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Applied theories in social work are social constructs that evolve according to cultural, political and social trends. The history of community work in Europe after the Second World War provides an example of a family of practices that is constantly evolving, in terms of its integration into social work, its methods, and the political project that underpins it. While the development of broad-based and conscientising approaches were challenged by neo-liberalism from the 1980s on, community work practice is currently undergoing a revival based on community building and person-centred methods, under the influence of the new public management. This paper is based on a doctoral research conducted in six European countries, examining the relationship between social work and community work, and the various forms of community work across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the powerful stereotypical media discourse that shapes and reproduces a certain racialised and prejudiced perception of people identified as “Roma” in Germany. Using a close analysis of a single picture – appearing as harmless at first glance – and through the reconstruction of its various interpretational contexts and semantics the paper identifies mechanisms used in stereotypical media coverage of “Roma”. This qualitative analysis draws on media analysis of antigypsyism as well as on research of photographic construction of the “gypsy” in order to analyse the contemporary visual regime of “Roma” in Germany. As it portrays “the Roma” as a fundamentally different and socially deviant group, this visual stereotyping is shown to be an integral element of the persistent antigypsyist ideology, deeply embedded in German society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the first women to hold teaching and research positions in Spanish universities during the first third of the twentieth century. It traces the paths of the pioneers who used their intellectual capacity to broaden the scope for their working lives. Legal changes introduced in 1910 made it possible for women with a university degree to work as professors in the university or in secondary schools, and in libraries, museums or archives. The writer Emilia Pardo Bazán, was the first woman to be appointed as a lecturer for her literary merits. She taught on a PhD course at the University of Madrid, and was followed by other female lecturers, at the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters, Science, Pharmacy and Law; in this order. The paper recalls these first female lecturers, the posts they occupied, the situations they encountered, and their overall trajectories. All began to work in the midst of a strong androcentric culture. Very few of those who started as lecturers before 1936 – the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War – continued later at university on a permanent basis. The majority chose other types of employment which offered greater stability in less time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that while the significance of Tunisian state economic and political reforms during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has reflected the changing patterns of the caravan slave trade in previous research, much of this research has not considered the role of slaves in the emergent Tunisian economy. Nowhere is this negligence more apparent than in the agricultural sector, which was predominantly responsible for strengthening economic growth from the late eighteenth century until its weakening as a result of encroaching European capitalism by the mid-nineteenth century. Drawing on Tunisian state population data known as theMajbaCensus and the extant economic literature, the paper addresses this gap by exploring the implications of the Tunisian state economic reforms on enslaved labor in the agricultural sector. Exploring this research gap will enable us to ascertain the extent to which enslaved labor contributed to Tunisia’s burgeoning agricultural sector in a manner that has dodged academics’ attention. After providing a historical context of European capital penetration and its implications on political and economic reforms from the Ottoman conquest through the Husaynid periods, the paper looks at how European capital infusion after the first quarter of the nineteenth century transformed the agricultural sector and examines the role of slave labor prior to the European capital infusion and commercialization of the agricultural sector. Using theMajbaCensus records’ regional distribution of blacks in the Regency the paper sheds light on the implications of the precarious economy engendered by agricultural commercialization under the aegis of European capitalism on the structure of enslaved labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper argues that the well-known triadic relationship between kin state, resident state and national minority needs to take into account a fourth dimension: that of European institutions. This is illustrated through a study of relational identities on the EU’s Eastern border where the reconfiguration of ethnic relations followed the end of the iron curtain and EU accession. It considers two neighbouring ethnic minorities. One minority is part of the EU – the Belarusians in Poland – and the other is not part of the EU – the Poles in Belarus. The paper argues that the intersection of these four relational dimensions result in contrasting kinds of ethnic identification for the two minority groups leading to either fluidification or solidification under different circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that