European Sphere Research Articles

Existència individual i col·lectiva en Josep Ferrater Mora

Summary: Without neglecting essentialist reminiscences and specifying the impact of Existential Philosophies on Josep Ferrater Mora, in whom they are mixed with other tendencies, we will study his foundation of collectivity on individual existence. We will emphasize the ethical component, which transcends the prudence of his political positioning, and his eagerness to link the Catalan, Spanish and European spheres, respecting plurality. The essay Les formes de la vida catalana will be analyzed in particular, considering sources, circumstances, approaches, re-elaborations, censorship, and reception. The treatment of the question of identity in previous and subsequent works is also contemplated. Keywords: Josep Ferrater Mora, Existential Philosophies, identity, exile, post-war period

Demons and Diversity in León

Abstract This article examines a wall painting of the temptation of Saint Martin in the so-called Panteón de los Reyes of San Isidoro in León, focusing on its unorthodox portrayal of Satan as an Ethiopianized, dark-skinned figure wearing a robe reflective of Fatimid textile traditions. Tracing the scene’s divergent sources within the complex network of images, texts, and ideas then circulating in León, it argues that the unusually configured image constituted an innovative, intervisual response to the concerns of a palatine viewership that in the first decades of the twelfth century remained preoccupied with its own dynastic and political position, both within the Leonese kingdom and with reference to its wider European sphere.

Rilevanza pubblica delle comunità religiose nella dimensione giuridica europea

SOMMARIO: 1. La presenza religiosa nella sfera pubblica - 2. La liberta religiosa collettiva nella CEDU - 3. La condizione giuridica delle confessioni religiose nel diritto della UE - 4. Identita confessionali e identita nazionali europee - 5. Il ruolo “pubblico” delle istituzioni religiose negli Stati europei - 6. In particolare: a) la rilevanza costituzionale dei soggetti confessionali in Germania - 7. Segue: b) la condizione giuridica delle confessioni religiose in Italia. Public relevance of religious communities in the European legal dimension The religious phenomenon appears relevant both on an individual level and on a social level. In many cases religious experience, on the one hand, helps to draw the personal identity of the subject; on the other, it is an element that characterizes various aspects of civil society, up to the influence of the political and institutional dynamics of many contemporary state systems. This paper intends to demonstrate that the religious phenomenon does not appear confined only in the strictly private sphere, but lives and manifests itself also in the public dimension. This approach seems to be confirmed, among other things, by the new public role that religious communities are progressively taking on in the European legal sphere, as well as within individual state systems in Europe. From the analysis of the rules in force both at the European and national level, this work therefore derives a significant legal recognition of the public relevance of religions and religious communities that are direct institutional expression, paying particular attention to the experience gained in the German law and in the Italian legal system.

Middle palaeolithic lithic assemblages in western Mediterranean Europe from MIS 5 to 3

This paper focuses on an overview of the sites featuring lithic industries ascribed to Middle Palaeolithic based upon a raw materials, technological organization and toolkit management. This is a synthetic analysis of the Western Mediterranean area where sites featuring broad stratigraphic sequences are abundant and enable an adequate assessment of the available record. Presenting all the data organized according to geographical regions contributed to the homogeneity of the results and allowed us to contextualize a regional synthesis, from a broad territorial and chronological point of view. This perspective was compared to other distant European spheres which in turn enabled establishing a framework that consolidates the study area as a different cluster, independent from the remainder of the territories. This paper shows how the various Neanderthal populations had diverse cultural traditions throughout Europe; these are reflected by the archaeological record with the existence of diverse regional clusters that show a significant variability during the Middle Palaeolithic. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that even though the previously referred technical traditions persisted throughout the entire Middle Palaeolithic, arguably even more so than during more recent time periods, it seems pretty obvious that the idea of the Middle Palaeolithic being an homogenous period is wrong and should be disregarded as far as Europe and the Western Mediterranean in particular are concerned.

Exploring the Framing of Animal Farming and Meat Consumption: On the Diversity of Topics Used and Qualitative Patterns in Selected Demographic Contexts.

