FESTIVAL RECEPTION
The Guildhall School of Music & Drama is one of the world’s leading conservatoires and drama schools, offering musicians, actors, stage managers and theatre technicians an inspiring environment in which to develop as artists and professionals.

19.15
Welcome speeches by Claire Fox (director, Academy of Ideas) and guests.

19.30-19.50
The Quartet from Guildhall School of Music & Drama will perform

• Debussy: String Quartet, 1st mvt
• Beethoven: String Quartet op 18. No. 1, 2nd mvt

Jonathan Bloxham cello
Elitsa Bogdanova viola
Caroline Simon violin
Viktor Stenhjem viola

Throughout the evening: jazz provided by the Sam Braysher Trio

Tickets £5/£3. Available here.

Prometheus was severely punished for giving fire and the arts to mankind, but his loss of liberty was our gain. Just what though is the relationship between technology and freedom? Did washing machines liberate women, or was it feminists who demanded washing machines? In what senses are we – in a gadget-filled world – freer today than 50 or 500 years ago? What might it mean, even, when we talk of being made free?

For the developing world, technology has been named ‘the single most transformative tool for development’, while others claim it will destroy – not liberate – traditional communities. Our lives are enriched by technology but we also blame it for taking away our autonomy. The smartphone that makes the daily commute a creative moment is also the device that makes you available 24/7 to the demands of your boss, and indeed your friends. Can we ever be truly free if privacy is a thing of the past, where technology has enabled the accumulation of masses of personal data? Even when there is so much potential to exploit, critics point out that its potential to emancipate humanity might be illusory. But technology is all around us. It makes things faster, smaller, cheaper, and improves how we live, work and entertain. It can empower – removing the shackles of disability and dependency and the housewife’s daily graft. Technology has made travel to the moon and the bottom of the oceans possible, given us artificial hearts and oral contraceptives, mapped our genetic code and even allowed the blind to see again and amputees to run in the Olympics.

Nevertheless, we often seem incapable of handling the change new technology brings. Does it cause a loss of autonomy – or are we more fearful of our inability to withstand change? Should we be much more demanding of what we could get from new kinds of technology? What does the debate about technology say about our sense of purpose and ambition? Perhaps in answering that, we can begin to answer the question of whether or not technology can liberate us, or if the liberated are in the best position to make use of what technology offers.

Tickets: FREE; no booking required.

Few would claim existing drug policies have prevented the widespread use of illicit drugs. On the contrary, many believe prohibition has actually encouraged profiteering and increased the harm caused by drug use. Plenty of politicians have openly declared that the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has failed, and that policy should be shaped by pragmatic concerns rather than moralistic zeal. Policymakers’ historic failure to manage psychoactive substances is especially troubling because they now face new challenges in the form of so-called legal highs. Drugs with names like Mexxy, Dimethocaine, 5-IAI, Silver Bullet, and many more are not covered by existing legislation, but have similar effects to those that are. The number of legal drugs available seems to be growing rapidly, and the harm caused by them is rising accordingly. The UK government has made it clear that doing nothing is not an option. Simply asking what should be done, however, forces us to confront the failure of policies meant to deal with more familiar substances like cannabis, crack and heroin. If all new highs become are simply banned by being brought under the purview of the ageing Misuse of Drugs Act, will they be controlled any better than they are now? If criminalising drug use has been seen to fail, should the challenge of legal highs be seen as an opportunity rather than a crisis? A chance to make a much-needed distinction between substance abuse and the relatively harmless recreational use of drugs, legal or otherwise?

Tobacco, alcohol, medicines and even food can all cause harm and provide profit for black marketeers, but in none of these cases are consumers automatically at risk of arrest as with cannabis or heroin. This year the All Party Parliamentary Policy Group for Drug Policy Reform launched an inquiry into how alternative methods of regulation might control new drugs, perhaps licensing them on the model of tobacco and alcohol. Nevertheless, there are big fears that letting go of the simple stick of criminal punishment might unleash a popular appetite for drugs, with the implication that the death toll will rise. Is this true, and if so, why are so many people so keen to pop animal tranquilisers and plant food for kicks? If the licensing model is too risky, how can we avoid the failure of our old ‘war on drugs’? Is banning legal highs the only option? Or should the law back off?

Produced in partnership with Maudsley Debates.

The debate will be in English.

Tickets: FREE but registration required in advance.

For more information, and to register, please call Novo Argumente +49 699 7206 701 or email johannes.richardt@novo-argumente.com.

Cities are the greatest creations of humanity Daniel Libeskind, Architect

Megacities are exposed to all the classic risks, but their exposure and vulnerability are disproportionate. They create risks of new dimensions - megarisks Stefan Heyd, former Chair of the Board of Management, Münchener Rück

Will the 21st century go down in history as the century when the city triumphed? For the first time in human history, more than half of the world`s population now lives in cities, and it is estimated that by 2030 the proportion will rise to 60% or five billion people. Much of this urban growth is taking place at breathtaking speed in Asia where the likes of Chongqing in China has grown rapidly over the past two decades to become a city of some 30 million people. Indeed the Far Eastern Economic Review predicts that by the middle of the century Asia alone will have at least 10 ‘hypercities’ of 20 million people or more.

The United Nations has heralded cities as ‘dynamic centres of creativity and culture’ while Harvard academic Edward Glaeser claims they will make us ‘richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier’. Nevertheless, in the west we often seem unconvinced by such claims. At a time when many believe that ‘small is beautiful’ and call for ‘sustainable’ and ‘appropriate’ growth, megacities and other emerging centres of the east and south are often viewed with apprehension. Within German cities too, changes related to urban development and regeneration are frequently viewed suspiciously. Not only have large infrastructural projects such as the expansion of Berlin and Frankfurt airports and the reconstruction of Stuttgart railway station provoked vociferous protests, but seemingly innocuous schemes such as a new concert hall in Hamburg, have become mired in controversy. In Berlin the closure of the iconic Tacheles arts centre is said to symbolise the replacement of traditional neighbourhoods and long standing communities by a new glassy, more corporate cityscape.

