Changing philosophies of action? Argentine’s cultural policies in the 21st century

ABSTRACT

How can the many institutional and ideological changes of Argentine cultural policy at the beginning of the 21st century be explained? This paper analyses how representations of culture, programs and public actions are translated into different ‘philosophies of action’ depending on the political stripe of each government and the agents of cultural policy. If the predominant philosophy of action during the whole period is ‘culture as an economic resource’, it coexists with other philosophies: ‘culture as show’, ‘a communication tool’, ‘social inclusion’ and finally ‘a factor of citizenship’.     

Is there a European culture?

Abstract

The article explores the historical roots of the current tensions between the local and the global in Europe, as expressed by the region's audio-visual industries. It suggests that current postures and initiatives have their origins in efforts, which began in the 1920s, to defend ‘an idea of nationhood which presumed sovereignty over culture’ (V. de Grazia), against the perceived onslaught of American cinema, jazz, radio, advertising, etc. The argument follows the evolution of these strategies of cultural protectionism and adaptation through the age of radio and television, down to the Internet. It suggests that ‘Europe’ as a cultural entity will not be formed by this experience, since although every society uses the same sort of tactics and language to face up to globalization, the impulse to cling to local identities and idiosyncracies is, if anything, getting stronger today.     

Italian masculinities

Abstract

After both world wars Italy struggled to have territories in the Upper Adriatic, among them the port city of Trieste, included within its national borders. Italy’s hopes to utilize Trieste as a barrier against incursion from the east and the city’s symbolic importance as an outpost for the defense of italianità are well known, but the city’s role as a conduit to former Habsburg provinces in Central Europe remains overlooked. In fact, regional associations with Mitteleuropa, seen by those on the peninsula as indications that the city was distant or foreign, formed one facet of a regional identity which proved compatible with national expectations. From annexation in 1918, the competing visions of Trieste as a bulwark against the east and as a junction in Central Europe shaped local identity and carved a niche for the city within the national framework.     

An unholy alliance: Swiss citizenship between local legal tradition,federal laissez-faire,and ethno-national rejection of foreigners 1848–1933

This article traces the development of the federal structure of Swiss citizenship between the founding of the federal state in 1848 and the entrenchment of a restrictive naturalisation and establishment policy in the interwar period. Considering the difficult integration of foreign residents through naturalisation in the past and present in Switzerland, the author examines the causes for the granting and refusal of Swiss citizenship. She shows that the development of and arrangements for access to Swiss citizenship cannot be reduced only to notions about the Swiss nation or national interests. They are the result of a permanent process of political negotiation and coordination between the federation, cantons and local authorities; owing to its importance in social assistance matters, local citizenship constituted an impediment to naturalisation until well into the twentieth century. In contrast, the federation and certain cantons like Zurich, Basle and Geneva had sought since the 1880s to reduce the strongly increasing number of foreign residents by liberalising naturalisation. The outbreak of the Second World War put an end to these endeavours. With the rise of a ‘new right’ since 1900, the setting up of the Central Office of the Foreign Police in 1917, and the institutionalisation of the authorities' ‘fight against foreign infiltration’, Swiss nationality law became ethnicised. Cultural ‘assimilation’ into the ‘particularity of Swiss society’ was now regarded as a precondition for becoming a Swiss citizen. The new federal rejection of foreigners thus joined with the traditionally restrictive policy of local authorities in an unholy alliance that began to breach only in the 1980s.     

Common Starting Points,Different Directions

In the late 19th century, political debates emerged in Sweden and Norway as well as in Finland concerning Travelling families – in this article defined as indigenous itinerant families whom the settled population pejoratively designated with terms such as ‘tatere’ (Norway), ‘tattare’ (Sweden) or ‘zigenare’ (Finland). In this article, these debates are compared, and the transfer of ideas and proposals between the three countries is analysed. It is argued that, on a local level, similar politics of ‘territorial exclusion’ were enacted in all three countries. This was, however, challenged by ‘liberal social politics’, a strategy aiming not at exclusion but at forced assimilation by means such as, for example, removing children from their parents. This strategy was proposed in all three countries, and socio-political agents were well aware of the debates in the neighbouring countries. But it was only in Norway that the most far-reaching proposals were realized. This is explained mainly by pointing at the way in which leading agents chose to act when trying to implement their proposals. The article also problematizes some conclusions drawn in earlier research, where the emergence of debates on Travelling families has been explained by pointing at the rise of ethnic nationalism. Instead, the article argues, the emergence of the so-called ‘social question’ in Western Europe in the 19th century should be considered as an at least equally important background factor.     

