Welcome to postnormal times

Futures, 42, 5, June 2010

Ziauddin Sardar

Abstract

All that was ‘normal’ has now evaporated; we have entered postnormal times, the in between period where old orthodoxies are dying, new ones have not yet emerged, and nothing really makes sense. To have any notion of a viable future, we must grasp the significance of this period of transition which is characterized…

The Idea of Justice

Book Of The Week

The Idea of Justice, By Amartya Sen

Reviewed by Ziauddin Sardar

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play…

Displaced Homes

A lush, green beautiful valley. In Chingiz Samedzadeh and Yulya Rusyayeva’s photograph, which features in British Council’s Close to Home http://www.britishcouncil.org/bulgaria-living-together-close-to-home.htm

exhibition, the natural beauty of the scenery is spoiled by a road that runs right through the valley. But there is more in the photograph than meets the eye. The road is also a border; it divides two warring states, Azerbaijan and Armenia. One…

Reading The Qur’an

Ziauddin Sardar’s new book which offers a fresh interpretation of the Qur’an with emphasis on context as well as on plurality and inclusiveness. Sardar uses several different methods, from traditional exegesis to hermeneutics, critical theory and cultural analysis to draw contemporary lessons from the Sacred Text on a wide range of topics, from power…

“As you surf the Net, read newspapers, blogs and tweets, watch YouTube and merge yourself in gossip, consider how little all the multiplicity of information available tells you about anything that is not of the West, derivative of the history, ideas, experience and technology of that dispensation. There is a coherent historic narrative out there – but it is the narrative of the gradual expansion of consciousness, will…

A Garden of Identities: Multiple Selves and Other Futures

I close my eyes and think of a future world. A visionary world, thirty, forty years from today. A world not of new humanity but a plethora of old and new humanities. A world where more than one of way of being human is not only the norm but is considered essential for the very survival of our species. This is the world as a garden.…