This article surveys the Catholic Church's exploitation of sport in Liberal (1861–1922), Fascist (1922–1943), and post-war Italy. It examines how and why the Church overcame its initial reticence to embrace sport and turn it into a fundamental pillar of an alternative culture that challenged the monopoly of national sporting federations. Following the rise of Fascism, sport became one of the principal means by which the Church resisted a complete takeover by the regime. Analysis of the devout Catholic cyclist Gino Bartali reveals how the Church maintained its identity and tradition of sporting independence despite the inevitable suppression of Catholic sporting organisations. Culminating in an examination of the ‘immortalisation’ of Bartali after his win in the 1948 Tour De France – a victory popularly credited with saving Italy from civil war – the article illuminates the processes by which sport became a central feature of Catholicism in national life. It highlights the Church's contribution to the development of Italian sport, assesses the wider impact of sport's role in forming alternative cultures, and argues that sport perfectly positioned the Church to respond to the demands of Reconstruction Italy and provided opportunities to secure a post-war Christian Democratic 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.

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.

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.

This paper highlights the role of chronic psychosocial stress in accelerated ageing and age-associated degenerative diseases, referring to the free radical theory of ageing. Chronic work stress in midlife provides an illustrative case to explore these associations, with an emphasis on cardiovascular disease and its subclinical precursors. It is argued that lack of control at work and the experience of an imbalance between efforts spent and rewards received at work trigger continued stress reactions with adverse long term effects on health. These conditions impair the working person's successful self-regulation in a core social role in adult life – the work role. Self-efficacy and self-esteem, two important psychological components of well-being and health, are compromised if personal control and social reward are lacking. Selected empirical results derived from epidemiological and experimental investigations are reported to illustrate this argument. In particular, otherwise healthy middle-aged employees suffering from stress at work are twice as likely to report a new cardiovascular disease in a five year period compared with their less stressed colleagues. In another study, an increase in average ambulatory systolic blood pressure and heart rate is observed in a group of workers characterized by an imbalance between effort and reward at work. The implications of this research for improved quality of life and healthy ageing in early old age concern the provision of adequate social roles, which offer opportunities for experiencing continued personal control and social reward. At the socio-political level, new forms of social productivity in economic and non-monetarized sectors need to be developed.

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.

The financial and economic crises of the last few years in many Southern Eurozone countries are generally studied individually, without reference to other such crises in the region. In this note, we argue that they may also be approached as symptoms of an underlying structural challenge facing the EU economy. In many ways the relationship between northern and southern Eurozone countries seems remarkably similar to typical economic centre–periphery relations, yet without the harmonizing role that a national government could play. The occurrence and combination of crises seems to be indicative of what one would expect from the adverse effects of centre–periphery relations among countries. Unfortunately, this would imply that the crises we are currently seeing are likely to continuously reoccur in the near future to the detriment of sustainable economic growth and political-economic stability in Europe.

This article examines the figure of the desaparecido as a transnational symbol, focusing on the ‘success’ this figure has had in the contemporary debate about memory in Spain. Taken from the repressive context of the dictatorships of the 1970s in South America, the disappeared have travelled to the Spain of the twenty-first century, where they are progressively replacing the former ‘fusilados y paseados’ of the Franco Regime. After charting the ways in which the term has been used in the public debate, we analyse the figure of the disappeared in the novel, El vano ayer, by the Spanish writer Isaac Rosa.

The current euro crisis, considered by the IMF to be the new heart of the international economic crisis, has its historical roots in the process of construction of the European Monetary Union (EMU). The resulting architecture of economic governance in the EU has revealed itself to contain serious shortcomings in both ideological terms (design of a coherent exit strategy) and institutional terms (procedures, irreversibility and implementation times of the decisions made). As a result, the responses made by Europe have been late, hesitant, sometimes lacking in intensity and inconsistent in their attempts to manage the crisis.

A novel written by a Muslim Andalusian of the 12th century brilliantly argues that all knowledge can be obtained by applying reason to experience.

