[PDF] Desperately Seeking Europe eBook

Author : Susan Stern
Publisher :
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 33,5 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Europe
ISBN : 9781873132197

GET BOOK

Europe? What is it? A land mass (plus a few islands) which stretches from Portugal to the Russian Urals? Or at least up to the Turkish Bosporus? Or (still) just to the German border? A continent with a common history? A common language, culture, religion? A common anything? This book is collection of original contributions solicited by the Alfred Herrrhausen Society for International Dialogue. The Herrhausen Society was set up in 1992 by Deutsche Bank and provides a forum for examining socially relevant issues, identifying the problems and discussing their possible solutions. Authors include: Josef Ackermann, Ulrich Beck, Matthias Berninger, Ralf Dahrendorf, Patrik Cox, Ismael Cem, Laszlo Foldenyi; Rabbi David J.Goldberg, Adolf Muschg, Chenjerai Hove, Sergei Karaganow, Tommy Koh, Noelle Lenoir; Ma Canrong; Cees Noteboom; Joseph Nye; Yasar Huri Ozturk; Jiri Pehe; Richard Perle; Andrej Plesu; Michael Portillo; Avi Primor; Gunther Verheugen; Ilija Trojanow; Slavenka Drakulic; Janusz Reiter; Peter Ruzicka; Michael Walzer; Jean-Claude Trichet; Friedrich Kardinal Wetter; Ernst-Ludwig Winnacker; Vaira Vike-Freiberga; William Wallace; Robert Weinberg; Valery Giscard d'Estaing; Romano Prodi; Jacques Le Goff; Throw out the word 'Europe' to most members of the European Union, and they will assume you are talking about their exclusive club of fifteen-about-to-become-twenty-five-plus countries. Most members of the EU, that is, but not all. Someone from the U.K. will likely think you are referring to the countries across the Channel - some of which may belong to the Union, some not, but my goodness, what's the difference? Europe - someone from a wannabe EU country, or even an about-to-be one, especially from a country situated in middle, or central, or eastern - uh - Europe? - will hardly think of Europe as synonymous with the European Union.After all, they too are Europeans, even though they don't belong to the EU. Or are they? The rest of the world - the Americas, Africa, Asia, Australasia - thinks they are, it's mainly EU members who don't. Indeed, it's the rest of the world which provides a European identity to the people from the bits of Europe beyond the EU (Michael Portillo). Europe - for the Norwegians or the Swiss, the question doesn't even present itself. They know they're Europeans, and so, funnily enough, do the bona-fide members of the European Union. Desperately Seeking Europe is a roadmap which contains 36 contributions from international politicians, sociologists, economists and renowned writers, all of whom have their own opinions on what Europe is, was, will be or should be - as the case may be. The book presents a mosaic of provocative views, in some cases at odds with each other, in others, surprisingly similar, but often for quite different reasons. A fascinating read!

Author : Daniel Halberstam
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 27,39 MB
Release : 2007
Category :
ISBN :

GET BOOK

This brief essay reviews "European and U.S. Constitutionalism" (Georg Nolte, ed., Cambridge University Press, 2005), a volume that seeks to distil what constitutionalism across Europe has in common and how that differs from constitutionalism in the United States. After presenting the various contributions to the book, the essay takes a step back to examine the nature of comparative constitutionalism itself. The essay proposes that we understand comparative legal inquiry as coming in three different forms: the study of foreign law, first order comparativism, and complex critical comparativism. After describing the method and virtues of each, the essay situates the various contributions within these types. Next, the essay engages the substance of the book, which is the comparative examination of rights. The essay suggests that the book, which contains a wealth of insightful contributions, nevertheless seems to neglect two important differences in rights analysis in the United States and Europe: first, the difference between a motivational and a non-motivational conception of rights; and second, the difference between an abstract versus an institutional conception of rights. The essay concludes by noting that even these differences ultimately do not render European constitutionalism distinct, but suggest, instead, the continued exceptionalism of constitutionalism in the United States.

Author : Ien Ang
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 37,93 MB
Release : 2006-06-28
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1134940424

GET BOOK

Millions of people all over the world are avid members of the television audience. Yet, despite the central place television occupies in contemporary culture, our understanding of its complex and dynamic role in everyday life remains surprisingly limited. Focusing on the television audience, Ien Ang asks why we understand so little about its nature, and argues that our ignorance arises directly out of the biases inherent in prevailing official knowledge about it. She sets out to deconstruct the assumptions of this official knowledge by exploring the territory where it is mainly produced - the television institutions. Ang draws on Foucault's theory of power/knowledge to scrutinize television's desperate search for the audience, and to identify differences and similarities in the approaches of American commercial television and European public service television to their audiences. She looks carefully at recent developments in the field of ratings research, in particular the controversial introduction of the `people meter' as an instrument for measuring the television audience. By defining the limits and limitations of these institutional procedures of knowledge production, Ien Ang opens up new avenues for understanding television audiences. Her ethnographic perspective on the television audience gives new insights into our television culture, with the audience seen not as an object to be controlled, but as an active social subject, engaging with television in a variety of cultural and creative ways.

