Privatisation of Italian Cultural Heritage

Italy is home to much of the European cultural heritage, including artistic, archaeological, architectural and environmental heritage. Articles 7 and 22 (now 33), introduced in the Financial Act 2002 (now Law 112/2002) by the current Italian government, are privatising part of it. Already, objects from the mediaeval period to the 20th century have been sold to international investment firms and private investors for amounts that many Italian experts consider well below the median market price. Hundreds of other objects, among them temples, old cities, medieval palazzos, archaeological sites, museums, beaches and islands, are waiting to be sold. Currently, this case is not only a source of division in Italian politics but is also the subject of heated public debate. It highlights crucial social and cultural problems relating to global privatisation that the world community will have to face in the coming years.     

The visual dehumanisation of refugees

Dealing with refugees is one of the most contested political issues in Australia. We examine how media images of asylum seekers have framed ensuing debates during two crucial periods over the past decade. By conducting a content analysis of newspaper front pages we demonstrate that asylum seekers have primarily been represented as medium or large groups and through a focus on boats. We argue that this visual framing, and in particular the relative absence of images that depict individual asylum seekers with recognisable facial features, associates refugees not with a humanitarian challenge, but with threats to sovereignty and security. These dehumanising visual patterns reinforce a politics of fear that explains why refugees are publicly framed as people whose plight, dire as it is, nevertheless does not generate a compassionate political response.

如何对待难民是澳大利亚一个最具争议的政治话题。我们考察了在过去十年中的两个关键时期中媒体的避难者形象是如何影响接下来辩论的。根据笔者对报纸的头版所做的内容分析,避难者主要被再现为中、大型群体,多集中在船上。我们认为,这样的视觉形象、尤其是缺少描画个体避难者脸部特征的形象,不会将避难者同人道主义问题联系起来,而只会同威胁主权及安全相链接。这类非人性化的视觉模式强化了恐惧的政治,这也解释了为什么公众认为难民境遇凄惨,却不给他们政治上的同情。     

Engineering Education in Cold War Diplomacy: India,Germany, and the Establishment of IIT Madras**

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT) was set up with assistance of the Federal Republic of Germany between 1956 and 1974. It became the largest, and finally, a successful techno-scientific education project undertaken by the Federal Republic outside of Germany. In this paper, I argue that the engagement of the Federal Republic at IIT Madras has to be understood primarily as a project of Cold-War science and technology diplomacy, which on the German side was aimed at preventing an Indian recognition of the German Democratic Republic as a sovereign nation. In aiding the establishment of IIT Madras, the Federal Republic came into direct competition with the Soviet Union, which supported IIT Bombay but also with the United States of America, which supported IIT Kanpur. The assistance to establish IIT Madras and its governance followed mainly political guidelines, to which educational and scientific aspects were rendered subordinate. When the project was in a crisis after the first State Treaty to establish IIT Madras expired in 1963, the political flagship project of the Federal Republic was not allowed to fail. Instead, the cooperation was reorganized and support increased.     

Freemasonry in Turkey’s modern history of ideas: A factor of liberalization and individualization?

This article provides a brief outline of the impact of Turkish Freemasonry on the development of modern Turkey since the eighteenth century. It draws a short and incomplete history from a qualitative viewpoint, including influential topics, approaches, and camps. As European influences were historically strong in shaping Freemasonry on the Bosphorus, the text makes Turkish Freemasonry a case of Turkish‐European exchange and an example of specific currents of modernization, individualization, and liberalization—with all their pros and cons—within Islamic societies. The relevant questions are where and in which frameworks such currents may have been effective, where they perhaps produced the opposite of what they intended, and to what extent they could contribute to mitigating today’s torn political climate to all participants’ benefit. The article is based on interactions with representatives of Turkey’s Freemasonry, mainly of the liberal and progressive strands, making it more a narrative‐oriented account of an evolving greater picture than an array of detailed empirical‐scientific evidence on single pillars. The goal is to illustrate the complexity of “semi‐secular” socio‐religious dynamics in a Muslim context and to put the past into some relation to the present.