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On the biodiversity of science
The economic potential of Nobel Prize-winning discoveries has rarely been known or intended. A defence of the "aimlessness" of science and a call for a three-pronged system of universities, scientific societies and academies. [more]
How to defend the Enlightenment
"To say that reason is only desiccating and too dry is a dangerous caricature. No less dangerous is to eliminate the place for arts, for myth, which is a different kind of knowledge of the world." Tzvetan Todorov in conversation with AC Grayling about his new book, "In Defence of the Enlightenment". [more]
The structure and silence of the cognitariat
Only a small "creative class" achieves the freedom stereotypically attributed to knowledge workers, writes Christopher Newfield. Increasingly, recipients of higher education are prepared for working life in a knowledge economy where independence has been eroded. [more]
Banking regulation? Malfunction!
The few regulatory measures introduced since the financial collapse are being supervised by the same banking sector that caused it in the first place, writes Lucas Zeise. Governments' delegation of regulatory responsibilities has deeply negative implications for democracy. [more]
Fair game
350 million do it regularly. It offers levels of complexity and human interaction beyond any other art form. We can't continue to ignore the cultural impact of online gaming, says Michael Bywater. [more]
Nature: Object of science and aesthetic category
In the natural sciences, transformation is more important than diversity, writes Hansjörg Küster. Conservation laws prevent us thinking about our landscapes, which are not always as natural as they seem. More research is needed into how landscape can be managed. [more]
The defender of contingency
An interview with Ernesto Laclau
Ernesto Laclau talks to the Greek journal "Intellectum" about the uses of populism, why radical democracy has nothing to do with liberalism, and how lack of political competition benefits the far-Right. [more]
The ecological imperative
Reductions in greenhouse gases demand major economic and political changes. Dominique Bourg writes that we must abandon our obsessively humanist ideology if we wish to preserve humanity itself. This is an ecological imperative in its true, moral sense. [more]
Anger as the ship goes down
Obama's proposed banking reforms are likely to face insurmountable opposition from Congress, where lobby interests have become all-powerful. Worse still, writes George Blecher, the proposals themselves don't go far enough. [more]
Lessons learned and open questions
Welfare state building in post-communist EU member states
The dissatisfaction expressed by the many not to have benefited from transition suggests post-commmunist welfare states have a long way to go before they attain western levels of credibility. Their democracies depend on that gap being bridged, argues Claus Offe. [more]
Erring on the side of secrecy
"Index on Censorship" covers another chapter of the fruitless cartoon debate; "Glänta" pays attention to nature; "RiLi" picks over the debris of aviation's dreams; "Multitudes" calls on cognitarians of all lands; "L'Homme" misses women's lib in the 68 anniversary; "Edinburgh Review" takes Kafka's Prague down from the top shelf; "NZ" says Russian readers never had it so good as during Glasnost; "Osteuropa" doubts there's anything left in the pan-Slavic idea; "Mehr Licht" appeals to philosophy's transformative potential; and "Vikerkaar" uncovers the ancient origins of the telenovela. [more]
See no evil
"They have turned my book into another chapter of this fruitless debate." Jytte Klausen talks to "Index on Censorship" about the controversial decision of Yale University Press to publish her book on the Danish cartoon crisis without reproductions of the cartoons themselves. [more]
Repression's capital, Europe's canary
Kafka's home city has a lot to hide, writes James Hawes. The Czech capital's architectural debt to greater Germany; its authoritarian past and history of anti-Semitism; even its most famous son's penchant for pornography -- these unwelcome truths are bad for business. [more]
Battlefield Europe
Transnational commemoration and European identity
A pan-European memory cannot be reduced to the Holocaust and the Gulag alone, no matter how central these are, and must be able to compare memories without offsetting each against the other. On the "concentric circles" of European memory. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
Auschwitz and the Gulag are generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter. But they are only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come, writes historian Timothy Snyder. [Russian version added] [more]
Swiss self-defeatism
The Swiss vote to ban minarets has less to do with a "populist factor" inherent in referenda than with resentment at high-level corruption and the fear of social declassification. Celebrated by rightwing parties across Europe, the vote augurs more Islam-baiting to come. [more]
The revenge of the beer fiddlers?
