Culture
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Updating common knowledge | Eurozine
Have you ever wondered how the results of scientific research get written up, published, disseminated and, in some cases, eventually accepted as conventional wisdom? How do those obscure academic articles in hard-to-remember journals contribute to our everyday understanding of the world around us? Are you perplexed over how science says one thing today only to be upended tomorrow? If so,…
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Taming the ship of fools
Greta Thunberg accused participants of the 2023 World Economic Forum with ‘fuelling the destruction of the planet’. She argued that the irresponsibility of the economic elite, who ‘are prioritizing self-greed, corporate greed and short-term economic profits’, discredits their alleged competence. Thunberg, who called for the complete dismissal of their opinion, is also often dealt criticism: in 2020, for example, then…
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‘Science is cool’ | Eurozine
Due to differences in school systems between Ukraine and Austria, Ukrainian adolescents often enter university earlier than Austrian students. This episode of the Knowledgeable Youth podcast discusses the variations in higher education. The students’ conversation centres around Agata Zysiak’s article ‘Bleaching Blue Collars’ that draws insights from the experiences of first-generation students under state socialism in Poland and the barriers…
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Occupied futures | Eurozine
As the object of study rather than the subject of communication, the so-called Middle East has long been a locus for advanced technologies of mapping. In the field of aerial vision, these technologies historically employed cartographic and photographic methods. The legacy of cadastral, photographic and photogrammetric devices continues to impact how people and regions are quantified, nowhere more so than…
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Welcome to the dictator’s playground
On 2 October 2018 a team of agents dispatched by the Saudi government strangled dissident Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi after he entered the consulate building in Istanbul. The respected journalist’s body was dismembered and, according to Turkish intelligence, dissolved in acid. The CIA said Khashoggi’s state-employed assassins acted at the behest of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Since…
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‘I feel freedom when I am in my school’
In May 2022, Iryna Khamayko started an educational center for Ukrainian teenagers seeking refuge in Austria after Russia’s full-scale invasion. The idea was clear: to ensure a safe educational environment, equip the students with the German language, and make sure they could continue their education. Today, the Free People Educational Hub in Vienna is still open. Two of the school’s…
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Something happens, somewhere | Eurozine
A non-event, a continuity: growing rapeseed in Ukraine. For the most part, it’s an unsensational succession of seasonal repetitions: hybridized seeds are sown late summer into nitrogen-treated soil; phosphorus fertilizer is added in autumn to strengthen roots; the plants mature in spring, absorbing another dose of nitrogen; four-petalled yellow flowers, blooming late spring into summer, are sprayed with insecticide; once…
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The privilege of anxiety | Eurozine
Anna-Esther Younes is a Palestinian German scholar of race critical theories, psychoanalytic approaches, and de/post-/colonial theory. Her research on the ‘War on antisemitism’, race and settler-colonialism provides piercing insights into how the censorship and repression of Palestinians manifest today, in Germany, Europe and beyond. For more than a decade, Younes has experienced (research and academic) job losses and media misinformation…
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False prophets, false promises | Eurozine
‘And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.’ That’s the Book of Revelation, but the words might as well have been spoken by an American anytime between the religious revivals of the 18th century and the…
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The paunch | Eurozine
I am in possession of a protruding middle. If you don’t look carefully, you might miss it but it’s there: rotund, firmly planted and bulging. I carry it before me as if it were something to be proud of. On the occasions when it looks less prominent, it can be hidden under loose and preferably dark clothing, but if I…
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