Artists and writers have served as an ‘early warning system’ for political upheavals and social tensions in many eastern European countries. Contributions to the new issue of ‘Osteuropa’ focus on Russia as the origin of a contemporary intersection of countercultural aesthetics and conservative ideology.
In ‘Soundings’, David Featherstone and Lazaros Karaliotas ask how we can expand our image of the working class beyond a ‘narrowly nationed narrative of the crisis’. Also, Mary Kaldor probes the ‘tragic mistake’ to find new hopes for a ‘remain-and-reform’ position, and Gabriel Bristow clarifies the misunderstood gilets jaunes movement.
In the 100th edition of Belarusian literary journal ‘Dziejaslou’, Svetlana Alexievich explains why the irrational continues to be the underlying subject of her celebrated chronicles of the Soviet and post-Soviet everyday. Also, a history of socialism in Belarus, revealing autonomy from the early days of the Socialist International.
The Nobel Prize-tipped Jon Fosse began his literary career as a poet and novelist, but from the 1990s became famous abroad as a prolific dramatist. In Syn og Segn, Fosse talks with his editor and literary biographer Cecilie Seiness about growing older and returning to novel writing.
Estonian journal Vikerkaar devotes its summer issue to Africa, including contributions on the social and environmental costs of Chinese development, bushman culture, the hauntings of colonialism, new African writing and more.
Twentieth-century social sciences tended to leave monetary questions to economists, but in recent years there has been an explosion in the sociological research of money. ‘Mittelweg 36’ offers perspectives.
Urbanist magazine ‘dérive’ finds an old dichotomy re-filtered through politico-spatial transformations; including articles on the role of ‘ruralism’ in support for the AfD in Germany and throwbacks to imperial anti-proletarianism in the discourse of Austria’s neo-conservatives.
Expectations of an AfD surge in Saxony and Brandenburg prompt speculations in Blätter on a watershed moment for the party, as it veers further rightwards. Also, why blaming the history of the GDR for east Germany’s far-right problem is crudely ideological; and the failure of politics and media to see the Lübcke murder coming.
In Danish journal ‘Passage’, David Hasberg Zirak-Schmidt examines how theatre shapes public attitudes to historical events, with a special look at Shakespeare’s histories. Also, contributions on the ‘fictive documentaries’ of Danish modernist Peter Seeberg and the potrayal of female victims in true crime.
How can we avoid the prevailing stereotypes of ‘Africa’? How can we overcome the obsessive association of the continent with certain geopolitical markers? How do we stop seeing it as an endless reservoir of raw materials and a market for cheap goods? The new issue of Springerin develops alternative approaches to the discourse of ‘liberation’.
In Krytyka Polityczna online, Kamil Fejfer writes on the precarious working conditions of Ukrainian migrant workers and the unscrupulous practices of many Polish employers; Sławomir Broniarz talks about the recent teachers’ strikes and why they lacked popular support; and Piotr Wójcik criticizes ineffective infrastructure projects aimed at countering Poland’s drought problem.
In il Mulino, Stefano Feltri compares Merkel and Sarkozy’s lack of confidence in Berlusconi’s reforms in 2011 with the spectacle of Salvini rubbing shoulders with Le Pen, Wilders, et al. Both were ‘unequivocally images of Italy’s isolation in Europe. In the past this was hard to bear and always denied, but now it is proclaimed with pride.’
In ‘Osteuropa’, political scientists and journalists speculate on Ukraine’s ‘president without qualities’. The familiar cycle of hope and disappointment turbo-charged by social media’s disruptive technology. Also, a dossier on the sociology of the war in Ukraine.
Host looks at the Czech fascination with the Nordic countries, which predates the Scandi-noir craze by more than a century. Also, two Wikimedians parse the EU’s Digital Single Market Guidance, arguing that it will change the way the internet works – at least for
individual users.
The reaction of artists and celebrities to the result of the re-run Istanbul municipal elections, in which Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party lost to the opposition CHP, leads Varlık to explore the complex relationship between art and politics. At the centre of the issue is the question: ‘Which is more political: the artist or their work?’
Democracy is about more than ‘one person, one vote’, says novelist Robert Harris in Index on Censorship. In this issue, authors from Brazil, Hungary, Venezuela, and elsewhere, look at how new populist regimes hamstring democratic life by taking control of judicial systems.