This article argues that, just as science and technology policies played a key role in the early 1980s in dispelling Euro-pessimism and establishing a new momentum towards European integration, so, in the early 1990s, science and technology policies offer a viable way to confront Europe's present crisis of confidence. The agenda has shifted. Today the issues of unemployment, the environment and how best to assimilate the countries of Eastern and Central Europe jostle for priority alongside the older issues of competitiveness and globalization. In spite of the pessimism, none of these challenges is insuperable. On the contrary, it is argued, a co-ordinated supply-side response which gives priority, East and West, to encouraging investment in new equipment, new skills and energy-saving clean technologies, provides a route both out of recession and to increased competitiveness in the global market place.

Affective processes fuel and orient social behaviour throughout life; if they did not exist, there would be no striving, no goal-pursuit, no goal-oriented action. Two interconnected brain regions are deeply involved in the socially adaptive functions of affect and emotion. Both the maturation and functioning of the brain mechanisms involved undergo the shaping influence of the manifold experience that is derived from social interactions.

The economic crisis in Southeast Asia has provoked a debate on the economic and political culture of the region. Is Asian capitalism really suffering from structural deficiencies or does it only signify the imposition of western ethnocentric values? Inside Southeast Asia, public discussion on the issue of corruption has erupted, involving culturally specific notions of what is acceptable or not. Likewise, unbridled exercise of power increasingly faces an indigenous demand for more accountability of the powerholders. The reform debate that is conducted between Southeast Asians themselves seems to be more promising than western calls for democracy and economic transparency.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 Royal Museum for Central Africa (RMCA) in Tervuren is often referred to as one of the last colonial museums in the world. This article provides an overview of the various steps taken in the fundamental transformation process and the plan for renovation of the museum with a view to making it a modern and dynamic Africa museum. For this institution, which is simultaneously a Museum, Research Institute, and Centre of Information Dissemination, a mere change of décor is not sufficient: a fundamental shift in vision, a series of risks, and especially a move towards dialogue and transparency have been part of the process, which has implications that extend far beyond the walls of the museum.

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.*

This article employs the framework of critical infrastructure studies to outline the settler–colonial oppression and decolonial resistance in the Crimean Peninsula. It shows how Soviet and Russian colonialism intertwined ongoing landscape destruction with forced displacements and colonial othering. In addition, it outlines the laborious process of decolonial nourishment to define infrastructure beyond settler terms, questioning what counts as such. The text counters Russian colonial understanding of infrastructure that could not comprehend indigenous Crimean Tatar irrigation systems, constructed through intimate relations with soil and water rather than large-scale geoengineering. The Crimean Tatar water infrastructures are considered, in line with other forms of resistance, as ones of decolonial care. They create the possibility of a future which goes against that imposed by the Russian state.

Conflicts between science and religion, autonomous reason and divine revelation seem to continue in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim heritage and traditions. This holds true both in the secular West and in the Muslim East, in the scientifically and technologically most advanced societies as well as in the scientifically and technologically most backward cultures and countries. This article reviews some of the problems and issues involved in this persistent conflict, and tries to deal with the question of why such disputes and controversies arise in the first place in scientifically very weak Muslim societies.

Strong evidence in the field of neuroscience now makes it possible to claim, with minimal reservation, that E. T. A. Hoffmann’s literary imagination was enriched by synaesthesia. E. T. A. Hoffmann is recognised as a remarkable polymath. A writer of fiction, bibliophile, composer and music critic, he not only understood Romantic sensibility but also involved himself in contemporary scientific debates on the nature of sound and perception, and was familiar with the acoustic theories of Ritter and Schubert’s work on magnetism and electrical energy. Hoffmann’s distinctive creativity was formed and informed by his diverse abilities and interests, and by his auditory sensibility and kinaesthetic appreciation of music. We postulate that the multi-sensory nature of Hoffmann’s work is evidence of creative synaesthesia, a phenomenon that occurs when a neurophysiological sensation perceived in the brain stimulates a different sense or senses and, as a result, produces a creative outcome. Taking as our example his intensely musical story Ritter Gluck, published in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of February 1809, we examine Hoffmann’s complex and idiosyncratic use of metaphor and structure in the scientific context of his own time and continent, and in the context of 21st century scientific understandings of brain science.

We are a sensorium commune, sensuous beings who perceive through many diverse senses at once.1

Using the most recent wave of European Values Survey (EVS) data, this study explores the correlates of generalized trust by comparing Turkish and Greek communities living on the island of Cyprus. The results suggest that, besides confidence in institutions, there are different determinants of trust for each Cypriot community. In comparing Greek and Turkish Cypriots, the results suggest that being married, being older, having an urban residence, being in better health, and participating more in voluntary organizations are correlated with higher levels of generalized trust among Turkish Cypriots, whereas Greek Cypriots who are natives and who have more life satisfaction have higher levels of generalized trust. This study makes a significant contribution by being the first empirical study to test generalized trust among both communities living in the island of Cyprus.

The 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections witnessed an unprecedented wave of radical right parties (RRPs) not only enter the EP, but even outperform the centre-right and centre-left parties in several Member States (MSs). With few exceptions, the 2019 EP elections reconfirmed this state of affairs, although this time around Liberal and Green parties also made inroads into the EP. Despite these results, the performance of the RRPs tends to be taken with a grain of salt since EP elections are generally considered Second Order Elections (SOEs). Yet the electoral consolidation witnessed by these parties in various Member States indicates that their performance is more than a fluke and that therefore it should not be treated as an outlier that is going to be course-corrected by the next election cycle. The 2019 EP election showed that this was not the case. In this regard, this paper examines the notion of radical right mainstreaming by tracking how, at the EU level, RRPs vacillate between pursuing forms of respectable cohabitation in EP groups such as the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) or, as was the case in 2019, they are embracing policy congruent schemes (see the Identity and Democracy Group).

