Source: The Conversation – UK – By Adrianna Zabrzewska, Senior Research Fellow (Postdoc), Edinburgh Napier University
Toxic masculinity doesn’t stop at marginalising women and LGBTQ+ people. It harms straight men by discouraging emotional expression, tenderness, and connection.
As the TV show Adolescence demonstrated, the troubling anxiety and rage surrounding what it means to “be a man” can arise early in life. What Adolescence also reminds us, though, is that framing boys as potential threats is not the way to go.
So how do we reach boys before they radicalise in dangerous ways? How can we do this without reducing them to stereotypes?
In my research, I drew on feminist philosophy to propose three concepts for rethinking masculinity: relationality, vulnerability, and inclination. There are books that already feature these ideals, like Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan or Rick Riordan’s action-packed urban fantasy series Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.
The concept, inclination, relates to fostering a caring, curious orientation toward difference, a willingness to “lean in” rather than stand aloof. Or, to paraphrase the Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero, it is the courage to fall down the “slippery slope” of love, friendship and emotional bonds. In my interpretation, inclination is the drive that motivates people to connect with the world and care for various vulnerable others.
Inclination can be seen in Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, which combines exciting adventures with emotional depth. Magnus is a teenage male hero who is sweet, caring, and driven by love for his friends.
With a diverse cast of characters, from deaf elves to Muslim American female warriors and genderfluid pottery artists, the series offers an engaging lesson in intersectionality, which refers to the fact that everyone is part of multiple social categories.
Riordan’s other boy protagonists – including Percy Jackson or Jason Grace (also from the world of Percy Jackson) – rely on friends of all genders and are not threatened by independent women.
They bravely display their own vulnerability while respecting the vulnerability of others. And if they don’t – like the protagonist of The Trials of Apollo – it’s because they’re written as caricatures of self-aggrandising, hyper-individualistic masculinity.
Redefining masculinity through queer fiction
The concept of relationality is the idea that we are formed not in isolation but through relationships. It acknowledges the diverse contexts we inhabit, and emphasises that our differences should be respected, not ignored. Ideally, a person who sees themselves as relational would focus on fostering an ethical commitment to honour, rather than exploit, the vulnerabilities of others.
This can be seen in Two Boys Kissing, which follows several queer teenage protagonists as they explore friendship, love, and identity. What makes the novel remarkable is its chorus of narrators: a collective voice of gay men whose lives were lost during the HIV/Aids epidemic.
The narrators watch over the living boys with tenderness and urgency. They become a vigilant, caring presence that transcends time and space. They provide a sense of continuity between generations and individuals, showing that relationships matter, not only in our immediate circles but also in the larger tapestry of life.
Vulnerability refers to the shared human condition of being a body born from another body. We are all finite and fragile, susceptible to harm, loss, and injustice. Through our fragility and dependence, vulnerability can be transformed into resilience and connection. This is especially true when we recognise the diverse experiences of disenfranchisement that we each face.
In Two Boys Kissing, the chorus of narrators celebrate imperfect bodies, both cis-gendered and trans, that defy unrealistic beauty standards. They whisper encouragement to a lonely teen contemplating suicide and agonise over his pain. They affirm that care, intimacy and affection are not signs of weakness but of strength. Through these voices, Levithan’s readers learn that self-acceptance comes not from independence or dominance but from reaching out to others.
When strategically integrated into stories, educational practices and daily interactions, vulnerability, relationality, and inclination can help us sketch new ethical horizons, and not only for masculinity but for gendered existence as a whole.
Of course, literature will not solve our problems. It will not turn us into better people overnight (if at all). But stories are powerful cultural tools. They can show boys that being strong doesn’t mean being unfeeling, and that caring for others is not a betrayal of masculinity but its renewal.
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Adrianna Zabrzewska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Sales of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) rocketed when Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election. Nearly a year into the second Trump administration – and 50 years since Arendt’s death in December 1975 – it seems like an apposite time to revisit the book and see what light it sheds on 2025.
The book is brilliant but difficult, combining history, political science and philosophy in a way that can be very disorientating. So what might we, as democratic citizens, gain from reading it?
Born to a secular German Jewish family in 1906, Arendt studied philosophy under Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers before turning to Zionist activism in Berlin in the early 1930s. After a brush with the gestapo, she fled to France, and in 1941 left Europe for the US. So when she began researching Origins in the early 1940s, she was no stranger to totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism, she argued, was a radically new form of government distinguished by its ideological conception of history. For the Nazis, history was a clash of races; for Stalinism, it was class war. Either way, totalitarian leaders sought to execute historical “laws” by forcibly reshaping the humans they ruled.
Humanity, Arendt said, is distinguished by its infinite variability – no person can ever entirely substitute for another. Totalitarianism aimed to destroy this. It isolated individuals, dissolving the bonds through which they unite and empower each other, and sought to extinguish human personhood.
The concentration camps’ total domination did so by reducing each inmate to “a bundle of reactions that can be liquidated and replaced” before killing them. With everyone ultimately subject to this threat, totalitarianism rendered the human person as such, superfluous.
Rather than pursuing stability, totalitarianism was always a movement, constantly instigating change. When its propaganda collided with facts, it brutalised reality until the facts conformed. Its ideal subjects not only believed its lies: they no longer found the distinction between truth and falsehood meaningful. This was “post-truth politics” at its most extreme.
Common sense won’t save us
Comparing today’s politics to fully fledged totalitarianism can be illuminating. But if it’s all we do, we risk overlooking Arendt’s subtler lessons about warning signs that can help us gauge threats to democracy.
The first is that political catastrophe isn’t always signposted by great causes, but arises when sometimes seemingly trivial developments converge. The greatest example for Arendt was political antisemitism. During the 19th century, only a “crackpot” fringe embraced it. By the 1930s, it was driving world politics.
This resonates with hard-right and far-right ideology today. Ideas widely seen as eccentric 20 years ago have increasingly come to shape democratic politics. Anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia penetrate the political mainstream. Alongside growing Islamophobia, antisemitism is on the rise again too.