So do cities and urban development strengthen or weaken our societies? Is it the case, as sceptics suggest, that as cities develop, social exclusion, and urban blight are likely to grow with them? On the other hand, if as claimed cities are dynamic centres of innovation that foster humans’ ability to learn from one another, then why are we not building big new cities in Germany?  What role might modern architecture and technology play in the development of the city of the future?

Education is regarded as vitally important in a number of ways: training workers for the global market, helping young people to develop a positive sense of identity; and serving as a pathway to upward social mobility. Yet, are these aims true to what higher education should be? Is there more to education than just becoming an informed citizen, getting a job or taking tests? The past hundred years and more have seen wide shifts in the model of American higher education: put crudely, from a system mainly based on colleges providing a uniform and largely traditional education, especially in the liberal arts, to a university system geared towards research and specialisation, with a bent to the hard sciences and the law. But is the university still a place where we pursue the truth for its own sake?

For many, such an old-fashioned notion is more suited to eccentric religious foundations like Oral Roberts University than the modern campus, where relativistic notions of truth and value are widespread, and there is even little consensus on the content of the curriculum. The bewildering array of electives available can be seen as liberating the student from the dead hand of tradition, but when students are expected to know what they want to read, perhaps one traditional role of the university is neglected: precisely to educate a generation of young people in what they don’t even know they need to know. Their unknown unknowns if you like.

Just what should the balance be between meeting the requirements of today’s fast-paced world and teaching the best of yesterday’s? Should it require all students to know at least some of the same things? Is student choice an aspect of academic freedom, or is educational anarchy a testament to the decline of professorial authority? Is there a value in common knowledge, or are some things best left to specialists? Is the academy today still somewhere that should aspire with Emerson to ‘get the soul out of bed’?

Tickets: FREE but booking essential. Please see www.thegreatdebate.org.uk

Whatever Happened to Equality? is a day of active debate and documentary-making. Participants will take a critical look at how the discourse of equality has changed in recent times. The day includes a film-making training workshop for young people, who will be encouraged to video their thoughts, and have the opportunity to gain hands-on experience of working behind and in front of the camera. Videos will be published on the internet.

An introductory workshop will introduce interview formats and techniques, capture on film participants’ initial reflections on the topics and brief them on doing a multi-camera shoot of an event.

There will be two panel debates, open to a wider audience of all ages, each introduced by a panel of experts. Participants will be given plenty of opportunities to ask questions and make points from the floor:

Equality, Equity and the dispossessed
The notions of equality and equity are widely used and yet people’s understanding of their meaning differs hugely. This can make it difficult to know what people are talking about when they argue for greater equality - is it equal rights? Equal access to education? Equal opportunity? Equal pay? All of the above? This session will interrogate these differences and ask in what contexts is a more equal society a better one?

Speakers include:
Dr Vikki Boliver, Durham University
Dr Geoff Payne, Newcastle University
Chris Snowdon, author, The Spirit Level Delusion

Equality versus Difference
Why has difference replaced equality as the central theme of feminist and anti-racist politics over the past three decades? What has been lost and gained by this shift of emphasis?

Speakers include:
Dr Davina Cooper, author, Challenging Diversity: Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference
Dolan Cummings, associate fellow, Academy of Ideas
David Goodhart, Director, Demos

Film-workshop participants will video the debates and interview speakers and audience members. A closing session will encourage them to reflect on the discussions and ideas to which they have been exposed; they will record final interviews with each other, capturing new thoughts resulting from the day’s events, and a demonstration of how to upload material to the web will be given.

For further information and tickets please see the Great Debate website.

Tickets: free and ticketed.

For more information email davebowden@Instituteofideas.com

With the ‘omnishambles’ coalition and anger at the cuts, satire seems to be undergoing a renaissance. Under New Labour, argued John O’Farrell, left-leaning comics seemed as interested in mocking Vicky Pollard-style chavs as the government. Yet Armando Ianucci’s expletive-laden The Thick of It has become part of the political lexicon while Channel 4’s 10 O’Clock Live seems to have established itself as a youthful rival to more established satirical shows. On stage, Laura Wade’s dissection of the Bullingdon Club has seen Posh join an adaptation of Yes, Minister as a theatrical hit. Meanwhile, the likes of Uncaged Monkeys have seen leading scientists, philosophers and self-proclaimed ‘geeks’ become a hit on the comedy circuit, taking pot-shots at ‘bad’ science, organised religion and other apparent symptoms of contemporary irrationalism. Comedians such as Marcus Brigstocke, Steve Coogan and Stephen Fry are regularly invited on to current affairs programmes to take a wry, sideways look at everything from climate change to press regulation. And despite the occasional backlash against their perceived smugness, they are generally taken seriously as political commentators.

Yet some query how far contemporary comedy lives up to satire’s unofficial slogan to ‘afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted’. Comedians who proudly defend their right to free speech when mocking religious fundamentalism or political correctness can simultaneously be seen demanding that others should be censored when joking about other controversial issues around disability, racism and sexual violence. There was widespread outrage when Paul Chambers was charged for joking about blowing up an airport, yet relative silence when drunk student Liam Stacey was jailed for tweeting unpleasant racist humour about Fabrice Muamba. The Thick of It and Posh are quoted and celebrated by Labour ministers in opposition: despite many being part of the same Oxbridge-educated political establishment. Similarly, whether young or old, the subjects of irreverence – greedy bankers, sleazy politicians, the folly of the public and, of course, the Daily Mail – have a depressingly familiar ring.

Has satire been blunted by a conformist attitude to ‘acceptable’ speech or does it still possess a real bite? Does satire generally confirm existing prejudices or can it still shock and challenge received wisdom? Are there targets and topics which are arguably getting off lightly? How far can satire go in a society which is increasingly uncertain of who it respects and what values it shares? And having given a licence to comedians to mock more serious public figures, are we in danger of suspending our critical faculties when they hold forth?