The regulation of amateurs in musical life
Cultural professionalism is not the simple expression of an all-embracing economic logic, but generated and sustained by specific institutions, writes Rasmus Fleischer. A history of the three hundred year-old struggle between professional and amateur musicians in Sweden. [more]
Kigali's ambassador-at-large
How Philip Gourevitch wrote the victors' history book
With his book about the Rwandan genocide, Philip Gourevitch has perhaps more than anyone influenced the way the conflict is viewed in the US and Europe. But his view is clouded by over-simplifications and a glorified view of the Kagame government, writes Felix Holmgren. [more]
The forgotten slaughter
An interview with Marie Béatrice Umutesi
Two years after the Rwandan genocide, refugees living in camps in Zaire were systematically slaughtered -- an event the rest of the world has chosen to forget. The international community first betrayed the Tutsis, then the Hutus, says former refugee Marie Béatrice Umutesi. [more]
The meaning of network culture
As digital computing meshes with mobile networking technology, society is undergoing a cultural shift. Whereas in postmodernism, being was left in a fabric of emotional intensities, today the self is affirmed through the net. What does this mean for the democratic public sphere? [more]
Charismatic megafauna
"Soundings" wonders where climate mainstreaming is heading; "Esprit" returns to earth; "Merkur" lampoons the CO2 dwarf; "Dilema veche" talks to Romania's impatient émigrés; "Transit" records the dilemmas of an editor; "Blätter" joins cause with the students; "Mittelweg 36" analyses the futility of political planning; "Akadeemia" doesn't miss the communists; and "Passage" reads modern Arabic literature. [more]
Reducing CO2 -- and increasing growth!
Mankind, with its "lack of laziness", hyperactivity and dash of fatalism, is unflinchingly heading for climate catastrophe. The entrepreneurial spirit is celebrating new triumphs in the guise of environmentalism. [more]
Making the world more livable
City planning as social policy
A comparison of European and Islamic cities shows how in the first half of the twentieth century, the sophistication of planning tools increased in inverse proportion to planners' socio-political utopianism. [more]
The media and climate change
The entry of climate change into the media mainstream, welcome as it is, nevertheless brings new problems. Journalists, campaigners and scientists discuss the implications of demand-led reporting and the dangers of focusing on "charismatic megafauna". [more]
Literary perspectives: Lithuania
Almost normal
The literary field in Lithuania has established itself since independence, despite vastly smaller print runs. Today, a range of literary approaches can be made out, from the social criticism of the middle generation to the more private narratives of the post-Soviet writers. [more]
Marx? Which Marx?
Marx's naturalistic understanding of value as being inherent in a commodity has led many interpreters to see money and credit as surface phenomena. In doing so, they overlook the contemporary role played by credit in the reproduction of capital, writes Anders Ramsay. [more]
New Eurozine associate: NAQD
The Algerian journal of social criticism "NAQD" is now an associate of Eurozine. Published annually in French and Arabic, articles focus on key issues affecting the societies of Algeria, Maghreb and elsewhere in the Arabic-speaking world. [more]
Literary perspectives: Denmark
The contemporary literary reservation
Committed, critical writing in Denmark is emerging from its sheltered existence in a literary reservation, in doing so collapsing the boundaries between the literary field and the broader public sphere, writes Andreas Harbsmeier. [Danish version added] [more]
The crisis, the economists and Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize
In Elinor Ostrom's work, economic science and political philosophy meet. Her receipt of the Nobel Prize is recognition of the possibility for fruitful dialogue between economics and other equally rigorous disciplines, writes Jérôme Sgard. [more]
Environmental injustice
Environmental justice halts at national boundaries, ignoring the correlation between environmental harm and other social factors. A cosmopolitan approach is required that considers the situation of individuals in cross-border contexts, argues Jonas Ebbesson. [more]
Guns, fire and ditches
A report from Tatárszentgyörgy on the Roma killings
Conversations with villagers of Tatárszentgyörgy, Hungary, the scene of anti-Roma violence in February 2009. An insight into the spiral of crime and resentment in small communities facing increasing competition for employment and education. [more]
Gorbachev's go-ahead
András Schweitzer in conversation with Mark Kramer
With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to accuse the West of reluctance in '89. Yet concerns about a violent crackdown by Moscow were understandable, if ultimately unfounded. [more]
Extra-parliamentary opposition 2.0
"Blätter" declares a revolution of the everyday; "Lettre Internationale" (Denmark) writes the history of global movements after '89; "Lettera Internazionale" sees a parallel reality outlive its origins; "The Hungarian Quarterly" asks whether the dog was wagged in central Europe; "Osteuropa" charts the post-communist curve; "Arena" wrangles over the burka and the niqab in Sweden; "Reset" seeks to redress Italy's political gender imbalance; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) is impressed by Michele Bachelet, Chile's first female president; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Oslo) does not expect a Copenhagen deal; "Arche" explores the common history of Belarus and Lithuania; and "A Prior" reinvents Flaubert as the cognitive proletariat's prophet of doom. [more]
