In the 2006 Italian election campaign, then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi popularised a widely held view about the negative role of the euro for the Italian economy. This view had initially originated with the secessionist Northern Leagues. More recently, it had come to reflect the view of more moderate political players too. In the campaign Berlusconi ridiculed his contender, and the ultimate victor of the elections, Romano Prodi, for having accepted the ‘unfair Lira pegging’ to the euro in 1998. These claims reflect an ongoing debate about whether the adoption of the euro caused or even significantly contributed to Italy’s loss of economic competitiveness. We will trace the Italian trajectory and its economic preparedness for proposed entry into the EMU. We will weigh whether the terms and conditions of entry predisposed Italy to an inferior economic performance from the outset. We will assess the relative merits of the two interpretations of the role of the euro for Italy since its endorsement of the Maastricht Criteria, agreed to in December 1991. We will also look at the role played by the economic adjustments involved, followed soon after by Italy’s financial crisis in 1992. These latter events ultimately forced Italy to temporarily leave the European Monetary System (EMS). The country re-entered the EMS in 1998. We conclude that Italy’s weaknesses became more obvious with the adherence to conditions required for euro entry, but that its deep-seated political and economic problems were entrenched.

Sociology is currently undergoing an interesting theoretical and methodological turn. A number of recent and influential works of sociology deal with the seemingly trivial phenomena of everyday life. The standard mass surveys are being replaced by in-depth, interpretative, and qualitative procedures that focus on the visual surface of society. They do so by means of observation and its extension – photography. The author believes that this is not a new fashion but rather signals a true paradigmatic shift. For the author, it heralds the emergence of a ‘third’ sociology, after the ‘first sociology’ of social organisms and systems, and the ‘second sociology’ of behaviour and action. The new focus is on social existence manifested by social events of various scales. This sociology of social existence provides a new angle of vision, which promises to advance considerably our understanding of several perennial riddles of human society.

The theme of the 2006 IAP Conference, held at Alexandria, from 1–3 December 2006, was ‘The Unity of Science’. Let me explain how I interpret this interesting motto. For me, this does not mean that there is one regina scientiarum that rules over the other fields of science and learning; a role that was allotted to theology in olden times, and that nowadays – in a more secular vein – is claimed by physics. In my view, the notion ‘unity of science’ rather refers to ‘communality within diversity’. Disciplines vary in content, issues and methods. But there are also quite some common objectives, interests and concerns, the most important of which may be the common goal of searching for testable truth with objective and independent evidence. The communalities render it possible, or even imperative, to communicate and to cooperate. The diversity implies complementariness and calls for interdisciplinarity in the study of today’s numerous and complex phenomena in science and society.

It is not unusual to credit certain individuals with having put and end to the Cold War. This essay discusses some of the most important of these people, focusing on their role in the Polish crisis of 1980–82: Mikhail Gorbachev, John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Lane Kirkland. The author arrives at the conclusion that the question of the extent to which individuals can be held responsible for the victory over the Soviet Union is wrong, because it neglects underlying processes, such as the economic crisis in the Eastern Bloc and East–West contacts established during the détente of the 1970s.

France was one of the main supporters of Solidarność. The events in August and September 1980 immediately gained the interest of the French media. Trade unionists started to collaborate with their Polish colleagues, for instance by setting up exchange programs or by introducing Solidarność to international trade unions. Organisations of solidarity were founded and started to collect food, clothes and drugs. After the proclamation of Martial Law in Poland, this grew into a mass movement, involving many layers of the French population. Both workers and intellectuals were drawn to the idea of a ‘second left’: an alternative to the old and radical socialism.

The reaction of Western trade unions towards Solidarność was extremely varied, ranging from enthusiastic support to the denunciation of Solidarność as ‘counter-revolutionary’ and in the pay of the CIA. These views depended on political, institutional, and cultural determinants and had much to do with the national circumstances of particular unions and their representatives.

In 2009 it will have been 400 years since Philip III expelled the Moriscos from Spain. It is therefore time to consider what remains of this tragedy in present-day Spanish collective memory. As opposed to the history as written by the victors it is necessary to also listen to the voice of the descendants of the victims, recovering their own historical memory. As a symbol of the reparation of an historical injustice the present-day Spanish state may grant the descendants of the expelled Moriscos the right to Spanish citizenship, as has already happened with the descendants of the Sephardim or Spanish Jews. In this article I consider four forms of memory of the expulsion of the Moriscos, embodied respectively in History, Literature, Art and Popular Culture. In the section on History, I analyze the works of Gregorio Marañón and Henry Kamen. Literary memory will be represented by the figure of the Morisco Ricote in Part II of Cervantes’ Quixote. For Art, I will look at a series of paintings commissioned by Philip III and at a painting competition held in Madrid under Philip IV. Popular culture is represented by the celebrations of ‘moros y cristianos,’ or ‘Moors and Christians,’ an old tradition that is still alive.

Dante’s attitude towards Jews and Muslims in the Divine Comedy has been a controversial issue in literary studies of the medieval period. This article outlines the most central questions in this regard and argues that the treatment of the issue has often been misleading due to exaggeration and overstatement. Dante has been seen, respectively, as a summarizer of medieval culture and mentalities, as a medieval intellectual who was more open for non-Christian influences than his fellow Christians, and as a highly prejudiced conservative. In considering the constituents of Dante’s worldview, the article that follows argues that Dante should rather be seen as a medieval Christian whose cultural horizon was limited, whose political theory of world government was narrowly focused on a specific problem within European Christendom, and whose vision of redemption, although complex and original in various respects, could not but embrace all human beings as either righteous or corrupted Christians.

In September, 1219, Francis of Assisi went to Egypt to preach to Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil. Although we in fact know very little about this event, writers from the 13th century to the 20th have portrayed Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love and understanding. This study of the varying depictions of this lapidary encounter throws into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim–Christian encounters have inspired in European writers over eight centuries.

This article is a small part of a research project dealing with the presence of Hebrew poetry from al-Andalus in Israeli culture in general and in Israeli poetry in particular. In spite of its indisputably canonic status and 800-year history as a central model for the writing of poetry, this magnificent corpus is quite unknown to today’s readers, and its genres are obsolete. It is, as I shall explain, a ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic entity. The article contains some explanatory references to the historical trajectory of the poetry in question, from a central and active position to a marginal and passive presence – dealing with both the particular beneficial conditions in al-Andalus and current internal and external political situations. However, the paper is not about literary history or cultural politics. Rather, it focuses on the ways ‘dinosaur-like’ canonic status is revealed in the writing of contemporary poetry and in its readings. I begin with a short introduction concerned both with the poetry of al-Andalus and with the cognitive and inter-textual aspects related to the ‘dinosaur-like’ existence of texts and models. Owing to lack of space, I then deal with only three of the many characteristic features of this phenomenon: cognitive accessibility (illustrated by two readings of a Palestinian poem by Sami al-Kilani), manifested distancing (illustrated by Amnon Shamosh’s poem that converses with Yehuda Halevi), and modes of alluding (illustrated by a poem of Yehuda Amichai).