Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Gerard Toal, Professor of Government and International Affairs, Virginia Tech

Donald Trump is reportedly “sick” of seeing maps of the front line in Ukraine. Indeed, according to one European official’s account, he tossed aside Ukrainian delegation maps during his latest meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Oct. 17, 2025.

Instead, Trump is said to have aggressively pushed Zelenskyy to accept Russia’s terms to end the war and surrender all of the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As a political geographer who has studied Eastern Europe and post-communist states, I know how crucial maps are to the dynamics of territorial conflicts and peace negotiations. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, maps were central to the ethnic cleansing that took place in the early 1990s, driving visions of creating mono-ethnic space through violence, and also to the ending of the war. Similarly, in the Caucasus, cartographic fantasies of homogeneous territories have underwritten campaigns against ethnic others in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

And it is no surprise that maps are a critical part of negotiations now to end the 3½-year conflict in Ukraine.

Creative cartography

Drawing partition lines on maps has always been a feature of stalemated territorial conflicts. U.S. negotiators in 1995 forged the agreement that brought Bosnia’s war to an end through last-minute cartographic adjustments ensuring that the settlement conformed to an already agreed-upon 49-51 percentage split of the territory between Bosnian-Serb forces and those representing the Bosnian Federation.

Dividing territory in percentage terms, however, goes against the grain of how most people view their territorial homelands. In his famous account of nations as “imagined communities,” the Anglo-Irish historian Benedict Anderson described how states create nations through the widespread circulation of a common territorial map. In this way, map images became a type of state logo. Nations not only imagined themselves as a community but as belonging to a particular recognizable space, a familiar territorial homeland.

Territories in today’s world have become instantly recognizable shapes on posters and T-shirts and in textbooks. Yet they are also experienced as something alive and personal – a “geo-body,” in the words of Thai historian Thongchai Winichakul.

It is part of what leads citizens, and nations, to feel deeply connected to their state’s territorial boundaries. And it helps explain the generally persistent resistance of Ukrainians to territorial concessions to Russia – even though there are signs that popular sentiment is beginning to shift after 3½ years of war.

Fighting and dying for a homeland, as Ukrainian soldiers have done in their thousands, adds to the emotive power of territory. To many Ukrainians it isn’t property they are being asked to concede but sacred and indivisible land paid for with blood.

This understanding of territory is quite different from that of Trump and his handpicked cadre of “deal guys” who treat international conflict like short-term business transactions.

Misreading the map

This pursuit of a deal over other considerations has a downside and can lead to missteps. Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff, believed he had achieved something of a breakthrough during a meeting with the Russians in early August when looking at areas where Russia might withdraw on the map. German newspaper Bild reported that Witkoff, who does not speak Russian and didn’t have his own translator, misunderstood Putin’s demand of a “peaceful withdrawal” of Ukrainians from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia as an offer of Russia’s “peaceful withdrawal” from those regions.

Because it led to the postponement of new U.S. sanctions and a summit proposal, the Russians went along with the misunderstanding, according to the Bild’s reporting.

Similarly, the subsequent Alaska summit was not the breakthrough Trump envisioned. Putin got the red-carpet treatment on U.S. soil but nonetheless subjected Trump to a lengthy historical lecture on why Russia owns Ukraine.

Putin was unwilling to give Trump the ceasefire deal the U.S. president desired. Putin did, however, make a territorial proposal that kept Trump interested in continuing to play the peacemaker: If Russia acquired all of the territory of the two oblasts that made up the Donbas, then Russia would consider freezing its lines in Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Haggling over percentiles

This provided the background for an extraordinary meeting in the White House on Aug. 18, 2025, when seven European leaders joined Zelenskyy in meeting Trump to discuss a possible endgame to the war.

The Ukrainian delegation was pictured entering the White House with what looked like a rolled-up map. In the Oval Office, however, they were confronted with the White House’s own rigid board depicting a map of the “Russia-Ukraine Conflict.”

It featured a choropleth display with the estimated territory under Russian occupation colored in orange and quantified as a percentage figure of each oblast’s territory. The map indicated that Russia occupied 99% of Luhansk and 76% of Donetsk. Putin wanted 100% of both – a demand that required Ukraine to surrender the fortified territories safeguarding central Ukraine.

What the Oval Office map meant to Trump was clear the following day in a phone interview on “Fox and Friends.” Referring to the map, he said that a “big chunk of territory is taken,” implying it is now lost to Ukraine.

In other words, the map recorded the score in real estate terms from a regrettable war between a small state and a much larger one.

Zelenskyy tried to argue for a different approach to map issues, one that affirmed the symbolic and strategic importance of keeping Ukraine’s territorial integrity alive as an ideal for Ukrainians and the international community.

He made some progress. After meeting Zelenskyy at the United Nations on Sept. 23, Trump suggested that Ukraine could succeed in its fight to “take back their country in its original form.”

Battlegrounds as real estate

With Trump seemingly drifting toward supporting Ukraine with long-range missiles, Putin seized the initiative by phoning Trump. In an extensive phone call prior to Zelenskyy’s White House visit on Oct. 17, the Russian leader updated his offer for peace, suggesting his forces would withdraw from Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in return for all of the Donbas region.

This set the stage for the latest reported Trump-Zelenskyy shouting match and the tossing aside of front-line maps.

Afterward, Trump posted on social media: “… it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL! Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts. They should stop where they are.”

This is Trump’s current position on map issues. Backing off pressuring Ukraine to give up all the Donbas in public, he believes that Ukraine and the Donbas should be “cut up” along the current battlelines. Asked in a Fox News interview on Oct. 6 whether Putin would be open to ending the war “without taking significant property from Ukraine,” Trump responded: “Well, he’s going to take something. They fought and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property.”

This gets at how Zelenskyy and Trump seemingly see different things when they look at front-line maps. The Ukrainian leader sees a painful reality, his country’s geo-body violently cut apart by an invading, occupying power. Trump comments indicate he sees it as a property dispute in which the strongest power has accumulated some territorial winnings and now needs to cash them in.

Gerard Toal in the past received funding from the US National Science Foundation and the Research Council of Norway.