Scientists work by collecting observable evidence of different phenomena, from which they analyse and construct theoretical explanations. Consequently, science involves systematic efforts to increase human knowledge, a phenomenon that is usually described as ‘cumulativity’. Most scientists would probably agree that (excellent) research should be cumulative, and by this they usually mean that scientists should accommodate and refer to the publications of other scholars. This article suggests that our perception of science would benefit from a broader and more nuanced approach to cumulativity. The article therefore provides a discussion on how contemporary scholars can approach cumulativity by adopting the fundamental ideology of the web 2.0 and web squared concepts. A proposition for an altered approach is posited through web squared cumulativity conceptualization, involving a more open and collaborative approach. The discussion provides a foretaste of contemporary initiatives that suggest the spread of this emerging trend.

In this article, Elizabethan and Jacobean Baroque drama is considered as a comparative, structuring reference and as a control parameter for understanding contemporary British public television police drama as a genre in its own right. The argument for its autonomy and specificity lies not primarily with formal arguments, but with its intimate connection with representations on government and governance, as practices and world-models aimed at the management of complexity. Starting from the above, I premise that the public police drama format is highly relevant for Europe at large, not only as a fictional means of comprehending complex government, but as an emerging forum of actual public deliberation on the means and goals of complex government. The logical extension of the current study would be a future analysis of the manner in which the suggested template of police drama was absorbed in the continental television and government culture. For the moment the argument is restricted to pointing out the premises offered by the British original format for a poetics of complex order and of multi-level governance essential for the configuration of a European political imaginary.

The notion of ‘sufficiency consciousness’ is a way of life to be adopted towards attitude change in a world that craves for absolutist secularity and religious dogmatism. The paper explores aspects of sufficiency that could promote material development, and as such require a total attitude change and behaviour remodification of public life. It is obvious that performance-driven targets, accelerated growth, investment and prosperity-driven agenda by market forces alone would lead to a skewed understanding of both the notion of sufficiency and material development. Hence, a proposition for value-based sense of material development, ethical buying and consumption have all become survival strategies for civil society groups and organisations to effect change from within. In the Buddhist scheme of thought, two significant core concepts of wisdom and compassion impact on social change and behaviour. Developing non-material values generated by wisdom and compassion are proposed as a lifelong pursuit in understanding human tendencies such as greed, clinging, and craving to amass wealth and excessive indulgence. Such an approach and an analysis evoke a sense of sufficiency alongside appropriate and sustainable material development. The use of certain economic indexes and other technical data in the paper indicate and symbolise the extent to which material progress is emphasised over and above the non-material. A possible development of an index such as Gross National Happiness (GNH) as proposed by the Thai specialists is included as an alternative to the sole-material-progress-based data discourses. Cultivating oneself with compassion juxtaposed by wisdom challenges all to uphold goodness as part of being human. Opposition to such a view of life and a way of life is problematic in the light of the current phenomena of theatrical performance of violence to redress grievances as well as limitless confidence in economic growth and greedy investment plans. It is a value-laden counterpoint to the zero tolerance that can address the larger socio-political issue of the alterity1 that both help to understand what actually sufficiency means in the array material development. Wisdom becomes a guide to action with compassion, while compassion expands the capacity of wisdom to understand the part and the whole. It is in this interplay of value-tracking that one is able to realise the importance of human activity that can evolve checks and balances, which are imperative to measure material development and social progress. ‘Sufficiency consciousness’ and material development are healthy, vibrant and adaptive aspects for civil society groups as well as other institutions to participate critically in ‘religious affairs’ in a ‘secular realm’ with what life offers. The non-material basis of wisdom and compassion offers a wholesome view of ‘sufficiency consciousness’, which is fundamental to material development, economic activity, political governance, institutional arrangements and campaign strategies, for civil society groups to achieve their potential. Wisdom steers compassion while compassion transforms wisdom in those engaged in human activity, which is both about ‘here’ and the ‘not yet’.

