Articles

As protests continue in Slovenia, Robert Titan Felix sees the need for a programme to protect the welfare state and citizens themselves from the greed of capital, which pushes the less successful to the margins of existence.

Boyan Znepolski remains far from convinced by recent attempts by contemporary philosophers to get to grips with the relation between democracy as a political regime and “the people”. He discerns a deficit of creativity in the thought of Zizek, Badiou and Laclau.

At some point, there is a tilt; there always is. Then we shall settle down into our new historical system. Wallerstein foresees one of two possibilities: more hierarchy, exploitation and polarization; or a system that has never yet existed, based on relative democracy and relative equality.

Claus Offe opts for democracy over “TINA” logic (“there is no alternative”), which only leads to a politics that fails to provide the electorate with choices. And therein lies the trap. Only more solidarity and more democracy, he argues, can rescue the eurozone from the brink of collapse.

Disillusionment with democracy founded on mistrust of business and political elites has prompted a popular obsession with transparency. But the management of mistrust cannot remedy voters’ loss of power and may spell the end for democratic reform.

Alina Polyakova questions the assumption that the rise of the radical right in Central and Eastern Europe is rooted in economic conditions. Looking instead at the consequences of post-socialist civil society for liberal democracy is far more likely to render a more realistic picture, she writes.

Not only does Henrihs Vorkals play with your consciousness and sense of perception, writes art historian Laine Kristberga. He also makes you think about the formal values of art and the illusory nature of a painting.

Lloyd Newson tackles issues of free speech, Islam and multiculturalism in his recent verbatim theatre production, which combines text drawn from interviews with movement. This is the point of departure for an interview with Maryam Omidi.

Of the 200,000 Hungarian refugees who fled Hungary following the Soviet invasion in 1956, close to 20,000 were what is now known to border controls as “unaccompanied minors”. Based on his archival research and the personal testimonies of these people, now in their seventies, historian and former dissident Béla Nóvé traces their life stories.

As online freedom comes under attack from big business and governments alike, Jennifer Granick provides a bracing, global overview of the legal and regulatory landscape surrounding the Internet.

“It’s hardly worth having a word to describe not believing in God. I don’t believe in witches, but I don’t call myself an ahexist”. At an event at the Rationalist Association in London, Laurie Taylor got up close and personal with Britain’s leading public intellectual.

Underlying the debate on intellectual property is an ideological faultline between capitalist models and alternatives, writes Sabine Nuss. Although a property approach to intellectual goods has major disadvantages it remains the lesser of many evils.

Protests at the end of 2012 in Slovenia caught the attention of international newspapers. Boris Vezjak asks what the goal of this “uprising” – suddenly a universally popular concept – is, and whether it might represent more than merely an isolated incident.

Green economist Molly Scott Cato acknowledges the extraordinary advances that economic growth has brought. However, she insists that only by learning to flourish within limits can we hope to regain our sense of the good life.

The troubled relationship between modernity and its colonial past haunts the ethnographic museum. But do new museums of world culture provide a plausible alternative?