Fighting for Trieste: nationalism and political violence at the edge of the Iron Curtain

Between 1945 and 1954, the Italian and Yugoslav governments staunchly disputed national sovereignty of Trieste and northern Istria. Although scholars have extensively studied the diplomatic dimension of what became known as the ‘Trieste question’, only a few have devoted attention to the Italian government’s aggressive strategy toward the city from 1945 to 1954. This article examines the Italian politics of nationalism in Cold War Trieste by investigating the interactions between the central government, the Allied authorities and the local political forces that either supported or opposed Italian territorial claims toward the city. Based upon the study of Italian as well as Allied governmental records, state-led propaganda and public press, this article suggests that the central government not only tolerated but also encouraged phenomena of local political violence to oppose the Communist threat and defy Allied occupation. This study ultimately proves the residual strength of nationalism as a political ideology and further elucidates the undisclosed relationship between right-wing movements and the central government during the early years of the Cold War.     

Beyond Annexationism: The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik as Structural Transformation, 1917–18

This article explores the eastern policy of Germany and Austria-Hungary during the latter half of the First World War (1917–18). It attempts to go beyond the traditional annexationist–non-annexationist dichotomy prevalent in the literature and approach the issue from the perspective of structural transformation of the international system. It argues that the Central Powers endeavoured to accommodate imperial collapse in Eastern Europe and prevent its further spread by replacing the obsolete system of imperial dynasticism with a new arrangement based on autonomous and semi-autonomous states. German and Austrian leaders often disagreed on implementation and formed temporary understandings across the civilian–military divide. This policy ultimately proved counterproductive, as it failed to contain the westward spread of national and social revolution. Austro-German support for nominally independent states in Eastern Europe, national in form but Central European in cultural and political outlook, inadvertently contributed to further imperial collapse, as the increasingly restless nationalities of Austria-Hungary began to challenge the legitimacy of imperial dynasticism in Central Europe. The Central Powers’ Ostpolitik in 1917–18 became a transformative historical event due to the fact that it facilitated the structural transformation of international relations in Central and Eastern Europe from imperial dynasticism to a system of nation-states.     

Sport and society in Italy today

Summary

In ‘Itinerary’ Patrick McCarthy provides an introduction to the four articles that examine the connections between sport, politics, business and contemporary culture in Italy. Noting that mass participation in sport has been closely related to modernization, McCarthy argues that the forms of contemporary mass sport reflect the particular cultural, political and economic conditions of each European society. In Italy these made soccer and cycling the most popular mass sports by 1945.

Patrizia Dogliani’s article ‘Sport and Fascism’ examines the development of mass sport in Italy from the late nineteenth century, showing the critical role played by the Fascist regime, which rapidly expanded public sports facilities while the language of politics and combat permeated the vocabulary of sport in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially the emphasis was on international competition as a symbol of national virility, but following the success of Germany and the USA in the 1936 Olympics the regime’s search for consensus placed new emphasis on recreational aspects. The institutional and administrative organization of sport established in the 1930s remained in place in Italy, however, until more recendy.

In ‘Itinerary 2’ McCarthy examines the roles of the boxer Carnera from Friuli and the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari as sporting heroes of Mussolini’s Italy and in ‘Itinerary 3’ shows how the struggles between Catholic Italy and Communist Italy were personified in the rivalry between the cyclists Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi in the post-war period.

In ‘Itinerary 4’ he asks why soccer had by the 1970s overtaken cycling as Italy’s most popular sport. That theme is examined in greater detail by Nicola Porro and Pippa Russo, whose article reconstructs the ‘hybridization of sport, mass media and politics’ in Italy in the 1990s. Its central focus is Silvio Berlusconi, the self-made media tycoon who founded Fininvest in the 1970s, acquired AC Milan in 1986, and by 1994 controlled a media empire that enabled him to found a new political party (Forza Italia) and become Italy’s Prime Minister albeit for less than a year. Porro and Russo examine the ways in which Berlusconi’s roles in the world of the media and professional soccer have changed both Italian politics and Italian sport.

