Can democracies deal with climate change?

Trust in the ability of political elites to deal with the eco-social consequences of climate change is evaporating. Reaching eco-political targets calls for more participation of citizens as active architects of their society, write Claus Leggewie and Harald Welzer. [more]

The populist moment

Unlike the extremist parties of the 1930s, the new populist movements do not aim to abolish democracy: quite the opposite, writes Ivan Krastev. What we are witnessing is a conflict between elites suspicious of democracy and increasingly illiberal publics. [Slovak version added] [more]

An amorphous society

Lithuania in the era of high post-communism

"High post-communism" in eastern Europe is defined by efforts to control collective memory, political discourse dominated by abstract concepts, and the cult of entertainment -- a view from Lithuania. [Slovak version added] [more]

Literary perspectives: Sweden

Beyond crime fiction, handbags and designer suits

Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled, among things, on authors' love lives and penchant for designer handbags. Yet there is more out there if one looks: Hans Koppel's hatchet job on suburban manners, for example, or Magnus Hedlund's explorations of human perception. [German version added] [more]

The creativity fix

In Richard Florida's "creative city", the creative class dissolves the classical division between the productive bourgeoisie and the bohemian. But creativity strategies have been crafted to co-exist with urban socio-economic problems, not to solve them. [German version added] [more]

The malady of infinite aspiration

"Esprit" watches market prophecies self-fulfil; "Blätter" calls off the bets in the financial casino; "Mute" refutes the received wisdom about inflation; "Dilema veche" notes how the financial crisis is reimposing the East-West divide; "New Humanist" turns to Durkheim to make sense of the depression; "Wespennest" doesn't give in to resignation; "Le Monde diplomatique" (Berlin) enters the belly of the piggy bank; "Vikerkaar" heeds cultures' anthropophagic appeal; "Dialogi" warns of a cultural wasteland in Maribor; and "Kritika & Kontext" returns a lost son to Bratislava. [more]

Something to declare

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has been criticized from all sides since its inception sixty years ago. Conor Gearty calls for a fresh definition of this most humanist value. [more]

The red carpet

Communication and drug terrorism in Mexico

Drug trafficking is "a highly productive industry" in Mexico, writes Juan Villoro. Corruption, a severe lack of freedom of expression, and excessive violence characterize the country as it is today. [more]

From subprime to slump?

This year the world has seen the power of money to socialize the costs of capitalist crisis, but are prices going to go on rising to Weimar-like levels? Jon Amsden explores the origins of the crisis and discerns something worse than inflation on the horizon. [more]

Nowadays

On resignation

Attention has to be paid to the individual victims of a small minority in pursuit of limitless and obscene wealth and power, writes Giuliano Mesa. Resignation in the face of the dominance of economic logic must be resisted! [more]

Zero confidence

Banks collapsing, homes repossessed, jobs disappearing... no wonder the world is in despair. Steven Lukes turns to Emile Durkheim to make sense of the real depression. Is there a remedy for "the malady of infinite aspiration"? [more]

Panic in the financial casino

Self-regulation by the market has turned out to be an illusion: what's needed now is more governmental regulation of financial markets along with caps on managerial salaries, writes Heiner Flassbeck. [more]

Fragile new Europe

Despite talk of a "unified European plan" to combat recession, the motto among EU member states seems to be "each to his own". The financial crisis is reimposing the divide between eastern and western Europe, writes Mircea Vasilescu. [more]

Glänta supports the financial sector

The financial crisis has made it clear how vital, yet how fragile, capitalism is. In solidarity, Glänta magazine would like to share its cultural capital. Sponsorship of the financial sector is not an act of charity! [more]

Made in Bulgaria

The national as advertising repertoire

In Bulgarian political discourse, to talk of the nation means to talk non-politically. Advertising makes visible this depoliticization of the national. [more]

The re-transnationalization of literary criticism

Critical discussion of foreign literature serves as a source of information not only for readers but also for the "trade". When that discussion disappears or becomes one-sided, this has consequences for the literary institution as a whole. [Danish version added] [more]