– ref. When it comes to Ukraine peace negotiations, it’s all over the map – https://theconversation.com/when-it-comes-to-ukraine-peace-negotiations-its-all-over-the-map-265798

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amin Saikal, Adjunct Professor of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia; Victoria University; Australian National University

In recent weeks, Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban have engaged in the most serious military clashes between the two neighbours in several years.

Qatar and Turkey mediated a ceasefire on Sunday, bringing an end to the hostilities that have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds.

Both countries have agreed to respect one another’s territorial integrity. They will meet again in Istanbul later this week to discuss the next steps.

Yet, the situation remains tense, as the underlying causes of the conflict have yet to be resolved.

A haven for terrorism

At the heart of the conflict is Islamabad’s claim the Afghan Taliban have been harbouring and aiding the Pakistani Taliban (also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP) in order to change Pakistan along the lines of the Taliban’s extremist Islamic rule in Afghanistan.

The Taliban government has denied Islamabad’s accusations.

Since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in mid-2021, following the retreat of the United States and its allies, they have once again turned the country into a nest of various terrorist groups. This includes, most importantly, the TTP.

The Taliban have accommodated hundreds of TTP fighters (some with their families) in Afghanistan and boosted the TTP’s combat capabilities, so the group can now engage in deadlier cross-border operations in Pakistan.

According to the United Nations, the TTP has even accessed some of the US$7 billion (A$10.8 billion) worth of weapons left behind by the US and allied forces.

As the TTP has increased its operations in Pakistan, Islamabad has become more intolerant of the Afghan Taliban government.

It has also grown very concerned about Kabul’s ties with Pakistan’s regional rival, India. The Taliban’s acting foreign minister, Amir Khan Mutaqqi, recently visited New Delhi, where he was warmly welcomed by India’s government. Pakistan has traditionally viewed Afghanistan as being part of its backyard of influence.

Pakistan’s military and powerful military intelligence (the Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI) have sought to counter the threat from Afghanistan by pursuing a strategy of deterrence and punishment.

This has included deporting tens and thousands of refugees back to Afghanistan, most of whom had fled the Taliban’s repressive, discriminatory and misogynist rule. Islamabad has also occasionally bombed targets in Afghanistan.

What led to the recent fighting

The situation escalated sharply this month after the TTP launched attacks on Pakistan security forces, including a suicide bombing on a police training school, killing 23 people.

Pakistan responded by striking what it claimed to be TTP sites in Kabul and Kandahar, where the Taliban’s elusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhunzadeh reportedly lives.

In retaliation, Taliban forces attacked Pakistani posts along the disputed 2,600-kilometre Afghanistan-Pakistan border (also known as the Durand Line), resulting in considerable military and civilian casualties on both sides.

Pakistan also blocked Afghan transit routes, striking a serious blow to the already devastated Afghan economy. Although the Taliban rerouted their goods through Iranian ports, this is not as financially viable or a proper substitute for Pakistan’s transit routes.

The two sides agreed to a 48-hour ceasefire last week, but it was immediately broken when Pakistan launched more airstrikes that Kabul said killed several cricket players. Islamabad denies civilians were killed.

Pakistan’s dilemma

In the final analysis, Islamabad cannot blame anyone but itself for the challenges it faces from the Afghan Taliban. It nurtured and supported the Taliban as a terrorist group for some three decades.

As Pakistani Defence Minister Kawaja Asif recently acknowledged, Islamabad long pursued a double-edged foreign policy. It has publicly opposed terrorism, while using extremist groups, like the Afghan Taliban and their affiliates, to gain regional influence in its competition with India.

Thanks to this policy, the Afghan Taliban were able to seize power from the mid-1990s to the September 11 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on the US, and subsequently mount an effective resistance to the two-decade-long US-led intervention in Afghanistan. The Taliban were also able to regain power in 2021, to the detriment of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It is important to note this conflict is not between Pakistan and the people of Afghanistan, who are languishing under the Taliban’s draconian rule. Rather, this is a conflict between Pakistan and the Taliban government – a patron-client relationship that has now backfired.

The Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan is medievalist and fragile. It needs to be ousted, but this is a matter for the people of Afghanistan, not Pakistan. Foreign intervention in Afghanistan has not worked in the past.

Selfless assistance from the international community is needed to empower the people of Afghanistan to chart their own future. A combination of internal resistance to the Afghan Taliban – and external pressure on the group – is the best way forward.

Amin Saikal 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.

– ref. Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban avoid a deeper war for now, but how long can the peace hold? – https://theconversation.com/pakistan-and-the-afghan-taliban-avoid-a-deeper-war-for-now-but-how-long-can-the-peace-hold-267843

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Stefan Volk, Professor of Management, University of Sydney

You arrive at work, coffee in hand, ready to tackle the day. But your manager seems off, curt in meetings, impatient with questions, and unusually sharp in tone.

Before chalking it up to personality, consider this: they might just be sleep-deprived. Research in organisational behaviour and sleep science suggests that a leader’s sleep quality can significantly shape their behaviour at work – not just their mood, but their decision-making, communication style, and even ethical judgement. And the effects ripple far beyond the manager themselves.

In a multi-day field study tracking supervisors and their teams, researchers found that poor sleep on one night predicted more abusive supervisory behaviour the next day. This wasn’t a fixed trait; the same leaders behaved more positively after better sleep.

The study revealed a clear pattern: when leaders slept poorly, their capacity for self-control dropped. This affected the people around them, leading to more brittle interactions and disengaged teams.

The whole team is affected

This isn’t just about being cranky. Sleep deprivation impairs emotional regulation, reduces patience and increases impulsivity.

Tired managers are more likely to micromanage, react punitively and set an edgy tone, even when their team members are well-rested. These behaviours, in turn, reduce team engagement and discretionary effort. The result is a measurable dip in collective energy and productivity.

Despite the evidence, many organisations still glorify sleep deprivation. Executives who rise at 4am and start working before sunrise are often celebrated as paragons of discipline.

For some, early starts align with their natural circadian rhythms, which regulate our sleep/wake cycle. But for many others, this schedule creates circadian misalignment — a mismatch between biological clocks and social demands — which degrades alertness, mood and long-term health.

Management scholars argue that this culture begins early, in business schools and leadership development programs, where short sleep is normalised as a badge of honour.

