The fortune of cricket in India, perhaps unlike anywhere else in the cricketing world, is closely allied with its identity as a nation

The Truth concerns a lot more than scientific platitudes: all sorts of figures have laid claim to knowing the truth about the human condition and their societies, from novelists and journalists to campaigners and politicians. In fact, one of the most important things about putting forward new ideas and persuading others is that no particular credentials are necessary.

The idea that we could and should change the world was the stuff of politics in the past, and students’ or workers’ radicalism expressed this in a radical form. Today that politics has lost its meaning, and all that’s left for so-called radicals is to call for a more extreme version of what ‘politics’ is about today. The form is still there, but the content has changed.

In order to develop a more incisive critique of contemporary society, it is necessary to consider not only the particular nuances of the financial economy, but also the broader historical context, and the relationship between capitalism and wider social and political forces.

This essay defends the material basis of progress and the right of developing countries to undergo development, and finally argues that material development offers the only way to avoid the environmental disasters that we are constantly warned are just around the corner.

When it comes to thinking about culture and artworks, torn between a multiculturalist melange and celebration of cynicism, the problem seems not to be we don’t know who artworks or culture belong to, more that we want nothing to do with the whole lot of them.

Both the fetishisation of strong leadership and the reaction against it stem from a one-sided focus on leaders as personalities, and neglect of the other side of the relationship. Leadership is a relationship, not merely a personal quality.

The language of contemporary politics is packed full of jargon. It stands in for real political discourse and debate but is no substitute. In its place we need to rehabilitate rhetoric: language designed to convince others of the rightness of our propositions.

There is an assumption that people in general are increasingly vulnerable and in need of ‘support’. In this sense, the adoption reforms are a product of a wider ‘cultural’ problem – not in the ethnic or anthropological sense, but with regards our political culture and the ideas that it tends to generate.

We are now a nation obsessed with our bowels and bumpy bits, indulging in the guilty pleasure of a meat-feast pizza then seeking penance with the cholesterol kit. But why should it follow that a healthier population must be more obsessed with health?

The growth of identity politics means that instead of the universal claim for negative liberty, all minority groups are now encouraged to fight their corner for their piece of the recognition pie. In one fell swoop, such policies not only fix people into categories which are themselves restrictive, but also isolate groups from wider society.

By emphasising the recovery and naming of bodies, what becomes of the unnamed dead? Who takes responsibility for those whose remains will not only never be recovered and identified but will never be missed? Does the emphasis placed upon ‘our’ dead by forensic science dilute or obstruct sympathy for the death of ‘others’?

An adequate approach to the relationship between theory and practice would acknowledge the value of the many kinds of intellectual contributions that get called popular philosophy, without over-egging their importance or dismissing them as philosophy lite.

Two students from Barton Court Grammar School in an email head-to-head on whether man or machine should be exploring space in the twenty first century

Although the interwar years of Weimar Germany and 1960s Britain appeared to be golden moments for anti-establishment mirth, it is easy to miss the insubordinate heart of satire that is still beating as strong today, as thoughtful humour is so often social critique by stealth.

The plausibility of evolutionary psychology rests on the question of whether psychological attributes are analogous to anatomical structures in their origins and in their functioning. If not, it is a mistake to explain them in terms of evolutionary theory which explains physical, anatomical features determined by biological mechanisms.

What both Republicans and Democrats fail to grasp is that international legitimacy of the kind that caused the West to accept American leadership after World War Two must derive, ultimately, from domestic politics. International legitimacy cannot be restored solely through actions in the international sphere.

Disenchantment with the elitism of European politicians and institutions may lay the basis for a more positive reassertion of popular control over political decision-making at the national level. This would mean recognising that the problems of European integration are only magnifications of problems whose origins lie at home.

Counter-intuitively, in a world of often disconnected and atomised individuals, alcohol can play a part in bringing communities back together again.

A recent survey suggests the Western public may be less worried about the rise of China than the ‘China-bashing’ media suggest, and more optimistic about its future development.

The end of Left and Right, if it has occurred, needs to be taken seriously. It amounts to no less than the collapse of a way of looking at, and doing, ‘politics’.

We need to be less concerned about when is the right age for children to start reading, and how, and much more worried about what counts as being great literature, in having real standards that children can aim at.

Don Eales recalls the political power of popular song, and asks where the voices of challenge and dissent are today.

Professor James Woudhuysen argues that an Olympics ‘Win/Win’ won’t work

Despite using no words, instrumental music speaks volumes. A simple jig makes people dance in delight and a melancholy melody reduces people to tears; union songs, hymns, football chants and even the national anthem bring people together with shared values, ideas and aims; and everybody has their own special songs.