Foundation Arena Articles
The articles you can access from this page all come from the first 100 issues of Arena, published from 1963 until 1992. They are selections from the writings of the Arena editors and others who played a significant role in developing systematic ideas in the development of Arena’s theory of social being and social transformation. This theory, which has gone through various stages of development, is sometimes referred to as the Arena thesis. In these articles it is developed in relation to various fields, and to pressing questions that came to the fore in the late twentieth century in the context of the rise of new capitalism and the techno-sciences. These questions and theoretical preoccupations have been at the heart of the Arena project for over fifty years.
These selected writings have been made available here since they are not available electronically elsewhere. All Arenas — the first series of Arena, as well as Arena Magazine and Arena Journal — are available in print from the Arena office (email john@arena.org.au). All issues of Arena Magazine and Arena Journal are available electronically from Informit.
Foundation Arena Articles: Simon Cooper
Article by Simon Cooper from ARENA journal no. 29/30, 2008: Regulating Hybrid Monsters? The Limits of Latour and Actor Network Theory
Foundation Arena Articles: Geoff Sharp
Four articles by Geoff Sharp from Arena issues between 1968 and 1992, in PDF format: 'Features of the Intellectually Trained', 'Intellectuals in Transition', 'Constitutive Abstraction and Social Practice', and 'Intellectual Interchange and Social Practice'
Foundation Arena Articles: Paul James
Four articles by Paul James (one with Freya Carkeek), from the eighties and early nineties: 'Australia in the Corporate Image: A New Nationalism', 'The Nation and its Post-Modern Critics', ' Theory Without Practice: The Work of Anthony Giddens', and ' This Abstract Body'
Foundation Arena Articles: John Hinkson
Four articles by John Hinkson and a reply by Boris Frankel, from Arena issues spanning 1982 - 1992: 'Beyond Imagination? Responding to Nuclear War', 'Post-Lyotard: A Critique of the Information Society', 'Misreading the Deeper Current: The Limits of Economic Rationality', 'A Postmodern Market Society?' (Frankel), and 'Ships in the Night: A Reply to Boris Frankel'
Foundation Arena Articles: Alison Caddick
Two articles on feminism by Alison Caddick, from 1986 and 1992: 'Feminism and the Body', and 'Feminist and Postmodern: Donna Haraway's Cyborg'
Foundation Arena Articles: Gerry Gill
'Post-Structuralism as Ideology': An article in PDF format by Gerry Gill, from Arena issue 69, 1984