The mainstreaming of previously marginal views helps explain a second warning sign that politics is increasingly driven by what Arendt described as “forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest”.
A simplistic politics of ideological fantasy and paranoia takes over instead. It appeals most to the isolated and lonely, people lost in society who have given up hope that anyone will ever address their real interests and concerns. Perpetually frustrated by reality, they seek escape in conspiracy theories instead.
Arendt’s story resonates with There Is Nothing For You Here, Fiona Hill’s account of the “left-behind” in communities of de-industrialised regions in the US, UK, Russia, and Germany – regions where the far right has grown.
In early 20th-century Europe, similar experiences of powerlessness spread alongside the imperialist embrace of what Arendt called “the limitless pursuit of power after power”. When colonial violence boomeranged back to its European source, the powerless were drawn to leaders who exemplified the violent pursuit of power for power’s sake.
New wine in old bottles
The neo-imperialist flex of a US government executing civilian boat crews in international waters while deploying regular armed forces domestically to fight crime looks like an appeal to the same instincts Arendt was writing about.
But perhaps Origins’ most important lesson is about trying to understand something radically new using outdated concepts – “interpreting history by commonplaces” as Arendt called it. Faced with a jarringly new style of politics, there is a temptation to explain it away as mere nationalistic excess, for instance. Or as an understandable expression of economic disappointment and one readily addressed with economic remedies.
Origins tells instead the story of something much greater than the sum of its parts taking on a terrible life of its own. By trying to reduce it to familiar terms, Arendt said, “the impact of reality and the shock of experience were no longer felt” and people failed to resist when they most needed to.
But this lesson also applies to the idea of totalitarianism itself. It helped Arendt understand the 1940s, but we shouldn’t assume that it will apply directly to 2025. The term totalitarianism could itself distract, rather than mobilising people.
For example, if claiming that Trumpian populism is already totalitarian seems excessively alarmist, then deciding that it isn’t might be excessively reassuring. Either could diminish people’s ability to respond to the demands of the moment.
What we urgently need instead is what Arendt described as “the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality – whatever it may be”. Origins’ greatest lesson is in showing us what that looks like.
The main lesson for 2025 is as much about what Arendt was doing in the 1940s as about what she was saying: actively thinking in the now, and trying to grasp an emergent “something” on its own terms – a threat that is taking shape, but which hasn’t yet fully revealed itself.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org; ff you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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Christopher J. Finlay has previously received funding from the British Academy and from the Leverhulme Trust.
Refugee health is often discussed in terms of crises such as disease outbreaks, malnutrition and psychological distress. But some of the most serious effects of displacement are harder to see. One example is how forced migration can change the bacteria in the gut that support immunity and long-term health.
The human gut contains trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi, together known as the gut microbiome. These microbes help digest food, support the immune system and protect against illness. A healthy gut microbiome is usually diverse and balanced, with plenty of beneficial bacteria that help protect against infection and inflammation.
Studies show that refugees often have gut microbiomes that look different from those of people who have not experienced displacement. Researchers describe distinct gut microbiome profiles, typically with fewer types of microbes and changes in which bacteria are most common. These differences are not genetic. Instead, they reflect the extreme conditions many refugees face before, during and after displacement.
Understanding these differences can help improve healthcare for refugees, but it also shows how social inequality can become physically embedded in the body over time.
One common finding is higher levels of harmful bacteria and antibiotic-resistant organisms in refugee gut microbiomes. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria can survive medicines designed to kill them, making infections harder to treat and easier to pass on.
Poor sanitation and contaminated environments play a major role. Many refugees come from, or travel through, areas affected by conflict or disaster, where access to clean water and toilets is limited. Drinking unsafe water or eating contaminated food increases the chance that disease-causing bacteria will settle in the gut and multiply, a process known as colonisation.
Refugees often live in challenging conditions, including limited access to clean water, adequate sanitation and healthcare services. stu.dio/Shutterstock
Common examples include E coli, Salmonella and Shigella. These bacteria can cause diarrhoea, vomiting and fever, and in severe cases may lead to dehydration, blood infection, poor growth in children or long-term digestive problems.
Repeated stomach and bowel infections, especially in crowded places with poor sanitation, disturb the normal balance of gut microbes. Over time, harmful species can take over, while the overall range of microbes shrinks. Having fewer different types of gut bacteria is widely recognised as a sign of poor gut health.
Chronic stress makes these problems worse. Refugees are often exposed to prolonged stress linked to war, violence, forced movement, separation from family and ongoing uncertainty. Rates of mental health challenges are high, and stress affects physical health through the gut–brain axis, the communication system between the brain and the digestive system.
Long-term stress alters immune responses, hormone levels and the gut lining. These changes increase inflammation and make it easier for harmful microbes to grow, while reducing beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.
Antibiotic use is another major factor driving poor gut health and antibiotic resistance. In low-resource or conflict settings, antibiotics are often used frequently because infections are common and access to testing is limited. Refugees may receive multiple courses without a clear diagnosis or follow-up. While these medicines can save lives, repeated or unnecessary use allows resistant bacteria to survive and spread.
Antibiotics also destroy helpful microbes that keep the gut healthy. Repeated courses reduce the number and variety of beneficial bacteria, weakening the gut’s ability to protect itself.
As a result, antibiotic-resistant strains such as E coli that can neutralise antibiotics can become established in the gut, making infections much harder to treat.
Poor conditions and malnutrition
Living conditions during displacement further increase the risk of gut infection and the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Refugees camps and temporary shelters are often overcrowded and lack basic hygiene facilities, allowing infectious diseases to spread easily.
Infectious diseases can spread rapidly in refugee camps where overcrowding and limited sanitation increase transmission risk. Ajdin Kamber/Shutterstock
Dietary disruption also affects gut health. Sudden shifts from traditional diets rich in fibre to emergency food aid high in refined carbohydrates deprive beneficial gut bacteria of fuel. Low-fibre diets weaken gut defences and allow harmful bacteria to thrive.
Malnutrition further increases vulnerability, especially in children, whose gut microbiomes are still developing.
