16/08/2009 - The Forum

Meet the guests

Pulitzer prize winning German biologist Bert Hölldobler explores the astonishing ability of ant colonies to work together as a single unit, a Superorganism.

Ants co-operate and communicate collectively, dividing labour to benefit the whole group with no need for an overseer.

What are the evolutionary lessons for humanity?

The role of collaboration in human society fascinates Anglo-American sociologist Richard Sennett.

From new research he detects that the current financial crisis will produce a change in work/life practices as ex-Wall Street workers hanker for more co-operation and less cut-throat competition.

When it comes to business, will it continue to be down to the survival of the fittest?

Testing the borderline between co-operation and being co-opted, curator of Middle Eastern art Rose Issa explores the ways in which Iran’s young artists are evading censors.

She reveals how they use loopholes in the system to defy authority and still manage to say the unsayable.

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