Harbour cities as places of movement, immigration and emigration, as places of inclusion and exclusion, develop distinct modes of being that not only reflect different cultural traditions and political and social self-conceptions, but also contain economic potential and communicate how they see themselves as part of the larger structure that is "Europe".
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Clifford Geertz predicted that the world would be characterized by ‘deep diversity’, ‘a sense of dispersion, of particularity, of complexity and of uncenteredness’ rather than unified world order, as stipulated by the then consensus. In an age of identity politics and culture wars, Geertz’s insights sound even more powerful today than they did at the time. According to the American anthropologist, our task is ‘to penetrate the dazzle of the new heterogeneity’ and analyze the paradox that confronts us: the world is both more global and more divided than ever in human history. The sense that we find ourselves in ‘a scramble of differences in a field of connection’ is even more immediate, as is the realization that there is a multiplicity of alternative, sometimes conflicting and clashing, visions of the good. This focal point, inspired by a lecture that Geertz delivered in 1995 at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, summarized in the institute’s magazine, will engage with these issues. It follows the launch of a research programme of the same name at the institute in January 2023.
In recent years, the possibility of a "grand narrative" that includes both East and West in a common European story has been discussed intensely. In a new Focal Point, Eurozine seeks to broaden the question beyond the East-West historical divide. How are contested interpretations of historical and recent events made active in the present, both uniting and dividing European societies?
Forty years on, the differences between the 1968 uprisings in western and eastern Europe move into ever sharper focus. "In retrospect, the great event of '68 in Europe was not Paris, but Prague. But we were unable to see this at the time."
To coincide with the awarding of the 2016 Jean Améry Prize for European essay writing, Eurozine publishes essays by authors nominated for the prize, including a representative selection of Eurozine partner journals.
The Snowden leaks and the ensuing NSA scandal made the whole world debate privacy and data protection. Now the discussion has entered a new phase - and it's all about policy. A focal point on the politics of privacy: claiming a European value.