Keen On 2022
FIVE conversations that will map the new year
Last week, Tim Marshall came on KEEN ON to talk about his new book, The Power of Geography: Ten Maps That Reveal the Future of Our World. Marshall’s maps of the future include the Sahel, Iran, Turkey, outer space, and, oddly enough, good old Blighty itself - the United Kingdom.
Riffing off The Power of Geography, here are the five conversational maps that, we at KEEN ON, will be featuring in 2022.
THE (dis)UNITED STATES. Will there even be a unitary political map of the USA on January 1, 2023? Next week, I’m interviewing Barbara Walter and Stephen Marche on KEEN ON who both have intriguing new books out about a future civil war in the US. Marche’s The Next Civil War is more pessimistic than Walter’s How Civil Wars Start, but even she acknowledges that America’s political fissures could easily metastasize into violence. What Marche and Walter agree on, however, is that the geography of the 21st century American civil war will be less symmetrical and continuous than its 19th century version. We at KEEN ON believe that the unitary 20th century United States of America has already broken up. In 2022 we will see the consequences of this fissure.
CHINESE CAPITALISM. How to talk about China? Last year, KEEN ON featured a number shows about the geo-strategic rise of China with Singapore based analysts like Kishore Mahbubani & Parag Khanna. That rise will, of course, continue in the new year. But we believe that one of the biggest stories of 2022 will be the increasing coverage of China’s (im)moral economy. Last November, we talked to the Canadian journalist Joanna Chiu about the human cost of China’s rise. Next week, the Uyghur-Chinese author Amelia Pang will appear on KEEN ON to talk about her deeply troubling new book Made in China. Pang’s investigation of the inhuman conditions of Chinese authoritarian-capitalism identifies “the hidden costs of America’s cheap goods”. China, like pre civil war 19th century America, is a stain on the world’s conscience.
HUNGARIAN (inter)NATIONALISM. We did a couple of shows in 2021 on the moral complexity of life in Viktor Orban’s neo-authoritarian Hungary. The first with Dorottya Redai, the Budapest based LGBTQ activist and one of Time’s 100 influential people of 2021. And second with the Vienna based academic Dorit Geva about what she calls “Ordonationalism” in Hungary. We at KEEN ON believe that Orban’s assault on Hungarian democracy will become a model for aspiring neo-authoritarian leaders around the world. The most interesting thing about our Ordonationalist moment, we believe, is its internationalism. KEEN ON will, therefore, map the growing power of Ordonationalism with a number of Hungarian focused conversations throughout 2022.
GLOBAL CITIES. The London based Tim Marshall wistfully imagines the continuing relevance of a post Brexit United Kingdom in 2022. But there’s no doubt that London, with its cultural and economic geographical remains a significant global power. In 2021, KEEN ON hosted a number of conversations about world cities including early modern Antwerp, contemporary New York City and a dystopian digital San Francisco. And next week we go back to world’s original global city in a conversation with the classicist Bruce Clark about his new history of Athens, the two thousand year old story of the world’s most continuous city.
THE IMAGINARY MIDDLE EAST: Marshall includes contemporary Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia in his ten very literal maps that reveal the future of the world. But we at KEEN ON suspect that the Middle Eastern maps that most reveal the future of the region are imaginary. These are Kamal Al-Solaylee’s maps of belonging, of returning to places which either no long or never existed. From the Lebanon to Israel/Palestine to the region’s disappeared Christian communities, these are the Middle Eastern conversations that KEEN ON featured in 2021 and will continue to host in 2022.