The spread of harmful and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in refugee populations is a public health issue, not a personal one. Addressing them requires coordinated public health interventions, including improved sanitation, careful antibiotic use, stress-aware care and nutritional support that helps restore a healthy gut.
Understanding how all these factors interact is essential for developing humane, effective healthcare strategies that protect both refugee communities and wider public health.
Manal Mohammed does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
When COVID lockdown loomed back in 2020, many people panic-bought toilet rolls – but I stocked up on notebooks and my favourite pencils.
I had been inspired by the writing of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In Letters to a Young Poet (1929), a collection of ten letters written to a young military cadet who had sent his poetry to Rilke for critique, Rilke advised: “Confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write?”
In a BBC radio programme, The Essay: Letters to a Young Poet, first broadcast in 2014, the English poet Vicki Feaver responded to Rilke’s question. She said: “Of course I wouldn’t literally die, but a part of me would die, as it did in the years when I didn’t write.”
My husband, Arthur Gardner, who died of motor neurone disease in 2008, would have identified with this. He started reading and writing poetry in his early 20s and his enthusiasm and ambition increased as he grew older.
During his last few months, he had lost the use of his arms and hands and was dependent on a machine that pushed air into his lungs. Nevertheless, he used every possible opportunity to work on his poems, particularly looking forward to the weekly visit of a sensitive and sympathetic Marie Curie nurse who would patiently scribe for him.
Feaver had wanted to be a poet since reading the work of William Blake as a child. But it wasn’t until she was in her early 30s, married with four young children, that she began to write seriously. The poem 1974, which appears in her collection, I Want! I Want! (2019), includes a conversation she had at a party when a man asked her what she did. The final stanza reveals how significant an impact it had:
‘I’m a poet!’ I lied
jolting myself to life:
a woman buried under ice
with words burning inside.
Feaver’s first full collection, Close Relatives (now out of print) was published in 1981. Thirteen years later, her collection The Handless Maiden won several awards. Many of these poems are reworkings of stories from other sources.
The title poem, one that Feaver has said is very important to her, is a retelling of one of Grimms’ fairy tales. A woman whose hands have been severed by her father has them restored when she plunges them in water to save her drowning child. Of course, hands are used for writing, and this is emphasised in the last lines of the poem: “And I cried for my hands that sprouted / in the red-orange mud – the hands / that write this, grasping / her curled fist.”
In a later poem, Bramble Arm, Feaver explores the notion that writing can be empowering. The speaker of the poem describes a dream where her right arm, “the arm that wields / my writing hand”, is covered in brambles:
It could be a punishment
for unlocking the voice
I was taught as a child
to soften or silence.
Or a sign of its power –
a weak woman’s arm
transformed into
a fearsome weapon.
Now in her eighties, Feaver has continued to write. Her most recent publication, The Yellow Kite (2025) is her first collection since she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In the first poem, Ode to Parkinson’s, she addresses the illness which “began as her enemy”, but can be seen as a friend because: “You jolted her awake: / challenging her to live / every minute left to her.”
The word “jolted” is possibly a deliberate link to her earlier poem 1974. The jolt caused by the man’s question was the motivation to begin writing, and now illness has given a new sense of urgency to living fully – and for Feaver, that means writing.
There are 25 poems in the pamphlet. Many of them are about what it is like to live with Parkinson’s, some of them using the moniker “shaking woman”. One poem, Her Lost Words, reveals how hard it is for a poet who feels as if “the inside of her head”:
was a shaken snow-globe
where words, mingling with the storm
of whirling flakes, settled randomly,
revealing some and burying others.
In Parkinson’s Speaks, the disease is given its own voice, and it is a cruel one: “But I’m patient. I can wait. / You’ve already fallen / and broken a hip.”
The poems face up to the reality of ageing and serious illness but refuse self-pity or false optimism. The title poem, the last one in the pamphlet, refers to a kite that was a gift from a ten-year-old son “the year his father left”. The poet recalls “watching it as it soared” and the effect it had: “My spirit that I thought / would never recover / struggled up from the floor / and flew into the air.”
Writing does not take us away from the difficult and the painful. If we write with courage and with integrity, it can take us to the very heart of it.
It was after my husband’s death that I started writing poetry. Many of the poems I wrote then were raw and self-centred, but writing them helped me to make sense of my grief. Now I write with more awareness of the craft and with ambition.
It’s often difficult and frustrating but frequently absorbing and fascinating. I think of Rilke’s question. Must I write? My answer is yes.
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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
Julie Meril Gardner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Voice cloning technology platforms like ElevenLabs allow anyone to replicate a voice using just a few seconds of audio, for a small fee. These technologies are reshaping cultural and artistic expression.
These female-led examples demonstrate working with the creative challenges of voice technologies, and in some ways, they’re nothing new: electronic music pioneer and composer Suzanne Ciani developed a technological approach decades ago to incorporate a male persona, named “Steve”, into her compositions when a male voice was required.
Voice-swapping technologies are also used by some male producers to present as female artists. British researcher and musician Helen Reddington has observed that: “Like the male gaze, the male ear is hidden and its power exercised behind the scenes.”
Reddington wrote that in 2018 in relation to the way that male writer/producers use female singers to reach an audience. But applied to AI, this points to a cultural dynamic where voice manipulation, as an extension of the male gaze and ear, may also reflect deeper desires to control female identities – especially in music, where voice is central to emotional expression and identity.
One of imoliver’s songs, created using an AI female voice.
AI voice technologies are a form of information technology. However, once a voice is rendered as information and is simulated, it will have “lost” its physical form. The combination of disembodied voice and the quality of its simulation can make it easier for people to think of computers as being like a human. This means that a person will be heard whether a machine or human speaks. It is this connection to a person that voice cloning disrupts.
British AI artist Oliver McCann, known as imoliver, openly admits to having “no musical talent at all … I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments, and I have no musical background at all”. Yet through AI, he has developed songs that foreground a female persona. Likewise, the eminent producer Timbaland has invented a pink-haired female artist, TaTa, in a new genre he refers to as a-pop or artificial pop. But does a creator’s gender matter in the development of AI artists and wider fanbases?