But the consequences are serious. Chronic sleep deprivation undermines learning, performance and wellbeing, cultivating leaders who are less resilient, less clear-headed and less engaging at precisely the moments that call for steadiness and persuasion.

Leaders aren’t aware of the value of sleep

Surveys suggest nearly half of leaders report sleep problems, and more than 65% are dissatisfied with how much sleep they get.

Alarmingly, over 40% regularly sleep six hours or less, well below the recommended seven to eight hours for adults. And more than 80% of leaders say that not enough effort was spent to educate them about the importance of sleep.

The short-term effects of sleep deprivation are well known:

• daytime sleepiness
• reduced attention span
• and slower reaction times.

But the long-term consequences are even more concerning. Chronic sleep deprivation increases the risk of depression, addiction, obesity and metabolic disorders. It also impairs self-regulation, making individuals more prone to impulsive behaviours, from unhealthy eating to substance misuse.

For leaders, sleep isn’t just a health issue, it’s a performance issue. Studies show sleep-deprived leaders are less inspiring, less charismatic and, as mentioned earlier, more likely to be abusive towards their teams.

They struggle to manage their emotions, and often are not aware that their hostility stems from poor sleep. This can initiate a downward spiral: negative interactions lead to rumination and stress, which further disrupt sleep, perpetuating the cycle. Even a few nights of poor sleep can damage leader-follower relationships.

And the consequences extend to ethics. Sleep deprivation compromises moral awareness and increases the likelihood of unethical behaviour. One study found a 2.1-hour reduction in sleep led to a 10% decline in moral awareness.

Education can build a healthier workplace

Given the evidence, leadership development programs must take sleep seriously. Career sustainability for leaders means building mental and physical resilience to meet high job demands, and sleep is central to that.

Leaders also play a critical role in modelling healthy behaviours for their teams. By prioritising sleep, they can foster a culture of wellbeing and sustainable performance.

Unfortunately, sleep is still undervalued in many organisations. But that can change. By educating current and future leaders about the science of sleep, organisations can cultivate more effective, ethical and engaging leadership — and healthier workplaces overall.

So next time your manager seems unusually difficult, consider what kind of night they had. A short or restless sleep might be the invisible force shaping today’s workplace dynamics.

Stefan Volk 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.

– ref. Is your manager grumpy in the mornings? Poor sleep can lead to abusive and unethical behaviour – https://theconversation.com/is-your-manager-grumpy-in-the-mornings-poor-sleep-can-lead-to-abusive-and-unethical-behaviour-266793

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Esmé Louise James, Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Melbourne

Kim Kardashian’s clothing brand, Skims, has been no stranger to a controversial campaign. Over the past few years, Skims has repeatedly made headlines for releasing divisive products such as the nipple bra and hip-enhancing shorts.

Its latest release is no exception. Last week, the brand announced the release of an A$70 faux hair micro thong, available in twelve different colour and hair texture variations. The product has rightly been identified as a merkin – a pubic wig, or hairpiece for the pubic area.

While this controversial thong has been released as part of a 1970s-themed campaign, the history of the merkin dates much further back.

Venereal disease

The merkin is believed to have originated in the Early Modern period in Europe. The Oxford Companion to the Body dates its debut to 1450, though its exact origin remains contested.

What is known for certain, however, is the function of this curious piece of clothing. By the end of the 15th century, a major syphilis epidemic had swept Europe. The initial outbreak became known as the “Great Pox”. It led to widespread death and disfigurement, before becoming less virulent in later centuries.

As historian Jon Arrizabalaga and colleagues explain:

In some cases, the lips, nose or eyes were eaten away, or on others the whole of the sexual organs.

Pubic wigs became a practical way to conceal signs of the disease around the genital area. As well as hiding syphilitic sores, merkins could help to mask the scent of rotting flesh by adding a lavender-scented powder to the material.

It has been estimated that by the 18th century, one in five Londoners suffered from syphilitic infection. Admission records of London’s hospitals and workhouse infirmaries show syphilis was particularly rife among young, impoverished and mostly unmarried women, who used commercial sex to support themselves.

With no effective cure for the disease found until the beginning of the 20th century, it is hardly surprising merkins were used to conceal undesirable symptoms.

Pubic lice

Pubic wigs also proved useful for preventing the spread of pubic lice. England and France were battling rampant infestations of lice well into the 17th century. Shaving one’s pubic hair was, understandably, a proven method to prevent infestation.

However, this hairless appearance carried a negative stigma, as it was associated with the presence of disease and prolific engagement with vice.

Pubic wigs offered a solution to this perverse beauty paradox of the time, allowing women to appear unshaven (thus, healthy and clean) while being shaven to prevent infestation and spread of lice. The wigs could be boiled or even baked after use to assure sterilisation.

Appearances in literature

Although cultural awareness clearly predates it, the first recorded use of the term “merkin” comes from John Taylor’s Observations and Travel, published in 1617. It features among a satirical list of exotic and indulgent imports – such as “apes, monkeys, merkins, marmosets” – suggesting it was already recognised as a risqué commodity associated with vanity and excess.

The merkin continued to appear across a wide range of literature from the 17th century, particularly in bawdy pieces of work, such as the following 1661 poem:

He laid her on the ground,
His Spirits fell a ferking,
Her Zeal was in a sound,
He edified her Merkin.

Its use is most commonly associated with sex workers, though it is plausible wealthy individuals would also have adorned themselves with merkins to preserve the appearance of beauty and health.

Powdered wigs were adopted by nobility in the 18th century to conceal hair loss and deformities that resulted from syphilis, so it is not a stretch to imagine merkins would have been adopted as well.

By 1786, the term “merkin” had entered the formal lexicon, defined in Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue as “counterfeit hair for women’s privy parts”.

Merkins today

As public health improved and societal attitudes towards hygiene changed, merkins largely fell out of fashion.

By the late 19th century, they had mostly faded into obscurity and survived only as a quirky historical footnote. One example is the well-known faux-Victorian photograph of a supposed merkin salesman peddling his display case of pubic wigs, which is circulating as though it were a genuine 19th century image.

While the Skims micro thong may appear to be a cheeky novelty, the merkin itself boasts a centuries-long history – evolving from a practical accessory to a provocative fashion statement today.