The burden of freedom
Polish culture 1989-1999
For Poland, the challenge of '89 lay in combining the formerly separate cultural spheres of dissidence, exile and official policy. When censorship fell away, a cultural "autism" that had developed in Poland during communism encountered a new opponent: the West. [more]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
Auschwitz and the Gulag are generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter. But they are only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come, writes historian Timothy Snyder. [Russian version added] [more]
Global justice and the renewal of critical theory
A dialogue with Nancy Fraser
The fall of communism sucked the energy out of social-egalitarian movements, argues Nancy Fraser. Yet it also brought renewals. In the era of globalization, the campaign for redistribution concentrates increasingly on inequalities between, rather than within, nations. [Swedish version added] [more]
Propaganda of inequality
Sarrazin, Sloterdijk and the new German coalition government
In a row over the integration of Germany's Turkish population, prominent intellectuals have supported an "elitist" position. All part of a campaign by the "neo-Nietzscheans" to create acceptance for a higher degree of inequality in society, writes Albrecht von Lucke. [more]
Are newspapers still relevant?
It is not the Internet that is responsible for the "crisis of the press", but subordination of journalism to the market, writes the political editor of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". For the first time since 1945, German journalism risks becoming trivialized. [English version added] [more]
The forgetting museum
It seems self-evident that commemoration averts recurrence of that which is being commemorated. Yet an obsession with memory blinds us to the abuses of memory and to the uses of forgetting. [Estonian version added] [more]
Why is there no US climate policy?
Climate policy in the US is negotiated exclusively in terms of domestic interests. Rick Piltz explains how the combination of political parochialism and the effects of Bush-era climate change denial are stalling the necessary decision-making. [German version added] [more]
Every day is Copenhagen
A breakthrough in international climate policy is still possible
Neither the industrialized nor the emerging countries are able to solve the climate problem by "going it alone". In Copenhagen, the EU needs to table a set of exacting reduction targets, without conditioning them on the willingness of others to follow suit. [more]
The Good Society Debate
Eurozine partner editors join a debate, co-initiated by "Soundings", on the possibility for a "new political narrative that combines sharp analysis of the shortcomings of the economies and societies we live in with an authentic and convincing vision for the future". [more]
Legacies of "Judeo-Bolshevism"
Scenes from post-communist Poland
For young Polish Jews, many of whom reappropriated their Jewish identity after 1989, the historical injury of the Holocaust is often complicated by their grandparents' participation in the communist project. Marci Shore's deeply personal interviews reveal above all this contradiction. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
Anti-communism in a post-communist country
How progressive tendencies become regressive
Whether irrational or calculated, anti-communism in the Czech Republic distracts from more pressing problems. The Czech communist party might be an anachronism, but to ostracize it only prolongs its existence. [Polish version added] [more]
Myths of neutrality
Ignoring the Holocaust in Sweden and Switzerland
In Sweden and Switzerland, complicity in the Holocaust was for a long time ignored. It was only as a result of foreign publicity that national myths of neutrality gave way to admissions of responsibility, writes Arne Ruth. [Polish version added] [more]
Battlefield Europe
Transnational commemoration and European identity
A pan-European memory cannot be reduced to the Holocaust and the Gulag alone, no matter how central these are, and must be able to compare memories without offsetting each against the other. On the "concentric circles" of European memory. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
The dissident generation, the European idea and transatlantic divergence
In the former satellite states, the legacy of '89 includes a hawkish Atlanticism that endures to the present, writes Christian Lequesne. The recent open letter to President Obama signed by Walesa, Havel and other luminaries speaks of a fading relationship. [Romanian version added] [more]
Tito between legend and thriller
A museum to Tito at his one-time summer residence glorifying the Yugoslav dictator is in stark contrast to a damning new biography, finds Slavenka Drakulic. Yet between the two extremes is an absence of objective history-writing in the former Yugoslavia. [Romanian version added] [more]
Holocaust: The ignored reality
Auschwitz and the Gulag are generally taken to be adequate or even final symbols of the evil of mass slaughter. But they are only the beginning of knowledge, a hint of the true reckoning with the past still to come, writes historian Timothy Snyder. [Russian version added] [more]
After the crisis, back to a Protestant ethic?