Simple SummaryIn various contexts, people talk about the farming and consumption of animals using different arguments to construct and justify their (non-)acceptability. This paper reports on a qualitative research among consumers with different backgrounds in urban and rural areas in The Netherlands and Turkey. We present an elaborate methodology for qualitatively researching everyday-life talk about animal farming and meat consumption. We explain how we collected and organised topics people refer to, and looked at the possible relation of complete argumentations with the researched contexts. The resulting long list of topics includes animal welfare arguments, but shows that in everyday-life many others are used, such as health, taste, money, religion, and environmental impact. Our research indicates several ties between mentioned topics and the researched contexts—the most noticeable pattern being the difference between respondents in cities and rural areas. However, in contrast to what literature suggests, single contextual features, like country or gender, offered relatively little insight into the differences that showed up in the complete argumentations. This, we argue, does not imply that context does not matter, but rather that so many cultural and personal contextual aspects play a role that singular contextual features cannot sufficiently explain framing.In various contexts, people talk about animal farming and meat consumption using different arguments to construct and justify their (non-)acceptability. This article presents the results of an in-depth qualitative inquiry into the content of and contextual patterns in the everyday-life framing regarding this issue, performed among consumers in various settings in two extremes in the European sphere: the Netherlands and Turkey. We describe the methodological steps of collecting, coding, and organizing the variety of encountered framing topics, as well as our search for symbolic convergence in groups of consumers from different selected demographic contexts (country, urban-rural areas, gender, age, and education level). The framing of animal farming and meat consumption in everyday-life is not a simple one-issue rational display of facts; people referred to a vast range of topics in the categories knowledge, convictions, pronounced behaviour, values, norms, interests, and feelings. Looking at framing in relation to the researched demographic contexts, most patterns were found on the level of topics; symbolic convergence in lines of reasoning and composite framing was less prominent in groups based on single demographic contexts than anticipated. An explanation for this lies in the complexity of frame construction, happening in relation with multiple interdependent contextual features.

The Irish Language – a Unique Part of Irish Life and Cultural Revitalisation and Protection

The present paper is devoted to the topic of the Irish language and its relation to Irish identity in the modern world, taking into account crucial aspects of the language’s revitalisation and protection. The focus is predominantly on particular ways of achieving the ambitious goal of societal bilingualism in Ireland in the long term. The notion that language and identity are interrelated is the leitmotif of this chapter. Approaching the issue from socio-linguistic and ethnographic perspectives, the revitalisation of the Irish language may trigger the interest of the wider public, assuming that language is an invaluable part of spiritual, nonmaterial culture. Indeed, we consider that the death of the Irish language would be a serious loss not only in the sphere of Ireland’s cultural and national heritage, but also in the wider European sphere.

European Counterpublics? DiEM25, Plan B and the Agonistic European Public Sphere

ABSTRACTAfter the negotiations between the Syriza government and the European Union (EU), the European Left faced the dilemma of which kind of progressive Europe could be developed within the existing EU framework. Two initiatives were launched to foster an alternative Europe after the Greek crisis: ‘A Plan B in Europe’ (Plan B) and the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25). These initiatives emerged to promote a new European project as a rejection of EU austerity policies and lack of democracy. The shaping of alternatives is understood within the framework of the public sphere and Europeanization from below. In this sense, both movements are considered counterpublics that introduce conflict within the European sphere and are capable of elaborating counterdiscourses and develop transnational connections. The article analyses the potentials and constraints of enhancing a transnational and agonistic public sphere from perspectives and experiences which, while sharing the need of internationalization, develop different strategies.

Las atribuciones del Gobierno en funciones

The delimitation of the powers of the transitional government has a great constitutional relevance. It is a typical institution in parliamentary forms of government in circumstances of political crisis. It finds its foundation in the principle of responsibility of the institutions and in the principle of continuity of the State. The power of codecision of Spain in the institutions of the European Union requires that the criteria of urgency and guarantee of general interest that are applied at the state level also extend to the European sphere.

#Democracy: social media use and democratic legitimacy in Central and Eastern Europe

ABSTRACTSince 1989, many of the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have made the dramatic change from communist regimes to democratic nations that are integrated in the European sphere. While these sweeping changes have given rise to a successful transition to democracy unlike any the world has ever seen, there remain issues with governance as well as citizen support for the regime. While other studies have shown that mass media can influence a person's attitudes and opinions in the region, none has explored what effect social media can have on orientations toward democracy in the region. In the following paper, I build several hypotheses based on previous studies of media effects and democratic survival. I then employ survey data to empirically test whether social media increases support for democracy. The study finds that not only does using social media increase support for democracy, but also simple usage rather than information seeking provides more consistent effects on a person's support for democracy in CEE.

The depiction of America on Martin Waldseemüller’s world map from 1507—Humanistic geography in the service of political propaganda

AbstractThis paper demonstrates that the depiction of America on Waldseemuller’s world map of 1507, regardless of its apparently modern depiction, was not a rendering based primarily on geographical knowledge of new discoveries across the Atlantic Ocean. On the contrary, this depiction of America should instead be considered to have been much more influenced by the extremely powerful political and economic interests of the Portuguese Crown and the southern German-trading houses in the impending conflict with the Spanish royal family over supremacy in the spice trade with India. After having demonstrated that this map’s depiction of America, which based on an insular conception, neither corresponded to contemporary ideas nor was verifiable in any way at the beginning of the sixteenth century in the European cultural sphere, the map itself will serve—in a way that has not yet been employed in research related to Waldseemuller’s world map—to illustrate the extent to which this supposedly groundbreaking depic...

