Aktivity

Vzhledem k problémům, které přinesla transformace společností, tvrdí Ulrich Beck, že dnes žijeme ve „společnosti rizik”. Uvažujeme-li o riziku, uvažujeme o nebezpečí či hrozbě související s tím, co děláme, a dokonce i s tím, co neděláme. Když lidé říkají „to je riskantní krok”, chtějí tím naznačit, že se někdo vystavuje nežádoucí situaci. Ve společnosti rizik […]

Europe is facing the biggest wave of migration since that from the East at the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War. And it is indeed Central Europe, whose peoples regard freedom of movement as the greatest benefit arising from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, where today […]

Když lidé začnou pochybovat a hledat ospravedlnění, může je přepadnout nejistota. Ta nebývá právě příjemná, a tak se jí zpravidla snaží uniknout. Nátlak na přizpůsobení se normám šířeným kulturní výchovou bývá proto obvykle doprovázen snahou o diskreditaci a očernění norem kultur jiných. Na jednom konci spektra se pomocí rétorických projevů o „čistotě” a „nákaze” obhajuje […]

Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context. The horrific murder of the editor, cartoonists and other staff of the irreverent satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, along with two […]

This is the first time in its history that the European Union has faced a mass influx of refugees from outside the region. Each year, as UNHCR announced record numbers of displaced people, the general assumption – until recently – was that this is a problem for other parts of the world. However, rising displacement […]

THOSE of us outside Europe are watching the unbelievable images of the Keleti train station in Budapest, the corpse of a toddler washed up on a Turkish beach, the desperate Syrian families chancing their lives on the night trip to the Greek islands — and we keep being told this is a European problem. The […]

The year 2014 will be remembered in Europe for the West’s rickety consensus on how best to minimize the damage caused by Russia’s resurgence as a revisionist power. Developments along Europe’s periphery marked the unequivocal end of aspirational “positive geopolitics,” built around the belief that the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990 began a […]

Sometimes it is easy to forget why we study history. Of course, we use the past to understand the present; but also, ideally, we learn from it too. What a shame, then, that there is no space in the new national curriculum for the history of Byzantium. The eastern half of the Roman empire that […]

It was born in the ashes of World War II and grew rapidly during Les Trente Glorieuses, the 30 years of economic development that followed that conflict. It then matured, expanded, and acquired both a currency and a good deal of respect. By the start of the 21st century, it was feted as a great […]

Ronan McCrea is a barrister and a lecturer at the Faculty of Laws at University College London. His latest book is Religion and the Public Order of the European Union (2010). he European relationship between religion, law and politics is a strange creature. Religious influence over political life is weaker in Europe than in almost […]