a two-tier system has evolved dividing intra-UK/EU marriages from extra-UK/EU marriages. For the former, marriage is a contract between two individuals overseen by a facilitating state. For the latter, marriage has become more of a legal status defined and controlled by an intrusive and obstructive state. I argue that this divergence in legislating regulation is steeped in an ethnicized imagining of ‘Britishness’ whereby the more noticeably ‘other’ migrants (by skin colour or religion) are perceived as a threat to the national character. The conceptualization of women as legally ‘disabled’ citizens (1870 Naturalisation Act) for whom a state must act as responsible patriarch, is a fundamental part of this imagining of the nation. The paper therefore examines the social (gendered and ethnicized) assumptions and political aims embedded within the legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the development of economic higher education in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1953, ie before the emergence of new economic universities with the same name: University of Economics (Vysoká škola ekonomická) in Prague and Bratislava. Its aim is to determine possible similarities and differences in economic education between the Czech lands and Slovakia. Although the paper embraces the issue comprehensively, the main focus is on the comparison of two of the most important colleges, the Commercial College in Prague and Slovak College of Commerce in Bratislava. It concludes and claims that despite the Czechoslovak uniform policy in tertiary education, there were undoubtedly some national differences. Essentially, they stemmed from different networks and the number of economic schools in the Czech lands and Slovakia and from different prior traditions. Overall, Slovaks endeavoured to continue with the preceding development more than Czechs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1933 and 1939, around 20,000 Jewish, ‘non-Aryan’ or politically active refugee women from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia entered Britain on domestic service permits. Their immigration, mostly organised by women in the British voluntary sector, served as a moral response to the humanitarian crisis caused by Fascism in Europe, and a practical response to the ‘servant crisis’ in Britain as working-class women increasingly rejected domestic labour. This paper considers the practical and emotional relationships around domestic service and argues that the acceptance of refugee women into the metropolitan British home was conditional on the tacit expectation they could fill the vacancy left by the working classes, becoming British through their labour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has two aims: firstly, it sketches the history of language teaching in France and francophone Switzerland over a period of 200 years, with a particular focus on the teaching of German. Secondly, it seeks to shed light on some of the francophone historiographical approaches which have influenced recent research in this area. Historical sociolinguistic studies have highlighted the multilingual nature of the Ancien Régime. Mainstream conclusions from the history of language teaching methodology have been complemented by contributions from sociolinguistics which shed light on the developing status of teachers, their working conditions, their role in educational institutions and their professionalisation during the nineteenth century. From the beginning of the twentieth century, despite the dominance of monolingual ideology, discussion of modern language teaching started to take place transnationally. Today, historians are also working across borders in order to get a more accurate picture of the development of language teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent scholarship has emphasized the role of the colonial experience in the development of the idea of Europe and European integration, notions of European solidarity in the age of imperialism have largely been ignored. This paper investigates the specific context in which journalists and politicians voiced such pleas for solidarity, explores the motivations for them, and probes their limits in times of tension. A closer look at the actors involved illustrates the strictures placed on ideas of European solidarity and illuminates the limited potential of projects of integration prior to 1914. However, latter considerations notwithstanding, a discourse on European solidarity in a colonial context did emerge in the decades before the First World War, allowing early proponents of integration to view colonialism as a field for common European action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the educational project of Belgium’s acclaimed socialist and modernist architect Renaat Braem (1910–2001). While Braem is foremost remembered as a militant opinion maker, his work as an educator and an artist has received little scrutiny. When Braem was appointed interim director at the Antwerp National Higher Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning (NHIBS) in 1962, his first action point was not to change the curriculum. He instead reconstructed the physical configuration of the school. With an eye-catching staircase painting, he accentuated an important passage in the school building: the one from the administrative offices and library to the architectural studios. Claiming a central position in the institute, the staircase functioned as a stage and an auditorium on which an ideological and educational programme was enacted in an implicit, yet very physical manner. This article not only looks atwhatthe painting