Ever since October 2011, when it was estimated that the global population had passed seven billion people, discussions have raged about how the world will cope. With food prices already rising amid deeper environmental concerns, the United Nations and governments worldwide are particularly preoccupied with how we will feed ourselves. An increasing population is overwhelmingly viewed as a matter of more mouths to feed rather than a potential source of solutions. So while feeding the world seems a straightforward technical issue of implementing the most efficient and effective farming practices, a host of extraneous social, political, cultural, even ethical issues seem to thwart the implementation of solutions. The angst-ridden discussion about the pros and cons of growing genetically modified crops is only one example. Meanwhile, Western societies seem disillusioned with the gains of industrialised food production. Factory farming and processed foods are demonised; local, organic, natural are celebrated.

One solution is to rethink what we eat completely. With some food futurologists and nutritionists predicting meat will become a luxury even in the West, one proposal to ‘fill the meat gap’ is eating insects. This is no longer a marginal idea, a gross bush-tucker trial from TV’s I’m a Celebrity… jungle. The Dutch government recently invested a million euros into research into getting insects into mainstream diets. British food experts are taking seriously research from Wageningen University that shows insects provide as much nutritional value as ordinary meat. There is of course a ‘yuk factor’ to consider, but those who don’t relish the prospect of crunching through a bug sandwich are assured that crickets and grasshoppers can be ground down to be used in burgers and so on. And after all, a large number of the world’s population already eat insects as a regular part of their diet: caterpillars and locusts are popular in Africa, crickets are eaten in Thailand and we’ve all seen the HSBC advert in which a Cambodian farmer catches flying insects to keep them off his crops, then cooks and sells them. Have Europeans something to learn from the developing world, or are such dietary choices the product of poverty rather than culinary experimentation?

Why do most of us find the eating of insects repulsive, but don’t flinch when offered fish eggs, liver, kidney, snails? Might not science and modern-farming methods help us go beyond bug-burgers or should we all just become less squeamish? What are the most palatable ways of solving the world’s food crisis?

Nibbling samples of innovative food solutions will be available to try before the discussion.

La question de la tolérance suscite des prises de position contradictoires en Europe. Elle est célébrée comme un idéal essentiel dans certains discours tout en étant accusée en même temps dans d’autres de saper ses propres valeurs.

Interdire le port de la burqa serait contradictoire avec la tradition de tolérance du Royaume–uni mais dans son combat contre l’islamisme radical, le premier ministre David Cameron appelle à en finir avec ce qu’il nomme « la tolérance passive » du multiculturalisme et prône à la place un « libéralisme musclé ». En Hongrie, maintenant c’est « tolérance zéro » pour tous ceux qui sont soupçonnés de menacer une conception étroite de l’identité nationale et de l’unité du pays, pendant que l’Union Européenne réagit en n’acceptant plus les atteintes à la liberté de la presse et les mesures anti-roms du gouvernement hongrois.

A la suite des tragiques évènements d’Oslo l’an dernier, la tolérance de la société norvégienne a été jugée excessive par l’ensemble de la classe politique: aussi bien par ceux qui soutiennent les idées de Brevik sinon ses actes que par ceux qui considéraient que laisser se répandre la rhétorique anti-musulmane enflammée de l’extrême droite ne pouvait qu’alimenter ses actions monstrueuses.

En France, les crimes du tueur de Toulouse ont relancé un débat virulent sur les limites de la tolérance. Dans un contexte de campagne électoral 2012 où les esprits se sont vite échauffées, le gouvernement de Nicolas Sarkozy a été à maintes reprises accusé de courir après l’extrême droite dans les débats sur l’immigration, la viande halal, et l’identité nationale, l’opposition a au contraire plaidé pour plus de tolérance envers les minorités religieuses et ethniques. Cependant, pour certains, cet événement a pour effet de rappeler de façon tragique les risques encourus à tolérer des conduites hostiles aux valeurs de l’Occident. Au moment où des politiciens de divers bords sont d’accord pour demander la criminalisation de « l’intolérable » discours négationniste sur le génocide arménien, les tribunaux adoptent une position autre mais pas forcément au nom du droit à la liberté d’expression. Pourtant, d’autres limites à la liberté d’expression (de l’interdiction de diffuser des thèses négationnistes sur la Shoah à l’interdiction du port de la burqa) ne sont pas considérées comme portant atteinte aux valeurs de tolérance de la République.

Finalement de quoi parlons-nous quand nous parlons de tolérance ? Si nous assimilons la tolérance avec le fait de ne pas porter de jugement sur les conduites et les propos, alors la tolérance risque de se confondre avec l’indulgence et peut-être même avec l’indifférence. L’idée de « tolérance zéro » si souvent avancée comme un moyen de protection de dangers éventuels, ne cache t’elle pas plutôt le refus du débat et de la confrontation ? Faut-il envisager la question de la tolérance à partir de la revendication de ma liberté d’agir ou à partir du besoin de sécurité d’autrui ? Pouvons nous permettre d’être tolérants avec ceux qui ne le sont pas ? La liberté d’expression peut-elle être « excessive » ou « irresponsable » ? Le prix de la liberté, n’est-il pas précisément le fait de devoir tolérer des choses immondes, blessantes, agressives ? Ou bien ces concepts ne seraient-ils pas inutiles et dangereux dans le monde incertain où nous vivons ?

Martin Jacques is visiting professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His recent book, When China Rules the World: the end of the Western world and the birth of a new global order, suggests that this is China’s century. Indeed, its economic performance seems to vindicate his analysis. But then again, between 1960 and 1972, the Greek economy grew at 8% p.a. (more than China’s projections for 2011-2015). Come and argue about the hype and the reality.

Entrance free. To reserve a place email

Battle of Ideas 2012 End of Festival ‘WRAP’ Party

7.30pm - 9.00pm

Barbican Bar, Level G, Lakeside Terrace, Entrance

Carry on the debates informally over drinks.

9.30pm - Late

Vibe Bar, 91-95 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL

Keep your lanyard or wristband for free entry.

