Populist parties participate in the process of political representation through elections. Little is known about how they conceptualize this process since their statements refer to a direct involvement of citizens in decision-making and disapprove of representatives. This article addresses this issue and presents an empirical study about how Lithuanian populist political parties define political representation. The data come from the 2016 election manifestos and from party websites between April 2016 and September 2017. The qualitative content analysis reveals that populists define representation by referencing common moral values and constant communication with citizens. This helps them create a political identity common to themselves as representatives and the represented.

In this article, I claim that Wittgenstein was familiar with Hamann’s work, particularly with two of the latter’s original contributions: (a) the idea of transforming Luther’s concept of grammar into a critical philosophical and linguistic tool; and (b) Hamann’s use of a kenotic, impure style as a means to attain the humility his religious stance demands. I suggest that an understanding of Hamann’s style as a tool to achieve humility sheds light on Wittgenstein’s later refutation of the purity of the Tractarian style. As reflected in remarks published in collections such as Culture and Value and Public and Private Occasions, Wittgenstein – like Hamann – aspired to modesty not only in his private life, but also in his philosophical work, attributing it a religious significance. In this context, his later style of philosophizing, characterized by the use of everyday rather than metaphysical terms, the inclusion of impure concepts and humble examples, dialogue and fragmentariness, is a means to ‘dismantle one’s pride’, in the practice of philosophy conceived as ‘working on oneself’.

Last year, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration announced the first detection of a gravitational wave. A century after the fundamental predictions of Einstein, the first direct observation of a binary black hole system merging to form a single black hole was made. The observations provide unique access to the properties of spacetime at extreme curvatures: the strong-field and high-velocity regime. It allows unprecedented tests of general relativity for the nonlinear dynamics of highly disturbed black holes. LIGO and Virgo realized a global interferometer network, and more detections were made, including a signal from a binary neutron star merger. The scientific impact of the various detections will be explained. In addition, key technological aspects will be addressed, such as the interferometric detection principle, optics, as well as sensors and actuators. Attention is paid to Advanced Virgo, the European detector near Pisa, which came online in 2017. We end with a discussion of the largest challenges in the field, including plans for the Einstein Telescope, a large underground observatory for gravitational-wave science.

The public debate about the consequences of Brexit in Britain follows certain predictable lines of established academic concepts in British constitutional law. This arguably overlooks the important constitutional complications of Brexit, including the position of Scotland in post-Brexit Britain. This article takes the unorthodox approach of focusing on legal and intellectual history rather than British constitutional law, because in this way one obtains a better understanding of the present British constitutional framework in the context of Europe. The discussion is from a continental European viewpoint and through the eyes of a private and commercial lawyer. The completely different understanding of Britain and Europe about the nature of a constitution and the structure of a state becomes more apparent with Britain’s departure from the EU, which may also influence the future national cohesion of the UK itself, particularly the relationship between England and Scotland after Brexit.

In 1868, Japan embarked on its unique journey to become a modern country that was deemed successful and advanced by Western standards. But what characterized Japanese civilization at the outset of this quest and how did the makers of modern Japan conceptualize their goals? To answer this question, we will look at the long tradition of the Mito School, with special attention for the works of the Later Mito School, and to the thinkers and practitioners of the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods. This shall enable us to determine the aim, the nature and the success of Japan’s quest for its own path to modernization. The dissemination of the paradigm of modernization thereby attained to Korea and China shall be followed through and evaluated.

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.

A person’s image of a foreign country is often not related to an actual encounter, but limited and one-sided based on the environment of the person’s native land. Consider, for example, the Russian elite perception of the West in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Peter the Great’s reign shook Russia’s traditional society and led to the spread of promiscuity and general immorality. Consequently, for many Russians, whether or not they traveled, the West, epitomized by France, was a place of erotic pleasures and easygoing life. By the beginning of the nineteenth century some members of the Russian elite started to question the political system of their native land. For some of them, like Peter Chaadaev, the West stood as a symbol of the ideal political institutions and Russia for the dead end of history.

