Articles

The male breadwinner model of the welfare state has given way to the adult worker model, however care work continues to be left to migrant women, writes Fiona Williams. The privatisation of care favoured by contemporary policy means wages are forced down among a group least able to negotiate.

Contemporary European politics is a building site that makes a lot of noise but on which nothing ever gets built, said German political sociologist Claus Offe at the concluding event in Eurozine’s debate series “Europe talks to Europe”. Pessimistic yet invigorating, the discussion featured prominent intellectuals and opinion makers from western and eastern Europe.

Women have been as vociferous as men in the Egyptian revolution. However their demands for an end to sexual discrimination are not universally respected. Is a new revolutionary patriarchy emerging in Egypt like in Iran after 1979?

On 12 April 2011, Yuri Gagarin’s space mission has its fiftieth anniversary. Much more than a mere historical mytheme of the Soviet Union, Gagarin’s journey reflects the triumph of technology in a century that believed in progress, writes Walter Famler.

Eurozine has been nominated for the European CIVIS Online Media Prize for integration and cultural diversity. The prize is awarded to Internet media outlets of “high journalistic quality” and is awarded on 14 April in Berlin. “Topical and pluralistic – here Europe talks with itself,” says the jury about Eurozine.

In the last decade, Flemish fiction has stepped out of the shadow of its Dutch “older sister”, writes Tom Van Imschoot. Despite authors’ individuality, trends can be discerned. The most prominent is the turn from metafiction towards various forms of realism, be it the regional, the semi-autobiographical or the “virtual”.

For the Bosnian Omer Hadziselimovic, being an immigrant in the US is to experience both regression and rejuvenation. Constantly translating between his old and new lives, he nevertheless finds that at some deeper level the differences start to disappear.

Blaming the American Way of Life for the ills of post-industrial European society is a poor excuse for Europeans’ own partiality to consumer pleasures, writes Petr Fischer. On a positive note, American individualism could teach Europe a thing or two about social solidarity.

Behind the recent attacks on multiculturalism is a false public memory of stable mutuality disrupted by the arrival of people of other cultures, writes Markha Valenta. A row over the absence of non-white characters in the English detective series “Midsomer Murders” says a lot about our fantasies of “home”.

Sociologist Mohammed Bamyeh was present at Tahrir Square throughout the Egyptian Revolution and was able to see the popular political will unfolding. Here he singles out key elements in the uprising and describes the social transformations they have brought about.

Russia’s authoritarian regime owes its tenacity to the reversal of two central communist precepts, writes Ivan Krastev. First, its abandonment of the ideology of public interest prevents it being measured against its own standards. Second, its policy of open borders diffuses protest potential from a dissatisfied middle class.

Lured by the promise of formal freedom, Lithuanian architects in the Soviet period colluded in the destruction of swathes of Vilnius’s historical centre. Once a rallying point of the independence movement, Vilnius’s Baroque and Gothic urban heritage is now subject to a new onslaught from local finance capital – and no one seems to care.

The crisis of the euro indicates not only a threat to European integration, but also a crisis of European democracy characterized by a surge in “anti-politics”. Many analysts have identified the media as the single most important factor in this development, as the marketization of the media combines with digital technology to create a political order determined by public opinion. In political decision-making, the question whether this opinion is right or wrong becomes secondary to its value as a form of feedback. British journalist Judith Vidal-Hall met Bulgarian cultural anthropologist Ivaylo Ditchev in Sofia to discuss what this means for citizens’ trust in the political system and for democracy as such. Moderated by Carl Henrik Fredriksson, editor-in-chief of Eurozine.

Across Europe, countries are clawing back the sovereignty they once willingly sacrificed in pursuit of a collective ideal. At the beginning of 2011, Belgium – a country apparently irreparably divided along national lines – handed over the EU presidency to Hungary, where hard-edged nationalism aimed not only at minorities, but also at the loss of autonomy that accompanies political union, has gained momentum. From the point of view of European integration, these and similar developments are deeply worrying. On the other hand, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, nationalism was seen as a liberating force: in Ukraine nationalism is associated not only with the aim to break Russian influence, but also with a strong urge to join the European Union. Does it make sense at all to talk in the same terms about contemporary nationalism in East and West? Ukrainian journalist and politician Andriy Shevchenko met Belgian author David Van Reybrouck in Lviv to discuss the re-nationalization of political life in Europe. Moderated by Sofia Dyak of the Foundation Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv.

In many European countries, post-war nationhood has been built on myths of general resistance against fascism, often combined with a nationally framed approach to history that clashes with those of neighbouring states. Politics of memory play a role in conflicts between fellow EU states and former enemies such as Poland and Germany, but also countries like Sweden and Switzerland have yet to come to terms with their recent past. What is the role of intellectuals in disputes over contested history and can cross-border journalism build an element of real universality into the European project? Shouldn’t a European citizenship worthy of its name include the right and duty of everyone, regardless of nationality and background, to treat issues of historical guilt and suffering on a transnational basis? Swedish journalist Arne Ruth met Polish cultural theorist Danuta Glondys in Warsaw to discuss Memory and European citizenship. Moderated by Wojciech Przybylski, editor of Res Publica Nowa.