Author : Annette Jünemann
Publisher : Springer
Page : 186 pages
File Size : 28,29 MB
Release : 2017-03-16
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 3658170115

GET BOOK

An unprecedented number of people is currently on the move seeking refuge in Europe. Large parts of European societies respond with anxiety and mistrust to the influx of people. Nationalist, anti-migrant parties from Slovakia over Germany to the UK have gained increasing support among the electorate and challenge the political mainstream. Europe is struggling how to respond. While the search for solutions is ongoing one pattern seems to be emerging: Fortress Europe is in the making. Unfortunately, few of these discussions and measures consider the structural root causes and dynamics of migration, the motives of migrants or societal challenges more thoroughly. This book seeks to address this deficit. Taking migration and asylum policies as a starting point, it analyses the various dimensions underpinning migration. In doing so, it identifies why receiving countries are in many ways part of the problem. To eschew an overtly Euro-centric perspective and stimulate a debate between science and politics, it contains contributions by academics and practitioners alike from both shores of the Mediterranean.

Author : Peter Fitzpatrick
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 467 pages
File Size : 36,36 MB
Release : 2019-01-04
Category : Law
ISBN : 0429814550

GET BOOK

First published in 1998, this volume focuses critically on the European identity of the law of the European Union, of national law and the law of human rights. It is primarily concerned with the ways in which European identity is created through the rejection of a malign Other constituted in opposition to all that a virtuous Europe and its law, are supposed to be. The construction of this Other is explored in claims of the EU legal order to a unity and coherence transcending the nation-state; in the assertion of a European identity through laws effecting cultural, immigration and security policies; and in the claims to a lofty 'European-ness' made by national law and the European Convention on Human Rights. A major contribution to the understanding of European Law in the terms of the debates over modernity and postmodernity, this book will interest those involved with studies of the European Union and its law, with critical legal studies and also with socio-legal studies.

Author : Carl Cederström
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 31,91 MB
Release : 2017
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9781944869397

GET BOOK

A highly-entertaining account of two young professors attempt to improve themselves through the techniques of the burgeoning self-optimization movement, including drugs, surgical implants, the administering of electric shocks and stripping naked in public.

Author : Olga Strietska-Ilina
Publisher : Peter Lang
Page : 292 pages
File Size : 29,10 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780820474762

GET BOOK

In March 2000, at the European Council meeting in Lisbon, the European Union heads of states set an ambitious goal «to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world.» Such a goal requires major reforms of the societies and economies of the EU member states. This book explores the effects of these reforms on the eight Central and Eastern European countries that entered the EU in May 2004. Since 1989, these countries have been going through a major transformation to the market economy and democratic society. A Clash of Transitions attempts to answer how the societies and people can cope with multiple transitions. This volume is useful for courses on education, Central and Eastern Europe and European studies.

Author : David Gowland
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 892 pages
File Size : 17,76 MB
Release : 2014-01-14
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1317873254

GET BOOK

The European Mosaic is an up-to-date introduction to all aspects of the politics, economics, culture and recent history of the European Union in particular and Europe in general. The European Mosaic effectively familiarizes students with EU issues that are currently in the news and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. It is a clear and accessible introduction to the European polity. Its strongly interdisciplinary focus provides a multidimensional understanding of contemporary Europe, of the process of European integration, and of the dynamics of the European Union. Suitable for undergrduate courses in European politics.

Author : Ulrich Beck
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 295 pages
File Size : 48,45 MB
Release : 2014-11-05
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0745694594

GET BOOK

Europe is Europe’s last remaining realistic political utopia. But Europe remains to be understood and conceptualized. This historically unique form of international community cannot be explained in terms of the traditional concepts of politics and the state, which remain trapped in the straightjacket of methodological nationalism. Thus, if we are to understand cosmopolitan Europe, we must radically rethink the conventional categories of social and political analysis. Just as the Peace of Westphalia brought the religious civil wars of the seventeenth century to an end through the separation of church and state, so too the separation of state and nation represents the appropriate response to the horrors of the twentieth century. And just as the secular state makes the exercise of different religions possible, so too cosmopolitan Europe must guarantee the coexistence of different ethnic, religious and political forms of life across national borders based on the principle of cosmopolitan tolerance. The task the authors have set themselves in this book is nothing less than to rethink Europe as an idea and a reality. It represents an attempt to understand the process of Europeanization in light of the theory of reflexive modernization and thereby to redefine it at both the theoretical and the political level. This book completes Ulrich Beck’s trilogy on ‘cosmopolitan realism’, the volumes of which complement each other and can be read independently. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the key social and political developments of our time.

Author : Mads P. Sørensen
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 30,85 MB
Release : 2012-08-21
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1136263586

GET BOOK

Since the 1980s, Ulrich Beck has worked extensively on his theories of second modernity and the risk society. In Ulrich Beck, Mads P. Sørensen and Allan Christiansen provide an extensive and thorough introduction to the German sociologist’s collected works. The book covers his sociology of work, his theories of individualization, globalization and subpolitics, his world famous theory of the risk society and second modernity as well as his latest work on cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the theory outlined in Beck’s chief work, Risk Society, and on his theory of second modernity, Sørensen and Christiansen explain the sociologist’s ideas and writing in a clear and accessible way. Largely concerned with the last 25 years of Beck’s authorship, the book nevertheless takes a retrospective look at his works from the late seventies and early eighties, and reviews the critique that has been raised against Beck’s sociology through the years. Each chapter of Ulrich Beck comes with a list of suggested further reading, as well as explanations of core terms. The book also includes a biography of Beck, and full bibliographies of his work in both English and German. This comprehensive introduction will be of interest to all students of sociology, contemporary social theory, globalization theory, environmental studies, politics, geography and risk studies.