"After the financial crisis, back to a Protestant ethic?" Rather not, says Ralf Dahrendorf, but still: the reduced circumstances in which developed countries are finding themselves call for a return to a responsible, parsimonious capitalism. [Polish version added] [more]
Eurozine im:print
New series of print collections
"Eurozine im:print" is a new series of print collections, compiling Eurozine articles and essays around topics of special interest to a transnational debate. The first issue is now published: "Literary perspectives. The re-transnationalisation of literary criticism". [more]
And ultimately to forget
"Merkur" wonders what the hell the Internet is good for; "Esprit" says it's not the economy, stupid; "Dilema veche" sees the intellectual baby thrown out with the bathwater; "Kritika & Kontext" proclaims Spinoza the first great thinker of secularism; "NZ" knows how to overcome fear; "Res Publica Nowa" finds history in the here and now; "Vikerkaar" considers forgetting; "Samtiden" watches Germany go back to the Prussian future; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) contemplates the strange formula "6-1+1"; "Roots" reviews Macedonian literature between tradition and innovation; "Ord&Bild" expands the Latin American library; and "Sodobnost" remarks that it's not just the West that's westernistic. [more]
The standard mode of technology criticism
From argument 1 -- "What the hell is it good for?", to argument 9 -- new technologies reduce our ability to think, write and read, Kathrin Passig compiles cultural criticism's most frequent objections to new technologies. [more]
Enclave with open borders
Just before the first local elections in Kosovo since the declaration of independence in February 2008, Frederik Steiner visited two out of the three communities in Kosovo with a Serbian majority. [more]
Spinoza and philosophers today
Celebrated by Marxist philosophers in the 1960s as a pioneer of the concept of ideology, Spinoza is today of renewed interest in philosophy and neurophysiology. In a round-table interview, leading experts discuss the 17th-century thinker's relevance today. [more]
Meeting halfway
Recent Macedonian literature between tradition and innovation
Female Macedonian novelists are reversing the male dominance of the genre, writes Lidija Kapushevska-Drakulevska. In poetry, meanwhile, "a completely individualized form of expression" has developed, and it is here that the biggest innovations are being made. [more]
In God's name
A new UN proposal condemning "defamation of religion" cements oppressive governments' control of free speech while still sounding compatible with the advanced multiculturalism of liberal democracies, writes Miklós Haraszti. [Romanian version added] [more]
Neurocapitalism
The fear of depression, dementia and attention deficit disorder legitimizes the boom in neuro-psychotropic drugs. In a performance-driven society that confronts the self with its own shortcomings, neuroscience serves an expanding market. [English version added] [more]
In praise of hybridity
Cultural globalization is not the transplantation of western ideas and technologies across the planet, but the adaptation of these according to local requirements, writes Ales Debeljak. Hybridity, the product of a longue durée, is at the heart of the western paradigm. [more]
Wandering western women
"It had not occurred to me that I was violating rigid custom in appearing in a hat and gauze veil rather than a 'chadar' and face cloth." Isabella L. Bird and Louisa Jebb both travelled to the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century. Hannah Adcock compares their journals. [more]
Nuclear Bonapartism
"Wespennest" refuses to mellow with age; "Blätter" supports a culture flat-rate for the Internet; "New Humanist" rallies for the new atheists; "RiLi" dares to criticize the French nuclear state; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Oslo) says West Germans would rather have been reunited with Tuscany; "Kulturos barai" calls for a new resurgence, twenty years after '89; "Springerin" turns, turns, turns; "Host" portrays the typical Czech writer; and "Merkur" doesn't feel the need to be avant-garde. [more]
If you want to change the world, you must change the economy
"Every day of crisis is a day of learning, a window of opportunity, but this window will get smaller and smaller unless rapid and fundamental changes take place in the economy." 95 year-old political economist Kurt Rothschild in interview with "Wespennest". [more]
Beyond belief
The "new believers" have been on the counter-attack in the God Debate. "While we need to take seriously the claim that scientific explanations are incomplete," rallies Richard Norman, "alternatives must still meet the same standards for what counts as a good explanation". [more]
Group texts
A critical look at edited collections and research groups
The trend in academic publishing away from the peer review journal towards the conference reader and the exhibition catalogue has brought a drop in editorial standards, writes art historian Wolffgang Kemp. [more]
The future of knowledge
Google Books, Open Access and the information society of tomorrow
The Bibliothčque National de France is the latest library to strike a deal with Google Books. Despite what amounts to Google's worldwide monopoly on information, the EU continues to support such private-public partnerships. Time for alternative structures, writes Daniel Leisegang. [more]
International conference: Central European Forum
