culture

A Letter From Paris, Where the New Normal Is Less Grouchy Than You’d Expect

Through Three Lockdowns, Parisians Have Read, Biked, and Even Behaved Like Tourists in Their Own Town

A Letter From Paris, Where the New Normal Is Less Grouchy Than You’d Expect | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

What is the new normal here in Paris? The answer is one that’s less grouchy than you might expect. Mais ça commence à bien faire—it’s getting a little much.

We’re more than a year out from #TheMoment, March 17, when the first lockdown in France began. At that crossroads where countries made different political decisions, France chose to put health first.

Now, as we settle into a third lockdown, to encounter someone without a mask in the street is startling. Every few streets or so, outside every pharmacy, there are little collapsible …

by Olivia Snaije |

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Our Search for Human Connection Continues in 2020 | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Our Search for Human Connection Continues in 2020

The 11th Annual Zócalo Book Prize Honors the Best Writing on Community and Social Cohesion

Since 2011, Zócalo Public Square’s annual book prize has recognized the nonfiction book, published in the U.S., that best enhances our understanding of community and the forces that strengthen or …

Looking for Jazz Uplift Under Lockdown | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Looking for Jazz Uplift Under Lockdown

A Music Critic Considers the Power of Time-Honored Rituals When They Can’t Happen as They Should

by Larry Blumenfeld |

Three days after the September 11 terrorist attacks I left my Brooklyn home, tracing backward the trail that thick billows of smoke had blown across the East River, to hear …

Hawai‘i Doesn’t Need More Tourists, It Needs Better Tourists

From Kaua‘i to Croatia, the World’s Increasingly Crowded Vacation Spots Seek Visitors Who Spend More Money—And Actually Talk to Locals

by Joe Mathews |

Rapidly rising tourism in Hawai‘i and around the world poses new and complicated economic, environmental, and cultural challenges that in turn will require better management and well-designed restrictions on visitors, …

The Philosopher Who Coined the Term ‘Nationalism’ Also Preached Inclusivity

275 Years Ago, Johann Gottfried Herder Imagined Nations Forming Around a Common Language and Culture, Not a Common Enemy

by Robert Zaretsky |

Since the French Revolution, a brilliant cast of ideologies has starred on the world stage, ranging from conservatism to liberalism to communism. Yet the -ism that has been most resilient, …

What Does It Mean to Be a ‘Local’ in Hawai‘i?

A Honolulu-Born Writer Reflects on How Demographic and Economic Change Are Making an Idealized Aloha State Identity Obsolete

by Peter Hong |

The story of the modern Hawai‘i diaspora is a paradox: Many of us who grew up in Hawai‘i in the second half of the 20th century developed a powerful sense …


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