O tema deste artigo é um texto apócrifo de W. G. Sebald, o ensaio "Europäische Peripherien" [Periferias Europeias], baseado em uma palestra proferida em fevereiro de 1992, em Tübingen. Esse ensaio ocupa um lugar especial na obra de Sebald, pois nele o autor se expressa mais resolutamente do que em qualquer outra ocasião sobre questões políticas, no que diz respeito tanto ao processo de unificação europeia quanto aos problemas fundamentais das sociedades ocidentais na transição para o século XXI. A partir (...) de uma leitura mais atenta, chego à conclusão de que esse ensaio, supostamente secundário, revela-se um importante pilar para reconstruir a interpretação profundamente melancólica que Sebald faz da história com base no conceito de uma “história natural da destruição”. Ao mesmo tempo, “Europäische Peripherien” permite reconhecer a importância de Mutation der Menschheit [Mutação da Humanidade], de Pierre Bertaux, como influência fundamental, até então não reconhecida, para o desenvolvimento da obra de Sebald.Palavras-chave: W.G. Sebald. Europa. “História natural da destruição”. Pierre Bertaux. AbstractThis article discusses the essay "Europäische Peripherien", a hitherto overlooked text by W.G. Sebald based on a lecture given in Tübingen in February 1992. The essay occupies a special position in Sebald's oeuvre, as the author positions himself more pronouncedly than anywhere else on political issues, both with regard to the process of European unification and to fundamental challenges of Western societies in the transition to the twenty-first century. In my close reading the supposedly insignificant essay proves to be an important text for a reconstruction of Sebald's deeply melancholic view of history as expressed in the concept of a "natural history of destruction". At the same time, "European Peripheries" allows us to acknowledge the importance of Pierre Bertaux’ Mutation der Menschheit as an undiscovered influence on the development of Sebald's oeuvre.Keywords: W.G. Sebald. Europa. “Natural history of destruction”. Pierre Bertaux. ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-4825-1912. (shrink)

Stepping-up the historiography of peripheral popularisation Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9454-8 Authors Aileen Fyfe, School of History, University of St Andrews, St Katharine’s Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AR UK Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This essay takes a critical and reflective look at two recently published books on contentious politics in the Balkans and Eastern Europe: Social Movements in the Balkans and Ideology and Social Protests in Eastern Europe. Focusing on regions somewhat neglected in scholarly analyses of the recent global upsurge of protests, these books aim to fill the gap by highlighting some contextual and regional specificities: a position of economic and geo-political periphery, weak or unconsolidated democratic institutions, post-socialist and transitional environments, (...) societal divisions, etc. By critically assessing both contributions, in a manner that looks for their complementarity, this essay: examines the characteristics of popular mobilizations and grievances in Southeast and Eastern Europe; questions dominant narratives of political and economic transition and EU integration; re-evaluates socialist heritage and post-socialist political trajectories; discusses the possibilities of articulating political alternatives to representative democracy and free market economy; and addresses the burden of conflicting memories and attitudes towards the region?s socialist past. (shrink)

The author attempts to investigate connections and interdependencies between periphery countries and the globalisation process, including the attitude of these countries to unification blocs, such as the European integration project. The basic research tool used in this work is a systemic analysis, as well as the core-periphery method, derived from social sciences. Its fundamental hypothesis is that the decline of the liberal architecture of the globe may translate into the periphery’s tendency to abandon real convergence in (...) favour of the fragmentary imitation of supranational bodies, potentially leading to intensified disintegration tendencies within phenomena, such as the consolidation of Europe. In the past, the powerless core of the community only contemplated the imitative Europeanisation of marginal territories. Today, however – because the idea to construct a homogeneous polity has collapsed – postulates of “multi-speed” integration can lead to the reconstruction of the historical division into the core and periphery of the old continent. (shrink)

This study examines the changing role of art and artist during the turn-of-the-century period, offering a consideration of the multiple dichotomies of art and life, aesthetics and economics, production and consumption, and centre and periphery.

This is an introduction to the Special Issue of Empedocles European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication focused on Latin American studies. The articles collected here were meticulously selected in light of previous discussions and conferences about Latin America that took place over the past year. The contributors transversally analyse several issues in current Latin American studies, particularly those related to philosophy, art, literature and visual studies. They propose alternative readings of Latin America taking into account its singularity and (...) the way in which traditional categories such as representation, power, modernity or gender, among others, are implicitly and explicitly used and criticized. (shrink)

Structuralism and dependency theories emerged when the World Wars and the Great Depression revealed to Latin American thinkers the peculiar vulnerabilities of their national economies. These theori...

