About

My name is Elsje Fourie and I’m a PhD student, light traveller and aspiring blogger.  I first took to the skies at age two, and haven’t quite disembarked  since.  The light traveller never rests in any one place for long,  going where the breeze takes her.  So this blog is partly a chance to write down of my experiences as much for me to remember as for others to read.

But The Light Traveller isn’t only–or even mainly–about travel in the literal sense of the word.  As a student of international relations, I’m also interested in journeys of the intellectual kind, and fascinated by societies, culture and politics around the world.  If this sounds broad, it is; I tend to float between the many issues and ideas which interest me.

I also try (with varying degrees of success) to maintain ideological “lightness”, because detachment can be a virtue when it allows us to see an issue from all sides.  The trick is knowing when to throw off the sandbags and climb higher into the air, or when a special cause or idea is worth coming back down to earth for.

I’m particularly interested in modernisation and modernity:  whether and how our human condition changed after the Industrial Revolution, and how these changes continue to reverberate in different societies.  My dissertation addresses the ways in which policy-makers in developing countries think and talk about modernisation, and focuses particularly on China and India.

It’s largely for this reason that I’ve chosen to give this blog a vaguely steampunk feel (I hope it will become more so as I get more adept at the technical side of things).  In many ways, as the above link points out, steampunk captures the sense of wonder with which the Victorians approached modernity:  the technology opened up new horizons and enabled heroic explorations into the unknown.  On the other hand, steampunk is also post-apocalyptic and bleak.  For this reason, the movement, to me, captures both the promise and threat of the modern condition—a legacy we are still dealing with today…

©2007-2009 ~liebeSuse

The Light Traveller, then, tries to travel without unnecessary baggage—both physical and intellectual.  She does not always succeed, and sometimes she gets too carried away by the wind or feels alienated by her lack of roots.  But for the most part she has a lot of fun on her journey.  So welcome to my blog; comments and suggestions are always welcome!