Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Ideas: Emergence, diaspora, the 'imperial consumer': which ideas will shape the coming year?
Some really interesting stuff in here, including Tom Bentley on Amartya Sen's new book, Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny, which promises to be another influential Sen masterpiece.
Naomi Klein's entry was interesting too, especially given the continuing WTO tensions:
It's an old idea that is being reclaimed and retro-fitted for a new economy: worker control. For the past four years, and largely under the media radar, workers in Latin America have been responding to rampant unemployment and capital flight by taking over traditional businesses that have gone bankrupt and reopening them under democratic worker management. The wave of takeovers began in Argentina, where some 200 abandoned factories are now run through direct democracy, employing roughly 15,000 workers. It has since spread across the continent, and the past few months have seen the first takeovers in Canada and Spain. In October, the government of Hugo Chavez hosted the first Latin America-wide meeting of "recovered companies" in Venezuela. Six hundred workers from eight countries came together with a simple idea: if the capitalist class can't find a way to make their businesses work, workers deserve to have a go.
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