ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

Articles by Zaheer BaberSubscribe to Zaheer Baber

Climate Change and the Yellow Vest Movement

The Yellow Vest movement has been spreading from France to its neighbouring countries, as a response to the monstrous levels of inequality. Intellectuals on the left who have not been too impressed by the movement and want the overall transformation of neo-liberal capitalism should remember that when many parts of the world seem to be on the right-wing populist trajectory, any organised or deliberately non-organised movement can set off changes and effects in different, even unexpected, ways.

Bernie Sanders and the Afterlives of Occupy Wall Street

Bernie Sanders tapped into and reactivated the hopes of the Occupy Wall Street movement. However, the tragedy of igniting such hopes that were eventually crushed brings to mind one of Mark Twain’s many sardonic and insightful quips: “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.”

Fury of the Scholar Ignored

When scholars spar over assessments of their work, especially in a postmodern, smotheringly deconstructive fashion, we yearn for the concise postscript to end all arguments. 

 

Canada Rejects the Politics of Extremism

The resounding rejection of the Conservative Party in Canada's federal elections last month was a vote against the extreme legislative measures that the 10 years of the Stephen Harper government had introduced in trying to refashion the multicultural fabric of Canadian society.

No End in Barcelona

Home to La Rambla, the only street in the world which the Spanish poet Lorca wished would never end, Barcelona is now enlivened by migrant Pakistanis.

From Tenderloin to Tandoorloin

The notorious Tenderloin area of San Francisco, home to over 30,000 of America’s poor, has a vibrant South Asian connection.

Wards of Awards

Artists who revel in awards from the establishment run the risk of co-optation and neutralisation – and a loss of integrity.

Said, Mills and Jargon

The transformation of insightful ideas into opaque, indecipherable sentences through the compulsive deployment of tortuous jargon is obviously not a new phenomenon. The emergence and popularity of fields such as certain strands of “postcolonial theory” and “cultural studies” have only injected a new life force to a chronic affl iction. Over half a century ago the debate over “bad writing” was addressed directly by the great American sociologist C Wright Mills. In addition to mercilessly lampooning jargon and providing “translations” from complex to plain English, he also offered a diagnosis of the institutional and social psychological factors that contributed to and sustained it.

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