When some commentators described the student anti-fees protest in 2010 as a ‘dubstep rebellion’ they fed into a tradition of the powerful relationship of pop music and politics. From Bob Dylan’s ‘Blowing In the Wind’ and the Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fightin’ Man’ through to Gil Scot-Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’ and Public Enemy’s ‘Fight the Power’, popular music has often had a close relationship to powerful social movements. The likes of M.I.A and even Ed Sheeran feel moved to take stances on social issues, while in the UK, rapper Plan B’s ‘Ill Manors’ was hailed as a vital protest song in the wake of last summer’s riots. In the US, in recent years even leading country stars have thrown their support behind Occupy (rather than the Tea Party), gay marriage and against the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even controversial rap collective Odd Future confounded fans and critics alike when member Frank Ocean spoke openly about his bisexuality.

Yet, one writer argues, the economic and political turbulence has led more to ‘the New Boring’ than radical rebellion. Punk and urban music can happily soundtrack Jubilee concerts and the Olympics opening ceremony as much as footage of riots and upheaval. Newsnight can feature Dizzee Rascal or Odd Future and cause less controversy than historian David Starkey, while stars such as Adele can be hailed as non-conformist for enjoying their food and the odd drink. Yet, internationally, the plight of imprisoned Russian feminist-punks Pussy Riot and the emerging hip-hop scenes across the Arab Spring nations offers a reminder that popular music can have genuine anti-authoritarian credentials.

Has contemporary music lost its edge, or is it just that the political battlegrounds have shifted? When their politics are contemptible, can and should we separate the artists from the art as easily in popular music as we might do in other art-forms? Are ageing rebels guilty of retromania when discussing protest music of old, or is there a genuine sense that popular music is currently lacking a maverick, original spirit?

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From the controversy over teaching ‘intelligent design’ in schools, to arguments over prayers at council meetings or religiously based opposition to euthanasia, abortion or gay marriage, atheists have crossed swords with religious believers over a number of issues in recent years. And the critique is not limited to mainstream religion: champions of science, reason and evidence have also sought to expose the pretences of clairvoyants and alternative-health charlatans. There is a consensus among many educated people that religious values distort rather than contribute to private morality and public debate, and that evidence should always trump faith. But can anything amounting to a value system in itself be built just on atheism, or is atheism no more than a lack of belief in gods?

Just because some atheists have a commitment to reason, does that mean that atheists are overall more likely to be rational than other people? Are atheists really any more likely to be rational in general than those who do believe in a god? Aren’t there just as many atheists who believe in life after death, homeopathy, healing crystals, horoscopes, and a whole raft of superstitions?

Many prominent atheists would no doubt say that they are atheists because of their prior commitment to reason. But it can seem to many observers that it is the atheism that often comes first, rising out of a rejection of religious belief. For some, ‘atheist fundamentalism’ is an unattractive mirror image of the religiosity it opposes, and informed by contempt for the supposedly ignorant and scientifically illiterate population, or ‘nobbers’, as one celebrity scientist calls them. Is this because ‘atheism’ per se really is no more than the negative rejection of a belief in gods? If it is, how relevant is it in a society where fewer and fewer people are being raised with a belief in gods which they can reject? Is it precisely the lack of an experience of this personal emancipation, or journey towards humanism and reason, that leads atheists instead to direct their hostility at religious believers and institutions? How compelling is a negative belief?

Nonetheless, whether it’s the worship of Stephen Fry as the cleverest human on the planet or hostility to the influence of organised religion in politics, there is a growing identification with a non-religious, atheist, and humanist approach as a cultural movement, especially among bright young people. For many, atheism implies support for such progressive causes as the ‘right to die’ and LGBT equality, human rights and liberal education. But is atheism always the same as ‘humanism’? Is it really the idea of ‘atheism’ doing the work in these causes? Are there really such things as atheist values? Aren’t there as many religious people who also have liberal, progressive and humane ideas - especially in societies like Europe where religions have responded to humanism by emulating it in many ways? And aren’t there many religious people - perhaps a majority - who are just as committed as atheists are, maybe even more so, to the idea of a secular state? If so, what is the point of atheism?

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Although the press has been vilified recently, we all understand the ideal of a good journalist. From the heroes of Watergate to the war reporter Marie Colvin, whose death this year made her a powerful symbol of brave investigation, those who fearlessly expose the truth are widely admired. Many young people still aspire to work in the media and journalism degrees are more popular than ever, often pursued by starry-eyed idealists. Of course, heroic reporting is not typical of what ordinary journalists mostly do. never mind illegal hacking; new ethical challenges and changing practices threaten the standards to which today’s journalists so rightly aspire.

When former Independent journalist Johann Hari was accused of plagiarism in 2011, what surprised many was his defence; he thought he’d done nothing wrong. To many, this exemplified a decline in journalistic standards. Rather than undergoing a thorough apprenticeship on local papers, a new generation of journalists is being recruited whose main experience is of blogs and social media. It seems anybody with an interesting enough blog or Twitter account can become an opinion former; the Huffington Post is one of the most influential political blogs around, while Techcrunch has even interviewed President Obama. So should bloggers be taken as seriously as those who have worked their way up through the ranks of national newspapers? If the next generation of intrepid investigators is to emerge from citizen journalism, who will train them (and pay them) to become real journalists? At the same time, the ideals of good journalism seem to have changed. Many journalists now see themselves as partisan campaigners, rather than objective reporters: War correspondents lead calls for humanitarian intervention; social affairs correspondents implicitly endorse or condemn particular policies; and science journalists can seem indistinguishable from environmentalist activists. Meanwhile, investigative journalism has been trumped by WikiLeaks-style revelations, with journalists apparently content to merely sift through leaked information.

Will the decline of the traditional business models of news gathering destroy the traditional values of reporting? If no one digs up the news at ground level, the high towers of scrutiny, comment, campaigning, investigation and the rest will crumble. And what does it take to really check facts and dig deep when the news has become a rolling process, updated live, 24/7? The internet and mobile technologies promise access to more news than ever, but we don’t yet like to pay for content. And while hostility towards one Labour MP’s call for journalist licences led to some hasty backtracking, is there a way of ensuring young reporters have high standards of journalistic integrity instilled in them?

