Across Europe, forest fires are intensifying year upon year. Climate change, droughts, falling biodiversity and Eucalyptus trees are all factors that fuel the blazes. So how do we avoid fanning the flames? Tune into our next Standard Time Episode to find some answers!
The lurid past of French colonial expulsion and incarceration: of Algerians sent to French Guiana; Jews interned in camps termed ‘battalions’; and French colonized peoples replacing convicts as forced labour.
Reappraising Keynes and Hayek: cartoon figureheads on the frontlines of an ideological war; clearing the ground for an honest debate by debunking Keynesian and Hayekian myths; and the paradox of Hayek’s theory of markets as information networks.
Repression, murder, war: on the logic driving the Putin regime toward ever-greater excesses of violence. Featuring Yuri Andrukhovych on the Russian colonial empire – the only ever to have tried to reconquer a former possession. Also: articles on Navalny, and on what next for Georgia?
Rituals as collective practices: why rituals offer solutions to the problems of our rationalist age; an example of ritualism cum eco-activism; artivism and AIDS campaigning in the 90s; and how sorcery can save the planet.
The case for more embodied communication; on digitalisation and the privatisation of art; a balanced view of gaming; the historical roots of social polarisation in Turkey; and isolation in the films of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
Why the Russian Federation is a de facto empire despite the 1993 constitution; why Putin’s imperial but anti-ideological variety of Russian nationalism dominates; why Chechnya remains an open wound on the body politic; and feeling the impact of the Putin regime’s clampdown on intellectual freedoms.
On Olympic ideals and real-world interests: who benefits from the IOC’s policy of apoliticism? Republican games: On France’s hope for a ‘new national narrative’. Capitalist games: ‘Faster, higher, stronger’ as the watchword of the global city.
On the space to the left of European social democracy: Eurocommunism’s continuing legacy; reflections on the rise and fall of Eurocommunism in the UK; and everyday communism in the Austrian city of Graz.
Historicizing Doomsday: how West German ’80s pop marketed angst; why the next generation doesn’t want to live fast and die young; whether we’ve really reached tipping point; an what ‘no future’ meant for early Christians.
In Merkur 900: how the myth of Islamic antisemitism serves the apologists of violence; what the concept of dictatorship conceals about democracies; and why Rainald Goetz is trying not to grow cynical with age.
Shame as political, historical and linguistic category: how shame came to be used to control women; why school is a place both of social mobility and social shame; and whether MeToo marked the end of shame as we knew it.
Artificial intelligence beyond good and evil: connectionist vs. symbolist logic and how to programme creativity; why the algorithmic gaze reproduces neocolonialism in the Middle East; technophobia and what sci fi gets wrong about robots.
Political exiles living in fear: how the Kremlin’s repressive machinery operates far beyond Russia’s borders; why Turkey is no longer a safe haven for foreign dissidents; and the ways new technologies are facilitating transnational repression.
Young perspectives on work: the different value systems of labour; nuances in work-life meaning and purpose; what wage emancipation looks like; and why more responsibility for workers can revitalize the French business landscape.
Three decades of social upheaval: how geopolitical forces within and beyond the South Caucasus continue to displace the region’s populations; the prospects for peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan; and Georgia’s imperilled democracy approaching a watershed moment.
Queer histories in Estonia(n): featuring 19th-century writing defying heteronormative expectations; why ‘cis-gender’ is a useless concept; Russian-speaking LGBT+ activism; and a history of trans rights in Spain.