By Ismail Lagardien 25 May 2014. From The Citizen, newspaper, today, the unfortunate framing of a story through poor layout, and a misleading relationship between headline and story. Headline says ‘South Africa names first black finance minister’… Third paragraph reads: ‘In the 20 years since South Africa struggled free from the fetters of racist apartheid rule, the economy remains predominantly…
Economics Education is Producing ‘Idiot Savants’
By Ismail Lagardien In a more serious format, on the pages of the Mail & Guardian, arguably South Africa’s best weekly newspaper, I wrote about the need to encourage the orthodoxy that shapes the minds of Economics students. I recently came across a paper by Anne Krueger, and published by the Commission on Graduate Education in Economics of the American…
Disappointed by the Prints Made for Exhibition.
By Ismail Lagardien I sent the final two prints for the exhibition and talk off to have them framed. Actually, there is one final print which I have yet to decide on. It is central to the talk, and I need to decide on format…. Nonetheless, the framing was professionally done by Carin Erasmus (wonderful, creative and professional) of Optimum Framing at…
Coolie Woman
By Ismail Lagardien I finally ordered Gaiutra Bahadur’s book, Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture, which traces the author’s great-grandmother’s passage from Calcutta to the Caribbean as a ‘coolie’. With the book, Bahadur excavates the buried history of the quarter million other women who left India as indentured plantation labourers. Bahadur was born in Guyana (and now lives in the United States…
My Silliness: How I know we will have an uncomfortable discussion….
By Ismail Lagardien I am often struck by my own snobbishness. This does not mean I will change my ways anytime soon. Let me be clear, this is not the snobbishness that comes with money or social standing. It’s quite the opposite, actually. It’s just part of my preference not to indulge idiots, people with money, privilege, social standing or…
I suspect most of us will vote for the ANC, again.
By Ismail Lagardien There was a concerted campaign, sometime before the election that led to the second term of George W Bush as president of the United States, to discredit him – and rightfully so. He was a bad person! One set of criticisms of George W Bush included that he was, actually, a terribly unsavoury character. He loved a…
Watermark all Prints!
By Ismail Lagardien After finding that two of my photographs were used without my permission I am starting to watermark all pictures I place online – even on Facebook! I should have started a long time ago. As it goes I have hundreds, perhaps thousands of photographs online…. One of the prints used without permission (nor credit) was acquired directly…
Help students challenge economics
By Ismail Lagardien University students have just started the new academic year, and for many first-year students this is in effect the start of adulthood — a time when they start making decisions for themselves and charting their own futures and, perhaps, someday, the futures of many others. What they learn over the next four years, perhaps more, may well…
Power and Control: A Day at the Lake
Power and Control from i lagardien on Vimeo.
Happy in my solitude – and writing
By Ismail Lagardien 26 February 2014 – There is quite an inspirational silence that envelopes me at the moment. It makes for lots of great reading and writing. I am making slow progress with the book, and still target the second part of 2014 for publication. That is if the second one, a book-length photo-essay, does not come together sooner.…