Youth, culturally associated with the future, seems increasingly afflicted by uncertainty and crises. Can looking ahead be informed by past moments of transition? In 1960s Poland young people’s ‘futurological’ outlooks uncovered the microsocial ambivalences of technological progress, revealing cracks in mass communist ideology.
Articles
An outburst of syphillis is sweeping across Europe, and new HIV infections are also steadily rising. And yet, the public discourse seems to view sexually transmitted infections as a thing of the past. In this surprisingly light-hearted episode of Standard Time, medical doctors and a sex work activist talk screening, education, and stigma.
Conventional market-led solutions to water scarcity in the Arab Mediterranean, above all mega-projects such as dams, support state agendas and reinforce inequalities in access. Water wars are not inevitable but the result of bad management.
International humanitarian law forbids neither resistance nor self-defence. But it does set strict limitations on any party that engages in armed conflict. Both Hamas’s and Israel’s defiance of jus in bello is an assault on universal values.
Recommended topics
Capitalism is no longer a shining beacon: once influential countries are on the verge of becoming third-world economies; developing powers no longer aspire to the West’s visions of progress. Could a viable alternative, avoiding complete environmental devastation, be found in relinquishing fixations on the past and utopian ideals?
The Pianura Padana is home to a third of Italy’s population and generates nearly half of the national GDP. But over-exploitation, pollution and excessive land consumption are exacerbating the effects of climate change in this politically neglected region.
Marine Le Pen’s mainstreaming of the Rassemblement national involves cutting ties with radical elements and promoting defectors from other parties. The result is an incoherent mix of pragmatism, nationalist demagogy and even progressivism – and a party without a common culture.
“Come Together” is founded on the principles of partnership and peer-to-peer learning among individuals within community media organizations situated in six different countries. Instead of generating entirely new knowledge, the initiative aims to unearth and leverage the existing wisdom residing within these organizations to foster innovative approaches.
Eurozine review
Istanbul as palimpsest
Ord&Bild 3–4/2023
Gezi Park forever: why Erdoğan hasn’t seen the end of Turkey’s biggest ever protest movement. A country in constant conflict: Turkey’s oppressors and oppressed. And from the diaspora and back: A Turkish-Swedish family history.
Fascization
Esprit 10/2023
Esprit on the French far-right: Why Marine Le Pen can’t shake off the radicals; how Vincent Bolloré’s media are going back to the ’30s; and what to do about fascist jouissance.
Politicizing resource scarcity
Il Mulino 3/2023
Against resource determinism: why wars over water aren’t inevitable; taking back control of food; and why climate change isn’t the fault of humanity.
Focal points
As the end of abundance becomes an everyday experience in Europe, we are thinking more closely about how our food reaches the table.
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.
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.