The Skims line of “full bush” thongs were quickly sold out soon after they were announced. While the company hasn’t made the intention behind the product clear, its virality has certainly sparked a broader conversation about body hair politics.

In many ways, even these cultural conversations mirror those from centuries prior. The merkin’s very existence is proof that women’s body hair has, for hundreds of years, doubled as a potent symbol of health, sexuality, fashion and autonomy.

Esmé Louise James 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.

– ref. Skims has put merkins back on the fashion map. Here’s a brief (and hairy) history of the pubic wig – https://theconversation.com/skims-has-put-merkins-back-on-the-fashion-map-heres-a-brief-and-hairy-history-of-the-pubic-wig-267740

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Paul Giles, Professor of English, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, ACU, Australian Catholic University

The Land of Sweet Forever consists of eight previously unpublished stories and another eight non-fiction pieces by American author Harper Lee, who died in 2016. The non-fiction essays first appeared in magazines such as McCall’s and Book of the Month Club Newsletter and they are all quite short.

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Review: The Land of Sweet Forever – Harper Lee (Hutchinson Heinemann)

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Lee’s fame as a writer derives from her novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), which sold around 40 million copies and became one of the most widely taught books in United States classrooms during the second half of the 20th century. Its emollient representation of racial tensions in the Deep South chimed nicely with widespread anxieties among traditional white communities arising from civil rights movements of the 1960s.

An earlier draft of Mockingbird, entitled Go Set a Watchman, was published in 2015, shortly before Lee’s death. Again it sold very well, shifting over a million copies in the US during the first week of publication, despite this first version being more ambivalent and less sentimental in tone about enduring racial hostilities.

The eight stories in this new volume, edited by Casey Cep – who is working on an “authorised biography” of Lee – date from the writer’s early years, before Mockingbird. They are set partly in her home town of Maycomb, Alabama, and partly in Manhattan, where Lee lived during the 1950s, working first as a proofreader and then as an airline reservations clerk.

Cep describes the rediscovery of these stories, which were found in Lee’s New York apartment, as “thrilling”. In truth they are mostly slight productions, all written before Lee was 30 and none published in her lifetime. They would probably always have remained in her bottom drawer had it not been for the subsequent success of Mockingbird, but their posthumous rediscovery is valuable because it offers valuable insights into Lee’s artistic development.

There is nostalgia here for the world of childhood, something that later helped to ensure Lee’s massive popularity. The narrator of one story, “The Cat’s Meow” intimates that “no matter how long I lived away from home I would always be from Maycomb, Alabama”.

Though she resists the “deep-water segregationist” atmosphere of her hometown, Lee’s narrative persona in this story continually regresses to the perspectives of childhood: “I suddenly felt ten years old again.” Indeed, the psychological conflict between the safety she nostalgically associates with her early life and a more knowing adult perspective forms the crux of Lee’s work, both in these stories and her later fiction.

Another of these early stories, “A Roomful of Kibble”, offers a sympathetic portrait of the narrator’s friend Sarah at the University of Alabama. Sarah’s alleged transgressions – having a “bottle of beer in her hand” and “an irreverent attitude toward the Dean of Women” – make the tone of this story seem comically dated.

At the end, however, Sarah shuts the door in the face of a neighbour who has accidentally set herself on fire in the kitchen, because they had previously argued about barking dogs. This causes the unfortunate woman to burn “to a crisp in the hall”. This weird juxtaposition of gentility and murderous violence anticipates Lee’s more mature gothic style.

Dark humor

The most compelling aspect of these stories is their dark humour and restrained satire. This arises from the narrator’s sense of distance from domestic pieties. Lee’s narrators are attracted instinctively to the role of onlooker, caught between two worlds, but detached from both. They are neither fully immersed in Manhattan nor entirely at home back in Alabama.

One of the most amusing stories, “This is Show Business?”, features the narrator trying to help out a New York friend who is running errands by driving her car round the block in Manhattan to evade a parking patrolman.

Possessing only an Alabama driving licence and having never driven in New York, she describes the car sardonically as “one of those push-button affairs where if you know what to do, everything is done for you”. The disorientation experienced by the Southern girl is treated in an offhand manner, but her discomfort is palpable.

Yet there is a similar sense of discomfort when the focus switches back to Alabama. The story that gives this collection its title, “The Land of Sweet Forever”, starts with an ironic pastiche of Jane Austen’s famous first sentence to Pride and Prejudice:

It is a truth generally acknowledged by the citizens of Maycomb, Alabama, that a single woman in possession of little else but a good knowledge of English social history must be in want of someone to talk to.

But the story then develops into a typically double-edged description of Maycomb’s Methodist church, with the narrator ghoulishly observing: “There is nothing like a blood-curdling hymn to make one feel at home.” Given this sense of alienation, strategic silence becomes a useful tool in dealing with Bible-bashers and recalcitrant family members. Warding off her overtly racist sister, the narrator of “The Cat’s Meow” says “the first lesson of living at home these days” is “if you don’t agree with what you hear, place your tongue between your teeth and bite hard”.

‘National fantasy’

Penguin Australia, under the Hutchinson Heinemann imprint, is clearly targeting a mass audience for this book, imposing a “strict embargo” until publication day. The publisher is hoping these early stories and incidental pieces will be eagerly seized upon by Lee’s loyal fans, just as Go Set a Watchman was ten years ago.

It is certainly interesting to have these obscure and unpublished works now made available, but in truth this volume more resembles a scholarly edition of a famous author’s juvenilia than the kind of major publishing event that would mark the unearthing of literary buried treasure.

The non-fiction pieces are particularly varied in quality, with some interesting comments by Lee on her friend Truman Capote and on Gregory Peck, who played the role of Atticus Finch in the film of Mockingbird. Lee describes this as “an inspired performance” by Peck. She also writes revealingly about slavery, describing it as “man’s oldest institution”.

A 2006 letter to Oprah Winfrey, which appeared in The Oprah Magazine, includes some barbed remarks about e-books. Lee asks the television impresario if she could “imagine curling up in bed to read a computer” in the way she herself wept for Anna Karenina during her Alabama youth.

