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Articles published in Eurozine
Anything but ordinary
"That Breugel saw people as significant in themselves -- unexplained and various and simply being -- was what rang home." Janice Galloway reveals her lifelong fascination with the 16th century Flemish painter, whose love of the "ordinary", she believes, chimes with the Scottish character. [more]
Schopenhauer and the sound of sirens
Caught on a bus in rush-hour Tokyo, Anthony Head wonders whether Schopenhauer was right that immunity to noise is proof of idiocy. Could the impassive facades of his fellow travellers be concealing something more spiritual? [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. [Hungarian version added] [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]
Homecoming 2009
"Whether you're a Scot, of Scottish descent, or simply love Scotland", Homecoming 2009 is for you. Yet scotophiles should make no mistake: the reinvented Highland culture that emerged in the 19th century was but a "tame accessory to British unionism". [more]
Turkish language reform: The Scottish connection
The first advocate of a Turkish language reform was a Scotsman, writes Christopher Ferrard. At a time when anti-Ottoman bigotry abounded, Elias John Wilkinson Gibb (1857-1900) was a sympathetic interpreter of Islam to the Christian West. [more]
The city at the empire's edge
Since 9/11, violence in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous region of China has been portrayed by the authorities as the work of Islamist separatists. Nick Holdstock reports on a more nuanced reality of unemployment, religious repression, and the wish for independence. [more]
Cuban cinema in 1990
Discovering a feminist discourse within the male gaze
After thirty years of revolutionary cinema, complex gender issues are still pending. Reversing gender roles is not progressive in feminist terms. It only perpetuates the roles designed in patriarchal society, writes Brígida Pastor in her analysis of Cuban cinema in the 1990s. [more]
A submerged population
Ray Lawrence's film "Jindabyne", an adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver, addresses sexual politics and latent racism embedded in contemporary Australian culture, writes Will Brady. [more]
The bread and meat of life
Since Poland's accession to the EU, around 200 000 Polish workers are registered in the UK, with as many again estimated to be employed in the shadow economy. One reason for their choice may be that Poles are attracted to societies in which an established meritocracy operates. Yet, as is the case in Edinburgh, Polish immigration is also reviving community values. [more]
Imminent ruin and desperate remedy
Calcutta and its fragments
Calcutta's longstanding communist government is ingratiating the city to Western investors. By evicting squatters and street vendors from public spaces in the name of sanitation and Western norms, it is robbing Calcutta of its vital tradition of urban commons. [more]
Weeds and wild flowers
Political tourism in west Belfast
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, journalists would jump into taxis and ask to be taken to the fighting. Now it's political tourists eager for the scenes of past battles. But are taxi drivers qualified to be their guides? [more]
Miss Plumb
"Female missionaries have largely failed to capture the interest of historians. Their modesty has been mistaken for insignificance, their evangelizing for an embarrassing footnote in the story of empire." On the anything but dull life of Isabella Plumb, missionary in India 1882-1925. [more]
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