Is Humanity in Crisis?
Mark Levene, October 2002
September 11, war over Iraq, floods in Central Europe and Russia, drought
and starvation in southern Africa, the break-up of Antarctic ice sheets,
the collapse of fish stocks in the oceans, massive pollution as SE Asian
rainforest burns, AIDS, BSE, the threat of nuclear war in the Indian
sub-continent, the possibility of economic melt-down: the horror headlines
bombard us
practically every day and from every conceivable angle. But the big
question is are these things unrelated and thus, as far as academic research
is
concerned subjects which require careful scrutiny in separate compartments.
Or should we rather be seeing them as symptoms or by-products of some
much bigger, deeper and all-pervading malaise?
The answer to the question
may depend heavily on where one is coming from. Indeed posing the question
in this way at all might be considered
heavily loaded. To propose that what we are really dealing with are
a series of epiphenomena which point towards some inherent dysfunction
in
our global political economy is a serious charge. To go one stage further
and to insist that unless we can find ways out of that dysfunction we
are going to be in serious trouble as a species is hardly the sort of
pronouncement likely to have anybody cheering to the rafters.
So, how
can people make a judgement? And what role can academics provide in
getting us nearer to that goal? This is what a series of linked lectures
at Southampton this forthcoming year proposes to consider. It is the
product
of the Crisis Forum, shorthand for the Forum for Study of Crisis in
the 21st century, an initiative by two Southampton academics who do believe
that world is in serious crisis and that universities have a rather
important
role not only in providing a more broad cross-disciplinary analysis
of its manifestations but also in providing lateral ways of thinking to
help
us meet its manifold challenges.
Needless to say not everybody in the
university is going to agree with these ideas. Academics, almost by
defintion, have trenchant opinions.
So, it’s very unlikely that even invited speakers are going
to arrive at any consensus. On the other hand getting people from
entirely different
disciplines talking across boundaries may be a valuable start. The
big paradox about Southampton is it is brimming over with experts:
climate
change is high on the Oceanography, Enviromental Sciences and Geography
agendas, we have researchers in politics and economics on globalisation,
nuclear proliferation and Aids, a whole raft of people working on
potential palliatives in Engineering, Medicine and Maths, not to forget
many more
committed academics in the Humanities whose work on the political,
social and cultural implications of crisis is often keenly comparative
and historically
grounded. Certainly, if the issues at stake are as urgent as the organisers
claim, breaking down specialist barriers and getting disciplines and
departments to talk a common language with one another may be a singular
achievement.
That still, of course, begs the question about ways forward.
If humanity is in crisis, is the right response to leave it to the
experts to provide
us with some big technocratic fixes or is the road to sustainability
and survival founded on forms of social and cultural as well as economic
and
political self-liberation? There’s certainly all sorts of challenges
here and something the Crisis Forum proposes to engage in through a
series of interdisciplinary projects on specific aspects or symptoms
of the problem.
In the interim, the
Forum seminars are an opportunity for anybody and
everybody who cares about our planet to come along, listen and participate.
First published in The Dolphin (The University of Southampton magazine)
October 2002
last updated 26 March, 2004
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