‘Eurafrica’, the continental-scale fusion of Europe and Africa into one political entity, was first developed as a political concept in the 1920s by the Pan-European Union, and named as such in a 1929 article by its founder and leader Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. Within five years, this neologism had become a commonplace, as Eurafrica exploded across public political discourse. This paper unpacks what Eurafrica entailed in its original expression, what made it a useful concept for the Pan-European Union to employ, and what made it so appealing to a wider (European) public. It does so with particular reference to the way in which Eurafrica was presented as a means of opening up colonialism to those European states that lacked their own colonies. Partly, this meant appealing to German colonialists resentful at the stripping of Germany’s colonies at Versailles. Crucially, however, it also meant appealing to the broader ‘historical injustices’ that meant that Central European countries did not have access to colonies, and promising a future in which these intra-European ‘injustices’ could be transcended and Central Europeans could thus become equal partners in Europe’s mission civilisatrice in Africa.

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake produced huge and diversified reactions in Portuguese literature. This paper aims at analysing some of the issues raised by these reactions, namely: the recognition of the disturbance, beginning as geographical and architectural, but soon becoming symbolic and anthropological; the effects on the understanding of a phenomenon which, because it goes beyond the frontiers of what is known, soon becomes a paradigm of the incomprehensible, with the consequent debates on how to make God compatible with the destruction that occurred, and the confirmation of fear and terror as the major effects of the event. The paradoxical relation between seeing (too much) and saying (too little) is stressed, as well as the visual, theatrical, and melodramatic components of several descriptions of the event.

The last few decades have seen a significant growth of economists’ interest in studying institutions. They are generally preoccupied with explaining institutions using instruments that are specific for an economist, and especially with discerning the significance of institutions for both economic development and development economics. Therefore, the integration of institutions into economic theory is an essential step in our continuous attempt to refine and improve scientific explanations. The neoclassical theory of economic growth only identifies the conditions needed for material production growth, such as capital accumulation and technical progress. In order to explain ‘why’ people save, invest, learn and seek useful knowledge, special attention must also be paid to institutional and value systems.

Any definition of Central Europe based on geographical and/or historical facts causes difficulties. The line dividing Europe during the Cold War has a very limited use because it does not take into account Central Europe as a special part of the continent. Historians such as Geoffrey Barraclough, Hugh Seton-Watson and Oskar Halecki discussed the idea of a separate identity of Central Europe during the Cold War. Especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this discussion was re-opened. From a historian's point of view, the most important contributions came from Piotr Wandycz and Jenő Szűcs. An imaginary centre of Europe can only be found in the continent's common history.

There is a belief, rather widespread in English-speaking countries, that the eastern half of Europe is inhabited by a number of endlessly quarrelling small nations whose conflicts keep endangering the quiet and comfort of Anglophones. (Hugh Seton-Watson)

Launched in 2007, the European Research Council (ERC) aims at pulling out all the stops in supporting ambitious research projects in frontier research by the most talented scientists and scholars. The ERC grants are generous, open to nationals from any country in the world, and subject to one criterion alone: peer-reviewed excellence. We outline the central strategic priorities of the ERC, and briefly describe some impressions from the first two calls.

There is probably no other country like Turkey whose inhabitants succumbed so thoroughly to state interventions as to how to cover or uncover their heads and hair. Suppression and enforced alterations characterize the last two centuries. The headscarf has become an important topic for the Turkish press since the 1950s. Today, the headscarf plays a major role in the discussion about the ‘maturity’ of Turkey to become a member of the European Union.

In this paper I will illustrate the heuristic value of studying human rights as social representations. Results of cross-national studies are reported after a short presentation of social representation theory. Shared meanings in the field of human rights exist within and between cultural and national groups. Other findings concern dimensions on which individuals differ in their positioning toward human rights, related to respondents' beliefs about their own efficacy and the efficacy of institutions. These beliefs are anchored in national group membership, in value priorities and in experiences of social conflict. Studies in Geneva suggest there is a distinction between a large-scale principled agreement and much more restricted attitudes toward the application of human rights principles in specific situations.

Even agents possessed of free will must—if rational—be substantially predictable. However, there will be some situations where the act-choices of rational agents will not be predictable—for example, in circumstances of underdetermination due to insufficient information. And moreover, unpredictability can also result in situations of analysis overdetermination that arise when equally cogent analyses yield disparate results, as in the example of Dr. Psychic Psycho. The Prisoner's Dilemma affords yet another instance of this. Clearly, when determination fails even after rationality has had its say, then rationality's predictive power is exhausted! Fortunately, however, that does not mean that our human resources of issue-resolution are at the end of their tether.

