vienna:views

Vienna always comes back. Today as my colleague Emma was leaving for a summer at the IIASA Institute in nearby Laxenburg and I had to brief her on all my favourites spots. Then later, on the train, I felt an urge to relax after the last crazy days of thesis administration, to pour up a small bottle of The Glenlivet and start reading vienna:views.

So insure
Against.

Against Vienna.

Capital of insurance
Insurance of capital
where people push problems
for profit,
to the resounding sound of…

STEMPEL = stamps
stamps of the ink-tank, think tanks of reassurance
stamps of authority
stamps of bureaucracy
stamps of ...?

Singular power

I dream of standing at Westbahnhof, maybe even leaving Vienna with the night train. Just to depart with the knowledge that I will return.


(outside in the real world, Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, hope she gets confirmed, meanwhile in Europe, it is soon time for the EP-elections, I intend to vote Pirate and will give some good reasons for doing so here on Rawls & Me before not too long)

Leaving on a Mayday

The commuting has resumed with full strength; 1400 km this week alone and more to come before summer finally gets here by mid-June and releases me from the fixed tracks. This year, the summer promises excursions to inter alia Prague, Bingen, Marrakesh, and a utopia-workshop in Reading.

“Come fly with me, let's float down to Peru
In llama land there's a one-man band
And he'll toot his flute for you
Come fly with me, let's float down in the blue”

On the Mayday-album, I like this Sinatra cover by Anna as I keep struggling with the Manuscript.

In spite of my best intentions, I will not be able to write it all up this spring, not that it matters much with my final seminar scheduled first in December. But it would have felt so good to conclude this semester by being able to put that long text in the drawer. In any case, there are some good news as well, Environmental Politics liked the article I presented in New York in February and, pending certain modifications, it will hopefully be published by early next year.

In bed at the Radisson Edwardian Berkshire

Barely had I landed in London before the flu hit me. Having been queuing for security at Frankfurt Airport together with a flight from Mexico City some days ago I naturally felt a bit concerned. But after a night of high fever, I could feel that the worst was behind me.

Nonetheless, while my colleagues have been busy touring the Houses of Parliament, Transport for London and Deutsche Bank, I have been stranded in the same luxury hotel room, trying to read an old IHT and making plans for the fall now when my STINT application has been, big surprise, rejected. To be honest, my confidence in that organization is rapidly approaching zero, not because they have rejected the different applications that I have sent in over the last four years (that is simply part of the game), but because they seem to use a very strange ranking mechanism (the more I publish in international peer-review journals, the less scientific competent I become) in combination with insinuations of the kind that I do not really care if I get the scholarship or not.

Yet, I should not forget that somewhat banal motto “don’t be bitter, be better”. Over the course of my doctoral studies I have indeed been very fortunate with external funding; I have been able to visit both Rutgers and the University of Melbourne, participated in dozens of international conferences and met so many inspiring people. And the upside of this year’s STINT-round is that my friend Marcus will be able to spend the fall in New York, hopefully I will have the chance of visiting him there.

Bonn

Leaving the academic world behind, I have had reason to reflect about “place”.

As always, Germany speaks to me. I see all this: the light rain in the gardens, the knowledge that I have built a life around escapism, around the reconstructed journey, around small things that I cannot help to notice.

IHDP

International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change. That is one impressive acronym. Organized by several different UN-related bodies, the 7th IHDP conference certainly has a laudable mission, to integrate social and human perspectives into our thinking about environmental problems.

After one day of intensive panel discussions, poster presentations and plenary sessions, I am both thrilled and scared. Scared about the amount of spin, the number of already overstretched buzzwords finding their way into ever new combinations such as “sustainable adaptation”. Thrilled about all the work that is going on out there, about the great number of people from all over the world coming together to talk about our common future. In my good moments I think that, post-structuralism and financial crises aside, we are still building that planetary civilization. In my bad moments, I fear that all the economic growth assumptions going into those climate models are about to turn sour, that from here on it is simply downhill.

Both exaggerations, I know. But between the lines I cannot help but wonder if the disintegrative forces are not stronger, all things considered? In the past, humanity has had the good fortune that many of our actions, even if driven by self-interest, have led to desirable collective outcomes (just think about the process of capital accumulation). However, as our environment continues to deteriorate, much of this will change. Instead of laissez-faire we will need a conscious understanding of social transformation, an idea of how to get from a troubled present to a democratically decided future. And that on a global level. In time.

I am not saying that it cannot be done. Only that it will require so much good will, idealism and simple patience with each other.