Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity W.B.Yeats The Second … [Read more...] about THE CENTRE WILL NOT HOLD : On changing principles of political hope
May Blog : A post election comment
In the wake of the election it is clear that political geography is shifting under our feet. Centrifugal forces in what we used to call ‘British’ society, hitherto held in check, have staked out new and uncommon ground. This moment of de-centering, whether represented by the SNP on the Left, or UKIP on the Right, offers both an opportunity and a risk to everyone who holds on to … [Read more...] about May Blog : A post election comment
Mapping the Real : Ethno-graphology and the ‘Other Scene’
… since Neolithic times we have been marking down representations on cave walls, in the dirt, on parchment, trees, lunchplates, napkins, even on our own skin-all so we could remember where we have been, where we want to be going, where we should be going. There is a deep impulse ingrained in us to take these directions, coordinates, declarations out of … [Read more...] about Mapping the Real : Ethno-graphology and the ‘Other Scene’
Our Kind of Town
Citizen Social Science, Participatory Mapping and the Struggle for a Just City This is the text of a public lecture I gave to the Institute for Social Research at Birkbeck in October 2014.Thanks very much for the many useful comments made in the discussion following the lecture, some of which have been taken on board in revising this text. I am especially … [Read more...] about Our Kind of Town
March Blog: Living with Painting
Living with painting The works which constitute the life and fame of artists decay one after the other by the ravages of time. Thus the artists themselves are unknown, as there was no one to write about them so that this source of knowledge was not granted to posterity Giorgio Vasari Writing is present in the margins, painting is spread over ‘vacant’space’ - … [Read more...] about March Blog: Living with Painting