Articles

Today, the neurosciences enjoy a similar prestige as psychoanalysis in the twentieth century, write Hennric Jokeit and Ewa Hess. Despite the immense costs for healthcare systems, the fear of depression, dementia and attention deficit disorder legitimises the boom in neuro-psychotropic drugs. In a performance-driven society that confronts the self with its own shortcomings, neuroscience serves an expanding market.

The division of the world into “the West and the rest” is a misrepresentation, writes Ales Debeljak. Cultural globalization is not the transplantation of western ideas and technologies across the planet, but the adaptation of these according to local requirements. Hybridity, the product of a longue durée, is at the heart of the contemporary western paradigm.

“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, but the mistake was made unpleasantly apparent.” Isabella L. Bird and Louisa Jebb both travelled to the Middle East at the turn of the twentieth century. Hannah Adcock compares their journals.

Some sophisticated arguments for God have been made in response to the New Atheists. Richard Norman puts the “New Believers” to the test.

The Estonian media today has disappointed hopes that it would be a model of its kind in the post-Soviet space, writes Tiit Hennoste. While the traditional notion of journalists as “teachers of the people” survived the Soviet era, the pressures of independence proved insuperable. Estonia’s size means personal sympathies override political views, while a tiny market makes advertising sales paramount.

The shot putter is the origin of movement while the surfer enters a movement that already exists. For Deleuze, therein lies the difference between traditional and new sports. Karl Palmås rides this wave of thought towards a philosophy of surfing.

There is near universal consensus that a multilateral treaty is the only way to reduce global carbon emissions. Yet experience shows that deals focused on top-down mechanics fail, writes Simon Zadek. Unilateral action based on national self-interest is the only hope we have of effectively managing climate change.

How far did the West support the transformation of eastern Europe in 1989? Documents recently released from the Hungarian archives reveal how western leaders, without exception, deferred to the Soviet Union at the time, writes László Borhi. The threat of regional chaos and residual fear of German hegemony meant an overwhelming support for preserving the status quo as the events of 1989 unfolded.

As the US economy continues to worsen and unemployment rises, everyone including the President is holding their breath. Everyone except the veteran economist Paul Volcker, that is. George Blecher says he might be on to something.

The fundamentalist justification for ecological politics is outdated, writes Jürgen Trittin, chairman of the German Green party. The ecological reform of the global economy must bring on board those with no interest in preserving nature per se. The more radical, “nature-oriented” and naive a demand is, the less likely it is to be realized and the more catastrophic the consequences will be.

Global warming, if left unchecked, will undermine development, overtax social capacities and endanger international stability. Progressive policy must focus on “managing the unavoidable” and “avoiding the unmanageable”.

Combining feminist and ecological approaches, ecofeminism opposes the domination of the white male over women, over the poor and over the natural world. Virginie Maris surveys epistemological, moral and social forms of the ecofeminist critique, drawing conclusions about the association between reductionist science and paternalist capitalism.

Climate policy is heavily dependent on expert scientific opinion, with the IPCC the leading authority. Yet uncertainty surrounds the science of climate change, and in particular the 2° target. Does politics’ reliance on inexact science disqualify its decisions? And does scientists’ involvement in politics prejudice their objectivity? Not necessarily, writes Åsa Knaggård.

The economies of central eastern Europe have remained unchanged in at least one respect: their high level of energy wastage. Add to that the explosion of car-use in the region, and eastern central Europe becomes the EU’s major obstacle to reaching its emissions targets for 2020. So why does funding allocated through the European Union still disfavour climate-friendly development?

Barack Obama’s statements to the UN about the potentially devastating impacts of climate change are in stark contrast to Democratic policy back home, where climate policy is negotiated exclusively in terms of US domestic interests. Rick Piltz, director of Climate Science Watch, explains how the combination of political parochialism and the effects of Bush-era climate change denial are stalling the necessary decision-making.