But Lee was certainly no systematic critic and to include her recipe from a 1961 edition of The Artists and Writers’ Cookbook seems to be scraping the barrel in every sense. The book is also not helped by the publisher’s choice of “The Land of Sweet Forever” as the running head throughout this volume, a flaw in production that makes it difficult to locate the book’s individual pieces.

Harper Lee will always have an important place in American cultural history because To Kill a Mockingbird touched a vital cultural nerve in the 1960s, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin did a hundred years earlier. Like other immensely popular (and teachable) works such as The Great Gatsby, Lee’s work speaks to what critic Lauren Berlant called a condition of “national fantasy”.

In Berlant’s analysis, readers project their dreams and anxieties onto a particular version of the mythological mystique of the US. This kind of utopian vision manifests itself through material wealth and individual success in Gatsby, or through childhood security and racial harmony in Mockingbird.

Given the power of this idyllic vision, Lee was perhaps wise not to risk sullying it by engaging too actively with the rise and fall of critical fortunes normally associated with a long literary career. The social resonance of several writers in mid-20-century America – J.D. Salinger is the most obvious case – derived largely from their reticence, their unavailability for interviews or public appearances.

The apparently oracular nature of the author’s literary works seemed to be enhanced by the parsimonious scarcity of their output. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) promoted the invisibility not only of the novel’s fictional protagonist but also his elusive creator. This was, of course, the very reverse of today’s relentless circuit of authorial self-promotion, boosted as it is by publishing conglomerates eager for market spotlight. In this, as in so many other ways, Lee seems to be an author from a lost era.

Nevertheless, it is useful to gain from these pieces a clearer understanding of the complex historical situation within which Lee was working. It is chastening to recollect that the world Lee is chronicling is as distant in time from us as Herman Melville’s representation of New York in the 1850s was from that of F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby (1925).

Lee’s agent Maurice Crain described the author in 1956 as “a nice little Southern gal from Alabama”. Patronising though this undoubtedly was, it pinpointed an identity that Lee herself never entirely sought to outgrow. Many of Lee’s preoccupations can be recognised in embryonic form in The Land of Sweet Forever.

From the tone of her introduction to this book, it seems possible that Cep’s forthcoming “authorised biography” might possibly be too beholden to Lee’s legend. In due course, though, there might be opportunities for a fuller reassessment of Lee’s prominent position in 20th-century American literature.

I could imagine a critical work that would pay proper attention to her literary interplay between child and adult (perhaps involving queer theory), her perceptive probing of split selves, her capacity to bridge many different audiences and her canny awareness of how intense racial prejudice continued to lurk within ostensibly enlightened white communities in the Deep South.

Given her totemic popularity, Lee appears to be an author ripe for cultural reassessment. To that wider end, Cep’s biographical excavations may well in time prove indispensable.

Paul Giles previously received funding from the Australian Research Council.

– ref. Harper Lee’s unpublished stories are not ‘thrilling’ – but offer insight into a literary legend – https://theconversation.com/harper-lees-unpublished-stories-are-not-thrilling-but-offer-insight-into-a-literary-legend-267842

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Penelope Jackson, Adjunct Research Associate, School of Social Work and Arts, Charles Sturt University

The world’s largest art museum, the Louvre has approximately half a million objects in its collection, with about 30,000 on display, and sees on average 8 million visitors per year. That’s big on any scale, with a lot of people and objects to keep watch over. And Sundays are particularly busy.

In a cleverly conceived operation, four men wearing fluorescent vests pulled up at the Louvre in a flat-decked truck at 9.30 Sunday morning. Quickly setting to work, they raised an extendable ladder to the second storey. Climbing it, they cut through a window, entered the Galerie d’Apollon and, brandishing power tools, helped themselves to nine exquisite objects.

The objects taken were France’s royal jewels, formerly belonging to the Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife and arts patron.

This is where it gets tricky for the thieves: what can you do with these priceless objects? They can’t wear them – too big and glitzy to go unnoticed – and they can’t sell them legitimately, as images are all over the internet.

The best-case scenario, from the thieves’ perspective, is to break them down, melt the precious metals and sell the gems separately.

Empress Eugenie’s crown, which the perpetrators took and subsequently dropped as they fled the scene on motor scooters, contains eight gold eagles, 1,354 brilliant-cut diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. In short, this amounts to a sizeable stash of individual gems to try and sell.

Timing is everything

For the Louvre, any heist is a major blow. It calls into question their security, both electronic and human. Five security staff were nearby who acted to protect visitors and the alarms did ring, but the entire heist was completed within seven minutes.

Timing is crucial with heists.

In 2019, an 18-karat gold toilet titled America (2016), from the artist Maurizio Cattelan, was stolen from Blenheim Palace, England. It was taken in five and a half minutes. It weighed 98 kilograms and was fully functioning. In other words, the two men who took it (and were later caught and served prison sentences for their crimes) worked quickly and efficiently. At the time of the theft, as gold bullion it was estimated to be valued at A$6 million.

Van Gogh’s painting The Parsonage Garden at Neunen in Spring (1884) was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum, in the Netherlands, during their 2020 COVID closure. It was recovered in late 2023 after an investigation by Dutch art detective Arthur Brand.

The 2017 theft of two Gottfried Lindauer paintings from Auckland’s International Art Centre took just a few minutes to complete. The thieves ram-raided the front window of the auction house where the paintings, valued at NZ$1 million, were displayed. The portraits were recovered five years later through an intermediary, with only minor damage.

Recovering the stolen

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Picasso painting Weeping Woman (1937) was famously taken by the Australian Cultural Terrorists in 1986 – but only noticed as missing two days later.

Recovered just over two weeks later, the painting was left for the gallery staff to collect in a locker at Spencer Street railway station. The motivation behind the theft was to highlight the lack of financial support given to Victorian artists, but the true identity of the thieves remains a mystery.

In 1986, 26 paintings of religious subjects were stolen from the gallery at the Benedictine Monastery at New Norcia, Western Australia.

The thieves were poor planners: they hadn’t factored in that three men and the stash of paintings couldn’t fit into a Ford Falcon. The paintings were cut from their frames, ostensibly butchered. One was completely destroyed. The thieves were caught and charged.

Where to next for the thief?