Bottom-up Perspectives on Multilingual Ideologies in the EU: The Case of a Transnational NGO

This paper investigates the discursive construction of multilingualism in citizens’ discourses, aiming to fill a gap in the literature of European studies that has scarcely been concerned with language ideologies from bottom-up perspectives. In particular, we focus on the discourses of a transnational NGO to analyse how its members position themselves in relation to linguistic issues and to what extent (if so) they reproduce the EU’s multilingual ideology. Deriving data from focus groups and semi-structured interviews, we contextualise our analysis against the backdrop of an increasingly ‘glocalised’ European site of struggle between global communication and linguistic justice. Using critical discourse analysis we aim to show how discourses of multilingualism are being negotiated at the grass-roots level. Our findings suggest that whilst citizens’ discourses validate an ideal promotion and preservation of linguistic diversity in the EU, they also endorse a diglossic scenario with language performing separate identity and communicative functions. We thus argue for an understanding of European multilingualism that takes into account the transnational dynamics of the European sphere.

Ukraine Neither a State Nor a Country

This is an examination of the culture history of Ukraine, its relation to Russia, the Soviet Union and European imperialism and colonialism. The geography, religion and linguistic divisions of the area of Ukraine must be considered in any assessment of its future. This paper places the debate over Russian or European spheres of influence today over the country in a historical and cultural perspective.

The Downward March of Labor Halted? The Crisis of Neoliberal Capitalism and the Remaking of Working Classes

This article raises the question whether riots, protests, and strikes in the aftermath of the Euro‐crisis mark a turn from moving backwards to moving forward for labor movements. An answer to this question is developed by disentangling the unmaking and remaking of working classes in the Euro‐zone countries. The analysis of their unmaking draws on Beverly Silver's work and shows how technological and organization reorganization and relocations from the 1980s until the present weakened workers' bargaining power and political representation and tore apart the social fabric that had been crucial for the reproduction of class identities even during the period of institutionalized class conflict. The analysis of the remaking of working classes points at fragmented articulations of discontent, which also include the rise of right‐wing populism, as parts of a learning process that might eventually lead to the constitution of classes as collective agents of change. This analysis draws on E. P. Thompson's interpretation of the “original making” of working classes but extends his focus on England to the broader European sphere and the consideration of workers' responses to economic crises. Theoretical guidance for these last two aspects comes from Rosa Luxemburg's economic and political writings.

Rival Detectors Prepare to Take Snapshots of Distant Worlds

In the coming months on two mountaintops in Chile, two new state-of-the-art instruments—the North American Gemini Planet Imager and the European SPHERE—will start scanning the skies for planets around other stars.

Turning Javanese: The Domination of Cuba's Sugar Industry by Java Cane Varieties

By the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth, two islands had come to dominate global cane-sugar production. For most of the sixty-year period between 1870 and 1930, around half of the world's internationally traded crop came from Cuba and Java. The two islands had many topographical similarities that made them particularly well suited to the establishment of sugar plantations: both are relatively large islands with fertile soils and semi-tropical climate. They were also situated in regions that had been drawn into the European sphere of influence in the sixteenth century but that had only been lightly exploited before the nineteenth, when they were both well placed to assume leading roles in the satisfaction of the escalating demand for sugar in the industrialising societies of Europe and North America.However, Cuba and Java existed within two very distinct sets of imperial and commercial networks: Spanish and Atlantic, and Dutch and Indian Ocean respectively. As a result of this, while there have been a plethora of studies about cane agriculture and the sugar industry in each of the islands, there has been little effort to compare their histories or explore the interconnections between them. Only recently has a start been made to study systematically the “convergence and divergence” of the sugar industry in the two hemispheres and to compare the differences and similarities to be found in the paths followed by the two islands.Although the sugar industries of Cuba and Java took different directions, these were inextricably linked. While Cuban planters could exploit the availability of large areas of underused land to overcome the relative scarcity of labour, planters in Java took advantage of the relative abundance of labour to maximise yields from the more limited land available to them. As a consequence of this, Javanese planters influenced by the work of Cuban agronomist Álvaro Reynoso paid considerable attention to the development of scientific methods in cane cultivation. Meanwhile, Reynoso's ideas fell on deaf ears in his home island, where most planters ignored the need for a more scientific approach in the fields in favour of technological advances in the sugar factory and what they saw as their immediate commercial interests.