Noonoouri, a digital avatar signed by Warner Music Central Europe in 2024, though not completely AI-generated, is a composite of digital tools, presented as a human-made young female fashionista turned pop star. The Instagram feed for Noonoouri shows everyday activities – eating pasta, throwing peace signs, even signalling support for Black Lives Matter. The avatar’s appearance is malleable. But these gestures and modified appearance, while seemingly empathetic, may be more performative than transformative.
Noonoouri’s creator, Jeorg Zuber, used his own voice – digitally feminised – and motion capture of his movements to animate the avatar. It is Zuber’s embodiment of femininity that is being portrayed here, ultimately to produce a pliable brand ambassador. As Warner’s senior A&R manager, Marec Lerche, has stated: “We can change her style in a minute … we can make her fly if we want.”
As British author Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, has pointed out, apps used to develop these female avatars and characters rely on a misogynistic idea of “what a woman is and should be. She’ll never disagree with you, she’ll never answer back”. It is not AI doing the impersonation, but the human company.
Technology may blur boundaries, but it also reveals who holds the power. When male creators use AI to simulate female voices and personas, are they expanding artistic possibilities or perpetuating a new form of gender appropriation, ventriloquism and misogyny? One call to action to counter the growth of the manosphere is the increased presence of girl voices to tackle misogyny. Yet voice simulation technologies may undo this.
In the age of AI, impersonation takes on new meaning. When mediated by technologies largely controlled by cisgender men and tech platform companies, female impersonation risks becoming a tool of dominance rather than expression. The question is no longer just about artistic freedom – it’s about who gets to speak, and who is being spoken through.
This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry – and celebrate the wins, too.
Hussein Boon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Working on a laptop while looking out over terraced rice fields in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.Torjrtrx/Shutterstock
One of the first modern coworking spaces, C-Base in Berlin, was launched 30 years ago by a group of computer engineers as a “hacker space” in which to share their tech and techniques. Similarly, many of the people we first encountered in our anthropological research into the emerging world of digital nomadism in the mid-2010s were hackers and computer coders.
Nearly a decade later, we returned to Chiang Mai to see what had happened to these pioneers of the borderless, desk-free life. We wondered if they had been put off by the throngs of travellers who have followed in their sandal-clad footsteps, attracted by glamorous – if often inaccurate – images of the digital nomad lifestyle.
One of the city’s nomad hotspots is Yellow Coworking, which launched in 2020 as a blockchain-oriented, collaborative escape zone from the COVID pandemic. The later stages of the pandemic were an interesting time to be in Chiang Mai: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was followed by mass layoffs in Silicon Valley when Twitter, Meta, Coinbase and Microsoft all made significant cuts.
Yellow Coworking saw an influx of former Silicon Valley workers, Russian and Ukrainian coders, and crypto enthusiasts. “Some ex-Silicon Valley employees are here playing around with startups,” one Yellow staff member explained. “It makes sense for them to come here if they are trying to create an MVP” (that’s “minimum viable product” – startup jargon for a basic prototype that, with luck, will become the next technological success story).
“With its lower costs,” the staff member added, “Chiang Mai gives them a longer runway” (the amount of time the startup can remain solvent without raising additional funds).
People walking into Yellow Coworking’s modernist, European-style building simply raise their hands to sign themselves in via biometric fingerprint scanners. Many are computer coders or IT specialists in their 20s, taking advantage of fast broadband and (mostly western) passports to disconnect their lives from any particular location. They view technology and code as a global language, with no need to stay rooted to a single country or location.
Vitalik Buterin, creator of ethereum – the decentralised blockchain behind the world’s second biggest cryptocurrency, Ether – was often a focus of discussion at Yellow’s regular meet-ups. Buterin has identified as a digital nomad for most of the past decade, claiming to live out of a 40-litre backpack. Like many crypto folk, he views this borderless lifestyle as making perfect ideological sense.
Yellow Coworking in Chiang Mai hosts a mix of ex-Silicon Valley workers, Russian and Ukrainian coders, and crypto enthusiasts. Dave Cook, CC BY-NC-SA
The borderless revolution
In Chiang Mai, cryptocurrency usage has spread to the local population. During one meet-up held in a local bar, the owner took payment for shots of Thai rum in bitcoin. She too talked about the borderless revolution that was coming, and crypto being part of her financial future.
One of the western “crypto nomads” present was trying to launch his own cryptocoin (built on Buterin’s ethereum ecosystem) and get others to invest in it. A few tables away, another who had invested – and lost – a fortune in cryptocurrency explained he was now living in Chiang Mai because of the city’s relatively low cost of living.
For every success story, there were tales of loss and potential scams. Some told outlandish stories of crypto startups and other projects that were hard to validate. One person who wrote eBooks on how to invest successfully in crypto was selling courses on how to get involved. Another was writing code to improve the security of the ethereum blockchain system, to ensure it would be safe from hackers.
A valuable asset for states
Digital nomad hotspots, which also include European cities such as Lisbon in Portugal, show how the worlds of cryptocurrency, blockchain and digital nomadism are colliding – and evolving beyond mere workspace provision.
A collaborative, incubator-like atmosphere is at the core of The Block Lisboa, where you can pay in cryptocurrency and which hosts weekly Crypto Fridays for networking, collaboration and ideas sharing. In 2023, it held the first Ethereum Block Summit, which promised to “delve into the future of finance” by exploring “groundbreaking advancements in the ethereum ecosystem”.
Meanwhile, CV Labs is building a blockchain ecosystem of its own, comprising coworking spaces, events and summits in Lisbon and four other cities including Vaduz in Liechtenstein and Zug – part of Switzerland’s “Crypto Valley”. These spaces are open to cryptocurrency professionals and enthusiasts with professional exchange in mind.
Digital nomads are becoming a valuable asset for states to compete for – as Tsugio Makimoto and David Manners predicted they would in their 1997 book, Digital Nomad. “Just as we are already seeing governments competing with each other to attract industrial investment,” they wrote, “we may see governments competing with each other for citizens.”