Socio-economic development and the concept of the tourist function of areas are multidimensional socio-economic phenomena, the diagnosis of which is particularly important in various comparative studies regarding EU countries. Measurement based on GDP per capita, widely used in the assessment of the socio-economic level of development of countries, does not include many aspects of this development in its construction. Similarly, the level of development of the tourist function cannot be assessed by means of one universal measure. Both categories should be treated as complex phenomena, which are influenced by many different factors. The aim of this article is to compare and statistically assess two complex phenomena, i.e. level of socio-economic development and level of tourist function development in 28 European Union countries. Linear ordering of EU countries was carried out using the TOPSIS method on the basis of diagnostic variables determining individual complex phenomena in 2016. Values of the overall synthetic measure were also indicated, taking into account all diagnostic variables. Rankings of EU countries were built and four typological groups of countries with high, medium-high, medium-low and low level of development were created. Discriminant analysis indicated variables that have the greatest impact on the classification of EU countries in terms of the level of socio-economic development and level of tourism function development. A linear econometric model with synthetic variables was also constructed, and it was determined which of the synthetic measures is relatively more important in describing the shaping of the overall synthetic measure. The quality of the work is increased by the use of many different statistical and econometric methods, as well as methods from the field of Multidimensional Comparative Analysis. Thanks to this, it is possible not only to deepen the assessment of the studied phenomena, but also to obtain more objective results. Conclusions from the research may be a basis for proper management in the field of socio-economic development as well as for the development of the tourist function of EU countries. They can also be used for appropriate allocation of financial support for countries within the framework of the EU cohesion policy and in determining the tourist specialization of countries.

In 2005 the European Union (EU) began formally to negotiate Turkey's application to become a full member. Today, the EU is a very different organization, Turkey has also experienced major changes, and the Arab Spring has dramatically impacted the Middle East. In sum, there is a changed context for the evolving relationship between Turkey and the EU. This article explains that context and concludes that, for the foreseeable future, Turkey is unlikely to become a full EU member, although close ties with respect to economic matters and immigration will persist.

This essay deals with cultural studies, including elite culture and its products (literature and the performing arts), as well as studies of film and TV and other expressions of popular culture in the mainland of China. It lays particular emphasis on the currently prevailing concept of Cultural Studies introduced from the West at the beginning of the 1990s. The author addresses the following issues: how Cultural Studies was introduced into the Chinese context, how it was integrated with existing practices of cultural history and comparative literature studies, how it was institutionalized in China, and how it was developing into a position from where it can engage in a dialogue with Western scholarship against the background of increasing globalization. According to the author, Cultural Studies has much in common with literary studies, especially in the Chinese context. Therefore, these two branches of learning should not necessarily be seen as opposed to one another. Literary and cultural studies are complementary rather than exclusionary towards each other.

Sugar has attracted attention from economic historians, particularly because of its significance in the organisation of labour – notably the role of sugar in the development of slavery in the New World. In a Mediterranean setting, the links to slavery are less obvious, but the gradual westward transfer of sugar technology from the Levant to Sicily (under Muslim rule, and later under Aragonese rule) and to Spain reflects seismic changes in the Mediterranean economy. This was a luxury product and, as demand in western Europe grew, European merchants sought sources of supply closer to home than the eastern Mediterranean. Their reluctance to trade in the Levant reflected political uncertainties in the period when Turkish power was rising in the region. In southern Spain, Valencia (under Christian rule) and Granada (under Muslim rule) became major suppliers to northern Europe by the 15th century. Paradoxically, the survival of the last Muslim state in Spain, Granada, was made possible through the injection of capital by Italian and other merchants trading in sugar. However, the discovery of the Atlantic islands, especially Madeira, gave the Portuguese an opportunity to develop sugar production on a massive scale, again targeting Flanders and northern Europe. The article concludes with the arrival of sugar in the Caribbean, in the wake of Columbus.

Historians have long found it difficult to deal with fascism as a generic, Europe-wide, political phenomenon. The historiographic pendulum has swung from including virtually every right-wing movement under the label of fascism to denying altogether that generic fascism ever existed. Neither approach is historically valid. The fascists did not see themselves as a species of Conservatives; they looked upon themselves as a unique, international political phenomenon. Moreover, many of their non-fascist contemporaries accepted this claim. Both were right and, for this reason, it is necessary to renew efforts to delineate the ideological and stylistic parameters of generic fascism. An important aid in understanding fascism as a generic phenomenon is the analysis of the relations between the German Nazis and French and Dutch fascists in the years from 1933 to 1939, a topic that has been little studied until now.

