Subversión y moraleja

When I first came to Edinburgh, my expectations of university were mixed and my understanding of the institution limited. Talking with others about what uni meant to us, the ‘I’m just here for the piece of paper’ was a recurring theme. Others argued that attending university was a matter of access, both to people and resources. For others, it was simply the path to academia. Seeing people’s differing expectations, I wondered whether university could have a single purpose. Is University merely a ‘factory of the middle class’, as US activist Staughton Lynd puts it? Overall, I got the feeling that most of us came to uni without really knowing why, viewing it  as another step in the ‘predetermined path’ of life: you are born, go to school, go to uni, get a job. Uni is seen as a means, something we go through to rush down to London immediately afterwards seeking the hottest internship. After the divestment protests last May, I was struck by my limited understanding of how the ...

Since the rise of modern consumerism, people have defined themselves in terms of property. The rhetoric of ‘I am what I own’, deeply embedded in the roots of capitalism, fostered individualization through consumption.  The unfulfilled promises of consumerism, the fulfilment of all our needs, have made mass consumption a self-defeating practice, leading to excesses and waste beyond imagination. The craze of the consumer society could not be better represented than by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, one of the world’s biggest landfills, located where barely anyone can find it.  However, the impact of the 2008 economic crisis on the daily lives of the majority, and on many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through austerity measures and limited lending and investment opportunities has triggered a growth in what has been coined ‘collaborative consumption’. Born in the mid-2000s, the term refers to a socio-economic system built around the sharing of human and phy...