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Articles published in Eurozine
Repercussions
Historical perspectives on the Arab revolutions
The discontent fuelling the Arab revolutions has its roots in a western politics of divide and rule, argues Gérard Khoury. Will democratically elected Arab leaders break with the past, or will new repressive regimes emerge sustained by western complicity? [more]
Greece: The history behind the collapse
Greece's economic crisis has its roots in a political pact dating back to the foundation of the modern state, writes Georges Prévélakis. The threat posed to Europe by the Greek breakdown is less contagion than a wave of anti-western feeling that could exacerbate geopolitical instabilities. [more]
Responsibility for Europe: A relative concept
On French-German tensions during the euro crisis
French-German leadership during the crisis has been fraught with tension. It's not so much that Germany is abandoning its responsibilities, more a case of differences in political culture. While Germany may seem dilatory, French resolve forfeits democratic deliberation. [more]
Is Germany's future still European?
An interview with Jan-Werner Müller
Germany's politicians lack deep European convictions yet are susceptible to calls for a more strident role in Europe; and while the mainstream is unlikely to give up what it sees as the recipe for German success, "constitutional patriotism" could allow for greater Europeanization. [more]
To anticipate change, return to work
An interview with Jean-Paul Bouchet and Patrick Pierron
Employees no longer understand the changes taking place in companies or know where they stand in the chain of production. Compartmentalization and lack of involvement in decision-making are among the reasons for the rise in employee anxiety, argue two trade unionists. [more]
Tunisia: The founding era
Reporting from Tunisia, Antoine Garapon is struck by a sense of reversal: the revolutionary sprit has crossed the Mediterranean. Today, he writes, it is the Tunisians who have a lesson to teach us, one that we once shared but that has faded from memory: a lesson in politics. [more]
The renaissance of democratic hope
European involvement in the the Arab revolutions needs to be led by society and not by governments, argues Pierre Hassner in interview. "Our role as intellectuals is to protest against authoritarian regimes and to contact and support those resisting them." [more]
Being able to kill and being able to die
Questions about military heroism
Soldiers die because other soldiers kill them; self-sacrificing heroes often have blood on their hands. Yet praise of soldiers has come to focus entirely on self-sacrifice, ignoring the warrior's function of killing others, writes Christophe Bouton. [more]
The coast, the final frontier
An interview with Paul Virilio
A space attractive as it is unstable, the coast testifies to transformations in our connection to place brought on by globalization, says Paul Virilio. A zone of flux and exchange, the seaside is also a place of uncertainty connected to new environmental risks. [more]
The conflict and the historian
Interview with Henry Laurens and Avi Shlaim
"The great power is more often the prisoner of its local allies than the other way round." Dialogue with two historians, one of Israel, the other of Palestine; reflections on the impact of history on society and the interaction between local and global powers. [more]
Ban the burqa?
The French burqa ban met with broad agreement: the parliament was near-unanimous, Left and Right were both enthusiastic and public support was massive. This despite the fact it violated every principle of good lawmaking, writes Canadian ethical philosopher Paul Doumouchel. [more]
A counterproductive thinker?
Ivan Illich argued that beyond a certain threshold, industrial production reduces human freedom. Today, Illich's pessimism seems in some respects unwarranted, writes Denis Clerc. On the other hand, counterproductivity has become a central concept in contemporary economic thinking. [more]
Will the book enter the digital age?
An interview with Pascal Fouché
The digitization of the book has brought a new balance of power in the trade, with established publishers locked in struggle with the new digital distributors. Pascal Fouché discusses whether publishers are prepared for the dematerialization of the printed word. [more]
French universities: Outlook and resistance
An interview with Yves Lichtenberger
Opposition to the decentralization of the French university system culminated in protests by teaching staff in March 2009. Justified resentment at the top-down nature of the reforms combined with a resistance to change, argues Yves Lichtenberger. [more]
From identity crisis to full-blown conflict
The opposition to reforms at French universities
What began as a row over the French government plans for the revision of the status of researchers escalated in March 2009 into a prolonged and explosive dispute over Nicolas Sarkozy's attempt to overhaul France's poorly-funded public universities, writes Françoise Benhamou. [more]
Two tropisms
The crisis of social critique as seen from Paris and Frankfurt
There has long been a two-way influence between Frankfurt School critical theory and Parisian sociology. Nevertheless, specifically Franco-German misunderstandings exist over the nature of social critique and its political role, writes Danny Trom. [more]
Sarkozyism: The death of the Fifth Republic?