represents, but also athowit represents by applying Randolph Starn’s three categories of seeing: the glance, the measured view, and the scan. This threefold reading of the painting enables us to unpack (a) Braem’s educational project based on a socialist ideology and (b) the institutional climate of the 1960s. In the institutional debates, hovering between tradition and the rationalisation of education, Braem’s staircase painting proposed a third way. It revised the existing doctrines by reconciling the rational approach with a stronger focus on the human in the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In his later writings Peter Mair expressed strong and ever more urgent concerns over the state of party politics and the future of representative politics itself. This paper uses Mair’s thesis to frame a discussion about the state of our representative system of democracy. It starts by setting out his arguments on party and democratic failure. It then considers the question of whether the evidence supports such a perspective, or whether in fact there are signs of adaptability and change. This in turn leads to a discussion about the reform agenda in established representative democracies, with particular attention to the potential of ‘mini-publics’ in enabling a role for ordinary citizens in debates over constitutional reform. The paper concludes by arguing that this reform agenda provides evidence of democracies being reconfigured rather than stripped down. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the creation of the European Community, the Gaullist movement has never been united over the question of European integration. De Gaulle’s intergovernmental vision of the European project has largely been the dominant discourse. At times however, this narrative has been questioned—on the one hand by more supranational notions of European integration; and on the other by a more pro-sovereignty Eurosceptic discourse. Subsequently, in its various modern-day guises the Gaullist movement has faced a series of major internal divisions with regard to its position on ‘Europe’. This uncertainty has also manifested itself at the highest level as demonstrated by the changing discourse advocated by former French presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. This paper analyses the internal tensions over the European issue within the Gaullist movement at elite level. It determines that despite Chirac’s and Sarkozy’s attempts to unite the party throughout their presidencies the Gaullist movement is far from having moved towards a united European stance. Accordingly, the authors identify that over the past three decades, it is possible to identify three distinct, and at times conflicting, Gaullist stances on European integration with which the party’s elites have vacillated, namely Euro-Federalism, Euro-Pragmatism and Euro-Populism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The neo-liberal urban policies imposed under authoritarian policymaking triggered an important urban movement during May–June 2013 in Istanbul. A group called Taksim Solidarity (TS) arose behind this astonishing urban movement that the city and country had never witnessed before. It was a call for more transparent consulting, regulation and supervision stages in urban planning. Consisting of people from a wide spectrum of fields, it provided a much-needed political platform where people could put their ideas forward and create political synergy, in itself an extremely important factor in contesting the project. Based on a qualitative study, the present paper tries to understand the most important factors behind the Gezi resistance, and analyse the dynamics which saw more than 120 different organizations gather under the TS banner. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The advent of a post-racial understanding of racism has changed the way in which Europe sees itself and its ethnic minorities. The concept of the post-racial emerged in the United States to describe a belief that America was no longer a racist society and the election of Barack Obama to the highest office in the land was a public and highly visible confirmation of that state of affairs. A global post-racial culture has taken hold of western plutocracies in which racism is universally denounced but increasingly difficult to pin down. Sayyid's study, by using a decolonial analytics, examines the different ways in which racism is imagined and how this imagination shapes the way in which the post-racial appears. The paper goes on to sketch out an alternative account of the post-racial as an aspect of the various trends that have been described as being post-political. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I survey the histories of Europe's Christian Democratic parties and suggest that inasmuch as they show that religiously framed party politics can have significant and positive effects on both institutions and supporters, it is difficult to see how those lessons translate straightforwardly to the American social and political order. Even if they did, making a success, both electorally and substantively, of a Christian Democratic movement in the United States would require a degree of statesmanship that certainly seems in short supply these days. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslims in Europe have set up numerous initiatives aimed at reconciling religious life in modern societies. Whether they revolve around food certification, finance, education, or newly founded businesses that try to provide products and services compliant with religious prescriptions. Many charities are alternative safe spaces where people who share the same spirituality and ethics can connect and work together. Reviving Islamic traditions, such as shura, sharing a rejection of consumerism, and designing modes of governance opposed to bureaucracy, they may appear as rejecting modern models. However, inspired by the financially successful methods of big multinational companies, some charities try to design modes of action that try to emulate corporate culture. Becoming driven by results and figures such as “likes” on Facebook, retweets, and “views” on YouTube, they adapt their interpretation of the Qur’an and the hadith to justify material success as a means to achieve happiness. This paper analyses how, from a tradition rejecting materialism, some Muslim charities paradoxically develop a utilitarian mindset, and how corporate culture impacts the not-for-profit sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late-nineteenth century food production and trade were greatly transformed. Changes in the food chain gave rise to new problems connected with food safety and food quality, which caused new controls to be introduced throughout Europe. In this paper I will contribute to ongoing debates by focusing on the regulation of saccharin in an agrarian city in the south of Europe, Valencia. The laboratory-made sweetener was introduced into the food market at the turn of the century, becoming highly controversial shortly afterwards. Several local groups of players got involved in this dispute. The sugar industry was not only an important stakeholder in the passing of some specific laws that were to constrain the use of saccharin, but also the main driver of regulation, primarily in periods when saccharin could become a serious competitor and reduce the sector’s profit. Furthermore, the combined work of the sugar industry and the municipal laboratories was essential for the implementation of regulations. It was in such municipal laboratories that scientists played a main role in regulation. My paper will address the commercial disputes linked to the use of saccharin and the limited role of science and scientists in its control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current approaches to science-technology-society (STS) education focus primarily on the controversial socio-scientific issues that arise from the application of science in modern technology. This paper argues for an interdisciplinary approach to STS education that embraces science, technology, history, and social and cultural studies. By employing a case study of traditional papermaking technology, it investigates how the interactions between technology and science can be explored in an authentic societal and cultural context across a historical time span. The term technology-society-science (TSS) is used to represent an alternative approach to linking technology, society, and science that aims to redress the imbalance between science and technology, and to resolve the tension between two diverging goals of STS education. The educational implications of this alternative approach to STS education are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the compliance of universities in the European Union with the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher–Education Teaching Personnel, which deals primarily with protection for academic freedom. The paper briefly surveys the European genesis of the modern research university and academic freedom, before evaluating compliance with the UNESCO recommendation on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, university governance and tenure. Following from this, the paper examines the reasons for the generally low level of compliance with the UNESCO Recommendation within the EU states, and considers how such compliance could be improved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the immediate success of the diffusion of punched cards in the United States in 1890 with their hesitant reception in Europe until 1918. This difference has so far been understood as a reflection of European backwardness but, as this paper argues, is better understood as an indication of more efficient European bureaucracies, both public and private. Further, the spread of punched card equipment in Europe until the 1900s was impeded by the absence of agencies in Europe to handle sales and maintenance. The analysis also shows that, even after 1918, the spread of punched cards in Europe was not a simple infusion of US technology. European agencies contributed significantly to the shaping of the technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the literature on the relationship between consumption and technological development to understand the character of Europe’s 20th-century trajectory, i.e. the hidden integration of Europe long before the formal process of unification started. Within the rich historiography, the paper focuses on the intersection between production and consumption, where a range of social actors and institutions sought to represent consumers and mediate consumption. It is at this juncture of mediation that social actors and institutions negotiated the mediated design and the appropriation of new products and technologies. The paper further historicizes the juncture of mediation by introducing the European politics of the state, marketplace, and civil society within the context of economic crises, world wars, revolutionary changes, post-war reconstruction, and cold war. By looking at the mediation junction, a conceptual frame is offered to understand the connection, the disconnection, or the reconfiguration of technologies and consumer identities in 20th-century Europe. In a final section, the