In ‘Itinerary 5’ McCarthy sets the example of Berlusconi in the context of the integration of soccer and mass media, the commercialization and politicization of sport at a global level in the last decade. These issues are developed in greater detail in Emanuela Poli’s article, ‘The revolution in the televised soccer market’, which emphasizes the critical role that has been played by soccer and soccer clubs in the development of the new media empires based on digital pay-per-view TV and the sale of sporting events in the 1990s. This has left control of the sport (in terms of who can watch and when) in the hands of major international communications moguls like Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch.

‘Itinerary 6’ links the fragmentation of collective myths like the national soccer championships to the decline of the nation state, and surveys the situation of other sports in Italy (the Americas Cup, skiing, rugby football. Formula 1 motor racing and the gymnasium). The latter is the subject of the final article by Roberta Sassatelli on ‘The commercialization of discipline: keep-fit culture and its values’ which explores the social and cultural meanings attached to the growing vogue for fitness clubs and the shaping of the ideal body in contemporary Italy.     

The particular kindness of friends: ex-Fascists,clientage and the transition to democracy in Italy, 1945–1960

This article examines some of the social implications of Italy’s limited purge of the bureaucracy and Fascist political class following the Second World War. Using the postwar personal correspondence of former Fascist government ministers Giuseppe Bottai (1895–1959) and Dino Alfieri (1886–1966), the article analyses the informal networks that promoted the continued influence of these ex-Fascists with high-ranking bureaucrats and other prominent individuals (such as Pope Paul VI and Aldo Moro). Thanks to the long-standing social practice of the raccomandazione, Bottai and Alfieri maintained their Fascist-era connections well into the postwar period, often serving as intermediaries between ‘ordinary Italians’ and governmental, political and cultural elites. Although they no longer held political power, these ex-Fascists represented a class of ‘alternative elites’ unassociated with the democratic values of the new Republic.     

Immigrant ‘space’ in Italy: When an emigrant sending becomes an immigrant receiving society

This article examines the social and political responses to the new flow of immigrants to Italy from outside the European Union. First, the Italian experience is compared with the rest of Europe with respect to such questions as the characteristics of the immigrants themselves, and the response to them on the part of political parties, the church, the unions, and the state at local, regional and national levels. Next, broader comparisons are drawn between the Italian case and that of classic ‘societies of immigration’, particularly with regard to the structure of economic opportunity available to the extracomunitari in Italy.     

From the bottom of the bottle: justice,prison and social control in the Italian transition

The ‘conflict between politics and justice’ has been a central feature of the Italian ‘transition’ for reasons that touch on the essence of the so-called Second Republic. Apparently dominating the political agenda, it also functioned as a cover for a resurgence of coercive forms of social control in Italy. In response to the social transformations taking place throughout the western world, from the late 1980s the Italian prison system had been expanding and was used to target social marginal groups, especially foreigners and drug addicts. This paper examines how these changes took place, the juridical measures that gave rise to them and their political motivations in the period from the crisis of the First Republic to the declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ in the prison system which (at least for now) seems to have brought to a close the openly populist use of the criminal justice system.     

The Great War,the child’s body and the American Red Cross

Abstract

This article examines the child-relief activities of the American Red Cross in Hungary in the aftermath of the Great War, offering an insight into the workings of humanitarianism in interwar Europe. A close look at this one Central European ‘playground’ of transatlantic intervention helps us understand the logic and the underlying political, economic and ideological motives behind Allied humanitarian aid to ‘enemy’ children. Analysis of the ways in which the war’s aftermath affected children, their bodies and their relief throws light on the relationship between violent conflicts, children in need and humanitarian intervention. The article looks particularly at the role of the child’s damaged body and its photographic representation, making it what Cathleen Canning calls an ‘embodied experience of war’. Exploration of the humanitarian discourse around the suffering child helps us identify the humanitarian reaction to the unforeseen social consequences of wartime confrontation. The article argues that the harmed body of the ‘enemy child’ served to mobilise transnational compassion that challenged the war’s deeply anchored ‘friend–foe’ mentality. The child turned into a means of configuring and translating human suffering beyond ideological and political borders. At the same time humanitarian child relief helped to further consolidate asymmetric international power relations.     

