In Blätter, Birgit Mahnkopf refutes claims about automation’s brave new world: worsening job quality expected in exporting nations, massive unemployment set to disrupt the Global South. Also: controversy over the definition of the museum; and British parliamentarism beyond the ‘extreme centre’.
Tired debates over the artistic canon replace critique of sexism, racism and classism in education, argues Hanna Engelmeier in Merkur (Germany). Also: re-reading the GDR’s literature of disappointment, and national populism thought outside the liberal box.
An Estonian perspective on planetary ecological crisis: environmental contamination, return of diseases, urban heat islands, diversity decline – but also solutions for the future: greening Soviet-era architecture, transformation of regional economies, tax reforms and more.
New issue of ‘O’r Pedwar Gwynt’ (Wales), featuring Thatcher, the welfare state and Welsh pop, the wisdom of language, existentialism and mindfulness, and ‘pneumatic writing’ from the GDR.
‘Arche’ (Belarus) gives the coordinates of a new national historiography, discusses the publishing sector in the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic, and uncovers the roots of the aristocratic Chodkiewicz family, sixteenth-century magnates of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth.
In the new issue of ‘Revista Crítica’ (Portugal): a dossier on the economy as a ‘substantive reality’, beyond the limitations of mainstream economics, looking at interdisciplinary methods and ‘economics imperialism’, the political meaning of work, and the paradoxes of ‘innovation’.
‘La Revue Nouvelle’ analyses political disenchantment in Belgium: Social Democracy urgently needs to rethink as voter apathy aids rise of far-right Vlaams Belang; and as new ideological rifts pit productivity vs. ecology and nation vs. immigration.
In New Humanist, Peter Geoghegan warns against denialism over Northern Ireland: if not a direct result of Brexit, then the new sectarianism has certainly been precipitated by it. Also: articles on religion in the UK, social tech and the far-right, and the elisions of official feminism.
The new issue of ‘Fronesis’ searches for what Hannah Arendt called the ‘lost treasure’ of a tradition of revolutionary thinking. Hunting through diverse places, from Russia in 1917 to Indonesia, the American South, and the new movements of the 1960s, we are asked to think about how revolutions have been crushed, forgotten, or their aims perverted.
‘Revue Projet’ focuses on the internet’s reinvention of political activism: the web unleashes new energies and allows for new mobilizations, but real change can only be effected with the input of established organizations and offline engagement. Also: civic tech and the débat national; universal access campaigns; and digital democracy in Africa.
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.