Bratislava, 17 and 18 November 2009
The Central European Forum, an international conference open to the public, will take place in Bratislava on 17 and 18 November 2009. Participants include Slavenka Drakulic, Vaclav Havel, György Konrád, Ivan Krastev, Adam Michnik, Martin Simecka and Timothy Snyder. [more]
Bodies without Bodhis
The shot putter is the origin of movement while the surfer enters a movement that already exists. For Deleuze, therein lies the difference between traditional and new sports. Karl Palmĺs rides this wave of thought towards a philosophy of surfing. [more]
From spring to autumn
The Estonian media post-independence
The Estonian media has disappointed hopes that it would be a model of its kind in the post-Soviet space. Estonia's size means personal sympathies override political views, while a tiny market makes advertising sales paramount. [more]
From hegemony to diversity
A new look at the migration society
The image of "inadaptable" immigrants who retreat into parallel worlds where they reproduce their "culture of origin" permeates academic discourse on migration. Immigrants' everyday reality is thereby overlooked, writes Erol Yildiz. [more]
Literary perspectives: The Netherlands
"Profound Holland" and the new Dutch
While the work of novelists Jan Siebelink and Arnon Grunberg reflect the new need for security in the Netherlands, a parallel strand of contemporary Dutch literature sidesteps such concerns: writers with migrant backgrounds are introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire. [Czech version added] [more]
Plan B on climate: National deals
There is near universal consensus that a multilateral treaty is the only way to reduce global carbon emissions. Yet experience shows that deals focused on top-down mechanics fail. Unilateral action based on national self-interest is the only hope [more]
A reluctant and fearful West
1989 and its international context
Documents recently released from the Hungarian archives reveal how western leaders, without exception, deferred to the Soviet Union in 1989. The threat of regional chaos meant overwhelming support for preserving the status quo as events unfolded. [more]
Dilemma 89: Focal point
1989 represents not only an historic moment of liberation, but also a political and social dilemma for the present day. Eurozine compiles articles published by Eurozine partner journals over the course of the twentieth anniversary year. [more]
Literatur im Herbst: Dilemma 89
"Dilemma 89" is the topic of this year's "Literatur im Herbst", hosted by the Alte Schmiede in cooperation with "Wespennest" from 6 to 8 November in Vienna. Speakers include Herta Müller, Olga Tokarczuk, Jáchym Topol, Richard Wagner and Daniela Dahn. [more]
Do the obvious
As the US economy continues to worsen, everyone including the President is holding their breath. Everyone except the veteran economist Paul Volcker, that is. George Blecher says he might be on to something. [more]
History thieves
Thirty years after leaving Russia for Israel, an "unheimliche" experience in Berlin led Zinovy Zinik to investigate the chequered past of his Russian-born grandfather. An autobiographical exploration of "assumed identity" in twentieth-century Jewish experience. [Lithuanian version added] [more]
Literary perspectives: Hungary
Mastering history through narrative?
Reads the newest Hungarian novels, Gábor Csordás that all share a concern with narrative, holding out to the reader the hope of mastering history. [Czech version added] [more]
Shaken not toppled
"Mittelweg 36" cheers the libero of the '68 movement; "Osteuropa" sees Gagarin enter Putin's forcefield; "Polar" squints into the future of democracy; "Arena" counters general opinion on the Rwanda genocide; "Edinburgh Review" hears why Iraqi journalism is struggling; "dérive" exposes institutional racism in urbanism; "Revista Crítica" seeks pockets of solidarity in capitalism; and "Res Publica Nowa" asks "Are we East or West?" [more]
Columbus of the cosmos
The Yuri Gagarin cult
After a short period spent in ideological weightlessness, Yuri Gagarin succeeded in re-entering the post-communist world, writes historian Klaus Gestwa. Today, the cosmonaut cult is used for the patriotic re-interpretation of Soviet history. [more]
Picture puzzle
Hans Magnus Enzensberger in 1968
"His role was not that of a spokesman, but rather of a mentor, an influential prompter, later a critic, yet also a sometime activist." Wolfgang Kraushaar on Enzenberger's position as "libero" of the German '68 movement. [more]
No output without input
An inspection of our democracy
Political legitimacy is obtained from the efficiency of policies, rather than their origin in democratic participation. Yet how can a politics of good governance know whether the results of its policies are good if it sets its goals in advance? [more]
"Solving the riddle of all constitutions"
The notion of "post-democracy" has wide currency. Yet is democracy really in decline, or are there signs of its return as an issue of social concern? Members of the "new Frankfurt School" talk to "Polar" editor Peter Siller. [more]
Public debate: Memory and European citizenship
"To forget is to try not to remember what I already know", said Danuta Glondys at the second "Europe talks to Europe" debate. Arne Ruth instead pleaded for remembering and showed how cross-border journalism can help build universality into the European project. [more]
Climate politics: Always only good on paper?
