prospects of the good life? Add to this the coming shortage of food, drinking water, and fuel and the resulting upward spiral of costs for life’s necessities, further imposing hardship on new members of ‘the internet generation.’ Social and political catastrophes are to be expected. What can the countries in ‘Europe’s southern neighborhood’ do to respond, to be proactive in the face of massive and predictable changes?predictable problems, proactive response, cross-border collaboration, food, fuel riots