The term ‘the Sixties and Seventies’ conjures a wealth of defining images: from iconic portraits of Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King and Che Guevara through to devastating images of the horrors of Vietnam and Cambodia. While TV pictures of war, protest and urban unrest streamed into millions of homes worldwide, innovative photographers like William Eggleston, David Goldblatt, Shōmei Tōmatsu and Ernest Cole were pioneering new documentary forms, expressing more complex, personal perspectives of the world. Whether exposing the dehumanising effects of South African apartheid, subverting Soviet totalitarianism or recording everyday reality in America’s mid-West, human experience and political struggle remained key concerns. Yet beyond reportage, many of the greatest images of that era encapsulate its aspiration for novelty and change alongside a spirited celebration of freedom. As the Barbican exhibition ‘Everything Was Moving’ shows, this new generation of photographers documenting a changing world were ‘driven to understand that world, as well as their place in it’.

In today’s digital age where Instagram and high-quality cheap cameras potentially turn us all into citizen photographers, there appears to be considerable nostalgia for the Sixties and Seventies. On a political level, young rioters and Occupy-style clicktivists drape themselves in the iconography and rhetoric of the soixante-huitards; gay-marriage campaigners claim the mantle of the civil-rights movement, and Korda’s Guevara portrait served as the inspiration for Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign. On a cultural level, critic Simon Reynolds has coined the term ‘retromania’ to describe the enduring fascination among artists and musicians for mining heritage. An iconic moment in hit Sixties-set drama Mad Men saw advertising guru Don Draper deliver a key pitch for Kodak cameras (a company which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012). Meanwhile, photography as a call for action struggles in the straitjacket of a political culture grown skeptical of authenticity, individuality and the possibility of the new.

Does our fascination with the Sixties and Seventies golden age reveal a desire to capture some of the period’s radical spirit, or does it reveal more of a conservative retreat into nostalgia? In looking back, are we evading responsibility to confront and remake the world as it is? Where do we find radical photography today? Should we be willing to let go the quarrel between documentary and art photography or is it dangerous to blur the lines? Do we need more photographers willing to change the world, or merely to explain it?

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At first glance, the monarchy of 2012 seems to be in rude health. The Diamond Jubilee has been not so much an occasion for jingoistic national fervour as for quiet satisfaction that we live in a stable, free democracy that much of the world’s population can only envy. The Queen is viewed with almost unalloyed respect for the personal qualities she has brought to her role, and the wedding of William and Kate has restored the popularity of the House of Windsor to a pitch not seen since the early days of Diana. To many, the monarchy seems to provide a level of disinterested public service that is in sharp contrast to a political world tarnished with self-seeking and scandal.

And yet, and yet. This is the twenty-first century. If we were designing the constitution for a liberal democracy from scratch, it would not have a place for a hereditary monarchy, would it? Alex Salmond may argue that the Queen could remain head of state in Scotland even if full independence were achieved, but that can be seen as an awkward relic of a long history of conflict and union between neighbouring states. Moreover, on top of traditional political objections, in 2012 there appears to exist a more cultural disdain for all things ‘royal’. The jubilee celebrations were characterised by some as a ‘national sedative’, and ‘republican’ ire often seemed to be aimed less at the monarchy itself than the supposedly docile masses who doff their caps to it.  Whatever, contemporary royal events often feel more like evidence of popularity for celebrity than monarchist zeal. Conversely, republicanism remains a marginal political movement in contemporary UK. Interestingly, the lack of a popular campaign for a democratic republic is has less to do with a commitment to the hereditary principle than cynicism about politics in general. For many, the words ‘President Blair’ alone are enough to see off the case for a republic.

Is there still a logical case to be made for hereditary monarchy, beyond affection, nostalgia and inertia? Some would argue, for example, that its existence provides a code of allegiance which ensures ministers, the armed forces, and the judiciary do not seek to extend their powers beyond those allotted to them. Are there deeper principles that demand radical change? Or will we just stagger on with an institution that seems to have become adept at finding new and compelling raisons d’être, however much society changes?

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Today’s representation of childhood often seems overly negative: children are seen to be suffering from a litany of ills and problems. At the start of 2012, newspaper headlines proclaimed ‘Unhappy childhoods afflict one in 10 youngsters’, following the publication of a survey by the Children’s Society. Britain’s ‘happiness guru’, Lord Layard, declared: ‘Everybody involved in shaping children’s lives should sit up and take note of this report.’ Elaine Hindal, director of the society’s Campaign for Childhood, said: ‘We know that, right now, half a million children are unhappy’, and ‘unless we act now’ we risk creating ‘a lost future generation’. But are things really so bad for today’s kids? Surely many of the changes we have seen over recent decades are also a cause for celebration? For a start, children are healthier and wealthier than ever before. As the influential 2007 UNICEF report on child wellbeing in rich countries noted: ‘By almost any available measure, the great majority of children born into today’s developed societies enjoy unprecedented levels of health and safety.’

And yet might it be naive to paint an overly rosy picture of contemporary changes, some of which are the unintended consequence of attempts to improve children’s lives, from killjoy health-and-safety mania to questionable self-esteem initiatives? It might be going too far to suggest today’s children are threatened by a new-found ‘nature deficit disorder’, as some claim, but it is true that ‘cotton-wool kids’ are denied many of the freedoms and experiences that past generations took for granted. And if anti-bullying initiatives dominate schools, might we not expect today’s children to be less resilient, more victim-like? If, as is alleged, youth are reared on a diet of immediate gratification and entitlement (with some commentators seeing such trends as at least one factor in last summer’s UK riots), can we assume there will be no fallout? How has childhood changed in recent decades? Which changes are for the better and which for the worse? Could there be unique benefits as well as downsides to being a child today as opposed to in the past? Is it possible to delineate what are the key ingredients of a good childhood?