Introduction
Social agreement about the necessity of radical ecological change may be unprecedented, yet rhetoric and reality go their separate ways. Are multilateral climate deals inherently ineffective? Is the cap-and-trade approach being pursued at the expense of fairer alternatives? Is the declaration of commitment to sustainability an exercise in societal self-delusion? A Eurozine focal point debates the politics of global warming. [more]
The climate of history: Four theses
Freedom has been the most important motif of accounts of human history since the Enlightenment. Yet, as the climate reaches "tipping point", an awareness is only now emerging of the geological agency human beings gained through processes linked to their acquisition of freedom. [more]
Ecofeminism
Towards a fruitful dialogue between feminism and ecology
A survey of the epistemological, moral and social forms of the ecofeminist critique, drawing conclusions about the association between reductionist science and paternalist capitalism. Suggestions for a relationship with the natural world beyond the anthropocentric. [more]
Ecological materialism
How nature beomes political
The ecological reform of the global economy must bring on board those with no interest in preserving nature per se. The more "nature-oriented" a demand is, the less likely it is to be realized and the more catastrophic the consequences will be. [English version added] [more]
Locked into the politics of unsustainability
Dominant discourses of sustainability remain firmly within the growth paradigm, reflecting the exhaustion of the critique of consumer capitalism. Any genuine turn towards sustainability requires the redefinition of rights and freedoms widely held to be sacrosanct. [more]
Why is there no US climate policy?
Climate policy in the US is negotiated exclusively in terms of domestic interests. Rick Piltz explains how the combination of political parochialism and the effects of Bush-era climate change denial are stalling the necessary decision-making. [German version added] [more]
Green turnaround or businesss as usual?
EU climate policy in the new member-states
The economies of central eastern Europe have remained unchanged in at least one respect: their high level of energy wastage. Add to that the explosion of car-use in the region, and eastern central Europe becomes the EU's major obstacle to reaching its emissions targets for 2020. [more]
Climate change CO2onialism: What impacts for the South?
Cap-and-trade is a system that interferes with development patterns in the South to offset carbon emissions resulting from "business as usual" in the North. Politics should be seeking alternatives to the trading model, such as legally binding targets on renewable energy. [more]
Going nowhere, fast
The simulated revolution of sustainability
The plea for sustainability and change is followed by insufficient action, and indicators such as the "ecological footprint" point in the wrong direction. Our political systems are not yet able to meet the greatest challenge of the present: the shift from fossil to post-fossil fuel. [more]
Climate Change: Threatening security, undermining development
Global warming, if left unchecked, will undermine development, overtax social capacities and endanger international stability. Progressive policy must focus on "managing the unavoidable" and "avoiding the unmanageable". [more]
Stolen history (and other projects)
Together with A Prior Magazine the Eurozine Gallery presents four projects by Daniel Knorr. This, writes curator and critic Dieter Roelstraete, is an art "wholly woven into the bodily fabric of everyday life, of a relentless and vital physicality". [more]
On the lack thereof
Daniel Knorr's bare necessities
Daniel Knorr's work can described as a conceptually inflicted practice of very immateraial ideas, writes Dieter Roelstraete. "His is an art predicated on the immediate experience of the irreducible materiality of all thought, on the crafty mining of those ideas that lie dormant in matter, clutter, stuff." [more]
The false repentance of Biljana Plavsic
Bosnian Serb war criminal Biljana Plavsic was in October released from a Swedish prison after serving two thirds of an 11-year sentence. Slavenka Drakulic notes that Plavsic's "confession" in The Hague was nothing but a staged farce. [more]
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