Category Archives: North

What becomes of the Old South with the rise of the New North?

Contrary to the usual talk about the rise of the Global South, The New North: The World in 2050 by Laurence Smith argues that climate change will favour the development of the Arctic region, where there is more land than the south. From his RSA talk In 2050, Northern countries – notably Canada, Russia and [...]

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John Stanley Martin – Australia as an Iceland of the south

One way of reading an antipodean country like Australia is through the lens of its symmetrical opposites. For many, Australia has been compared to Nordic countries. One of Australia’s leading Nordicists, John Stanley Martin, unfortunately passed away this week. Here he talking about the commonality between Australia and Iceland. John Stanley Martin, descendent of the [...]

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Why ‘Up in the Air’ should be grounded

New critique or old myth? You could be forgiven for thinking that the recently released Up in the Air heralds a new wave of American films that reflect the real social realities of America exposed by the Global Financial Crisis. ‘ target=_blank>Rolling Stone claims that ‘Up in the Air is a defining movie for these [...]

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Go down Moses

How was the world oriented north? We take it for granted that north is up because you place the more important things on top. But does this mean that people in the South must feel forever inferior? To counter this psychological disadvantage, it is important to understand the historical processes that led to this arrangement. [...]

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Is Canada south?

In 1964, the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould took the Muskeg Express, a train that travels north more than 1,000 kilometres from Winnipeg to Churchill, in the upper reaches of Manitoba. At breakfast, he struck up a conversation with a surveyor Wally McLean and was impressed to learn about his ‘craft’ which was ‘to find in [...]

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