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In recent years European states have turned toward more austere political regimes, entailing budget cuts, deregulation of labour markets, restrictions of welfare systems, securitization of borders and new regimes of migration and citizenship. In the wake of such changes, new forms of social inclusion and exclusion appear that are justified through a reactivation of differences of race, class and gender.Against this backdrop, this collection investigates contemporary understandings of history and cultural memory. In doing so, the reader will join the leading European contributors of this title in examining how crisis and decline in contemporary Europe trigger a selective forgetting and remodelling of the past. Indeed, Austere Histories in European Societies breaks new paths in scholarship by synthesising and connecting current European debates on migration, racism and multiculturalism. In addition to this, the authors present debates on cultural memory and the place of the colonial legacy within an extensive comparative framework and across the boundaries of the humanities and social sciences. This book will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities, particularly in European studies, memory studies, sociology, postcolonial studies, migration studies, European history, cultural policy, cultural heritage, economics and political theory.

För politiker, opinionsbildare och organisationer som från mellankrigstiden och framåt arbetade för europeisk integration stod Afrika i centrum för intresset. Exploateringen av kolonierna krävde samarbete och gemensamma investeringar. Målet var ett tredje block – Eurafrika – som skulle säkra Europas geopolitiska ställning mot de bägge supermakterna. Europas enande skulle alltså börja i Afrika. Eurafrika är en bok som redan väckt internationell uppmärksamhet. Den gör upp med myten om EU som fredsprojekt och konstaterar att dagens EU knappast hade existerat om det inte från början utformats som en eurafrikansk gemenskap.

The relationship between media and the organizations they cover has changed dramatically in the last few decades, which have witnessed a huge expansion of news coverage focusing on different types of organizations and their activities. In parallel, organizations have dramatically increased their investment in public relations and other media-oriented forms of communication. Like other societal developments – globalization, marketization, individualization, scientification – mediatization has become an institutional force.This book analyses the mediatization of contemporary organizations and how individual organizations, industry or markets are scrutinized. It examines its key influence on the actions of organizations, and how it shaptes the entire landscape in which the organizations operate. What such a perspective provides is the accentuation of the interplay between organizations and different parts of the society as embedded in the media and its logic. This will be essential reading for professionals, academics and advanced students in organizational studies, public relations and media studies.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.In order to think theoretically about our global age it is important to understand how the global has been conceived historically.'Eurafrica'was an intellectual endeavor and political project that from the 1920s saw Europe's future survival - its continued role in history - as completely bound up with Europe's successful merger with Africa. In its time the concept of Eurafrica was tremendously influential in the process of European integration.Today the project is largely forgotten, yet the idea continues to influence EU policy towards its African'partner'. The book will recover a critical conception of the nexus between Europe and Africa - a relationship of significance across the humanities and social sciences. In assessing this historical concept the authors shed light on the process of European integration, African decolonization and the current conflictual relationship between Europe and Africa.

Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of communism and fascism and experiments in radical democracy. Spanning aesthetics, cultural studies, intellectual history, and political theory, this volume unpacks the significance of the shadow agent known as'the mass'during a critical period in European history. It follows its evolution into the preferred conceptual tool for social scientists, the ideal slogan for politicians, and the chosen image for artists and writers trying to capture a society in flux and a people in upheaval. This volume is the second installment in Stefan Jonsson's epic study of the crowd and the mass in modern Europe, building on his work in A Brief History of the Masses, which focused on monumental artworks produced in 1789, 1889, and 1989.

This innovative study of the works of Robert Musil opens a new window on the history of modern identity in western culture. Stefan Jonsson argues that Musil's Austria was the first postimperial state in modern Europe. Prior to its destruction in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian Empire had ruled over a vast array of nationalities and, in the course of its demise as well as after, Austria was beset by nationalism, racism, and other forms of identity politics that ultimately led to the triumph of Nazism.It was to this society that Musil responded in his great work The Man Without Qualities. Exploring the nooks and crannies of this modernist classic, Jonsson shows that Musil's narrative evolves along two axes that must be considered in tandem: Whereas the central plot portrays a Viennese elite that in 1913 attempts to restore social cohesion by gathering popular support for the cultural essence of the empire, the protagonist discovers that he lacks essence altogether and finds himself attracted by monsters, criminals, and revolutionary figures that reject the social order. In this way, Musil's novel traces the disappearance of what Jonsson calls the expressivist paradigm—the conviction that identities such as gender, nationality, class, and social character are expressions of permanent intrinsic dispositions. This, Jonsson argues, is Musil's great legacy. For not only did the Austrian author seek to liquidate prevailing conceptions of personal and cultural identity; he also projected “a new human being,” one who would resist assimilation into imperialist, nationalist, or fascist communities.Subject Without Nation presents a new interpretation of Viennese modernity and uncovers the historical foundations of poststructural and postcolonial reconceptualizations of human subjectivity. Illuminating links between Musil's oeuvre as a whole and post-war developments in critical thought, this book locates an important crossroads between literary criticism, intellectual history, and cultural theory.