Malaysia’s digital nomad visa initially targeted only nomads from IT and digital professions such as cybersecurity and software development. Estonia launched a digital nomad visa along with its e-residency programme to target high-skilled digital workers. While these visas typically restrict local employment, many allow nomads to bring family members and offer a path to residency, such as in Spain and Portugal.
Coworking spaces started off as techno-utopian, hacker spaces. Thirty years later, they are an increasingly important aspect of some cities’ tourism calculations – having been given further allure by the rise of the niche group of crypto nomads.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
From compelling stories to non-fiction, books can spark ideas that help us navigate the climate crisis. As part of The Conversation’s ongoing Climate Storytelling strand, we asked climate research and creative writing experts to review some of the best new and upcoming titles to look out for in 2026. We’d love to know which ones you enjoy – share your thoughts in the comments below.
Surviving Climate and Chaos: What Dinosaurs Teach Us About Climate Change and Resilience by Evan Jevnikar (December 2025)
Surviving Climate and Chaos offers a refreshing take on dinosaur narratives. While far from the first to guide readers through Mesozoic menageries, Evan Jevnikar contributes a deftly woven history of palaeo-climates alongside the chronological history of the dinosaurs.
Jevnikar shows how dinosaur evolution was intrinsically linked to Earth’s ever-changing climate. Throughout the Mesozoic Era – the “age of reptiles”, which lasted from 252 to 66 million years ago – we see them rise, adapt, and diversify. This was thanks to the way their metabolism and physiology were suited to the warmer, carbon-rich climates of the Triassic period (between 250 and 201 million years ago) and the Jurassic period (201 to 145 million years ago). But the rapid climate change triggered by a fateful asteroid strike (66 million years ago) outpaced the ability of highly specialist dinosaurs (particularly non-flying species) to adapt to a colder and sparser world.
Jevnikar notes how human-influenced climate changes mimic prehistoric catastrophes. Key examples include comparisons between the rising intensity of modern storms and the monsoons of the Triassic period, as well as parallels between carbon-dense volcanic activity throughout Earth’s history and the contemporary mass release of carbon dioxide by people burning fossil fuels.
Jevnikar’s inclusion of actionable solutions is reassuring, though: far from prophesying apocalypse, he couples objective warnings about the influences of climate on ecosystems with remedial steps that humanity can take to reverse some of the damage it has caused. These include reforestation initiatives, carbon capture technology and personal acts of climate consciousness.
Backed by scientific evidence yet communicated clearly enough for people who are not palaeo-climatologists, Jevnikar contemplates our roles as climate stewards in an entertaining and accessible way.
Nathan Bramald is a PhD candidate researching the scientific communication of dinosaurs in literature
Called By the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya by Anuradha Roy (January 2026)
For the past 25 years, novelist and publisher Anuradha Roy has called the Himalaya her home and her world. In Called by the Hills, she invites us up and into the Ranikhet hillside of northern India?, where oxygen fizzes like champagne, leopards stalk the forests and langur monkey troops dance on roofs.
Roy’s absorbing book offers a personal panorama of the region: here is the oak tree I planted, she says, that is where the internet cafe was. Throughout, she tends to her sentences with patience and personality, the same way she tends to her Himalaya-facing garden.
The UK edition, smartly presented by Daunt, includes Roy’s adoring watercolours of the dogs who found their way into her home. A book of wildflowers and kafal berries, Called by the Hills stands as both a gardening memoir and a love letter to an endless forest that now faces an ending, as climate change begins to muddle the seasons.
Dominic O’Key is an English-teaching associate
Despite it All: a Handbook for Climate Hopefuls by Fred Pearce (February 2026)
Journalist and writer Fred Pearce argues that climate action is already underway and that defeatism only narrows our imagination. He does not claim to be writing an academic text, yet he provides clear explanations, with careful sourcing and suggestions for further reading that draw the reader into a wider conversation.
His writing on inequity is particularly strong, especially the Enough for a Decent Life section, which confronts the fact that the wealthiest 10% have driven two-thirds of global warming since 1990. It asks how we meet the basic needs of 8 billion people while protecting the systems that support life.
Pearce’s treatment of technology and geopolitical action is thoughtful, using the global response to the stratospheric ozone hole to show that coordinated action can shift outcomes when it is taken seriously. The book focuses on collective work rather than individual lifestyle tweaks.
His examples illustrate what genuine progress looks like, from Indigenous stewardship to eco-restoration projects. The result is a sustained case for cautious optimism that feels earned rather than wishful.
Sam Illingworth is a professor of creative pedagogies
The climate crisis has a communications problem. How do we tell stories that move people – not just to fear the future, but to imagine and build a better one? This article is part of Climate Storytelling, a series exploring how arts and science can join forces to spark understanding, hope and action.
Frontierlands by Hazel Sheffield (February 2026)
The UK has one of the most concentrated forms of land ownership in the world. People are denied access to thousands of derelict properties, boarded up after factories close or landlords raise rents. Hazel Sheffield calls these unused buildings and properties Britain’s “frontiers”.
Documenting the tremendous obstacles to bringing them into productive use again, yet refusing pessimism, she follows artists, community organisers, bricklayers and car repair people who build with a new ethos. They propose collective ownership and neighbourhood co-production of crafts, festivals, healthy food options, together with affordable, low-carbon retrofitting.
In Frontierlands, Sheffield offers countless ideas for increasing our resilience in the face of late-stage capitalism. She also advocates for building neighbourhoods with better protection against a wetter and hotter climate. It’s a convincing argument: these initiatives will improve the nation’s health as well as its infrastructure.
Stephanie Palmer is a senior lecturer in the school of social sciences
The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit (March 2026)
Rebecca Solnit’s latest work is a powerful meditation on transformation in turbulent times. This slim volume situates today’s polarisation, authoritarian resurgence and reaction against progressive values within a broader historical arc.
The book opens with a moving land-return ceremony to Indigenous Americans and continues with examples of progress achieved through resistance and activism. Through vivid metaphors – caterpillars becoming butterflies, the labour pains of a new world — Solnit argues that the current turmoil signals the dying throes of patriarchy and colonialism.