For many years, the only hybrid human/animal embryos that could be legally created in the UK were those resulting from fertilising a hamster’s egg with a man’s sperm, as a means of testing male fertility. In 2008, it became legal to create all manner of hybrid human/animal embryos for research purposes, provided that such embryos were destroyed within two weeks of their creation. 2012 saw the establishment of a new £5.8million Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, to develop techniques for preventing the transmission of debilitating mitochondrial disease. But these techniques cannot be tested in clinical trials without a change in the law, and the government has commissioned a ‘public dialogue’ on the issue. Some object that mitochondrial-exchange techniques involve the creation of children with ‘three parents’, while others claim that this objection misunderstands the relevant science.

Those involved in such debates are familiar with the ‘yuck factor’ - the instinctive revulsion said to be felt by many, whenever the natural order of things is interfered with. The yuck factor is an obstacle often negotiated by appeal to scientific evidence, with tensions defused by incorporating ethics committees and ethical considerations into the practice and regulation of biomedicine. But while such procedures address the feelings prompted by scientific advances, they also result in substantive moral objections being either condescendingly dismissed as the irrational ‘yuck’ reaction, or subordinated to the scientistic framework of ‘evidence’. There seems to be scant room for more moral or political arguments, either in favour of, or in opposition to, biomedical progress.

This raises the question of how developments in biomedicine are understood and debated by the public, and whether the public has any meaningful input. By definition, there is no direct public input into scientific research (which is specialised work evaluated by means of peer review), but biomedical policy is supposedly developed under the auspices of the broader democratic process. Such policy affects not only the application of research once it has been conducted, but – if research techniques are contentious, for example if they involve the use of human embryos – whether the research is permitted to proceed at all, much less receive public funds. How are these decisions arrived at? What role do democracy, morality and a grasp of the actual science play in the process?

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From Page 3 girls to unsavoury sleb photos and lewd speculation into people’s private lives, hatred of the tabloids is about more than phone-hacking, as contributors to the Leveson Inquiry have proven beyond doubt. The visceral contempt for ‘tabloid culture’ is de rigueur for self-styled responsible citizens. It has been accused of generating a dumbed-down climate of public ignorance, dangerously objectifying women and warping the aspirations of celebrity-obsessed youth. But is ‘tabloid culture’ really code for the papers’ uncultured readers? When high-minded ‘ethical’ journalists demonise redtops, are they really deriding the millions who read and enjoy them? Are critics calling for the tabloids to be tamed really talking about the papers, or the public?

It is not hard to see why critics do despair at much tabloid journalism. From Heat magazine to Perez Hilton, E Television to the 3am girls, it seems that Angelina’s weight or Cheryl’s new hairstyle shift more papers than the Euro crisis or deaths in Syria. How do we account for the appetite for salacious, personal stories when such serious challenges face the world? Is it that people are really more interested in celebrity than politics or has the media prioritised the life of celebrities over reporting the news? And do tabloids themselves pander to the most backward instincts of readers, exploiting their fears, fuelling insecurities? What of tabloids that wilfully create panics about everything from Frankenstein foods to scrounging immigrants?

On the other hand, is indulging in gossip and gawping at celebrities really such a vice, or can it just be harmless fun? Should we be aspiring to a society in which people choose broadsheets over the Sun and the Star? Should we cheer if more tabloids go the way of the News of the World, or should we celebrate a diversity of newspaper styles and voices, and embrace tabloids as a valuable contribution, multiplying the views we have access to in a free society?

Higher education has been a bitterly contested subject in the past couple of years, from rows about the increase in student tuition fees and the Browne Report to open discussion about what the university is for. Academics have reacted angrily to government plans to quantify research in terms of its economic and social impact, which they say diminishes the value of academic research and the open-ended pursuit of knowledge.

Yet there is another little-discussed aspect to contemporary academic research, which may pose an even greater threat its value; that is, the relentless pressure on academics to produce what are known as research outcomes. All university departments now regularly institute research strategies, requiring academics to produce a minimum number of publications and apply for grants in a specified period of time. Departments are keen to create ‘research clusters’ in which academics, whose work may have little in common, are expected to collaborate on research outcomes, such as publications and grant applications. Individual lecturers are regularly monitored to ensure they are producing research. There is a vast research industry dedicated to publishing the ever-expanding number of papers and books, most of which serve little purpose other than to fulfil the research quotas that are demanded.

Is this a triumph for the importance of research as an end in itself? Or when research becomes an end unanchored to intellectual content, interest or any genuine contribution to knowledge, does it lose its value?

Are we entering a new prohibitionist era? Drinking and even smoking are still perfectly legal, but there is a palpable sense that they are less acceptable than they once were. Cigarettes have become far more expensive thanks to punitive taxes, and the authorities would like to do something similar with alcohol. The spread of ‘no drinking’ zones in public places also seems to follow the pattern of smoking bans, which now cover every indoor public space and many outdoor ones too. So are we witnessing prohibition by stealth? Instead of banning certain activities, is the state trying render them socially unacceptable?

Putting smokers beyond the social pale certainly seemed to be health secretary Andrew Lansley’s objective when he explained the decision to implement a ‘plain packaging’ policy for cigarettes: ‘[It] is about moving to a place where tobacco and smoking isn’t part of normal life.’ An Australian court’s decision to uphold an even more extreme plain packaging policy has paved the way for similar moves worldwide. And where official anti-smoking policies have gone, anti-booze strategies look set to follow. Dr Vivienne Nathanson of the British Medical Association was angered recently by the proximity of booze to other food stuffs. ‘We have to start denormalising alcohol,’ she said. So might we see ‘plain packaging’ for alcohol too? And will that other bane of public health, so-called junk food, be next for the denormalisation treatment? With a black market already blossoming for tax-free tobacco, can we expect the rise of home-brew and moonshine, or even organised crime dealing in booze as it does with other illicit drugs?

