Sulawesi: Where Continents Collide
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the above is a photo of the Scottish Highlands. In fact, it was taken in central Sulawesi.
The Jungle
Grobalization
Aziz Ansari’s Dev Shah- A Gandhi for Our Age?
Could American popular culture achieve what even Gandhi couldn’t? I’m taking of course about unity in the Subcontinent.
International Relations
Asia’s Unlikely Champions of Free Trade
Free trade was key to the rise of the mighty seafaring kingdoms of Southeast Asia, where a cultural predilection for pluralism, individual liberty and the primacy of contracts played an instrumental role.
The True Cost of Things
Trop Tackles: “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” by Thomas Piketty, Chapter 1
In the first of a series, the in-house wonk at the Tropicalist will summarize and dole out, chapter by chapter, all the bits of wisdom from the landmark 2014 book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.
The Line Podcast
The Line Ep. 15: An Antidote to Nationalism
How do you imagine your countrymen? Are they the people who look like you? Think like you? Or simply live around you?
Material Culture
The Quran, Islam and Egalitarianism
Early Arab society, like the Quran itself, was strikingly egalitarian, until it came up against the reality of administering a large and multicultural empire.
Grobalization
The Tulip Age
The story of how the humble bulb became embroiled in the conflict between the forces of globalization and tradition.
International Relations
Of Tulips and Turbans
“Tulip” and “turban” are doublets, or words having the same etymological origin.
The Line Podcast
The Line, Ep. 14: Raising Excellent Sheep
A spirited discussion with a panel of experts reveals a link between the educational arms race and increasing class anxiety.
Material Culture
The Stories our Flowers Tell
The clues to a culture’s origins can often be found in its gardens.
The Jungle
Trop Picks: Tulips
The science behind how tulips “remember” winters past.
Bad Gals/ Boys
A Mind of Her Own: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
An upper class Englishwoman pronouncing on the oppression of native women who take the veil would likely be of little interest to readers of this site, but Lady Mary (like her namesake on Downton Abbey) had ideas of her own.
Immaterial Culture
Body Language
In Asia, our hands speak another language.
The City
Hygiene and the City
The modern metropolis: a heady cocktail of sex, technology and high finance, with an undertone of sewage.