The rush to find a COVID-19 vaccine has resulted in myriad products rather than medical strategies. In the West, mostly private labs are behind what has become a precious commodity. How did public health and money become contractually tied to privately owned medicine?
Russian journal ‘New Literary Observer’ focuses on the utopianism of the Soviet avantgarde: why ’20s architecture remained on paper; on urbanist versus de-urbanist futures; and how memorials constructed memory in real time.
Russia’s penal system has not been reformed since the late-Stalinist period and is essentially managed by the FSB. Alexei Navalny will be sent to one of the many correction colonies that serve as prisons. Conditions in these deeply backward institutions are atrocious, says Olga Romanova, founder of the NGO Russia Behind Bars.
Carnival is a time of cultural exuberance. In the Low Countries, however, the masquerade has become a refuge for dominant groups to caricature the heritage and bodies of others. Where does this propensity come from? And can it be changed?
What causes the stark generational difference in people’s understanding of Soviet times? Is it only personal nostalgia, or maybe another set of expectations? Why didn’t the lifting of the Iron Curtain bring down the wall between East and West? Kinga Anna Gajda examines the perspectives offered in the Eurozine anthology ‘The Legacy of Division. East and West after 1989’.
Radical Islamism benefits from the silence of moderate Muslims who see no reason why their faith implies a responsibility to condemn its violence. But Islamism also stands to gain from the blurring of boundaries between genuine Islamophobia and criticism of Islam where it departs from democratic norms.
Yet another independent outlet is slain in Hungary: Klubrádió just lost its broadcast license, resuming a decade-long campaign to silence the channel. Journalists march on, hoping for a lengthy legal battle to do them justice in the end. They have accommodated pressure, but their defiance comes at a high price.
Germany was quick to claim the German-Turkish vaccine developers of Pfizer/BioNTech as proof of its open society. But their success is more an exception than a rule. Rather than congratulate itself, Germany needs to confront how it abandoned the migrants it once invited.
In ‘Krytyka’ (Ukraine), Mykola Riabchuk explains why Kundera’s concept of Central Europe was about excluding anything east of Prague – and why recent developments have proven it redundant. Also: the literature of the Maidan and its folkloric origins; and Mykola Khvylovy’s Soviet orientalism.
In ‘New Humanist’ (UK): the colonial roots of Australian anti-environmentalism; the singularity myth and the limitations of the fascism debate; and where Christopher Hitchens’s disciples have ended up.
‘Czas Kultury’ looks at Poland’s constitutional crisis and anti-European drift: why liberals need to do more to communicate rule of law; how the politicization of the judiciary destabilizes society; and why democratic countries need creative challenge.
The focal point presents the findings of the project ‘Eurasia in Global Dialogue’ being carried out at the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM). The focal point is an extension of the earlier focal point, ‘Russia in Global Dialogue’ that ran in Eurozine and at the IWM from 2012–2018.
Like sustenance and sex, society can’t be reproduced without shelter. That is why today’s housing crisis is so central. Contributions to this focal point look at both the winners and the losers of the crisis: the people profiting from the financialization of housing and those reimagining the right to the city.
Is the term ‘fascism’ applicable to an authoritarian politician like Trump? Does the label ‘anti-fascist’ gloss over crucial controversies surrounding the term? And is Weimar a useful comparison when thinking about anti-democratic tendencies in the US, in the EU and globally? A new focal point in collaboration with Public Seminar.
Cultural journals have played a crucial role in the formation of the public spheres in Europe and beyond. Looking at their history helps understand where they are headed. A Eurozine focal point in collaboration with the Working Group on Periodicals Research.
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.
