Recent urban development in Moldova’s capital city Chişinău is in many ways typical of other post-Soviet cities where aggressive privatization and the de-industrialization of urban economies have prompted the rise of social inequality. Sociologist and urban activist Vitalie Sprinceana describes how Chişinău’s citizens and activists are rehabilitating urban space by forging new urban networks and creative communities.
Following the election of the city’s new mayor Ada Colau in June 2015, Barcelona has reinvented itself amid a hive of social, cultural and political activism. Ann Marie Utratel explains how the city’s transformation resonates with inspired efforts to realign collaborative economies with the commons paradigm.
After 100 days in power, Poland’s nationalist right-wing government expressed its desire to completely transform Polish culture. As the anticipated assault on the country’s national culture gets underway, journalist and activist Igor Stokfiszewski of Krytyka Polityczna considers the threat that this blinkered approach poses to the vibrancy and diversity of grassroots cultural initiatives.
Just because something can’t work or doesn’t work, doesn’t mean people aren’t going to try it, says US journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anne Applebaum: just because it’s a bad idea to break up Europe doesn’t mean people won’t want to try that too.
War in Ukraine has caused about 1.5 million people to become internally displaced. Living conditions are often very difficult for those who flee the war zone in eastern Ukraine, writes Matteo Tacconi; however an informal network of NGOs does what it can to provide support.
The war in the Donbas region, which began in 2014, has created a humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine characterized by civilian casualties, huge floods of refugees, the collapse of infrastructure and the destruction of residential buildings. Another aspect of the crisis has been a severe deterioration of the position of cultural, national and religious minorities. The status of people from the LGBT community has also been affected.
Carl Henrik Fredriksson considers the misguided notion that Russia under Vladimir Putin may have become a threat to security in Europe. In fact, Russia’s contraventions of international treaties during the last decade render the very concept of European security null and void.
The latest machine writing may be more technologically heavy-handed than, say, the creation of “portmanteau words” in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. But some of the linguistic inventiveness generated by machines is no less enchanting, finds Alessandro Ludovico.
If the university is to survive, faculty are going to have to rethink their roles as critical public intellectuals, connect their scholarship to broader social issues and learn how to write for and speak to a broader public. Of this much, the cultural critic and doyen of critical pedagogy Henry Giroux is convinced.
Russia in Europe – Russia and Europe is the title of May’s Debate on Europe, which took place at the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum in Saint Petersburg from 15 to 18 May. The event is intended as a platform for communication about the forms and prospects of neighbourhood between Russia and Europe today.
Throughout Europe, parliamentary politics has become increasingly intertwined with the politics of street protest, writes Mateusz Falkowski. And as recent events in Poland and Hungary show, a new dynamic of protest has emerged from the clash in central and eastern Europe between populist and liberal visions of democracy.
Commons are a form of resistance against self-exploitation, isolation and the reduction of people to consumers, writes Brigitte Kratzwald. But this resistance isn’t about destroying what already exists: it’s about creative production geared to meeting people’s real needs.
Received notions of artistic and social practices belonging to separate spheres of society are fading away, writes Agnieszka Winiewska of Krytyka Polityczna (Poland). The commons is where cultural and social activists meet with the broader public and, together, create a genuinely participatory culture.
Commoning strategies are often improvised even in the liminal spaces that emerge in the cracks of Fortress Europe, says urban anthropologist Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe. In a text based on her September 2015 talk at the ECF’s annual Idea Camp, Ifekwunigwe calls for a new commons that embraces both the mobile and the settled.