The Fenced-In World: How Contested Spaces, Economic Walls, and Digital Divides Are Reshaping Sovereignty

From the Open Access Blog.

Global Currents: Intersections of Body, Border, and Byte in a Fragmented World

The newsletter snippets from Monocle, Semafor, Bloomberg, the Economist, Newsweek, and ArtNews from August 28-31, 2025, offer a kaleidoscopic view of contemporary global affairs, weaving together threads of cultural contestation, diplomatic friction, economic maneuvering, and artistic heritage. At its core, this assemblage reflects a world in flux, where local skirmishes over public spaces echo broader geopolitical realignments, and economic policies ripple into social fabrics. Analytically, these narratives reveal causal interrelations: cultural norms shape policy responses, which in turn exacerbate economic inequalities, all underpinned by social anxieties about identity and sovereignty. Theoretically, this aligns with Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, where dominant ideologies maintain power through everyday struggles (Gramsci, 1971), as seen in battles over nudity, tariffs, and art restitut…