Recovery of objects from heists is low. It’s impossible to put a number on but some say art recoveries globally are possibly as low as 10%.

Paintings are more difficult to sell on – you can’t change their physical appearance to the point of not being recognised.

However, with objects such as the gold toilet or jewels, the precious materials and gems can be repurposed. Time will tell if the Napoleonic jewels will be recovered.

Never say never. The Mona Lisa (1503), undoubtedly the main attraction at the Louvre, was stolen in 1911 and recovered two years later. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, was an Italian handyman working at the Louvre and was caught trying to sell it.

This latest heist at the Louvre highlights the vulnerability of objects in public collections. The irony being they’re often gifted to such institutions for safekeeping.

Those who guard objects are usually paid a minimum wage and yet they are tasked with a huge responsibility. When budget cuts are made, it’s often security staff that are reduced – such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ announcement just last week.

The thieves on Sunday knew what they were after and why. We aren’t privy to their motivation. We know the stolen jewels are part of France’s history and are irreplaceable. Their theft denies visitors of experiencing them individually for their beauty and craftsmanship, as well as collectively within the context of France’s history.

But part of me can’t help thinking how the French were partial to helping themselves to artworks and precious objects belonging to others. So perhaps this could be a case of déjà vu.

---

Penelope Jackson’s Unseen: Art and Crime in Australia (Monash University Publishing) will be published in December 2025.

Penelope Jackson 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.

– ref. The Mona Lisa, a gold toilet and now the Louvre’s royal jewels: a fascinating history of art heists – https://theconversation.com/the-mona-lisa-a-gold-toilet-and-now-the-louvres-royal-jewels-a-fascinating-history-of-art-heists-267849

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Penelope Jackson, Adjunct Research Associate, School of Social Work and Arts, Charles Sturt University

The world’s largest art museum, the Louvre has approximately half a million objects in its collection, with about 30,000 on display, and sees on average 8 million visitors per year. That’s big on any scale, with a lot of people and objects to keep watch over. And Sundays are particularly busy.

In a cleverly conceived operation, four men wearing fluorescent vests pulled up at the Louvre in a flat-decked truck at 9.30 Sunday morning. Quickly setting to work, they raised an extendable ladder to the second storey. Climbing it, they cut through a window, entered the Galerie d’Apollon and, brandishing power tools, helped themselves to nine exquisite objects.

The objects taken were France’s royal jewels, formerly belonging to the Empress Eugénie, Napoleon III’s wife and arts patron.

This is where it gets tricky for the thieves: what can you do with these priceless objects? They can’t wear them – too big and glitzy to go unnoticed – and they can’t sell them legitimately, as images are all over the internet.

The best-case scenario, from the thieves’ perspective, is to break them down, melt the precious metals and sell the gems separately.

Empress Eugenie’s crown, which the perpetrators took and subsequently dropped as they fled the scene on motor scooters, contains eight gold eagles, 1,354 brilliant-cut diamonds, 1,136 rose-cut diamonds and 56 emeralds. In short, this amounts to a sizeable stash of individual gems to try and sell.

Timing is everything

For the Louvre, any heist is a major blow. It calls into question their security, both electronic and human. Five security staff were nearby who acted to protect visitors and the alarms did ring, but the entire heist was completed within seven minutes.

Timing is crucial with heists.

In 2019, an 18-karat gold toilet titled America (2016), from the artist Maurizio Cattelan, was stolen from Blenheim Palace, England. It was taken in five and a half minutes. It weighed 98 kilograms and was fully functioning. In other words, the two men who took it (and were later caught and served prison sentences for their crimes) worked quickly and efficiently. At the time of the theft, as gold bullion it was estimated to be valued at A$6 million.

Van Gogh’s painting The Parsonage Garden at Neunen in Spring (1884) was stolen from the Singer Laren Museum, in the Netherlands, during their 2020 COVID closure. It was recovered in late 2023 after an investigation by Dutch art detective Arthur Brand.

The 2017 theft of two Gottfried Lindauer paintings from Auckland’s International Art Centre took just a few minutes to complete. The thieves ram-raided the front window of the auction house where the paintings, valued at NZ$1 million, were displayed. The portraits were recovered five years later through an intermediary, with only minor damage.

Recovering the stolen

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Picasso painting Weeping Woman (1937) was famously taken by the Australian Cultural Terrorists in 1986 – but only noticed as missing two days later.

Recovered just over two weeks later, the painting was left for the gallery staff to collect in a locker at Spencer Street railway station. The motivation behind the theft was to highlight the lack of financial support given to Victorian artists, but the true identity of the thieves remains a mystery.

In 1986, 26 paintings of religious subjects were stolen from the gallery at the Benedictine Monastery at New Norcia, Western Australia.

The thieves were poor planners: they hadn’t factored in that three men and the stash of paintings couldn’t fit into a Ford Falcon. The paintings were cut from their frames, ostensibly butchered. One was completely destroyed. The thieves were caught and charged.

Where to next for the thief?

Recovery of objects from heists is low. It’s impossible to put a number on but some say art recoveries globally are possibly as low as 10%.

Paintings are more difficult to sell on – you can’t change their physical appearance to the point of not being recognised.

However, with objects such as the gold toilet or jewels, the precious materials and gems can be repurposed. Time will tell if the Napoleonic jewels will be recovered.

Never say never. The Mona Lisa (1503), undoubtedly the main attraction at the Louvre, was stolen in 1911 and recovered two years later. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, was an Italian handyman working at the Louvre and was caught trying to sell it.

This latest heist at the Louvre highlights the vulnerability of objects in public collections. The irony being they’re often gifted to such institutions for safekeeping.

Those who guard objects are usually paid a minimum wage and yet they are tasked with a huge responsibility. When budget cuts are made, it’s often security staff that are reduced – such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ announcement just last week.

The thieves on Sunday knew what they were after and why. We aren’t privy to their motivation. We know the stolen jewels are part of France’s history and are irreplaceable. Their theft denies visitors of experiencing them individually for their beauty and craftsmanship, as well as collectively within the context of France’s history.

But part of me can’t help thinking how the French were partial to helping themselves to artworks and precious objects belonging to others. So perhaps this could be a case of déjà vu.