More fundamentally, is it right that the government, aided and abetted by health professionals, seeks to change and mould our behaviour? Or should we be free to determine our own social norms, what is normal and what is not, rather than have these decided for us? In the past, those calling for abstinence, such as the nineteenth-century Temperance movement, did so in moral terms: alcohol damaged and inhibited that which was considered virtuous, be it hard work or good judgement. Is there a moral argument being made today against boozing or smoking? And if not, what does that tell us about the contemporary drive towards the ‘denormalisation’ of certain forms of behaviour? Or is it simply a good thing that the government is looking out for us, encouraging us to adopt lifestyles which won’t cost the NHS millions or make town centres no-go areas on a Saturday night? Are we witnessing a sensible attempt to change our behaviour for the better, or an assault by stealth on our everyday freedoms?

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From its beginnings in New York’s Zucotti Park last Autumn, there is little doubt that the Occupy movement has been highly successful at grabbing a lot of media attention. Indeed such has been the focus that not only did Time magazine see fit to name the ‘protester’ as its Person of the Year 2011, the American Dialect Society chose ‘occupy’ as its word of the year. And while there has been some criticism of the various occupations in the US and the UK, the coverage has been largely favourable. One commentator praised Occupy for ‘yielding a massive period of political creativity’; another argued that, thanks to Occupy, ‘protest is cool’, and political activism ‘revivified’; and the Church of England’s Giles Fraser, former Canon at St Paul’s, went so far as to declare that if Jesus had been alive today, he’d have been camped outside St Paul’s with the protesters.

But what exactly is being celebrated in the Occupy phenomenon? Some supportive commentators praise the leaderless, non-hierarchical decision-making process employed at the Occupy camps; others hail the protesters’ use of social media; and still more admire the sheer perseverance of those prepared to camp outside throughout the winter months. Yet has there been too much celebration of the Occupiers’ means at the expense of scrutinising their ends? Indeed, in the case of Occupy, has the act of protesting become more important than the point of protesting? Does Occupy represent the transformation of protest into a lifestyle?

Not that the politics of Occupy is completely obscure. At its various locations, it has issued demands for tighter regulation of banks, a reduction in the level of inequality between rich and poor, greater transparency when it comes to political lobbying, and, more broadly, an attack on greed and overconsumption. Yet given these positions and sentiments, what does Occupy say about the meaning of radicalism, indeed, anti-capitalism today? After all, almost all mainstream politicians in Europe and the US talk darkly of corporate avarice and bankers’ greed. And while reducing inequality formed the centrepiece of US President Barack Obama’s state of the union address, British Prime Minister David Cameron has been busy attacking capitalism for its lack of morality. If Occupy is radical, what does that say about the nature of radicalism today? Is the anti-capitalism of Occupy not quite as radical as some would crack it up to be?

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For most of the twentieth century, the preservation of buildings or townscapes reflected a judgement that they were, in some way, of architectural, historic or cultural value. In recent years, however, there has been a parallel trend to preserve buildings and urban areas for different reasons. Reflecting a fear that globalisation and a quickening pace of change are creating ‘social amnesia’ and undermining our sense of place, many European cities are turning to ‘urban memory’. Using objets trouvés, past events, or fragments of the urban fabric, designers and urbanists seek to refashion cultural identity and boost emotional attachment to the post-industrial city. By contrast with static heritage industries, advocates of urban memory see their brand of nostalgia as a creative process; less living in the past than using memory to fortify the future.

English Heritage’s Simon Thurley has argued that an interest in heritage is ‘inbuilt in the psyche of the human race’. But architect Rem Koolhaas claims preservation is actually the invention of modernity; it was only the transformations wrought by modernisation that raised the issue of what to keep. Yet where once modern architects and urbanists celebrated the idea of erasing the past to create the future, today such confidence has long gone. Sometimes the past is romanticised: for example, critics of Clone Towns yearn for the independent shops and boutiques of old, rather than faceless supermarkets, fast-food chains and global fashion outlets. But as the heritage and memory industries have expanded, preservation has shifted from being retroactive to being proactive. So we see the growth of legacy-focused events such as the London Olympics; future memory is almost more important than present reality.

What lies behind the current interest in preservation and memory, and who should decide what is worth keeping? Given many buildings and historic cities are great human achievements, and that regenerated historic areas of cities are often highly popular, is today’s more circumspect approach to modernisation appropriate? Is conservation on the basis of social inclusion an appropriate way to judge the worth of a place or a building, or should such judgements be more practical or aesthetic? Either way, does the obsession with memory threaten to freeze us in an unchanging present?

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Policymakers regularly accompany their policy proposals with scientific claims, while campaigners also cite ‘the science’ to further their causes. But this tendency has not been without problems for the reputation of science and scientists. In 2010, for instance, it was revealed that the IPCC’s widely reported claim – that global warming would cause the Himalayan glaciers to melt by 2035 – was simply not true. In Autumn last year, the British Medical Association, as part of its anti-smoking crusade, asserted that smoking in cars generates 23 times more toxins than you would find in a smoky bar. While the figure was impressively frightening, it was also untrue.

There are countless other instances, from claims about whether a glass of red wine a day is good for our hearts to assertions that fetuses feel pain, where the science used to justify a particular course of action or argument has proven to be unreliable. Do such cases undermine the authority of science? Are we inclined to trust science less given the number of high-profile fictions passed off as scientific fact? Some suggest the peer-review process needs to be tightened; others that too much pressure is exerted on research institutions to gain media exposure which leads to exaggerated or distorted claims. But is this missing the point? Is the more significant problem the attempt to use science and scientific claims to justify political and moral arguments?

We experience this most prominently, although far from exclusively, in environmentalist discourse. There, arguments for reduced energy consumption, for changes in the way we live, are made in terms of that which the science demands. In effect, science is being used to tell us what to do. So rather than the problem being too little trust in science, are too many inclined to trust the science too much? Do government, activists and campaigners need to stop hiding behind science and scientific claims and make their arguments in moral and political rather than scientific terms?

