TaskRabbit, Uber, Airbnb and Kitchen Surfing
Platforms: The so-called sharing economy promises freedom to organize one's own working life. Sociologist Alexandrea J. Ravenelle examines the survival conditions of platform workers.
Russia without Putin
RUSSIA: One day Putin will leave the Kremlin - but that will not change anything, writes Tony Wood in his book on power and continuity in today's Russia, in which he attacks several well-known myths.
Linguistic dishes
LANGUAGE AND GENDER: Kübra Gümüşay does a slightly different language dish in Sprache und Sein, where she advocates a new way of perceiving language.
She "hears them" with her eyes
POEM:Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück's poems are surreal, where the imagination can prevail. Beneath the surface - like a frozen lake - is a world of disappointment, sadness, but not resignation.
The monstrous cost of the cheap fish
FISHING INDUSTRY: The United States imports 91 percent of all food fish from the other side of the globe, and fish intake is limited to five varieties while ancient coastal communities are in ruins. In Cambodia, the seabed is being emptied and emptied of illegal fishing from Vietnam. The theme is gloomy, but two different documentaries find bright spots.
Bjørneboe celebration with film and debate
JUBILEE Join the debate after the documentary The problem of evil, and see the celebration that took place at Røverstaden about Bjørneboe's life and life's work.
Changing your mind about identity politics can cost you everything
POLICY: American politics is not so much about changing existing policies, but more about appealing to the divisions between peoples.
To combine research, observation, gut feelings and human knowledge
LANGTVEKKISTAN: Erika Fatland has taken the journey across childhood's promised fantasy land that stretches across several national territories.
Contrary to the will of the Nobel
NOBEL PRIZE: Alfred Nobel's will is a document that the executors by law are obliged to follow. Heffermehl documents that the committee appointed by the Norwegian Storting since 1901 has ignored the will.
A people of speculators
HOUSING POLICY: Debate book launches controversial proposals on tax policy, inheritance tax, construction in allotment gardens and in the field boundary to even out economic and social differences.
China as the leader of an ecological civilization
ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY: The future of the world depends on China taking its environmental commitments seriously
Democracy in French-speaking Africa
SAHEL IN ENGLISH: France has strangely managed to preserve the hegemony over its former colonies, including in the dissemination of knowledge. This book is a much needed exception, which provides the background for understanding the recent coup in Mali.
The eco-anarchist on Greek Hydra: To be able to step out of our western everyday life
PORTRAIT: Can you today live a life where you sing until sunrise and dance at sunset? According to Don Lowe, all Greeks are anarchists at heart.
Ittaf, Palestinian failed suicide bombings after many years in prison
Palestine Annex: Ramallah (2014)
Transhumanism's dream of eternal life and zero pain
THE TECHNICAL POWERS: Two new books on people and technology: We are all influenced by the pressure chamber social platforms that Facebook creates. And what about NRK, should they actively participate in such a development?
From social democracy to neoliberalism
How is the development of society understood? Through ideas, actors and concrete processes, or through discourses, management techniques and projects for societal formation? MODERN TIMES's Svein Hammer picks up two books that are in relation to each other (one his own).
BEFORE AND AFTER THE EXPLOSION: How to patch up a city
TRIPOLI / BEIRUT: One of Lebanon's most controversial directors, Lucien Bourjeily, has put the country on the international theater map through his theater productions.
Bjørneboe, Gateavisa, and post-anarchism
Is it possible that traits from anarchism still have great validity for some of us today?
When corruption comes to life
BEIRUT: In its extreme consequence, corruption contributes to the loss of human life. We saw it in Bangladesh when the Rana Plaza factory building collapsed in 2013.
At a time when only "necessary" travel is allowed
TO TRAVEL: Where are you going to travel when the pandemic ravages the destination? In the literature, of course. On the desolate islands of the books, you can stretch up the hammock without being infected by anything other than longing.
Is it a pity for America?
Great power madness? America's shadowy sides have for many made fatal love and the relationship destructive. Bjørneboe's indignation towards America was of the solidarity type.
Bittersweet comedy in New York
DRAMA COMEDY: Director Sofia Coppola and actress Bill Murray were successful Lost in Translation and are now reunited in On The Rocks, in which Murray portrays a skirt hunter who is never far from a dry martini.
A powerful and different beast
HOLOCAUST: The Painted Bird is a powerful and disturbing film that depicts a young boy's cruel experiences in Eastern Europe during World War II.
HUXLEY'S DYSTOPIA: What would you rather be - happy or free?
SCIENCE FICTION: The TV series based on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World contains - by including digital surveillance - also an essential element from George Orwell's dystopian vision of the future.
Brave soldiers and lost system criticism
cinema Relevant The Outpost confirms the turn American war films have taken from system criticism of the hero cult.
Who dares disappoint the camera?
NUDENESS: Norwegian Jan Dalchow's new documentary series about body shame is honorable, but also trivial and sentimental.
Short film winners with political sting
NORWEGIAN SHORT MOVIE: Many of the films at this year's digital short film festival in Grimstad dealt with current political themes.
Short film program about the Y-block and the vulnerability of architecture
ARCHITECTURE: Two films about the Y-block have, in the shelter of the ongoing demolition, become both documentation of ideological oscillations and mourning hymns over a lost time.
Warning of the future
Utopia: An essayistic documentary that stretches towards future visions and utopias, but with a bleak foundational tone and inability to see any way out of the paralysis it describes.
Attentive and timeless presence
SLOW TRAVEL: Animals often have an almost enviable ability to find their place in the whole. Why can't people do the same?
Moments into the suffering of others
DOCUMENTARY PHOTO: The opportunity is there now to see what professional documentary photographers are doing.
Being threatened with death can make most people keep a low profile
FREEDOM OF SPEECH: The opportunity to say something is always very limited, says MODERN TIMES's regular writer in this essay about different authorities' use of force. Away from today's mass media, an "underground" network of intellectuals has now emerged, including experienced journalists, intelligence officers, renowned professors and politicians.