Where his precursors held themselves aloof, Sarkozy flings himself into the political fray. In expanding the bounds of what is conceivable for a French president, he has also tinkered with the balance of power. That could prove to be his downfall, writes Socialist politician Lucile Schmid. [more]
From abuse to usufruct
Environmentalism has introduced ideas of intergenerational equality, while economics has begun to quantify the social effects of activities overlooked in market prices. Signs of a return to a less deregulated way of looking at our relationship with things, writes Jean-Claude Monod. [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]
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]
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. [more]
The imaginary pirate of globalization
The terrorist, the hacker and the financier are the new pirates, taking advantage of the spatial revolution brought about by globalization. They force legal institutions to change their responses: universal jurisdiction turns every judge into a pirate of the law. [more]
Europe: Anomaly or necessity?
The governments of EU member-states blame Europe for the problems of the moment and lay claim to successes resulting from action at the European level. The result of this obsession with the nation? The EU is politically impotent on the international stage. [more]
Transposition or transformation?
Pioneering French politics website Rue89 attempts to bridge the gap between print and the Internet by encouraging contributions from experts and web users, but using journalists to direct and edit this participation. Editors Laurent Mauriac and Pascal Riché explain. [more]
Social Europe: A long march?
If social redistribution at European level should stand a chance, politicians must see beyond the purely national interests of their voters. Yet it is pointless to try to impose a European system for social protection until European citizens feel that they form part of the same community. [more]
Open letter on the public good and the role of generalist journals
The editors of "Esprit" write an open letter defending the role of generalist journals. When the academic world communicates only with specialists, and the "opinion forming" press provides only superficial analysis, generalist journals balance depth against accessibility. [more]
The instability of value
Financial markets, like politics and the media, lurch between confidence and crisis, boom and bust. Olivier Mongin argues that to understand the crisis of contemporary finance, we should be turning not to Smith or Marx, but Walras, the first to posit desire as the cause of value. [more]
Beyond transparency
Advocates of financial regulation see markets as sound in principle, merely distorted by concealed risks. However transparency is no guarantee against bubbles and crashes, writes André Orléan. It is the rationale for the universal interconnection of capital that needs to be disputed. [more]
National images of the past
The twentieth century and the "war of memories". An appeal by the International Memorial Society
If contradictions between national memories are recognized and understood, the historical awareness of each society is enriched. Eurozine republishes a call by the International Memorial Society for the creation of a platform upon which such a dialogue can be conducted. [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]
Nicolas Sarkozy, the laïcité and the religions
Nicolas Sarkozy's recent comments on religion have alarmed many. Yet, as Jean-Louis Schlegel demonstrates, they bear a continuity with his policy while still minister of the interior to establish an official Muslim representative body. [more]
A Western split within Christianity?
Benedict XVI's Regensburg speech in 2006 was directed less at Islam than at Protestantism, with its twofold spectres of sectarian utopia and consumer individualism. The real scandal was the way Benedict's anti-rationalism was warmly received by so many intellectuals. [more]
The EU: Neither God nor Caesar
How does the European Union handle the relationships between confessional faiths and the unified body that it is striving to bring about? Being inherently pluralistic, it is incumbent upon the EU to develop a new form of secularization. [more]
What is postcolonial thinking?
