Eurozine Editorial

If we define culture as a set of values and practices around which communities identify and cohere, then few things are more cultural than food. Where else is the narcissism of small differences greater than in matters gastronomic?

Returning champions and the future of Europe: our recap of this year and its most popular articles in Eurozine.

As the end of abundance becomes an everyday experience in Europe, we are thinking more closely about how our food reaches the table.

In this war, any standards of bellum justum are not worth the paper they are written on. More violence lies ahead, yet escalation is essentially a political choice.

Despite divisive nationalist politics, there are those who manage to overcome the odds, forming meaningful acts of solidarity. Eurozine’s new focal point ‘The world in pieces’ looks critically at what divides, tackling the complexities of destablized identity.

The Eurozine series ‘The writing on the wall’ provides insights from analysts in Europe’s east into the political situation in their countries, over a year into Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

Whether defending human rights on an international stage, checking facts from the frontline, processing traumatic experiences over a lifetime, or even questioning the language you have spoken since childhood – all matter in the collective fight for justice.

Two new articles in Eurozine’s series on democracies in the east of Europe focus on countries particularly susceptible to Russian influence: Serbia and Moldova.

On the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, European memory politics is once again drawn up to the surface. This Eurozine topical brings understanding to the populist treatment of WWII responsibility, and the consequences of a fragmented memory.

Given the amount of concerns we currently face, it can sometimes feel overwhelming to address the most pertinent issue that should be otherwise impossible to avoid. So how can ecological needs take their rightful place in relation to other human preoccupations?

Death by stalemate: how terminal splits down the middle of electorates favour authoritarian interference; why democratising the ‘biosphere’ is not about conservationism; and François Fejtő’s thought before and after communism.

Ever since the French Revolution, all modern regimes that have claimed to be democracies have rested on some form of people power. Can we really be so sure of the principle that divides the democratic ‘us’ from populist ‘them’?

One year on from the escalation of Russia’s invasion and there’s no sign of conflict resolution in Ukraine. While controversy abounds over political negotiations, constructive discussions about bearing witness to war and what of Ukraine’s cultural heritage should be preserved are forward thinking.

Is it possible to value time for oneself when barely able to make ends meet? Can fears of energy crises be soothed by ideas of fairer distribution? And can knowledge of more-than-human intelligence ease Anthropocene insecurity and feelings of isolation?

Very little information is available to the outside world about the situation for Ukrainians who have remained in the regions occupied by Russia since 24 February 2022. A new article in Eurozine provides a rare insight on life behind the Russian lines.

What’s in a word, a term, a meme, a full-blown narrative? At a moment of Russian unilateral ceasefire for the Orthodox Christmas, considered by many Ukrainians as hypocritical, Eurozine authors take an investigative look at the rhetoric of war and Russia’s victim narrative.