Resurrection in slow motion: the delayed restoration of the cinema exhibition industry in post-war Rotterdam (1940–65)

Abstract

Investigating a cultural industry such as the cinema exhibition sector allows insights in the dynamic intersections between economic, social and cultural history. One of the central questions in the debates about the history of movie-going in the Netherlands centres on why the size and number of cinemas and cinema visits per capita has been significantly lower than the average in Western Europe throughout most of the twentieth century. This article monitors the restoration and repositioning of the Rotterdam cinema exhibition sector in the new city centre arising after the devastation of the bombardment of 1940. An analysis of the trade press and the archives of the influential business association ‘NBB’ suggests how effective local exhibitors were in fending off outsider entrepreneurs and regulating internal competition. Alternative networks of socio-cultural or religious or organizations were successfully prevented from setting up a viable operation exhibiting films.     

Social observation in early commercial print media. Towards a genealogy of the social sketch (ca. 1820–1860)

Nineteenth-century journalism has rarely been an object of attention in the humanities and social sciences – despite its political and cultural significance and its documental value. This article explores the verbal-visual social sketch, as it has evolved as a journalistic genre on the expanding market of periodicals in early nineteenth-century Europe. The social sketches (often referred to as ‘panoramic literature’) provide rich ethnographic micro-analysis and often relate to debates held by statisticians, moralists, folklorists, and ethnologists. This article, rather than providing a close reading analysis of selected texts, attempts to trace a genealogy of the sketch of society from a history of knowledge perspective. After placing the consolidation of the social sketch within its socio-medial contexts, the article considers various literary and epistemic ‘regimes’ that have preconditioned and influenced the evolution of this verbal-visual genre of social observation and formulates cross-genre and interdisciplinary perspectives on the refinement and institutionalization of social inquiry throughout the nineteenth century.     

Europe’s other? The Turks and shifting borders of memory

Abstract

Since the fifteenth century, the ‘Turks’ have represented the paradigmatic other of Europe. Even in times without violent conflict, the ‘Turks’ delimited the mental border of Europe towards the ‘Orient’ and served for identity-building in East Central Europe. In that region, the commemoration of the Turkish menace substantiated claims of being part of Europe over the last 200 years. Societies in peripheral regions could thereby redraw Europe’s frontiers in their favour. A comparison across Eastern European countries demonstrates how attempts at an inner homogenization through instrumentalization of an imagined external enemy contradict the plurality of interpretations of the past.     

Contested Cartographies: Empire and Sovereignty on a Map of Sistān,Iran (1883)

ABSTRACT

The papers of Malkam Khān (1833–1908), Iranian ambassador in London from 1872 to 1889, a staunch supporter of Iranian state modernization and a scholar, include an often-overlooked map of the Iran–Afghanistan border dating to 1883. Mirzā Mohammad-Rezā Tabrizi compiled this exceptional piece of nineteenth-century Iranian cartography. The map is an illustration of how quickly the Qajar administration was able to emulate European cartographical discourses to protect its own interests in the context of the so-called ‘Great Game’, that is, the often confrontational Russo–British relations over the control of Central Asia and Afghanistan in the nineteenth century. In this article we show that Iranian officials had developed a much more substantial articulation between cartography and statecraft than is conveyed by the stereotypes in nineteenth-century Western literature, when the capacity of local players to use counter-mapping to their own advantage was often underestimated by European agents. Mirzā Mohammad-Rezā Tabrizi’s map of Sistān exemplifies how the apparently all-powerful Western science that seemingly supported nineteenth-century imperial expansion was rarely left unchallenged locally. The genealogy and circulation of the map also reflects how overly simplistic the postulation of a polarization of ‘Western’ knowledge and ‘Eastern’ attempts at safeguarding local sovereignty can be.     