Towards a European forest policy — Conflicting courses

Over the past several years, at least three different forest policy processes have emerged in the European sphere, two of which are legally binding agreements — one under the auspices of Forest Europe, attempting to negotiate a legally binding agreement; and two, the possibility of a legally binding agreement within the European Union (EU). We aim to identify, reconstruct and classify the major conflicts in both the Commission Green Paper on forest protection and information in the EU: preparing forests for climate change and Forest Europe initiated LBA process. The theoretical framework of this study uses an adapted conflict regulation approach based on the conflict triangle model. Empirically four dimensions are analysed to reconstruct and classify the conflicts: substance, procedure, relationship and discourses around the conflict. Empirical data has been gathered by qualitative document analysis and expert interviews with stakeholders at the national and EU level. The results of the empirical analysis identify three major conflicting interests: a) the subsidiarity principle, b) forest management and c) the responsibility for conducting the negotiations. Classifying these three conflicts into substance and procedural dimensions highlights the major role of the latter within the recent European forest policy processes.

Easily Cracked: Scientific Instruments in States of Disrepair

There has been much scholarly attention to definitions of the term "scientific instrument." Rather more mundane work by makers, curators, and users is devoted to instruments' maintenance and repair. A familiar argument holds that when a tool breaks, its character and recalcitrance become evident. Much can be gained from historical study of instruments' breakages, defects, and recuperation. Maintenance and repair technologies have been a vital aspect of relations between makers and other users. Their history illuminates systems of instruction, support, and abuse. These systems were, for example, evident in the development of astronomical instruments around 1800 within and beyond the European sphere. Episodes from that milieu are used to explore how instrument users sought autonomy, how instruments' mutable character was defined, and how judgments of instruments' failure or success were ever secured.

The Enlightened Image of Nature in the Dutch East Indies: Consequences of Postmodernist Doctrine for Broad Structures and Intimate Life

Eighteenth-century natural-history illustration in the Dutch East Indies reveals verisimilitude as a goal shared between colonial artists and their counterparts in Europe. Natural-history images more generally exhibit common styles in the world settled and dominated by Europeans. Apparently dramatic differences in the local settings of the artists produced only trivial variations in representing nature pictorially, in just the way that astronomy and physics in the European colonies and spheres of influence departed hardly at all from European practice. The overwhelming strength of disciplinary norms, in science and in art, is the standard explanation for this circumstance. An alternative explanation from social history is proposed. It centers on the hypothesis of a homology between households in colonial settings and in Europe. The alternative explanation implies that both the observatory and the artist's workshop were insensitive to superstructural variation in costume and architecture, as well as variation in climate and cuisine. The hypothesis behind the alternative explanation, designated by the term complementarity, derives directly from the postmodernist dictum that ideas are extrusions of social interactions. Nevertheless, just as the strength of disciplinary norms is unresolved in postmodernist doctrine, so complementarity directly challenges the postmodernist predilection for affirming the distinctiveness of colonial cultures.

Poststructuralism in Georgia

The philosophical works of Merab Mamardashvili are part of the (re-)emergence of phenomenological thought on the “margins” of the Eastern European sphere, appropriating and mediating a version of French poststructuralism in the “Soviet” 1980s, in which deconstruction constitutes both method and content. More specifically, Mamardashvili uses Descartes as the point de repère for his investigations into the phenomenology of the object of knowledge and the structure of consciousness, which come to model Mamardashvili's phenomenological Self, anticipating a modern, post-ideological Subject. Mamardashvili's paradigm of the object constitutes the “linguistic” turn in late Soviet Georgian philosophy. Mamardashvili's phenomenon or “fact” makes its appearance in an ideologically determined regime, like a “Centaur,” as a melange of myth, belief and “physical” event, as something unseen (in both senses of the word), not as an unmediated experience of the world, yet neither as pure “thought from outside.”

‘New face of Serbia’ at the Eurovision Song Contest: international media spectacle and national identity1

The aim of this paper is to examine the construction/recycling of national identities primarily through the participation of Serbia (and Montenegro) at the Eurovision Song Contests 2004–2008. First, the performances of this country's representatives at the Eurovision Song Contest will be examined, emphasising the aspects that contribute to the popularity of the songs chosen to represent the nation and the state. All those elements reinvent a picture of the past in its lived totality, managing to reawaken the sense of the supposedly idyllic national past associated with them. In this manner of (re-)creating identity, the recycling of memory and imagined tradition, but also references to European cultural, media and political spheres, have great symbolic weight. The second part will offer a discourse analysis of media coverage of the performance of the country as a host of the Eurovision Song Contest. It is shown how the notion of ‘the new face of Serbia’ is supposed to balance different, sometimes even confronted cultural markers present in concurrent identity strategies in Serbia.