The central question in this paper is the relationship between European modernist traveller's self-fashioning and the representation of Sub-Saharan African cultures, spaces and cross-cultural encounters in the early 20th century. The premise is that the cultural production of identity, including the question of artistic identity and poetics, is most productive where it is most ambivalent and uneasy. High modernist critical narratives pose the question of the phenomenology of travel in terms of textual authority. Authority, in the perception in late colonial European writing, was often simultaneously questioned and affirmed, meaning that Western art, and the modern society, were seen as lacking something significant outside of its margin. At the same time, the idea of the pure exotic emerged as incompatible with modern historical consciousness, and colonial texts anticipate many later theoretical ideas in postcolonial studies. The question is how to portray cross-cultural encounters, and how to fashion the self in the contact zone of travel and sojourn. Modernist travel writing asks what was the writer's self and the recognition of identity and difference in others. The modernist image of Africa carries important implications for the re-evaluation of art and literature and the renewal of artistic or narrative forms.

Globally connected and commodified digital means of communication offer a wealth of information across age-bands and across formal and informal sites of learning, yet few students obtain systematic training in transforming this information to knowledge that is tailored to their level of understanding and to the settings of learning. This gap between access to unsorted and often unsolicited information across boundaries of space, learning and generation and training in the formation of valid knowledge poses a threat to democratic societies that are based on informed citizens’ joint debate and decision-making. This article addresses the gap between students’ information access and their knowledge formation and discusses the challenges and possible solutions with empirical focus on the transition between upper-secondary and tertiary education. Globally connected social network sites (‘social media’) are key information sources for many students. Owing to their commodified, algorithmic and non-transparent character, these sites offer little guidance in terms of validation and verification of claims. I propose Media and Information Literacy (MIL) as an important means of minimizing the gap between information access and sound knowledge formation. This is because MIL goes beyond training of access to digital technologies and information search and retrieval. It also trains skills in applying communication technologies for validation, critique and knowledge production. I discuss the challenges posed to education to apply (MIL) as a key pathway to minimizing the gap in order to advance public value and societal resilience and suggest that educational systems shift their focus from teaching to learning in tandem with more inclusive approaches to where learning takes place.

Any consideration of English in the context of a literature for Europe prompts the question of whether English can be contained within the paradigm of Europe, whether it could or should ever be restrained from overflowing its edges and boundaries. While English was created from the crucible of European languages, its filiations have long since stretched far beyond the borders of the continent. Close observation of the dynamics of English, and of English Literature, it could be argued, illustrates one reason why contemporary Britain finds it difficult to limit itself to an exclusively European dimension.

The French noir tradition is supposed to dominate the French market of crime fiction, regardless of the growing success of French and non-French thrillers in France. Yet in the last two decades, the French literary crime fiction market has been marked by the arrival of non-French European authors. By combining a quantitative and qualitative approach to publishing series, translations, prizes and festivals, this article highlights the transnational dimension of the French market independently from a spontaneous methodological nationalism encouraged by the reception discourses.

The war-generation dealt with the Holocaust as a part of the spectrum of crimes inflicted by the Hitler regime on humanity. The postwar generation, which bore no responsibility, even as neutral witnesses or accomplices, saw it as a special monstrosity; Auschwitz has been integrated into their cultural heritage. In education this means that an obligation of remembrance can provoke reactions of boredom, irritation or worse, since youth is confronted daily with other problems. But remembrance should not be marginal in school history.

In February 2006, talks began in Vienna to decide the status of Kosovo. The solution was forecast in several statements: instead of officially remaining a province of Serbia, considering that 90% of the population of the area is Albanian, mostly Muslim, and want independence, independent statehood might be granted to Kosovo. Kosovo enjoyed an autonomous status under Tito (abolished by Milošević) and thus has the legal right to decide on independence.

