Contributors:

Carlos Pacheco
Colin Richaros
Hassan Zacjtan
Joao Rarrento
John Frow
Moira Simpson
Paul Gilroy
Peter Sloterdijk
Rosangela Renno
Santiago Kovaoloff
Surenora Munshi
Wang Hui

What is happening to our world? As part of its fiftieth anniversary celebrations, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation invited a dozen international contributors - ten intellectuals, an artist and a poet - to reflect on some of the most urgent cultural and ethical issues of our time. The result is this original and challenging book.

The relationships between theological and secular ideologies, terrorism and culture, capitalism and democracy recur in several of these essays - as do the long shadows cast by the events of 11 September 2001 in New York and 7 July 2005 n London. As Emilio Rui Vilar says in his Foreword: 'We live in an age that is rich in experiences but also burdened by uncertainties and risks.' The contributors to The State of the World approach these complexities from a diverse range of backgrounds and perspectives, moving towards new strategies for hope in the future.

Contents

Foreword by Emilio Rui Vilar
Introduction by Antonio Pinto Ribeiro


Notes on Contributors

Ethics and Aesthetics of Globalism: A Postcolonial Perspective by Homi K.Bhabha

Resentment in History: A Past More Present than the Present by Marc Ferro 21

Nihilism and Democracy by Mehdi Belhaj Kacem

On Difference and Inequality: The Lessons of Ethnographic Experience by Miguel Valede Almeida

Very Big and Very Small Societies by Daniel Miller

Attention and Solicitude in the Twenty-first Century by Bernard Stiegler

Multiculture and Conviviality in Postcolonial Europe by Paul Gilroy

The State of the Cultural Economy: The Rise of the Cultural Economy and the Challenges to Cultural Policy Making by Andy C. Pratt

Uncanny/Unwoven by Paul D.Miller

Sustainability, Culture and Evolution by Filipe Duarte Santos

The 'Science' in Political Science by Pedro Magalhaes

On the Concept of Civilisation by Antonio Cicero

The Arts, the Truthful and the Fair by Daniele Cohn

Acknowledgements