The reasons of Europe: Edmund Husserl,Jan Patočka,and María Zambrano on the spiritual heritage of Europe*

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the genuinely philosophical engagement with the idea of Europe twentieth century philosophy. Here, especially phenomenology has developed a distinct tradition of conceiving Europe not as a geographical and political entity but rather as a ‘spiritual shape.’ Husserl, as the originator of this thought, traces this spiritual Europe back to Ancient Greece of the 7/6 century B.C. in which an unprecedented ‘theoretical attitude’ towards the world originated. Hence, Europe is conceived as a project of reason, of pure rationality while at the same time leaving out the constitutive dimension of religion. Furthermore, this non-historical philosophical genealogy proves itself to be an arbitrary but intentional genealogy whose intentions have to be put into critical reconsideration. In this article, I will introduce Pato?ka and Zambrano as important critiques of Husserl’s genealogy, or even potentially violent mono-genealogy, as Derrida has emphasized. Following Foucault, it is the aim of this article to put into question the myth of a single historical-political origin of Europe’s spiritual heritage and furthermore to pay attention to the transformations and conflictual relations between Europe’s different forms of reason and religion.     

Slum Wars of the 21st Century: Gangs,Mano Dura and the New Urban Geography of Conflict in Central America

The political economy of violence in Central America is widely perceived as having undergone a critical shift during the past two decades, often pithily summarized as a movement from ‘political’ to ‘social’ violence. Although such an analysis is plausible, it also offers a depoliticized vision of the contemporary Central American panorama of violence. Basing itself principally on the example of Nicaragua, the country in the region that is historically perhaps most paradigmatically associated with violence, this article offers an alternative interpretation of the changes that the regional landscape of violence has undergone. It suggests that these are better understood as a movement from ‘peasant wars of the twentieth century’ ( Wolf, 1969 ) to ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ ( Beall, 2006 ), thereby highlighting how present‐day urban violence can in many ways be seen as representing a structural continuation of past political conflicts, albeit in new spatial contexts. At the same time, however, there are certain key differences between past and present violence, as a result of which contemporary conflict has intensified. This is most visible in relation to the changing forms of urban spatial organization in Central American cities, the heavy‐handed mano dura response to gangs by governments, and the dystopian evolutionary trajectory of gangs. Taken together, these processes point to a critical shift in the balance of power between rich and poor in the region, as the new ‘urban wars of the twenty‐first century’ are increasingly giving way to more circumscribed ‘slum wars’ that effectively signal the defeat of the poor.     

Show solidarity,live solitarily: the Nazi ‘New Europe’ as a ‘family of peoples’

Abstract

This chapter first investigates how the German Nazis used the term ‘European solidarity’ and demonstrates that the term meant political loyalty between European ‘peoples’ (Völker) in National Socialist discourses. Second, assuming that the Nazis’ objective in showing solidarity with or demanding loyalty from other nations was to increase strength in what they believed to be a conflict with ‘international Jewry’, it examines the logic of the Nazis behind including other European countries into their own camp in that conflict. It will be argued that the Nazis developed a sense of belonging with non-German Europeans based on three ideas: (1) the racist myth that all Europeans belonged to the ‘Aryan race’; (2) a Europe-wide consensus of the extreme Right on anti-Communism, antisemitism, and anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist worldviews; and (3) the existence of cross-border relations within Europe which led to shared experiences. The article draws on primary sources as well as on secondary literature about National Socialist concepts of Europe and about transnational academic, cultural and social relations in the National Socialist sphere of influence.     

The enlightened narrative in the age of liberal reform: William Robertson’s View of the Progress of Society in Hungary

This article examines a translation of the Scottish historian William Robertson’s probably most famous text (based on a previous German edition) in the journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the 1830s, as a case study on continuity between the Enlightenment and the era of liberal reform in Central Europe. It underlines the benefits of the comparative study of Scotland in Robertson’s time and Hungary in the Reform Age as partners in composite polities at the opposite ends of Europe, where patriotic projects of overcoming limitations of political sovereignty via cultural and economic improvement were pursued. The belated reception of Robertson in Hungary took place within a larger initiative of progress and refinement, associated with the liberal Count István Széchenyi, in an environment where many potential sympathizers with his programme were ambivalent about the values of cosmopolitanism and commerce promoted by Robertson, indebted as they remained to more archaic modes of patriotism. In view of the peculiarities of translation, and selection the Hungarian rendering of the View of the Progress was attuned to the sentiments of this constituency, and may be interpreted as a set of discursive gestures aimed at conquering it for the cause of ‘liberalism as refinement.’