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‘Ideas are the cogs that drive history, and understanding them is half way to being aboard that powerful juggernaut rather than under its wheels’. AC Grayling

Society seems woefully lacking in Big Ideas, and we seem to crave new thinking. In Britain, great hopes rest on the legacy of the Olympics, but however inspiring the sporting excellence we all witnessed, is it realistic that a summer of feel-good spectacle can resolve deep-rooted cultural problems, from widespread disdain for competitition to community fragmentation? In America, Mitt Romney has pledged to pit substantial ideas against the empty ‘yes, we can’ sloganeering of Barack Obama, with his running mate Paul Ryan dubbed the ‘intellectual’ saviour of the Republican Party, but can they really deliver? Europe, once the home of Enlightenment salons, is now associated more with EU technocrats than philosophes. Looking to the intellectual legacy of the past is considered out of pace with an ever-changing world. We seem estranged from ideas associated with important moments in history - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the American and French Revolutions. Can even a basic idea like free will survive the challenges of neuroscience and genetics? When the internet offers information at the click of a mouse, what’s the point of pedagogy?

Some contend intellectual life has rarely been healthier; after all today’s governments appoint economists, philosophers and scientific advisers to positions of influence, and the fashion for evidence-based policy puts a premium on academic research. Nevertheless, the emphasis is on ‘what works’ utility and short-term impact rather than open-ended, risky ideas. Often data is passed off as Truth, and Socratic dialogue replaced by rows over conflicting evidence. The scramble for the next Big Idea seems to have replaced the creative and painstaking development of ideas. It’s as though serious ideas can be conjured up in brainstorming sessions or critical-thinking classes. But think-tanks kite-flying the latest outside-of-the-box, blue-skies-thinking speak more to pragmatism and opportunism than following in the tradition of Plato. Ideas become free-floating, divorced from their origins, and take on any meaning one cares to ascribe to them. Hence freedom can mean protection, its defence leading to illiberal regulations; equality can mean conformity and sameness; tolerance becomes a coda for indifference, and individualism denotes little more than selfishness.

Where apparently novel concepts catch on, from sustainability to fairness, identity to offence, they are often little more than fashionable sound-bites. Other ideas are even described as dangerous; those who espouse the ‘wrong’ ideas branded as modern-day heretics. But can we ever hope to approach the truth if we stifle dissent? Is intellectual life on the wane? Is it conservative to cling to old ideas, or if we don’t stand on the shoulders of giants, are we doomed to stand still ? Might truth seeking be more important than the Truth?

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Abortion is a procedure whose relationship to medicine is neither straightforward nor agreed upon. It does have to be carried out by a licensed clinician with specific medical knowledge, but neither pregnancy nor the absence of pregnancy is a disease. They only require medical intervention (abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, or fertility treatment to bring about a pregnancy when nature does not oblige) in specific and subjective circumstances. The simultaneous medical and non-medical character of abortion has consequences for the meaning of the word ‘choice’.

While ‘pro-choice’ is the preferred term for those who support a woman’s right to have an abortion, the word also has quite different connotations. In health circles, it has become associated with the supposed empowerment of the patient, through the introduction of market competition and greater transparency, both very controversial developments. Furthermore, ‘informed choice’ has become a euphemism for individual choices that take account of official public-health information or that follow a period of counselling. Because of its non-medical aspects, however, abortion involves choice in the more fundamental sense of a moral choice, both on the part of the patient and on the part of the relevant clinicians. ‘Choice’ may be a popular buzzword in health-policy circles, but moral choice does not enjoy similar levels of official recognition or endorsement.

The 1967 Abortion Act says an abortion can only proceed if two doctors state, in good faith, that failure to abort would adversely affect a woman’s physical or mental health. Does this create space for genuine moral choice? Or is it a disingenuous compromise, bundling a multitude of reasons for choosing abortion into the category of ‘mental health’, and thus precluding the good faith the law demands? Is the meaning of a moral choice diminished if that choice can be exercised routinely, as critics of the ‘routinisation’ of abortion argue? What consequences will the introduction of new fetal-testing technologies that require only a sample of the mother’s blood, such as cell-free fetal DNA testing and whole fetal genome sequencing, have for the choice to have an abortion? And is this choice ultimately medical, or moral?

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Not since the American Revolution has taxation been such a pressing political cause. Conservative chancellor George Osborne recently vowed to tackle the ‘shocking’ level of tax avoidance among the super rich. Lib Dem Danny Alexander called it ‘morally indefensible’. And Labour’s Ken Livingstone slammed the ‘rich bastards’ who ‘just don’t get it’, arguing that ‘no one should be allowed to vote in a British election, let alone sit in parliament, unless they pay their full share of tax’. It’s not just been a cause for the political mainstream. Youthful radicals UK Uncut have mounted a high-profile campaign against companies and individuals deemed to be cheating HMRC. Rarely it seems has the tax man, historically a figure of popular disdain, been so lauded - as comedian Jimmy Carr recently discovered to his cost. But what’s driving this obsession with how much tax people are paying?

For many, the issue is principally about fairness. ‘How would I explain to my secretary’, said ex-Marks and Spencer chairman Stuart Rose after a high-income tax cut last year, ‘that I am getting less tax on my income, which is palpably bigger than hers, when hers is not going down?’. Such concerns have come to the fore now, campaigners point out, because of the economic crisis. We are not all in this together, it seems. ‘The evidence of systematic tax avoidance by rich individuals and UK-based companies’, argued business secretary Vince Cable, ‘strikes a particularly ugly note in these straitened times’. Campaigners argue tax avoidance deprives the public purse of anything between £7 billion and £25 billion each year, and suggest recovering this money would reduce the need for cuts. But can a more rigorous taxation system really provide a solution to rising levels of public debt, let alone the economic crisis? If the recent calls for making people’s tax returns public are any indication, the tax crusaders are as keen on stigmatising wealth as redistributing it. As one columnist put it: ‘What is there to hide, except dishonesty or moral shame at earning multiples more than others who work as hard or harder?’ So is the campaign against tax avoidance driven by a desire to plant one on the nose of the rich for being, well, rich?

Is it a problem if the campaign against tax avoidance is more moralistic than practical? While exploiting loopholes to save money, or enjoying a lower level of top-rate income tax, may be legal, is it just? Should the rich be forced to give more to the tax man in the interests of fairness, or is this itself an unfair attack on people’s freedom to enjoy their own wealth?

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