At its heart, this book is a rallying call for all those who yearn for a just, sustainable and flourishing society. Solnit tells us not to give up hope, reassuring us that these struggles mark the shedding of the old and the birth of a new civilisation. As a sustainability academic, writer and climate-anxious activist myself, it’s just what I needed to hear.
Denise Baden is a professor of sustainable business
Elemental: How We Will Live on a Warming Planet by Arthur Snell (March 2026)
With more than 25 years’ experience in conflict zones and fragile states, Arthur Snell travels from the heat of the Sahel to the Arctic Circle to show how
climate change is coinciding with a breakdown in geopolitical order,
increasing conflict, military spending and violence.
“This is not a book of predictions … [it] is a guide to the future,” he writes. Snell uses the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – to frame climate change as a force reshaping present-day global politics. Drawing on history and current affairs, he paints a picture of climate change as more than “just” an environmental challenge. He outlines how it is reshaping national security, economic stability and even sovereignty.
He connects drought and the scramble for critical minerals to food insecurity, reminding readers that land remains central to survival. Rising temperatures and air quality pressures drive migration, while wildfires and the “pyrocene” expose vulnerabilities in fossil fuel-dependent economies. Water, meanwhile, links floods in Asia to Arctic ambitions.
Snell’s analysis is rigorous yet human, resisting fatalism and emphasising how outcomes depend on governance and cooperation: choices we make today. Elemental is an interdisciplinary masterclass on power and responsibility in the 21st century.
Mary Johnstone-Louis is a sustainable business researcher.
The Given World by Melissa Harrison (May 2026)
The Given World is a novel rooted in nature. Set in the fictional English village of Lower Eodham, bird song and wildlife are observed in fine detail, interwoven with a well-paced plot. The narrative skips about characters, with each chapter (except the last) focusing on a different village inhabitant or visitor.
Somewhat sparse dialogue gives space to focus on the inner world of these people, with hints at their lives and the connections between them. There is a slightly dark tone, with mysteries we need to wait to understand about difficulties the characters have experienced or may in the future.
Set in post-COVID, modern day life, climate change is an undertone from the start. There are references to wildfires on the news, as well as the consumerist or anti-consumerist leanings of different characters. Mention of the now-closed wholefood vegetarian restaurant chain Cranks made me smile, remembering visits with my father before veganism went mainstream.
The Given World is a thoughtful and thought-provoking story which will resonate with those interested in our reliance on, and complex relationship with, the natural world.
Rosie Robison is a professor of social sustainability
My Body is a Meadow by Bethany Handley (May 2026)
I went through various emotions reading My Body is a Meadow – from angry and amused through to ashamed and annoyed. This reflects the author’s own journey to “radical acceptance” of being Disabled. Disabled like the environment is. Disabled like the flora and fauna that inhibit it are.
The book is at times a painfully honest assessment of how the damage done to Disabled people mirrors that being done to the environment, the barriers both encounter and in turn how these barriers could be overcome.
Handley is also a poet, which is reflected in the many beautiful turns of phrase that litter the book. Some of the points seem a little over worked – but perhaps necessarily so. This is a message that needs to germinate, take root and be planted in people’s minds in order for people and the planet to flourish.
Maria Kett is a professor of humanitarianism and social inclusion
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Xu Peng, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Illicit Economies, Violence and Development, SOAS, University of London
The town of Shwe Kokko in south-eastern Myanmar, which is widely recognised as hosting one of the country’s most notorious scam centres.Naphatpixs / Shutterstock
South-east Asia has become the “ground zero” for the global online scamming industry, according to the UN, costing victims billions of US dollars each year. Scam operations are run by Chinese crime syndicates from fortified compounds in countries like Myanmar, which has been embroiled in a nationwide armed conflict since 2021.
The size of the scam industry has led to sustained security crackdowns in recent years. This has included a number of joint operations involving police forces from multiple countries. However, despite releasing tens of thousands of trafficked workers from these compounds, the raids have done little to wipe out scam operations.
In October, for example, Myanmar’s military stormed a major scam hub in the south-eastern Karen State. The operation was, according to military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, proof that the army would “completely eradicate online scam activities from their roots”. But, just days later, local reporting indicated that work was continuing uninterrupted at other compounds in the area.
Since 2018, I have been carrying out fieldwork along Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand. I have found that checkpoint controls vary widely. This asymmetry determines where in Myanmar scam hubs emerge and helps explain why operations are often able to relocate rather than shut down when faced with pressure.
A banner warning against scams at Menglian border port, in the Yunnan province of China. It reads: ‘Scam tactics change daily – don’t listen, don’t believe, don’t transfer’. Xu Peng, CC BY-NC-ND
China’s border with northern Myanmar is heavily securitised. Before travellers reach the border, they must pass internal checkpoints on the main roads that lead into the border counties of Yunnan province.
Police routinely check ID cards and ask people whose household registration is outside Yunnan to explain their visit. Roadside posters, digital billboards and village loudspeakers repeat the same message: do not cross the border to work in scam parks.
Local police officers I interviewed described it as now “almost impossible” for ordinary people to cross informally from China into Myanmar. And restrictions on crossing the border have tightened since late 2023, when the armed conflict in northern Myanmar intensified.
China also exercises tight telecommunications and financial controls. Real-name registration for phone SIM cards, anti-fraud apps installed on smartphones and close scrutiny of cross-border money transfers all raise the risks of running large-scale scam centres near Chinese territory.
View across the Moei River towards Shwe Kokko, a cluster of buildings in Myanmar opposite Mae Sot in Thailand. Xu Peng, CC BY-NC-ND
The situation is different along Thailand’s border with Myanmar. This border has long served as a trade corridor, migration route and lifeline for refugees fleeing conflict in Myanmar. Decades of instability there have left a dense landscape of refugee camps, informal crossings and aid infrastructure in the Thai borderlands.
Towns such as Mae Sot in western Thailand, which sit only a short drive from Karen State where scam compounds have proliferated in recent years, have become key hubs for trade and refugee support. The same roads and bridges that carry refugees, aid workers and traders are also used by brokers moving trafficked workers.
