Arnold Toynbee famously said that “history is not just one damned thing after another,” and Peter Turchin has set out to try out the British historian’s intuition through a colossal data base from which to deduce patterns of development of social org
The magazine The Economist devotes its cover of 1 June to the European elections, with the headline 'The three women who will shape Europe.' Ursula von der Leyen seeks a new term as President of the European Commission, with the predictable support o
Trade unites, and its paths weave a web that holds the world together. Faced with shrinking globalization, with many countries preferring geographical or ideological proximity in their exchanges, to defend the links created by commercial traffic is t
At the end of the past century, a world without walls seemed feasible; in the first decades of this one, walls spread without control. Many are physical, fragmenting the territory with inaccessible precincts; others are judicial, segmenting the popul
Martin Wolf and Kohei Saito are antithetical figures: the veteran economics commentator of the Financial Times and the young philosophy professor at the University of Tokyo tackle the state of the world from opposite stances but coincide in detecting
The Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos, author of the political novel Z (on which the Costa-Gavras film of the same title was based), tells of how a few days after the coup d’état he saw that the newspaper Le Monde had published a piece in which sevent
For many, this title is an oxymoron. It seems that associating modernity and beauty is as provocative as writing frozen fire or the sound of silence. To use André Bretón’s famous line, “[modern] beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all,” intro
The renewal of capitalism and democracy must be animated by a simple, but powerful, idea: that of citizenship. We cannot just think as consumers, workers, business owners, savers, or investors. We must think as citizens. Citizenship must have three a
Dystopia exists, and can be found in El Salvador. In this small Central American country of abrupt geography, tropical climate, and the highest population density on the continent, President Nayib Bukele has launched an unprecedented social experimen
The world changed on 24 February 2022, but the start of the war in Ukraine was produced by the tensions in the tectonic plate of Eurasia. There is no way to understand the conflict without knowing the history of Russia, nor without penetrating the he
In a new epiphany of unease, a crowd chose a symbolic building as a frame for its protest. On 6 January 2021, Trump supporters stormed into the United States Capitol to try to overturn the election of Biden; and on 8 January 2023, Bolsonaro followers
Human beings are not free-floating agents capable of reshaping themselves in any way they choose; this only happens in online virtual worlds. We are limited in the first instance by our physical bodies. Technology has done a lot to free people from t
It is time to consider a radical solution to stave off the prospect of political violence and even civil war in the US. The Ukraine war and global economic troubles momentarily overshadowed domestic discord in the United States earlier this year, but
Architecture is not so much ‘frozen music’ as ‘crystallized politics.’ While Goethe understood that it has a mathematical internal order, as music does, its origin and purpose link it to politics inextricably. Organizing the ‘polis’ requires social n
The historic swerve of 24 February supplied an iconic image four months later in Madrid. The Russian invasion of Ukraine caused a geopolitical commotion that has been labeled Zeitenwende, and the leaders participating in the NATO summit gathered arou
President Biden ordered the revocation of the Executive Order, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” signed by former President Trump on December 18, 2020. The Trump order, mandating the preference for “traditional and classical architect
Donald Trump decreed on Monday that all new US federal buildings should be “beautiful”, in a long-expected executive order which excoriated architectural modernism but stopped short of demanding that all such projects should be in the classical style
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Purpose. Societies have long recognized the importance of beautiful public architecture. Ancient
When the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, the United States, like many other countries, was unprepared. As the contagion spread, the wealthiest country in the world found itself unable to provide even the medical masks and other protective gear that
The US Election
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” This line of the replicant in Blade Runner referred to robotic battles in remote worlds, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to apply it to phenomena we are living right now which, indeed, are pretty hard to b
Among the recently announced big government plans in the United Kingdom, the pronouncement that may well leave a more permanent mark on the post-Covid-19 landscape was Boris Johnson’s promise to “build build build”. The prime minister’s supposed ‘new
In terms of length and complexity, Joe Biden’s speech was the shortest and simplest. Donald Trump’s speech was not just twice as long, it was also significantly more complex…
Ramón González Férriz Por qué la política se ha vuelto radical
Peter Turchin Élites, contraélites y el camino a la desintegración política
Francis Fukuyama
New York 2022
Farrar Strauss & Giroux - 178 Pages
Jorge Dioni López Privatización, turismo, vivienda, especulación, tráfico... Por qué cada vez es más difícil vivir en las ciudades
Andrés Rubio El caos urbano, el mayor fracaso de la democracia
Jenofonte Oikonomikós
Giuliano da Empoli
París 2022
Gallimard - 288 Pages
Orlando Figes
Londres 2022
Bloomsbury - 368 Pages
Johan Norberg La historia del progreso humano
Owen Hatherley
Madrid 2022
Capitán Swing - 704 Pages
José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec El Mediterráneo, de la guerra de Troya a las pateras
Francis Fukuyama Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition
Antoni Ramon Josep Maria Montaner Cultura, ciudad y política
Byung-Chul Han
Barcelona 2014
Herder - 128 Pages
Guy Standing Una carta de derechos
Wendy Brown
Barcelona 2015
Herder - 208 Pages
Saskia Sassen Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy
John Gray Thoughts After Liberalism
