Last week I wrote about how the cityscape contains empty spaces, voids, which are the as-yet undeveloped tracts within the urban setting. Steve Latham But the word ‘void’ possesses a dual meaning. It is also a spiritual word. The void is what mystics experience in the depth of […]
In Focus
In Focus
Recognition of Latin Americans: a process acquiring local variations
A Latin-American is someone who belongs to, or is descended from Latin America, the conjunction of countries which mostly speak Spanish or Portuguese, without excluding the indigenous languages. Claudio Chipana We are Latin-Americans because we come from that great region south of the Rio Bravo, that region which […]
The urban void (1): The political dimension
Some neighbourhoods in our cities are labelled ‘void’, or ‘empty space’. They are treated as ‘nothing’. Steve Latham The journal ‘City’, which analyses urban trends, has used a Spanish word, to characterise these spaces as ‘nada’. It isn’t that there is nothing there. There are derelict, unoccupied, […]
The discipline of silence: Narcissistic escape, or healing for the nations?
In the recent TV series, “The big silence” (BBC 2, 2010), it emerged that people are both addicted to noise and consumerism, and yet desperate for an escape from it. Nigel Pocock Gordon Brown promised more consumption in order to escape the banking crisis; more consumption drives wage […]
Secular Pluralism (2): Many viewpoints, contradictory perspectives
Secular pluralism is an unspoken ideology in our society. Consequently, we must examine its hidden assumptions. Steve Latham There are two meanings of the term ‘secular’. It may mean, for example, simply a neutral space for the interplay of ideas, free from religious domination. On the other hand, […]
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