Something unbelievable is happening in Belarus: people, especially in the provinces, are protesting, despite their fear of political repressions. Meanwhile, in the urban centres, a pop-cultural movement has begun seeking a new Belarusian identity. Against the background of economic crisis and tensions with Russia, the regime is being forced to rethink its neo-Soviet cultural policy.
Following the disappointment of Obama, what is the way forward for the campaign against the criminalization of black people across the United States? Affinities between Black Lives Matter and traditions of community organizing show the potential for new coalitions, argues Julien Talpin.
In Central and Eastern Europe, a myriad of nationalists and populists are able to exploit what Richard Rorty called ‘the fear that there will be not enough to go around’. Yet liberal democracies are more resilient than they appear at the present moment, argues Samuel Abrahám.
The repair of everyday objects is a way of healing the wounds of post-socialist transition and of building affective bonds, where the market forces people to think of each other only as rational and expendable actors. Francisco Martínez talks to Estonians practitioners of ‘remont’ about their motivations.
The Polish intellectual and diplomat Adam Daniel Rotfeld played a key role in creating a new system of international security in the enlarged European Union. He contributed to settling the Transnistria conflict in the 1990s, helped resolve the political crisis in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution in 2004, and co-chaired the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Matters. How does a professional crisis manager and architect of European security see the international conflict around Ukraine and the future of Ukrainian–Russian relations? Rotfeld spoke to Piotr Kubasiak at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Vienna).
“I spent my childhood in a dystopia, which I detested with my whole heart, and I now live in a utopia.” Lithuanian author Marius Ivaškevičius explains why Brexit felt to him like a betrayal, why Europe remains a beacon of hope for people living under authoritarian regimes, and why, despite the sceptics, the European idea will prevail.
Yaşar Nezihe was the first Muslim woman to have her unveiled photograph published in the Ottoman press, the first socialist poet to compose a Turkish poem about May 1, and the first woman to write for the journal of the Communist Party of Turkey. Murat Batmankaya recalls her perseverance in the face of patriarchal oppression, material need and political adversity.
When ideological assumptions are shaken, fact loses its authority. Silvio Berlusconi was the first to channel this dynamic into a contemporary form of populism. From the archive.
In the wake of the US presidential election, the severity of the crisis facing liberal representative democracy is clear. The need for a civil domain has never been greater, argues sociologist Pascal Gielen. What options are left to creatives still prepared to imagine a better world?
Constitutional conflicts, foreign policy upheavals and media spats: one frenetic month into the Trump presidency, Americans are still in a state of shock. With the madness set to continue, it’s time for a petrified opposition to start making some noise.
Against the background of an anxiety-ridden debate around threats to a European identity, Fatima El-Tayeb looks at how exclusionary spatio-temporal structures are being remixed throughout Europe to create a trans-local and trans-ethnic counter-discourse.
In interview, Christian Iaione discusses the concept of the “co-city” – a city that is both cognitive and collaborative – which has been implemented in Bologna. Could this mark the beginning of a new era of urban co-governance? And what do the rise of bottom-up initiatives mean for the future of the welfare state?
The defence and regeneration of the commons depends both on meaningfully strengthening EU participative policy processes, and on greater responsiveness to local civic communities. Following the first European Commons Assembly, Sophie Bloemen and David Hammerstein consider current and future options for co-creation, stewardship and social and ecological sustainability.
Housing estates can accommodate many people, but they rarely bring residents together, creating instead an atomized mass of individuals. However, public space can be cultivated, even among blocks of flats. And the school can play a key role in creating a shared environment and civic involvement, as seen in the example of a project in Košice, Slovakia.
Urban life requires that less land be developed for settlement and reduces traffic volumes. Moreover, commoning practices can provide products required on a daily basis at reduced cost, while using fewer resources and improving quality of life. Fred Frohofer argues for the restructuring of our cities and their relation to rural regions.
Beginning in Athens’ Syntagma Square in summer 2011, a new wave of anti-austerity protest swept across Europe. Commoning practices became crucial to sustaining these movements’ momentum. Lazaros Karaliotas considers the implications for reorganizing urban life today.