Power, Place, and Play: A Dispatch on Geopolitical Shifts, Cultural Authenticity, and Spectacle Capital

From the Open Culture Blog.

Navigating Change Across Geopolitical, Cultural, and Economic Spheres

The newsletter snippets from Monocle, Semafor, ArtNews, Geoscape, Rest of World, UBS Insights, NZZ Geopolitics and the Economist from July 28-30, 2025, present a kaleidoscope of global developments—ranging from geopolitical tensions and economic shifts to cultural resilience and technological innovation. Collectively, they depict a world in flux, where traditional structures are tested by emerging forces, and societies grapple with the interplay of global and local dynamics.

The rich tapestry of this week’s newsletter snippets reveals converging dynamics of power, place, and play under contemporary capitalism. In Tim Weiner’s reflections on the CIA’s shifting mission—from counterterrorism to election defence—we witness not merely a bureaucratic pivot but a Foucauldian realignment of knowledge-power, wherein intelligence becomes a technology of governance aimed at preserving a fragile global order (Foucault, 1991). The…