European Stories is the first book of its kind in any European language. Its authors explore the many different ways 'public intellectuals' have debated Europe - the EU and its periphery - within distinct epistemological, disciplinary, ideological and above all national traditions. The chapters focus on the post-1989 era but with a view to the long history of the 'European idea' and its variants across the continent. To what extent such ideas frame the attitude of (...) class='Hi'>European publics is left open. But the authors assume that they matter to the European project as a whole. While the twelve national cases have been selected for the broad range they offer, from founding to non-EU member states, they are not exhaustive as the book is meant to encourage further research. The authors of these chapters are all themselves fully immersed in their respective public spheres although generally not strongly identified with one 'camp' or another. The expected readership is broad and interdisciplinary, ranging from political philosophy, to political science, international relations, history, sociology and the history of ideas. Beyond academia, European Stories is meant for all readers interested in the intellectual debates of our time. (shrink)

This paper tackles an old, yet persisting philosophical and cultural imaginary that justifies the political subjugation, marginalization and exclusion of distant others through claims that such people are less advanced and cognitively inferior, and therefore remain at the periphery of moral and political considerations of Western political culture. My premise here is that all knowledge is historically conditioned, and as such serves as a discursive formation that mirrors and sustains specific historical forms of social organization and practices. Thus, by (...) considering the interrelated themes of epistemic and social inclusion of refugees and migrants from a range of critical philosophical perspectives, I argue that successfully managing the dire humanitarian circumstances involved in admitting and receiving displaced and migrant people requires the inclusion of both the bodies of knowledge and discursive interactions and also diverse social and cultural perspectives. (shrink)

This paper tackles an old, yet persisting philosophical and cultural imaginary that justifies the political subjugation, marginalization and exclusion of distant others through claims that such people are less advanced and cognitively inferior, and therefore remain at the periphery of moral and political considerations of Western political culture. My premise here is that all knowledge is historically conditioned, and as such serves as a discursive formation that mirrors and sustains specific historical forms of social organization and practices. Thus, by (...) considering the interrelated themes of epistemic and social inclusion of refugees and migrants from a range of critical philosophical perspectives, I argue that successfully managing the dire humanitarian circumstances involved in admitting and receiving displaced and migrant people requires the inclusion of both the bodies of knowledge and discursive interactions and also diverse social and cultural perspectives. (shrink)

In this article I analyse prominent textbooks, encyclopedias and journals in the field of women’s and gender studies and ask where the authors and concepts presented in these texts and sites of publication come from in terms of geographic location. This is inspired by the question: to what extent can gender studies be described as a ‘multi-centered’ field (Connell, 2011) and can gender studies take into account feminist concepts of knowledge production which favour the involvement of the greatest possible diversity (...) of authors (Longino, 1990; Harding, 1991)? The analyses presented here show that being located at a North American or Western European institution still seems to be a crucial factor in authors being published and referred to – both in Western academic centres and in other regions. It seems that there is still a long way to go before various local gender studies communities can communicate on a more egalitarian footing. (shrink)

This essay considers Moscow’s simultaneously peripheral and central position on the global fashion map. It is predicated on a study of imaginary Russian geographies presented in Vogue and other fashion media, advertisements and promotional activities by important fashion brands, as well as the promotional texts and visuals of several new Russian fashion designers. While these different players all contribute to shaping the imagery of Russian fashion today, their agendas and aesthetics differ. This essay identifies three main approaches within the field (...) of the symbolic production of Russian fashion. Western fashion designers and fashion media mainly rely on Russian imperial sartorial heritage in their orientalizing approach to Russian fashion. Secondly, Russian Vogue perpetuates Moscow’s peripheral international fashion position either by passively transmitting derivative Western representations of Russianness, or by reconstructing its own high-fashion versions of traditional Russian decorative style. Finally, several young Russian fashion designers deconstruct both traditional Russian and socialist iconography, in a fundamentally new development for the country’s fashion scene. (shrink)

