The lithium reserves in northern Argentina are some of the largest in the world. Here lies the coveted ‘white gold’ that powers the batteries required for the EU energy transition. But the intensive extraction leaves behind domestic conflict and resource competition.
Articles
Incredibly independent
Positionen 3/2023
How can cultural journalism remain independent in an increasingly bleak economic environment? On the Nordic model of public funding for journals and what stops it from being exported; and why art and music criticism in Germany is being compromised by journals’ exclusive reliance on advertising.
For the preservation of critique
Social democratic journals policy in Scandinavia
State funding for cultural journals in the Scandinavian countries is based on the belief that plurality of opinion is essential. Emerging in the ’60s in response to media concentration in small language spaces, the ‘Nordic model’ can be transferred to settings where reservations about state interference in the media leave journals without a lifeline.
EU enlargement is increasingly connected to the question of Russian influence in the Western Balkans. But while strong cultural ties translate into popular support for Russia, particularly in Serbia, actual Russian involvement is limited. Instead, local elites mobilise pro-Russian sentiments for political gain.
Recommended topics
Three years after the mass anti-regime protests in Belarus, the pro-Russian state continues to brutally repress all expressions of national identity. But people have not forgotten their experiences in 2020 and believe that Belarus’s long history of foreign rule is nearing its end.
Resignation towards the war in Ukraine ignores not only the ongoing atrocities but also their implications for underlying European narratives. Now is the moment to rethink political orthodoxies. Part of the series ‘Lessons of war: The rebirth of Europe revisited’.
For millions of children in Ukraine, many of whom have been displaced, war has brought trauma that will shape the rest of their lives. Yet children also surprise and encourage adults with imaginative ways of coping. For this father, they are the central heroes of a story of life in wartime.
Power over principle
Turkey’s skin-deep opposition
Power to the powerful, contempt for the weak: in replicating this rule of Turkish politics, the opposition CHP differs in no way from Erdoğan’s AKP. Indeed, in persecuting all critics of the Turkish state, the Islamists are simply re-enacting the republican legacy.
Eurozine review
Copy-cat machos
Mittelweg 36 3–4/2023
On the rise of strongmen politicians (and a few strong women): why they are variations on a global theme. Also: Putin’s prospects after possible defeat; Xi’s reasons for keeping out; and Le Pen’s calculations on how to win.
Incredibly independent
Positionen 3/2023
How can cultural journalism remain independent in an increasingly bleak economic environment? On the Nordic model of public funding for journals and what stops it from being exported; and why art and music criticism in Germany is being compromised by journals’ exclusive reliance on advertising.
No escape
Glänta 1/2023
On aesthetics, power and conflict: how war makes art seem useless while kindling one’s longing to escape; on a natural disaster made worse by despotism; reflections on the hidden state; mercenaries.
Focal points
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine poses the greatest challenge to Europe’s self-understanding since World War II. Contributors to the new series ‘Lessons of war’ take on this challenge and reflect on the possibility of a ‘Rebirth of Europe’.
The ‘great democratic revolution’ of modern times, as Tocqueville once called it, appears to be spluttering to a halt. Some observers, recalling the disasters of the 1920s and 30s, are suggesting that an anti-democratic counterrevolution on a global scale has begun. But is the writing really on the wall? Or does declinism prevent us from recognizing moments of democratic renewal?
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
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.
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.