To investigate the identity attributes of Turkish people living in France it is necessary to consider ‘Turkish identity’, determine the stage of their identity building, and understand the role religion plays in this quest for identity. Considering the complex structure of Ottoman society and the multiple and dynamic properties of loyalty criteria, it is difficult to ascertain the definition of ‘Turkishness’ even in Turkey. It is probably not necessary to explain that this is even more difficult for Turks who are in the minority.

In this article, we develop a framework for a comparative analysis of policy-making in the EU pre- and post-accession CEE countries (CEECs) in order to create generalized knowledge in some particular areas, such as quality infrastructure (QI). In order to find how public policy-makers perceive QI, we employ a triangulation methodology. The results show that policy-makers are not fully familiar with national QI concepts and seldom rely on experts’ opinion. Moreover, QI legislation is uncritically transferred from the EU.

Crime fiction is currently one of the most globalized, most popular, and biggest-selling of commercial genres, but there has been almost no attempt to study it in relation to other kinds of post-colonial literature. There is no bibliography of crime writers as ‘post-colonial’, and no attempt to generalize about a body of fiction. This paper is a brief extract from work in progress, based on the books of over fifty Anglophone or Francophone authors who might be categorized as ‘post-colonial’ by birth or residence. I test post-colonial theory against crime fiction, to argue that strong generic conventions call into question some of that theory's received ideas. I consider two linked problems: first, so-called ‘colonial mimicry’ and its obverse, ‘ventriloquism’, because it seems to me a wrong turning in 20th-century criticism; and, second, the demand for new literatures which would create ‘national identities’. I argue that ‘mimicry’ makes no sense in the context of a strong popular genre, and that accusations of ‘colonial mimicry’ reinscribe the asymmetries of judgement they appear to attack. The possibility of imagined geopolitical units as identity-forming, especially in genres which are informed by social criticism, calls into question the demand for literature as a source of national identity.

The present state of the study of philosophy in China cannot be understood if the introduction of Western philosophy, including Marxism, in the early decades of the 20th century is ignored. During the first half of the past century, philosophy flourished at Peking University with a heavy emphasis on social and political theory, as well as at Tsinghua University, which focused more on professionalization of the discipline, logic, epistemology and the history of philosophy. From 1957 to 1979, philosophical studies suffered severely under an increasingly unfavourable political climate. It is only recently that departments of philosophy have been reconstructed, not only in Beijing but also in all major universities. Like their colleagues in other disciplines, many philosophers are nowadays struggling with the dichotomy between the old and the new, the Chinese and the Western tradition, and resisting an uncritical absorption of Western ideas. Finally, some observations are made on the lectures that Jürgen Habermas gave in China in 2001.

The EU plays a high-profile role in the international arena, and yet this role still evades accurate conceptualization. Since the EU is not a state, it is commonly accepted as sui generis; a normative power influencing the world order mostly by means of direct and intermediary persuasion. Despite this position, in practice when championing the global normative agenda, the EU does not always demonstrate high efficiency as a leader. This article studies the EU’s efforts to push through regional and global versions of a financial transaction tax, meant to promote the common good through the positive externalities it generates for the economy. The aim of the article is to arrive at an adequate explanation for the (in)ability of the EU to act as an agent of global governance in this case. The focus of attention is the inner organizational limitations on the EU’s behaviour as a global actor.

This article explores issues of visual representations and the interaction between fiction and reality in the making of the ‘idea of Europe’. It specifically focuses on David Černý's installation Entropa, exhibited at the headquarters of the Council of the European Union in 2009. The article argues that, despite the use of national stereotypes as the most characteristic representational element of the installation, Entropa does not limit itself to a sardonic critique of a political institution and a ridicule of national identities. Rather, it unveils the uneasiness of facing European identity as fiction. Entropa challenges the boundary between theatricality and reality, because it is exhibited in a political institution. The installation is addressed as a narrative of confusion, where fiction and fact interact in the construction of ideas on Europe, its history, politics, and culture. Therefore, the article concludes, such interaction potentially accommodates a critical standpoint towards the idea of Europe itself.

Basic scientific research is largely limited to the West. Original scientific contributions by the rest of the world are extremely limited, though China, South Korea and India are beginning to make their presence felt. This absence of scientific research is largely due to the undeveloped state of scientific culture. To counter this, systematic and rigorous theoretical training of talented minds is crucial. That requires close interaction with the West. The author suggests various ways to do so.

The processes of research proposals and evaluation have become ever more elaborate, but the system remains primitive. This paper argues for a fresh look at existing practices, with a view to developing less onerous and more efficient systems.

The importance of the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century has been queried in recent years and this paper attempts to show why the notion is still essential to a proper understanding of the twin advance in scientific conceptualization and factual discovery that began in the sixteenth century and led through such figures as Galileo to the new world view of Isaac Newton. The significance of the scholastic tradition, hermeticism and alchemy is not denied, but the major breakthrough that catapulted Europe into the modern age was the outcome of new conceptual tools and a fresh outlook on nature.

The discourse on ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ often implicitly or explicitly suggests that the natural sciences are at the forefront of the development towards worldwide mobility, communication and cooperation in the world of knowledge, while the humanities and social sciences look more frequently at the specifics of certain cultures and countries or lag behind in their intention to internationalize. On dits can be persistent in the domain, among other things, because systematic information on mobility and migration of scholars, as well as on their international activities is scarce. This contribution tries to extract what can be found on mobility and migration of scholars in Europe. The available information suggests that differences by disciplinary groups are unexpectedly small.