This article is about the post-war governance of Kosovo and the contradiction posed by the focus on multi-ethnicity on the one hand, and the development of a new Kosovar identity that transcends ethnicity on the other. Post-war Kosovo represents a bold experiment by the international community to create a society that adheres to European standards. The international administration has based its post-war reconstruction and governance of Kosovo on standards aimed at EU accession. To this end, since 1999 the international administration in Kosovo has pursued multi-ethnicity as a panacea. Far from creating the conditions conducive to greater inter-ethnic integration, the policies enacted supposedly in the name of multi-ethnicity have resulted in the further entrenchment of ethnic division. At the same time, the international administration has promoted a new Kosovo identity that transcends ethnicity and that fits with European standards. This article questions the international administration's approach in governing post-war Kosovo with the ultimate goal of EU accession. It argues that this approach has failed both in creating a more multi-ethnic society and in creating a new identity that is embraced by the people of Kosovo. This situation in turn raises questions as to whether there is a genuine will from the people of Kosovo to fulfil such standards, and therefore whether the goal of EU integration for Kosovo is a realistic one.

In the last two decades, mirroring systems have been detected in the monkey and in the human brain. The mirroring mechanisms have been considered as the neural basis for social cognition and interpersonal reactivity, and they have been assumed to support imitation, sharing of emotional states and empathy. Here I would like to compare ‘mirroring phenomena’ to ‘symmetrization phenomena’. In psychoanalytic literature, the construct of symmetrization has been proposed in the context of the Bi-Logic theory by Matte Blanco in 1975, on the basis of clinical evidence obtained in the psychoanalytical setting and following a theoretical analysis derived from the Freudian distinction between Primary and Secondary Processes. I will consider two different types of behaviours, empathic social interactions and the creation of transitional objects and spaces as defined by Winnicott in order to argue that symmetrization, in Matte Blanco’s terms, cannot be reduced to mirroring. I will then sketch a hypothesis on the interplay between the symmetric aspects of the mind and external reality in the development of higher relational functions of humans, also taking playing, arts and creativity into account. Finally I will describe the paradigmatic shift in neuro-imaging studies that was introduced with the discovery of the ‘Default Mode Network’ and its potential relevance in the research on the symmetric and asymmetric aspects of the human mind.

The concept of ‘symbolic interactionism’ has been particularly compelling since its inception as a method for studying human group life and human behaviour. Symbolic interactionism represents one of the most sociological reserach projects in social psychology, and the founders of communication, such as Lazarsfeld, Lewin, and Hovland, are all related to social psychology. Therefore, this article will attempt to answer the following questions through a historical review of the development of social psychology in the United States: symbolic interactionism is so closely related to communication studies, but why is it gradually missing in the establishment of communication studies? Can symbolic interactionism have a new academic resonance with contemporary communication research?

The purpose of this paper is to identify and assess current developments in scholarly publishing in Europe. Current models for disseminating content have limitations and Open Access models of publishing have been endorsed by the European Universities Association. The Harvard mandate for the deposit of materials in Open Access repositories is a bold new development, and the community is watching it with interest. It is possible that e-books may be the next large form of content to be made available to the user. Users certainly express interest in using this form of material. However, current library systems need to be developed in order to cope with this mass of new content. E-theses, available in Open Access from institutional repositories, are a form of content that is made much more visible than the paper equivalents. The DART-Europe portal, supported by LIBER (Association of European Research Libraries) currently provides access to 100,000 research theses in 150 European Universities. At an institutional and academic level, however, much remains to be done to embed Open Access into the landscape: the current situation is described in a new report for UCL (University College London), produced by RAND Europe.

Social change is taking place today with enormous acceleration. The globalization of politics, economy, and culture, changes in information technology and the revolution in genetic engineering are the major transforming powers. They create a complex of change and have an effect on the individual as well as the community. Known structures are coming apart and this evokes feelings of fear. However, spaces of opportunity will be opened, too. They can be used if (what we call) post-traditional ligatures constitute a new basis of social embedding. Examples of such bondings, which are more flexible and (to a large extent) self-created, are mentioned at the end of this article.

This contribution focuses on the spirit and the associated behaviours belonging to Belgian society. It deals with the past and, more specifically, with the legacy of the two world wars. In which way did Flemings and Francophones interact? What is the real nature of their relations described from the roots of the many issues and embedded consequences seen even today? Why is there a different vision of the past and how did the situation evolve with the federalization within the country?