Thai authorities do operate checkpoints and immigration controls. But compared with the Chinese border, these are shaped more by humanitarian concerns and longstanding cross-border social ties. It is relatively easy for foreign visitors to access Myanmar through the Thai border, as I discovered on a recent research trip.
I passed three checkpoints between the town of Tak and Mae Sot on a mini-bus and, despite prominent warning signs about scam compounds at the final checkpoint, officers checked documents quickly and let travellers through. This accessibility also makes it simple for scam recruiters, middlemen and some workers to move in and out of Myanmar.
The asymmetric border checkpoints help explain why scam hubs have clustered in Karen State, where Thai police estimate up to 100,000 people work in scam centres, while many northern compounds near China have closed down.
A sign at the final checkpoint before entering Mae Sot in Thailand, warning travellers about cyber scams near the Thai-Myanmar border. Xu Peng, CC BY-NC-ND
Myanmar’s moving checkpoints
Inside Myanmar’s contested borderlands, checkpoints are not run by a single authority. They are managed by a patchwork of ethnic armed organisations and border guard forces, each of which control their own stretch of road or river.
While these checkpoints focus on ensuring security, they are also a source of income. Local commanders and militias use them to tax goods, vehicles and people, with checkpoints set up, relaxed or moved when alliances or financial interests change.
This fragmented system creates room for scam operators to keep compounds running or to relocate workers and equipment when pressure from the authorities builds, especially when operators share profits with the people manning the checkpoints.
Interviews I have conducted with local scam brokers and police officers in China and Thailand suggest that information about impending crackdowns often circulates through these cross-border networks of recruiters, militias and complicit officials well in advance.
Reporting from Karen State suggests that ethnic militias escorted Chinese scam workers out of hubs such as KK Park and Shwe Kokko ahead of recent raids to cities like Yangon and Mandalay, charging substantial “fees” for safe passage.
South-east Asia’s scam industry bends under pressure, but it does not break. Checkpoints inside Myanmar and at its borders do not close the trade – they help decide where it goes next.
Xu Peng receives funding from the Serious Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Evidence (SOC ACE) research programme for the project “The Centrality of the Margins: Borderlands, Illicit Economies and Uneven Development”, and from the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme for the project “TRACE: Checkpoints, Conflict, and the Politics of Circulation”.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vahid Vahidinasab, Professor and Chair in Sustainability, Salford Business School, University of Salford
Solving the UK’s battery storage conuncdrum? A car park full of Tesla electric vehicles.Kev Gregory/Shutterstock
The amount of renewable energy produced around the world is increasingly exceeding demand – particularly from wind and solar sources. This presents a significant challenge when limited grid capacity and insufficient energy storage mean this clean power has to be curtailed, wasting the excess generation. The scale of this problem is substantial.
In the UK, for example, wind farms were forced to curtail 4.3 terawatt (trillion watt) hours of surplus energy – about 5% of their annual output – in 2023. This would have been enough to power 1.5 million homes for the year, so failing to harness it cost bill payers roughly £300 million and left some energy providers facing costly constraint payments.
Similar patterns are emerging across Europe, North America, Australia and other regions rapidly expanding their renewable capacity, where grid infrastructure has struggled to keep pace.
But on the Isle of Wight, off England’s south coast, a trial is under way that, in years to come, could help resolve this energy conundrum. It relies on “bidirectional charging” – the idea that electric cars don’t just have to be energy users; they can be energy storers and providers too.
Video: DriVe2X.
By 2040, around 36 million electric cars and vans are expected on UK roads. Already, current models can store enough energy to power a typical UK household for between seven and ten days. All the anticipated electric vehicle (EV) batteries by 2040 would offer around 2.5 terawatt hours of storage – enough to store much of the UK’s surplus solar power generated at bright summer lunchtimes, or the excess wind on stormy winter nights.
For most of the time, of course, (about 95%, on average), these cars won’t be using any of that energy because they are parked. Our technology could put this EV downtime to use storing and recirculating surplus renewable energy.
EV owners won’t just be doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. It would also mean they could buy electricity at cheaper, off‑peak times, then store it for their own household use in peak times. A new study from the University of Michigan finds that vehicle‑to‑home (V2H) charging could save drivers up to US$5,600 (£4,200) over their EV’s lifetime – as much as 90% of its total charging costs.
Energy companies and grid operators also stand to gain. One analysis estimates that European power systems could save up to €4 billion (£3.5 billion) through the introduction of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) and other smart‑charging schemes.
Two-way technology
Most EVs and chargers currently only move electricity one way – from source to car. But at the Centre for Self-Sustaining Systems and Societies, our focus is on two-way technology that enables energy to flow between EVs and homes, hotels, businesses, as well as the National Grid itself. This is complicated technology – not least because the form of electricity in which batteries store electricity, direct current (DC), needs converting into alternating current (AC) before it can be pumped back into a home, hotel or grid.
EVs will also need adapting to support bidirectional charging – currently, only a few models offer this capability. Widespread adoption will require all EVs to be factory-designed with integrated bidirectional hardware, supported by clear regulatory standards and strong market incentives.
On the Isle of Wight, our technology – part of the Europe-wide DriVe2X programme – is testing four bidirectional chargers at two hotels and a visitor boat mooring. One reason the Isle of Wight was selected for this test is its annual influx of tourists.
The island attracts more than 2 million visitors each year, meaning there are major fluctuations in demand for power between its low and peak tourism seasons. But many visitors bring EVs with them, and these could potentially store and circulate some of the extra power the island requires during their stay.
Our test drivers (a mixture of visitors and local residents) are able to schedule their departure times and minimum battery levels, so that our bidirectional charging system can store and circulate energy while retaining enough charge for the EV’s next trip. This addresses a fear that is sometimes expressed about this new technology – the risk of discovering a flat-battery just as you wish to set off on your journey.
The trial, which is moving into its final stage, has been given a community-first mindset through our local partner Future Isle of Wight, a community-owned company that is helping to shape how this technology can be scaled in a way that benefits local residents.