This paper analyses the e-voting experience of the local elections undertaken by Osh city Council in 2016. The process was introduced to ensure fair and democratic elections in Kyrgyzstan after continuous and repeated violent political uprising. The e-system, based on biometrics registration, biometric identification of voters and automated vote counting, was designed to help to avoid the most common election frauds: vote buying, carousel voting and group/family voting. The case study, mainly based on interviews, illustrates the adaptation and modernization of strategies to resist and cheat within the e-voting system. The analysis outlines three widely practised cheating strategies: procedural violations, such as avoiding cross-checking of manual and automated counting and allowing voting without biometrical identification; transformation of bribery into ‘vote auctioning’; and strengthening of kinship-based/regional support and tribal/regional identity under conditions of e-voting.

The future is notoriously difficult to predict, but it can be invented. One option would be to develop a strategy directed towards sustainable consumption because, while the patterns of consumption of food, energy and materials, including water, differ greatly in various parts of the world, if business continues as usual, rates of consumption threaten to become a serious source of conflict. Among the challenges of the new century are a better understanding of what is meant by the transition towards sustainable consumption and how science and technology could be used to improve the efficiency with which resources are utilized, new products and processes invented, and the environmental cost of modern lifestyles best evaluated. Efforts to influence the phenomenon of over-consumption in nations that are more developed economically, and address under-consumption in nations that are less developed, are not topics that can be resolved by scientists and technologists alone. Interdisciplinary studies have become increasingly important to elucidate best methods of production, benefits, threats and consumer behaviour. Implementation of new remedies from science and technology, however, requires dialogue with the public on a case-by-case basis and should begin at the earliest stages of innovation. Sustainable consumption as a strategy lies at the heart of sustainable development; it provides the basis of social equity currently undermined by the rich–poor divide and a route to conflict avoidance.

Since October 2000, mass graves from the Civil War and Franco's dictatorship have become the most visible issue of the process of recovery of historical memory in Spain, as a metaphor for digging up the traumatic past. This paper offers a historical reading of this process, pointing out the importance of recovering the buried bodies to give them a worthy burial, to restore their memory, and to allow families to complete their mourning. Mass graves have been the subject of different interventions: they have been located, marked and dignified, in some cases opened and the human remains exhumed. The graves, previously symbols of silence and oblivion are now sites of mourning and memory. In addition, many forgotten memories have been recovered. The victims of the war and the dictatorship have returned to the heart of the public debate, although not without controversy.

Almost a generation has gone by since the end of the Cold War, a time that has brought many changes. It has become steadily clearer that not the affirmation of the centrality of the democratic West – as asserted by Francis Fukuyama in his famous essay – but the opposite has occurred. There has been continuous erosion of the power of the West. First, the economic and geopolitical balance has increasingly shifted to Southeast Asia, where quite a few states have authoritarian, even totalitarian, socioeconomic arrangements. China is, of course, the best-known example. Second, the demographic and cultural tides have changed. In the past, Europe sent waves of émigrés all over the world. Now the West has become the destination of millions from non-European countries. The pattern of cultural adaptation has also undergone dramatic changes. A considerable number of non-Europeans have no desire to assimilate, or at least they wish to preserve their heritage. All these processes – especially as they relate to the fact that the West is losing its economic competitiveness – cause a response that often leads to racism and neo-fascism. Those who study European neo-fascists almost instinctively compare them with pre-Second World War fascists and Nazis. This temptation is reinforced by the fact that these neo-fascists often use Nazi symbols and trappings. However, a close look at these European neo-fascists/neo-Nazis and their prewar counterparts indicates that their similarities are usually deceptive and they actually belong to quite different species. Present-day neo-fascists/neo-Nazis are not imperialists, as were the German Nazis who dreamed about a worldwide empire. Current European right-wingers are parochial isolationists. They want not an empire but the cleansing of their state from newcomers, especially those of non-European origin. Many are even suspicious of European unity; they see the European Union as the key that opens the gates of their countries, not just to Asians/Africans but to East Europeans, seen as almost an alien race. Second, their view of Jews is different from that of the Nazis. They may be anti-Semitic, but their dislike of Jews is hardly the central element of their worldview. Moreover, they are similar to many of the general public who differentiate between ‘their’ native Jews – against whom they have no grudges – and newcomers from, say, Eastern Europe, whom they consider parasitic aliens. Furthermore, they have problems with the church. Some may be neo-pagans; in this they are also quite different from the Nazis, who had a tense relationship with the church but did not openly oppose it. Russian rightists in many ways follow the model of the European far right. This is due not only to direct ideological borrowing but also to similar conditions. Russia's heartland, for example, is also a major destination for non-European migrants. Still, the Russian far right's views unquestionably have elements arising from the country's specific conditions. As a result, they have developed several peculiar ideological characteristics. They are often pagan and quite hostile to the Orthodox Church. They also see Jews as part of an unholy cabal of Asiatics set on Russia's destruction.

Media, education and democracy are inseparably connected, as an educated citizenship is fundamental to the proper working of democracy. The mass media have a demonstrated and vital capacity to educate, especially beyond the parameters of formal education. The nature of such education is both civic and social, deliberate and unintentional. Vigilance is required to separate education from persuasion, information from propaganda. Given the centrality of media to democracy, not only do the media have an obligation to educate the citizenship, but the universities need to educate the citizenship about the media. Without such education, democracy itself is threatened.