Soundings

Faisal Devji argues that because 'terror' is an abstract concept, the war against it cannot be conducted according to military norms. This can be clearly seen in the history of Abu Ghraib.Following the attacks of 1 1 September 2001 on New York and Washington,...

In its deployment of the language of democracy - devolution, participation, engagement, the 'new localism' - New Labour has frequently emptied it of all content. How can we put new life into this vocabulary, and into democratic practices?It is widely...

Will Hutton, The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the Twenty-first Century, Little, BrownChairman Mao once famously declared, at a time when China was suffering immense rural poverty, that 'only socialism can save China'. Later, due to the...

Richard Jones offers a user-friendly guide to the science that underlies nanotechnology and the debates that surround it.Few new technologies have been accompanied by such expansive promises of their potential to change the world as nanotechnology. For...

The market is constantly encroaching on our lives, and it increasingly pervades our politics too. The contributors to Soundings 36 explore this issue in a number of different ways.Ken Livingstone is one of the most interesting and creative politicians...

Ken Livingstone talks to Doreen Massey about London as a global city, and how times - and politics - have changed since the GLC of the 1980s. On the one hand, London is now a place unrivalled in its particular form of multiculturalism. On the other,...

Nira Yuval-Davis argues that it is important to distinguish between different histories of racialisation when discussing Zionism as a form of racism.In spite of the great efforts made by the Israeli government and its supporters throughout the years...