In many countries, we have seen an increase in economic inequality over the past 20 to 25 years. The populations might therefore have changed their attitude about how and how much different countries should intervene to reduce the extent of economic inequality. A question is whether there is any connection between changes in redistribution preferences and trends in economic inequality in the prosperous Nordic welfare states. This article contributes by examining whether there are differences in redistribution attitude and changes herein based upon socio-economic criteria, which might include self-interest arguments. Nordic countries are interesting because there have been differences in development, and even strong growth in economic inequality, especially in Sweden and Denmark, although these countries in the literature have been seen as highly equal societies. The analysis shows that support for redistribution is relatively stable over time in each country, but also that there are major differences between countries, with support being much higher in Finland compared with Denmark. Females, discriminated groups and the unemployed generally support redistribution to a higher degree. Ageing generally increases redistributional support, while more education reduces support for government redistribution in Finland. In all four countries, the highest income groups are less supportive of redistribution of income.

Two developments in recent decades – the rising attention to children’s rights, and the growing importance of the digital environment – seem on a collision course, with children’s rights arguably more infringed than benefited by the digital world, and with efforts to promote children’s rights in a digital world seen by some as threatening the freedom of expression that digital networks enable. Here, I set out the case for realizing children’s rights in relation to the digital environment, and then examine the difficulties that arise. Most recently, the status of the child online is shifting from one of invisibility to one of hypervisibility in an increasingly datafied world, and the child’s right to privacy has rapidly become the most contested of all the rights. With challenges ranging from that of identifying who is a child online to reining in the economic power of the major digital platforms, states seem to be facing an impasse when it comes to taking effective action. The result is a series of stark policy choices which leave all stakeholders dissatisfied. I conclude by proposing a series of interventions focused less on the actions regarding particular child rights and more on the legal and institutional processes and standards by which all rights could be better realized in a digital world.

Students are often ill-prepared for the leap in expectations within disciplines when they make the transition from secondary to university-level instruction. Moreover, another equally large challenge exacerbates these vertical disciplinary gaps. At all levels, instruction takes place largely in disciplinary silos – in language and literature, history, mathematics, science, and so on. Learning goals in these silos are often phrased in very different language, e.g. ‘becoming a reader’ (or writer) in language arts, ‘inquiry’ in science, and ‘problem solving’ in mathematics. Such horizontal gaps result in instruction being far less coherent from the student’s perspective than it might be. The Teaching for Robust Understanding framework, known as TRU, may provide a means of addressing both kinds of gap. TRU focuses on the nature of learning environments that support the development of students as powerful learners. Through the lens of the TRU framework one can see commonalities across disciplines and across grade levels, and shape instructional practices accordingly. Within any particular discipline, treating students as active sense makers and arranging learning environments to provide opportunities for active sense making may help to bridge the gap between secondary and higher education.

This article highlights the problems faced by teachers, students, parents and authorities in Romania during the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as their management in the general context of the health crisis unfolding in this country. The documentation regarding Romania was compiled mainly on the basis of official reports and information taken from the media, due to the novelty of the subject for the case study presented. They were joined by theoretical-methodological works on the general epidemiological context and by studies on the particularities of the Romanian education system, which helped us to outline the theoretical-methodological background of the research. The authors have tried to highlight good practices, but also the errors that led to an increase in the number of cases and the imposition of restrictions, during the first four waves of the pandemic, with a major impact on educational activities in Romania. The main restrictions and advantages of online education, a first for the Romanian education system, are also highlighted.

An important proportion of citizens do not manifest confidence in many basic institutions (parliaments, parties, unions, army, public bureaucracies, big business, courts, ecclesiastic hierarchy, police) nor in the political class. Such a deficit of trust is attested by a wealth of empirical data. Nonetheless, the legitimacy of democratic regimes is not challenged: European citizens do not conceive realistically of an alternative system of government. A new counter-power is playing an increasing and crucial role in advanced pluralist democracies – that of magistrates and journalists combined. France and Italy are considered as typical cases, concerning in particular corruption at the highest level of the State and society. What types of citizens are needed in advanced democracies? Ignorant, naive, deferential, credulous, believers in myths or well informed, rationally distrustful citizens? Today, democracy is permanently under the supervision of the public, as attested by surveys conducted periodically.

Discussions of creativity and university governance often conflate multiple kinds of creativity–governance relations. Focusing on the ‘third kind’ of creativity–governance relations in universities, I discuss the role of creativity in prospecting governance models. In other words, this paper focuses on the methods for creatively seeking (third kind) creative governance models (second kind) that foster academic creativity (first kind). I argue that the methods of prospecting governance models are subject to institutional dynamics that steer such search off the path of creativity. I note in particular two such institutional dynamics that track the prospecting process – namely, professional expertise and referentiality – and I argue that these institutional dynamics generate inherent tension in the governance of creativity in universities. I illustrate these claims with findings from a large-scope research project on the branding of universities.

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.

In the course of European integration, many transnational institutions representing national universities, research organizations and industrial research have been established over the last decades. The purpose of this article is to give an empirical account of the role of transnational organizations in European science policy.

The most important ethical issues in the use of the Internet and World Wide Web in scientific research are considered together with some of the conceptual problems that arise as a result of applying new information technologies to old institutions. The paper concentrates on a set of issues relating to moral responsibility for the production, utilization and diffusion of scientific knowledge in a networked environment. A conclusion is that reliability of information and hence the individual scientist's capacity to take full moral responsibility may be compromised by the environment provided by the World Wide Web.