---

Penelope Jackson’s Unseen: Art and Crime in Australia (Monash University Publishing) will be published in December 2025.

Penelope Jackson 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.

– ref. The Mona Lisa, a gold toilet and the now the Louvre’s royal jewels: a fascinating history of art heists – https://theconversation.com/the-mona-lisa-a-gold-toilet-and-the-now-the-louvres-royal-jewels-a-fascinating-history-of-art-heists-267849

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kirsten Banks, Lecturer, School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology

For roughly 4.5 billion years, the Moon has kept Earth company. In the much shorter span of time that humans have been around, we’ve admired the great silver beacon in the night sky.

The Moon may soon also serve as our launchpad to celestial bodies farther afield in the Solar System. Major space players including the United States, Russia and China all have plans to establish bases on the Moon’s dusty surface within the next ten years. And one of the goals of NASA’s Artemis Moon mission is to enable humans to one day travel to Mars.

Tech billionaire and SpaceX head Elon Musk is even more bullish. “SpaceX will colonise Mars”, he said last year. Musk believes this could happen by 2055 – and would be just the beginning of humans becoming a multi-planetary species in order to save ourselves from future annihilation.

Not everyone agrees this is possible. But it raises a more fundamental question: should humans colonise space?

We asked five experts – four of whom said no. It’s not just a question of whether humans try to live in space, but also about how we do it. Here are their detailed answers.

Alice Gorman receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is also co-vice chair of the Global Expert Group on Sustainable Lunar Activities and a fellow of the Outer Space Institute.

Art Cotterell, Ben Bramble, Kirsten Banks, and Sara Webb 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.

– ref. Should humans colonise space? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/should-humans-colonise-space-we-asked-5-experts-267436

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By John Joseph Chin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Strategy and Technology, Carnegie Mellon University

Those who rise to power through a coup often fall by the same means.

That is one of the takeaways from events in Madagascar, where on Oct. 14, 2025, the military seized power after weeks of protests largely driven by Gen Z. Ironically, it was the same elite military unit that helped bring Andry Rajoelina, former mayor of the capital Antananarivo, to power in a March 2009 coup that now supported anti-government protesters and ultimately forced the president to flee.

I lead a research team that compiles the Colpus Dataset of coup types and characteristics and have written on the history of coups d’état from 1946 through 2025.

Our data suggests that even as coups have declined globally overall, coup risk remains comparatively high in Africa. Since 2020, the continent has now seen 10 successful coups across eight countries.

But the military takeover in Madagascar marks only the second coup in that period to take place outside of the Sahel region, stretching from the Atlantic to the Horn of Africa – a signal that Africa’s coup problem is becoming a continental one.

But why do some coups succeed and others fail? And why do Madagascar and various states in Africa have trouble escaping so-called coup traps?

Our data provides some answers. But first it is worth exploring what we mean when we use the term coup.

What is a coup?

A coup d’état is a seizure of executive power involving one or more concrete, observable and illegal actions by security personnel or civilian officials.

Here, Madagascar’s military takeover appears to qualify. Despite claims by the country’s new military leader, Col. Michael Randrianirina, that he had an order from the High Constitutional Court legitimizing his seizure of power, this seemed to be contradicted by statements a day earlier that Randrianirina’s military council had suspended the high court’s powers.

That’s not to say that every political event that smells like a coup is, in fact, a coup.

Many coup plots never come to fruition. A bona fide plot may be preempted and the plotters arrested, or plotters may abandon their plan before taking any concrete action. Moreover, sometimes a leader falsely alleges a coup plot to purge members of the government suspected of disloyalty.

A plot without an attempt to oust the leader is not, in our book, a coup.

Conversely, attempts to target a leader without a plan to seize power are not coups. This includes leader assassination attempts by political opponents or lone wolves or mutinies by disgruntled soldiers who might even march on the presidential palace to demand higher pay, promotions or other policy concessions.

Nor do most civilian-led mass uprisings entail coups, even if they are successful in toppling the government. Take Nepal, where in September a Gen Z-led protest turned violent and ousted the government. But there was no coup insofar as the military remained quartered rather than actively joining the protests or issuing a threat to compel the prime minister to resign.

However, some revolutions and coups do co-occur, resulting in a “coupvolution” or “endgame coup.”

Determining whether a coup accompanies anti-government protests depends on how elites and the military behave, not on how violent protesters may be.

In Madagascar, mostly peaceful civilian protests turned into a coup attempt once troops actively joined the demonstrations. That attempt succeeded when Randrianirina, commander of the elite CAPSAT force, claimed the interim presidency and insisted a military council would rule for the time being.

Why do coups succeed?

There have been 601 coup attempts since 1946, according to our database, with 299 being successful – or about 50%. In Africa during that period, 111 out of 225 coup attempts were successful.

Coups come in a variety of forms, with different causes and outcomes, and not all are equally likely to succeed. The events in Madagascar, however, tick many of the boxes associated with determining coup success.

Coups depend on coordinating a lot of people, while simultaneously preventing the leader from finding out about the plot. Mass protests of the kind that rocked Madagascar in recent weeks provide cover – as well as motive and opportunity – for coup plotters.

Counterintuitively, military force is rarely decisive. In a typical coup attempt, much of the military remains neutral, biding its time to see whether the leader or coupists will prevail. Consequently, the perceived momentum of events influences how the military rank and file react: If they think the coupmakers will succeed, they typically join; if they think the coup will fail, they generally oppose it.

A coup’s momentum depends on a variety of factors, including the identity, location and strategy of coup leaders, as well as domestic and international reactions to the coup.

Coups that are launched by government insiders and senior military officers in the capital and are nonviolent and result in pro-coup mass mobilization are the most likely to succeed. By contrast, coups that are launched by government outsiders and junior officers outside the capital and are bloody and generate fierce anti-coup mass mobilization are the most likely to fail.

Coup violence is inversely correlated with success. When no force is threatened – usually because the security forces remain united under a senior command – coups succeed 85% of the time.

By contrast, less than 40% of coups that escalate into civil-war levels of violence – that is, resulting in over 1,000 fatalities – succeed.

