Articles

The Israeli wall, far from being medieval, is an especially modern response, rife with the remains of Cold War obfuscation that viewed the world divided by the Iron Curtain as an essentially one-sided division.

From the Palestinian side, Raja Shehadeh assesses how life “behind” the walls and checkpoints looks like.

The rapid and drastic process of secularization in western Europe over the last decades has not diminished the continuing unease with which Europe considers the Islamic religion and Muslims in its midst. In this benchmark essay from 2004, José Casanova argues that the “Islam problem” is an indicator of the disparity between liberal and illiberal strands of European secularism.

Since I heard of Lothar Baier’s death, I’ve had the nagging wish to call Lothar in Montreal to try to make sense together of this weird, tragic event.

The “city” has become a favourite object of research in academia as well as the cultural mainstream and has spawned the areas of history, geography, sociology, literature and architecture. Rob Shields argues that the discipline has suffered however from its inability to clearly define the focus of its field and sketches out three important research areas for the field of urban studies: The social and economic sustainability of cities, future governance and administrative norms of cities, and finally virtual forms of urban life supported by new information and communication technologies.

Craig Calhoun argues that the self-constitution of Europe through public communication is an underestimated and neglected aspect of European integration. A functioning public discourse would not only be vital to the building of democratic European institutions, but in its ideal form the public sphere would shape and define the European integration project. Until now, the political and economic elites of Europe have failed to foster this public sphere.

The European integration project has made the discussion about transnational spaces for cultural and political debate acute. Can there at all be a common Europe without a pan-European public sphere, where potentially common values and ideas can be formed and transnational political institutions can find their legitimacy?

Speech held at the 17th European Meeting of Cultural journalsThe Republic of Letters? Cultural journals in a European public space
Tallinn, Estonia 14-17 May 2004

European transnational exchange is far from blossoming, argues Bernard Peters: The national public sphere has proved remarkably resilient against attempts to create a European space. In addition, transatlantic communication flows between North America and individual European countries continue to dominate the cultural and media landscape. What does this mean for the future of the much debated European public space?

South Africa’s foremost satirical performance artist takes a look at the South African government’s treatment of AIDS.