Viewing authoritarianism as a political trend overlooks the damage it can cause. The devastation ‘illiberal democracies’ are inflicting on cultural and media sectors show just how difficult it is to recreate something once it has been taken apart. Eurozine partners discuss ways to sustain journalism at the 32nd European Meeting of Cultural Journals.
Articles
Europe is facing not only Orbán’s autocratic turn but also that of his ‘apprentice’: Slovakia’s prime minister, Fico, has taken an advanced course in attacking his country’s judiciary, media and cultural institutions. His first goal: to get away with it, say beleaguered intellectuals, theatre directors, political scientists and investigative journalists from Bratislava.
Deadly floods in Spain highlight systemic flaws in approaches to extreme weather events. The terrible human cost in Valencia was largely the result of local government leaders and businesses ignoring warnings and responding too late. It’s time to rethink a system that prioritizes revenue over safety.
In this new Standard Time episode, we talk about Tech Giants, lack of regulation and what Europe can do about it.
Recommended topics
Unlike the political challenges and wars of the past, the climate and environmental crisis we now face is universal. Yet green movements remain on the political periphery and continue to be viewed in narrow, reductionist terms. What kind of solidarity can unite the emerging ecological class?
Back on the Trump track
Topical: US Election
War, women’s rights, deportations and democracy: what’s at risk as Trump returns? Eurozine’s topical reads on what to expect of the power shift in the US.
The popularity of Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of leftwing conservatism may guarantee her eponymous alliance a place in up to three state governments in eastern Germany. But in the West, her pro-Russian stance is seen as toxic.
“Come Together” is founded on the principles of partnership and peer-to-peer learning among individuals within community media organizations situated in six different countries. Instead of generating entirely new knowledge, the initiative aims to unearth and leverage the existing wisdom residing within these organizations to foster innovative approaches.
Eurozine review
Layers of dispossession
Soundings 87 (2024)
On the geography of Israeli settler colonialism; queer perspectives on the war in Ukraine; the experiences of Afghan ‘returnees’; and the familiar pattern of UK Labourism.
Neganthropology
Czas Kultury 2/2024
The politics and psychology of locality: on reviving local communities as high-tech expands and diversifies; forming networks against entropy; the Tortoise Strategy for caring; and rewriting life scripts.
Beyond the canon
Positionen 140 (2024)
Questioning the canon of electronic music history: on feminist debate between integrating women composers and anti-mainstreaming; the Danish composer who wrote her place in the chronicles. Also, empathetic yet non-romantic environmental sound art in Finland.
Focal points
The European Parliament elections on 9 June are a referendum on EU policy since 2019. Will voters give Europe the green light for further progress, or pull the brakes? A new Eurozine series measures the political atmosphere in the EU and its neighbourhoods at this crucial moment.
Food and water systems under pressure: as the end of abundance becomes an everyday experience in Europe, we are thinking more closely about how our food reaches the table.
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
Some observers, recalling the disasters of the 1920s and 30s, are suggesting that an anti-democratic counterrevolution on a global scale has begun. But is the writing really on the wall? Or does declinism prevent us from recognizing moments of democratic renewal?
Eurozine Network
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.