International trials of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are currently a matter of considerable interest – legal, political and human. The work of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR), set up respectively in 1993 and 1994, and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague in 2002, have focused attention on the practice and value of such juridical processes both as forms of law and in terms of the events they address. The unexpected death of Slobodan Milosevic during his trial at the ICTY has only intensified the controversy aroused by such proceedings. Politics, history, memory, mourning, reparation and even reconciliation are inescapably part of the legal process, often in an explicit and even formal manner. This means that scholars in disciplines other than legal science and people from many backgrounds are interested in the work of such international tribunals and in the types of ‘truth’ that they seek to establish.

Such trials are not new. The idea stems directly from the intersection of military violence and humanitarian impulses in the 19th century. Geneva law, emanating from the International Red Cross (founded after the main war of Italian unification), dealt with the humane treatment of wounded and prisoners. Hague law, which codified the conduct of belligerents towards non-combatants, grew from the Lieber Code devised by the Union during the American Civil War and from the attempts by European powers to regulate military conduct after the Franco-Prussian War, culminating in the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907.

The reproductive capacity of our species is far in excess of its needs. If all women used their reproductive potential to the full they would give birth to about 15 children on average. As averages of 6 or 7 were once sufficient to compensate for the high level of mortality, and higher numbers would have led to unacceptably high levels of population growth, that, presumably, is the level of fertility found in traditional European societies and in developing countries before the onset of fertility decline. In European societies, fertility decline began in the 19th century. It was a reaction to the disequilibrium that resulted from the long-term decline in mortality. However, a clear sequence cannot always be established. The assumption that prevailed in the 1950s and 1960s that this demographic transition, as it is customarily called, would lead to a new equilibrium appears not to have been well founded. Average family size has declined to such low levels that the age structure is seriously affected and the replacement of generations is no longer assured. A new disequilibrium has resulted. If this is a temporary phenomenon it is not an important issue. However, if it has to be assumed that future generations will also limit their reproduction to not more than 10% of their potential, the perspective is different. Even with continued high levels of immigration, population decline will then become inevitable. While some argue this will turn out to be beneficial, it is not without disadvantages.

Science as part of an open society cannot flourish if science becomes the exclusive possession of a closed set of specialists. The problem of scientific rhetoric, however, is that scientific knowledge cannot be everybody's knowledge in volume or in the concepts used and that therefore a loss of information content occurs when scientific knowledge is projected onto the screen of everyday knowledge: science then appears only as a silhouette. Even so silhouettes can convey an important message in relation to a special context under discussion. The particular silhouette selected then becomes a question of truthfulness in scientific rhetoric.

Academic research and education are, more than ever, a collective endeavour. This article discusses how different modes of governance facilitate or obstruct collective action in universities. Based on theories of public goods and the resource-based perspective, we develop the concept of university commons in order to analyse the challenges arising from the governance of collective action. We examine how to effectively balance collegial and managerial governance to create a sustainable portfolio of university commons.

In the Western world, the humanities have been under pressure for the last two or three decades. There are various reasons for this, which have to do with the changed status of humanities disciplines within universities, but also with the public at large. Employment prospects are deemed slimmer for humanities graduates than for STEM graduates. Aging populations requiring more health and old age provisions, and globalization increasing economic competition, are leading to economization and rationalization in the world of academe, relegating the humanities often – quite naturally, so to speak – to the end of the funding chain. Still, there are good reasons to continue funding, and promoting, the humanities. These reasons have to do with questions of identity, but also of economics.*

Noir is a genre label with a long and complex history. The success of certain European home-grown forms of the genre (the French polar, the Scandinavian noir, etc.) invite us to reflect on the range but also the limits of the label in today’s European culture. The seemingly paradoxical example of Donald Westlake’s Ordo, an American noir novel that is perhaps neither ‘truly American’ nor ‘noir’ (and perhaps not even a ‘novel’) will serve here as a test case for some reflections on the actual use and function of the noir label in European literary culture.