Across Europe, other DriVe2X test sites are exploring potential two-way energy hotspots. At Porto Airport in Maia, Portugal, a long-stay car park is testing how this technology can manage waves of passengers flowing in and out of an airport terminal. In Hungary’s capital Budapest, vehicle-to-home technology is being tested in a number of smart homes.
Video: DriVe2X.
While there are now more than 100 V2G test projects around the world, they remain small in scale. Key challenges include developing affordable smart chargers and hassle-free grid connection regulations, as well as protecting consumer confidence on issues such as battery warranties, privacy, and fair payment for the power their EVs provide.
Nonetheless, I believe bidirectional EVs could move from niche pilots to everyday life within the next two decades. In July, the UK government suggested that households and businesses could be providing the country with up to 75 gigawatts of flexible power by 2050 – of which more than half (40 gigawatts) would come from EVs. That is roughly the output of 40 large nuclear reactors – enough to power Britain’s total electricity consumption during a peak winter period.
But this future depends on daily life working smoothly. EV drivers will need to wake up with enough charge, understand when their vehicle is powering the house, and see they are saving money – all without worrying about battery wear, confusing markets or privacy risks. We hope our Isle of Wight trial can play a small but important role in realising this energy-efficient future.
Vahid Vahidinasab receives funding for the DriVe2X research and innovation project, which is co-funded by the European Commission and UKRI under grant numbers 101056934 and 10055673, respectively.
The Taliban’s morality police recently summoned four young men in the city of Herat in western Afghanistan for a “rehabilitation programme”. Their offence: “imitating actors” and “promoting foreign culture”. The young men had formed what they called the “Thomas Shelby Group”, after Cillian Murphy’s character in the popular TV drama Peaky Blinders – and the week before their detention they’d been observed strolling confidently around Herat dressed in black three-piece suits and leather gloves, smoking cigarettes.
The Taliban are well known for actively policing what they refer to as “Afghan cultural and Islamic traditions”. And the morality police’s role is to ensure the “promotion of virtue and prevention of vice”, according to the Sharia, Islam’s legal code – as interpreted by the Taliban.
The Taliban also emphasise their role in preserving the purity and dignity of their conception of Afghan culture. In recent weeks, videos on social media have depicted the morality police in Kabul ordering shopkeepers to remove billboards that include English terms written in Persian. They are apparently seen as enabling the influence of foreign values on Afghan culture.
The detention of these young men for promoting foreign culture is but one instance of the Taliban seeking to enforce a purified form of Afghan culture on people in the country in recent months.
At first glance it may seem surprising to hear, not only of an interest in Peaky Blinders in Afghanistan, but also of young men in one of the country’s most historic cities going to considerable lengths to procure and wear the show’s signature outfits.
But the fact is that despite the Taliban’s best efforts to depict Afghan culture as static and traditional, there has always been a connection and awareness in Afghanistan of what is going on culturally in the rest of the world. Those who think of Afghanistan as backward and isolated culturally are very mistaken.
Much recent scholarship demonstrates that Afghanistan is best understood as a place shaped through historic and ongoing global circulations of people, things and ideas.
Cultural exchange
Far from being tradition-bound tribespeople who take pride in only wearing local clothing, from the days when Silk Road merchants moved goods between Europe and Asia, people in Afghanistan have long incorporated global fashion trends into their own ways of dressing.
In the early 20th century, Afghanistan’s ruler Emir Habibullah Khan, who ruled from 1901 to 1919, introduced a uniform for members of his court based on styles of dress popular in British India.
In the era leading up to the second world war, urban people effortlessly adopted styles they encountered through foreign visitors and residents in the increasingly international city of Kabul. Many who travelled also brought home new trends from across Asia, Europe and America.
Despite the obvious displeasure shown by the country’s religious authorities, in this period the neatly trimmed “French cut” beard became popular among Kabul’s intelligentsia.
John Lennon wore an Afghan coat and a sporran at the press launch for the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, held at Brian Epstein’s house in May 1967. John Downing/Getty Images
This culture and fashion exchange was not a one-way process. Clothes designed in Afghanistan played a significant role in shaping fashion trends in some of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities, including Paris, Los Angeles and London.
For much of the 20th century, the thirst for fur coats in Europe and America was quenched through the import from Afghanistan of Persian lamb pelts from the prized Karakul sheep.
The popularity of Karakul fur expanded in Britain after Nasr Allah Khan, a son of Afghanistan’s Emir Abdur Rahman Khan (who ruled from 1880 to 1901), presented Queen Victoria with a gift of 80 pelts during his 1894 visit to Britain.
Artisans in Afghanistan knew how to turn the pelts of Karakul lambs into a soft and glossy fur-like material. Millions of skins were used to make coats for sale across Europe and North America until as recently as the 1980s. These included the famed “Afghans”, beloved of hippies in Europe and North America in the 1960s.
In this way, culture in Afghanistan has been shaped by the circulation of people, capital, things and ideas – and this is embedded in the country’s social and cultural fabric. Even a movement as assertive as the Taliban will confront obstacles in its attempts to limit this circulation and impose rigid and bounded ideas of Afghan culture on the country’s diverse and globally oriented population.
A good example of how this attempt to control Afghan culture was subverted during the Taliban’s previous period of rule (1996–2001) was the craze for the Hollywood blockbuster, Titanic. Cinema, television and music were banned (as were barber’s shops).
But underground video shops flourished, and Titanic became a popular symbol to show that one was aware of the wider world. Some bakeries in Kabul are reported to have produced cakes decorated to resemble the ill-fated ocean liner for consumption by the city’s globally connected residents on occasions such as birthdays and weddings.
The young men whom the Taliban deemed to be in need of rehabilitation are hardly isolated mavericks. They represent a key facet of culture in Afghanistan – a fluidity born of, and informed by, the country’s historic global connectedness.
This aspect of the country’s cultural dynamics has long interacted in complex ways with attempts to construct, maintain, preserve and purify what the authorities see as “tradition”. The four young men got away with a warning.
Like the Titanic cakes of the 1990s, the Peaky Blinders outfits are a way of making a statement that challenges the Taliban’s understanding of “Afghan culture” without being enough of an offence to land their wearers in serious trouble.
Magnus Marsden has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