Serbia wants to keep its authority over the province, which is considered to be the ‘cradle of Serbia,’ a sacrosanct place in Serbian history. However, the Serb population has gradually decreased and become a small minority. This happened due to a huge Serb emigration after the Ottoman conquest of the region, a spontaneous, sometimes forced emigration, which gained special impetus during the Second World War, when the region became part of ‘Great Albania,’ and Serbs were killed and chased out of the province. The tension and violence of the post-war decades made emigration advisable for Serbs. Milošević's Kosovo war-and-rape campaign made the Kosovars victims of exalted Serb nationalism in the late 1990s. The NATO bombing stopped this but the Serb minority declined into an unbearable situation. The Kosovo Liberation Army's violent actions, killing Serbs, burning their houses, shooting at school buses, continued until recently and led to the flight of half of the remaining Serb population, and ‘cleansed’ Kosovo of 80% of the Roma population.

Theses about globalised, cosmopolitan, transnational or multilateral memories have received wide circulation over the past few decades. However, their reception in – and pertinence to – Latin America has up to now received little attention within the international debate. This article aims to contribute to this debate by focusing on the particular field of memorialisation discourses and practices. The text posits the existence of a certain global memorialising language, characterised by particular aesthetic and architectonic features. These traits are placed in contrast and in dialogue with the rich memorial tradition that has developed in Argentina since the 1970s, led by the human rights movement and its supporters.

This paper examines the importance of human rights protection – in particular the European Convention on Human Rights – to the Council of Europe's survival as a political authority. Its underlying premise is that the proliferation of regional organisations in Europe in post-war Europe, and the creation of the Communities in 1958, contributed to a loss of a sense of purpose as to the Council of Europe's role in post-war Europe. Initial attempts to widen the scope of its political authority in relation to the Member States and other regional organisations were unsuccessful. It was, therefore, necessary for the Council of Europe to consolidate its existing mandate in ensuring the region's democratic security through human rights protection. Thus, led by its Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe institutions have, since 1949, provided the Member States with the necessary regional fora for examining and promulgating regional human rights legislation, such as the European Convention on Human Rights and its two additional protocols abolishing the death penalty.

The early modern books on Ambonese natural history by G.E. Rumphius have mostly been analysed for their aesthetic form and scientific content. However, with the concept of contact zones as introduced by M.L. Pratt, these texts can also be read as historical sources about colonialism and slavery in the late seventeenth-century Moluccas. This article explores the traces of colonialism and slavery in Rumphius’ Ambonese Herbal (1740ff.) and the Ambonese Curiosity Cabinet (1705).

The last 15 years have witnessed a wave of nostalgia for the recent past in Greece. This nostalgia is boosted by social media, especially Facebook, and revolves around the rising counsumer standards that the country experiences in the first three decades after its entry in the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1981. Drawing on media material and surveys, this article discusses this phenomenon, focusing on whether this nostalgia represents a cultural response to Europe and Europanization. Through a historically empathetic analysis, the article argues that this critique focuses on participation in the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), a choice that Greek society largely sees as harmful. In this vein, the drachma, Greece’s currency until 2002, is viewed nostalgically and identified with prosperity.

The purpose of the article is to determine the degree of influence of international migration issues on the process of transformation of European identity and to assess the prospects for applying this experience in the countries of Central Asia. The methodological base of the study was built on the basis of a combination of methods of structural-functional, comparative, institutional analysis and forecasting with elements of a descriptive method. The results of the scientific work consist of characterizing the concept of European identity and the main problems of its development in connection with the intensification of migration processes in the world, formulating the features of the incorporation and integration of foreign citizens in the EU states, as well as highlighting the principles and norms used by members of the Commonwealth to regulate migration flows. The materials of this work can be applied in research and applied fields: the article can be useful for scientists whose interests include the formation and development of regional identity in a globalized world, as well as the topics of migration processes and linguistic, cultural and social adaptation of immigrants.

When the political needs of governments, political parties, armed groups, etc., demand the making up of a past that justifies their specific present, their respective organs often seek to propagate a discourse that permeates the national social structure and allows the memory of the causes of past violence to be reinvented, through a strong perversion of history. In these situations, a trend known as historical presentism tends to emerge, i.e., the malformation of history and historical knowledge in the service of totalitarian projects, such as those of the Nazi and Soviet regimes in twentieth-century Europe, or identity-based nationalisms, sponsored by violent guerrillas, as in the case of the FARC-EP in Colombia. Two scenarios that exemplify singular manifestations of historical presentism in Europe and Latin America are given.