Postcolonial thinking developed in a transnational, eclectic vein from the very start, says theorist Achille Mbembe. This enabled it to combine the anti-imperialist tradition with the fledgling subaltern studies and a specific take on globalization. [more]
A history to be handed down
Interview with Lilian Thuram
The Caribbean-born French footballer Lilian Thuram talks about his longstanding interest in the history of slavery, about how sport can teach mutual respect, and why he still believes in the French model of integration. [more]
Nicolas Sarkozy, Gramsci reader
New power and the temptation of hegemony
Nicolas Sarkozy has professed admiration for the Gramscian notion of "cultural hegemony" -- political domination via domination of ideas. The difference is that Sarkozy seeks hegemony not over ideas so much as values. [more]
The city of Kinshasa as verbal architecture
Kinshasa, with its nine million inhabitants the second largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, epitomizes contemporary urban chaos. Given that Kinshasa's infrastructure is either non-existent or doomed to disappear, how can one grasp what holds the city together? [more]
From class struggle to place struggle
The local projects of Alberto Magnaghi and the urban renovation of Bernardo Secchi
The term "place struggle" serves to highlight the fact that, in post-industrial societies, conflicts are more and more related to the recovery of democratic space and polities. In a world where global technical flows devour conventional urban space, globalization must be tackled "bottom up". Magnaghi's and Secchi's Italian experiments anticipate this need. [more]
The politics of memory
Taboo and commemoration
While recent legislation in France ruled slavery to be a crime against humanity, the continuities of history and republicanism remain uninterrupted. [more]
Portobello Road
A London district in the "virtual" era
From immigrant district to faux-bohemian ghetto, the cultural strata that formed the unique identity of London's Portobello Road have been destroyed. [more]
Hungary, fifty years after the revolution
The great Hungarian socialist chronicler of eastern European totalitarianism writes on the revolution in the context of Hungarian history and of the power relations of international communism. [more]
Budapest in flames
A reportage from the barricades of Budapest, originally submitted to Esprit in 1956. [more]
Security: Paradigm of a disenchanted world
What is gained and what is risked in transferring attention to the term "security" and seeing in political institutions nothing else than the response to diffuse uneasiness? [more]
Memories and histories: The new Spanish Civil War
The pact of silence that has existed in Spain over the Civil War and Franco era is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. A boom in publications on the subject seems to bear out Manuel Azaña's comment that "burying the dead is a Spanish national pastime". [more]
Happy accidents
Deliberation and online exposure to opposing views
Beyond information and opinion sharing, does the Internet facilitate exposure to views we do not share? Does it meet this minimal condition for genuine democratic deliberation and participation? [more]
Framing an Internet network architecture
Political interference, online criminality, hacking, and economic security provide arguments in favour of increased supervision of the Internet. Are the insights that originally made the Internet so dynamic still valid when it becomes a basic infrastructure for the enrichment and sovereignty of nations? [more]
Handwritten correspondence to mental exercise by email
Until halfway through the last century, scientists' handwritten correspondence prepared the ground for the publication of a scientific work. This stage has shifted to the international conference, organized via email. What will this mean for archivists of the future? [more]
Agreements and disagreements with historians
Paul Ricoeur's debate with historians echoes in contemporary discussions about conflicting memories, minority issues, and the democratic struggle over past crimes in Europe. [more]
New powers, new menaces
A discussion
Europe has been sidelined by Asia's ascendance on the international scene and new responses by the US to terrorism. Moreover, Europe has failed to recognize the hierarchy of the terrorist menace and to respond effectively. [more]
November nights 2005: The geography of violence
A round table discussion
Can the riots in the French suburbs be understood as an attempt to force solidarity from the middle classes? On the causes and effects of French suburban unrest. [more]
The question of tolerance in Islamic societies
Today's Muslim societies must consider afresh the question of tolerance, and ask why they find themselves mired in indecision and resentment, says Abdesselam Cheddadi. [more]
The presence of African literature
The evolution of literary criticism, publishing, and readership
Africa’s growing role in western European culture is reflected in the increasing interest in its literature. Soon Kourouma will be shelved between Kafka and Kundera. [more]
Leave us alone!
"If anyone holds us back, makes it impossible for us to move forward, it must be Europe, as has been the case ever since slavery." An oral polemic. [more]
The legislation of 1905
Should France's laws from 1905 regulating laïcité be reformed after a century of changes in the religious composition of French society? [more]
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