Literary perspectives: Slovenia

A hollowed-out generation

Slovenian novelists are developing original responses to the experience of post-communist society, writes Ales Steger. While male novelists take a hyper-realist, social-critical approach, their female counterparts are creating fictions only loosely connected to contemporary time and space. [Lithuanian version added] [more]

Two stories

Kundera and the conclusion of the Velvet Revolution

The reaction to the Kundera allegations in the Czech Republic has largely been one of doubt rather than blame. Miroslav Balastík wonders whether the incident signifies the end of a phase of post-communism in the Czech Republic. [more]

Seeds of spring

A rebellion against censorship

When Ivan Klima and fellow writers spoke out against censorship in Czechoslovakia at the 1967 Writers' Congress, the literary weekly "Literární noviny" was taken out of the hands of the writers union and its editorial board dismissed. Yet the seed was sown for the Prague Spring of 1968. [more]

Through the eyes of a zombie

Europe, those who are excluded and the event of being together

Krystian Woznicki notes that art, in times of globalization, faces the question of the representability of community -- or rather, its unrepresentability. The latter includes the community of the excluded. [more]

Archipelago Europe

Instead of two homogeneous European regions -- "the East" and "the West" -- there are now fragments, enclaves, and islands. From Baden-Baden to Bucharest, Majorca to Moscow, Karl Schlögel experiences Europe as a series of spaces both distinct and connected. [French version added] [more]

Mistaken identity

Multiculturalist advocacy of collective rights opens the door for religious law to take precedence over civil law, argues Kenan Malik. Partly responsible is the idea that people are bearers of a particular culture as opposed to social and transformative beings. [German version added] [more]

Cities for living

Roger Scruton bemoans the "moral disaster" of cities in which "no one wishes to live, where public spaces are vandalized and private spaces boarded up". He lays the blame at the door of modern architecture à la Le Corbusier or Walter Gropius. Yet there is hope: the "New Urbanism" of Léon Krier. [more]

Neither man nor woman nor dog nor cat

"Samtiden" questions the concept of female literature; "Arche" takes stock after the elections in Belarus; "Springerin" unveils the veil; "Merkur" detects an urban moral disaster; "Res Publica Nowa" musters the phantoms of a non-existing metropolis; "FA-art" sees literature caught between commitment and autonomy; "Mittelweg 36" re-reads the "good German" W.G. Sebald; "Revolver Revue" points out the difference between the camera and the pen; "Revista Crítica" asks why young people have a problem with politics; and "Glänta" writes the encyclopaedia of the future. [more]

We need to broaden our political options

Interview with Michael Hardt

"We need alternatives to the thought that our only options are private or public ownership." Michael Hardt talks at the European Social Forum about his forthcoming collaboration with Antonio Negri, Common Wealth. [more]

Haider, the undetected Austrofascist

Jörg Haider was on the brink of a political comeback when he died in a car crash in October. Throughout his career, Haider's critics in Austria made a disastrous mistake, writes Robert Menasse. They suspected him of fascism, yet didn't understand the nature of it. [more]

The society of the query and the Googlization of our lives

A tribute to Joseph Weizenbaum

"There is only one way to turn signals into information, through interpretation", wrote the computer critic Joseph Weizenbaum. As Google's hegemony over online content increases, argues Geert Lovink, we should stop searching and start questioning. [Swedish version added] [more]

The art of not becoming accustomed to anything

Precarious employment in flexible capitalism

The vast reserve army of workers in precarious employment are the avant-garde of post-Fordism, constantly opening up new avenues for self-exploitation. [Swedish version added] [more]

Why has manga become a global cultural product?

In the West, manga has become a cultural accompaniment to economic globalization. No mere side-effect of Japan's economic power, writes Jean-Marie Bouissou, manga is ideally suited to the cultural obsessions of the early twenty-first century. [more]

What does it mean, disclosure?

While there are many differences between the Kundera case and those of other eastern European intellectuals revealed as having been informers, its disclosure has followed the usual pattern. Each case must be evaluated on an individual basis, cautions György Dalos. [more]