Articles

Georg Stauth,

Islamische Kultur und moderne Gesellschaft. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie des Islams

transcript , Bielefeld 2000

292 Seiten, 58 Mark.

International and domestic perceptions of Jörg Haider and his Freedom Party differ sharply. A leading Austrian journalist urges a closer look at the record of previous governments and points to the unique degree of media concentration as a problem that has a history.

Western Europe lives like an isolated family without any feelings for the post-communist states on the same continent, says the Slovene poet and essayist Ales Debeljak. He tries to formulate a defence for a broader conception of Europe and seeks a European “master narrative” that makes the creation of a real European identity possible.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos sees two different kinds of globalization that now have to enter into a dialouge. As counter-hegemonic globalization grows, the responsibility of its protagonists increases.

In 2000, the Serbian journal Rec together with radio B92 published a booklet under the title “Truths, Responsibilties, Reconciliations: The Example of Serbia”. The issues cited in the title emerge as keypoints towards building democracy in a society ravaged by long years of war. Nenad Dimitrijevic in his contribution looks at the concept of responsibility of a nation: Who is “responsible”, and what does that “responsibilitiy mean? How does one deal with this responsibility and look at one’s past through those eyes, and finally – what does it mean for one’s steps into the future?

In 2000, the Serbian journal Rec together with radio B92 published a booklet under the title “Truths, Responsibilties, Reconciliations: The Example of Serbia”. The issues cited in the title emerge as keypoints towards building democracy in a society ravaged by long years of war. Drinka Gojkovic writes about the meaning of an answer to the call for a collective public apology by the Serb nation, and what is needed before the recognition of “collective guilt” can be achieved.

In 2000, the Serbian journal Rec together with radio B92 published a booklet under the title “Truths, Responsibilties, Reconciliations: The Example of Serbia”. The issues cited in the title emerge as keypoints towards building democracy in a society ravaged by long years of war. The Israeli sociologist Arie Nadler draws parallels between the fromer Yugoslavia and the Middle East and sees that responsibility, reconciliation and the search for truth are not such different issues when applied to different regions and peoples.

We spoke to the artist Urs Lüthi and the art historian Doris Krystof, curator of the Vienna Kunsthalle, in Lüthi’s Munich apartment: about intention, authorship, and the genesis of his work over the course of 35 years of creativity. Marco Meier led the discussion.

When Andrea Zlatar investigates the contemporary and recent history of Croatian culture and cultural policy she finds out that the most horrifying consequence of the transition and war is not the material impoverishment of Croatian society, but the utter destruction of value systems that used to apply to specific fields of human activity.

As the world becomes smaller in many senses, international dependencies grow. Such developments also bring new responsibilities with them. Thomas Schramme looks at the moral grounds for so called humanitarian interventions; an intervention to protect one person’s human rights may often endanger another person’s human rights ­ the practice thus confronts us with a moral dilemma.

South Africa is facing the process of developing a new identity for itself and its people, and to deal with its past. Jyoti Mistry looks at the meaning of nations and the nation state in examining this process of creation of a national identity. Story-telling, history and memory play vital parts, particularly in South Africa, in building this “whole”. In a story that has no end in sight, she looks at how a country is dealing with its past and stepping into its future.

What connects the familiar divine self-revelation, a passionate debate at a congress of European cultural periodicals and the silent demonstration against the latest assassination by ETA? Mihaly Des writes on personal identities and projections thereof.

Slavenka Drakulic, a committed European, expresses doubts in the continuing momentum of European integration amidst rising anxieties about a loss of national identity. Mirrored in the success of right-wing and populist parties across Europe and concerns being voiced in the post-communist countries queuing for “entry”, this anxiety focuses on a cultural construct. To make the project Europe work, a new kind of imagined community will need to be created. Is Europe ready for that?