In Madagascar, we saw the involvement of government elites and senior officers in the capital, mass pro-coup mobilization, low levels of coup violence and a history of prior successful coups – all of which make coup success likely.

Madagascar is not alone

Since 2020, military actors have also taken power in coups in Burkina Faso, Chad, Gabon, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Sudan.

So why are so many African countries prone to falling into a coup trap?

Scholars have asked this question for decades. Development economist Paul Collier suggests that Africa is the most coup-prone region because it is the poorest region of the world, and it is poverty and low growth – and associated political violence – that drive coups.

Others have pointed to high levels of ethnic diversity, and a history of ethnic exclusion and ethnic militaries, as long-standing drivers of coups on the continent.

But since 2020, a number of other factors also appear to be driving up structural coup risk on the continent. Many African countries have seen declining trust in public institutions and leaders and a rise of terrorist violence, which have generated mass popularity for recent coups on the continent.

Anti-coup norms have also weakened in recent years. International pressure to restore civilian rule was quite strong in the 1990s and 2000s, contributing to the decline of African military coups. But new post-coup African governments appear more resilient to sanctions, are cooperating more with each other and are able to draw on the support of authoritarian “patrons,” notably Russia and China.

As a result, African post-coup governments are staying in power longer, which in turn emboldens coup plotters elsewhere who see a more permissive environment.

So even if there are limits to Africa’s “coup contagion,” Madagascar likely won’t be the last domino to fall, given structural conditions on the continent.

John Joseph Chin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Madagascar’s military power grab shows Africa’s coup problem isn’t restricted to the Sahel region – https://theconversation.com/madagascars-military-power-grab-shows-africas-coup-problem-isnt-restricted-to-the-sahel-region-267581

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Alex Beattie, Lecturer, Media and Communication, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington

A wave of proposed social media bans for young people has swept the globe recently, fuelled by mounting concern about the apparent harm the likes of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat can cause to vulnerable minds.

Australia was the first to announce restrictions on people under 16 having a social media account. New Zealand may soon follow, and Denmark’s prime minister recently declared her country would ban social media for under-15s, accusing mobile phones and social networks of “stealing our children’s childhood”.

The moves are part of a growing international trend: the United Kingdom, France, Norway, Pakistan and the United States are now considering or implementing similar restrictions, often requiring parental consent or digital ID verification.

At first glance, these policies appear to be about protecting young people from mental health harm, explicit content and addictive design. But beneath the language of safety lies something else: a shift in cultural values.

The bans reflect a kind of moral turn, one that risks reviving conservative notions that predate the internet. Might we be entering a new Victorian era of the internet, where the digital lives of young people are reshaped not just by regulation but by a reassertion of moral control?

Policing moral decline

The Victorian era was marked by rigid social codes, modest dress and formal communication. Public behaviour was tightly regulated, and schools were seen as key sites for socialising children into gender and class hierarchies.

Today, we see echoes of this in the way “digital wellness” is framed. Screen-time apps, detox retreats and “dumb” phones are marketed as tools for cultivating a “healthy” digital life – often with moral undertones. The ideal user is calm, focused and restrained. The impulsive, distracted or emotionally expressive user is pathologised.

This framing is especially evident in the work of Jonathan Haidt, psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, a central text in the age-restriction movement. Haidt argues that social media accelerates performative behaviour and emotional dysregulation in young people.

Viewed this way, youth digital life involves declining psychological resilience, rising polarisation and the erosion of shared civic values, rather than being a symptom of complex developmental or technological shifts. This has helped popularise the idea that social media is not just harmful but corrupting.

Yet the data behind these claims is contested. Critics have pointed out that Haidt’s conclusions often rely on correlational studies and selective interpretations.

For example, while some research links heavy social media use to anxiety and depression, other studies suggest the effects are modest and vary widely depending on context, platform and individual differences.

What’s missing from much of the debate is a recognition of young people’s agency, or their ability to navigate online spaces intelligently, creatively and socially.

Indeed, youth digital life is not just about passive consumption. It’s a site of literacy, expression and connection. Platforms such as TikTok and YouTube have fostered a renaissance of oral and visual communication.

Young people stitch together memes, remix videos and engage in rapid-fire editing to produce new forms of storytelling. These are not signs of decline but evolving literacies. To regulate youth access without acknowledging these skills risks suppressing the new in favour of preserving the familiar.

Regulate platforms, not young people

This is where the Victorian metaphor becomes useful. Just as Victorian norms sought to maintain a particular social order, today’s age restrictions risk enforcing a narrow vision of what digital life should look like.

On the surface, terms such as “brain rot” appear to convey the harm of excessive internet use. But in practice, they’re often used by teenagers to laugh about and resist the pressures of 24/7 hustle culture.

But concerns about young people’s digital habits seem rooted in a fear of cognitive difference – the idea that some users are too impulsive, too irrational, too deviant.

Young people are often cast as unable to communicate properly, hiding behind screens, avoiding phone calls. But these changing habits reflect broader shifts in how we relate to technology. The expectation to be always available, always responsive, ties us to our devices in ways that make switching off genuinely difficult.

Age restrictions may address some symptoms, but they don’t tackle the underlying design of platforms that are built to keep us scrolling, sharing and generating data.

If society and governments are serious about protecting young people, perhaps the better strategy is to regulate the digital platforms. Legal scholar Eric Goldman calls the age-restriction approach a “segregate and suppress” strategy – one that punishes youth rather than holding platforms accountable.

We would never ban children from playgrounds, but we do expect those spaces to be safe. Where are the safety barriers for digital spaces? Where is the duty of care from digital platforms?

The popularity of social media bans suggests a resurgence of conservative values in our digital lives. But protection should not come at the cost of autonomy, creativity or expression.

For many, the internet has become a moral battleground where values around attention, communication and identity are fiercely contested. But it is also a social infrastructure, one that young people are already shaping through new literacies and forms of expression.

Shielding them from it risks suppressing the very skills and voices that could help us build a better digital future.

Alex Beattie receives funding from The Royal Society Te Apārangi. He is a recipient of a Marsden Fast Start Grant.

– ref. As social media age restrictions spread, is the internet entering its Victorian era? – https://theconversation.com/as-social-media-age-restrictions-spread-is-the-internet-entering-its-victorian-era-267610