This article is based on a perspective on circulation of knowledge that allows the consideration of science as the result of the encounter between diverse communities. We tell a story that constantly changes places, scales, and cultures in order to stress the importance of networks as an alternative to the centre/periphery trope, which entangles world histories of science. The result is a picture much more complex and intertwined than the one suggested by these simplifying dichotomies. We focus on a (...) case study that illuminates the process of knowledge production in non-European spaces of modernity. The return of the Society of Jesus to the newly independent nation-states of Latin America is the point of departure to analyse the circulation of a specific scientific idea in Ecuador: Darwin’s theory of biological evolution through natural selection. The article follows the paths of three different knowledge makers whose encounters are seen as sites of knowledge production: a religious order, a Latin American... (shrink)

The people we call Europeans include many millions of European Union citizens, the Swiss, the Ukrainians, the Turks, the Norwegians, the Croatians, the Serbs, and the Albanians. Do they share memories and a common sense of history? Indeed, should Europeans share memories? Each of the European nations has accumulated a stockpile of tales and myths that allow its citizens to act in solidarity within set boundaries. What, then, does that imply for a united Europe? In what way do (...) Europeans have a "shared memory" We must display the anchor points of supra- and transnational memory as concentric circles: The first circle: the holocaust as a negative founding myth. The second circle: Soviet-communism-equally criminal? The third circle: expulsions as a pan-European Trauma? The fourth circle: the Armenian question- Unanswered? The fifth circle: the European periphery The sixth circle: Europe as a continent of Immigration. The seventh circle: Europe's success story after 1945. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show the peculiarities of modernity in a peripheral capitalist country like Brazil. To do this, our understanding of modernity and its relationship with capitalist progress will be explained. Subsequently, the particular character of capitalism in peripheral regions, with an emphasis on the Brazilian experience, will be analysed. More specifically, we shall explore the meaning of capitalist progress in Brazil in the last two decades, underlining Brazil’s role as an international platform for financial valorization (...) and the retrocession of the country’s industrial production in a context of monetary stability. These observations on a peripheral economy and its historical trajectory will allow us, in a third step, to analyse the particularity of Brazilian modernity today. Finally, we shall discuss the role of compensatory income programs and the rise of the so-called ‘new middle class’ in this scenario. (shrink)

Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. By Ivan T. Berend. Cambridge Studies in Modern Economic History, xviii + 414 pp. £45.00 cloth. The Transition in Eastern Europe, vol. 2: Restructuring: A National Bureau of Economic Research Project Report. Edited by Olivier Jean Blanchard, Kenneth A. Froot, and Jeffrey D. Sachs £38.50/$55.25 cloth. Children of Atlantis: Voices from the former Yugoslavia. Edited by Zdenko Lesic. 183 pp. £7.99 paper.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 237-240.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 293-302.

Modern medicine provides unprecedented opportunities in diagnostics and treatment. However, in some situations at the end of a patient’s life, many physicians refrain from using all possible measures to prolong life. We studied the incidence of different types of treatment withheld or withdrawn in 6 European countries and analyzed the main background characteristics.

This is an introduction to the thematic section on “The Historiography of Science and Religion in Europe,” which resulted from a symposium held at the eighth Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, University College London, UK, from September 14–17, 2018. The introduction provides a brief argument for the decentering of science and religion from the Anglo‐American discourse. It concludes by previewing the contributions of the section's essays.

As the editors of the series, New Literary Theory, proclaim in the preface of the book, the purpose of the series is to make more room in literary theory for playful and accessible approaches to li...

The new business opportunities and prospects emerging in Europe within the Common Market and other Western and European countries also raise important ethical challenges. This work comprises a collection of ethical insights to enhance the conduct of business in an evolving Europe.

This article aims to integrate discourse analysis of politically instrumental imagined identity geographies with the relational and territorial geography of the communities of praxis and interpretation that produce them. My case study is the international community of nationalist scientists who classified Europe’s biological races in the 1820s—1940s. I draw on network analysis, relational geography, historical sociology and the historical turn to problematize empirically how spatial patterns of this community’s shifting disciplinary and political coalitions, communication networks and power relations emerged, were (...) structured, persisted, changed, interacted and disappeared. I focus especially on core— periphery relations. I argue that if local historical spatial patterns affect those of later phenomena, geographies like that of European integration should be understood in the context of Europe’s complex historical cultural geography. Unlike discourse deconstruction alone, this complementary relational de-essentialization of geography can identify large-scale, enduring associations of cultural patterns as well as cultural flux and ambiguity. (shrink)