article suggests new avenues for research to examine the hidden integration of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary study into the nature of popular belief in the witch's familiar in early modern England and Scotland. It illustrates some of the similarities to be found between beliefs in the witch's familiar and contemporary fairy beliefs and argues that the extent of these similarities suggests that in the period there must have been considerable confusion between the two kinds of spirit, particularly on a popular level. The paper then goes on to argue that fairy beliefs provided a matrix of thought which underpinned the whole construct of the witch's familiar in the popular mind, a construct which interacted with elite demonological theory in a coherent and dynamic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a great deal of interest in the data on income and wealth inequality collected by Thomas Piketty. This paper does not question that data; rather, it questions the framework of Piketty's analysis, both theoretically and empirically—namely the alleged upward tendency of the ratio of wealth to national income and the rise of wealth inequality. First, in the mechanism put forward, wealth can only grow as a result of savings, thus ruling out any form of price effect (as in urban land). Second, Piketty’s second law defines an asymptotical trajectory, in which variables grow in parallel, something incompatible with the rise of the ratio between two variables. In addition, Piketty’s model does not match data for the USA. The historical profile of the ratio of wealth/national income is actually the inverted image of the productivity of capital (the ratio of output/firms’ fixed capital). Doubts are also expressed concerning the dramatic fall of the ratio of wealth/national income in Europe around World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Theoretical debate about the effects of politicisation on the democratic legitimacy of the European Union has tended to focus on the potential of conflict between European political parties or member state governments. At the same time, empirical sociological studies demonstrate that controversy about Europe continues to unfold primarily within national public spheres. There is as yet no genuine Europe-wide party system or public debate. This reveals a gap between the normative theoretical assessment of EU politicisation and empirical sociological analysis of this phenomenon. To reconcile this discrepancy, this paper develops three actually-existing trajectories of politicisation: the remote conflict, the international conflict and the domestic conflict. Each trajectory carries unique challenges and opportunities to the democratic legitimacy of the Union. It is argued that the domestic conflict trajectory is most promising from a normative democratic perspective. Paradoxically, this does not necessarily imply a renationalisation of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the liberation of the Second World War, the governing parties in both Belgium and The Netherlands agreed that it was necessary to punish the collaborators. But the notion that the large majority had to be ‘re-educated’ for social reintegration also very soon prevailed in both countries. Collaborators had to be ‘cured’ to become full democratic national citizens again, and their punishment was designed to achieve this. Although in the last few decades the research scope of transitional justice has developed greatly and has contributed to an ever more nuanced picture of the punishment of collaboration in the post-war period, the question of to what extent prisons were used as places to ‘improve’ enemies of the state during a regime change has largely been overlooked. But precisely by studying the execution of the punishment, underlying ideologies and interests are exposed, and we can see how well defined citizenship was. This paper, with the aid of the Dutch–Belgian comparison, considers how post-war re-education was approached in those countries and what this says about the meaning of imprisonment during regime changes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historically, to be a black public intellectual in Britain has, almost by definition, meant being located on the liberal-left spectrum, in terms of analyses of race and class. However, in the past decade a number of high-profile black British thinkers have explicitly positioned themselves at odds with black liberal and radical traditions of thought. This has been particularly apparent in their critiques of multiculturalism, youth and education. This paper uses recent documentary sources to analyse the discursive features of this emergent black social conservatism, examining its claims to authenticity, its claims to offer rethinking of multiculturalism and identity, and its objects of racialization. Drawing upon critical discourse analysis and critical theories of race and black intellectual production, it identifies internal tensions in this emergent discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the world prepares to commemorate the centenary of the First World War, it is timely to discuss meaningful learning activities that students of nursing could be engaged in to encourage them to reflect on the nurse's role then and now. Several films and television series about the war and featuring nursing have already been aired. No doubt there will be many more stories to come. Such stories have the potential to do more than eulogise nursing for students and practitioners. Stories, such as The crimson field, have potential to stimulate serious contemplation about values and cultural practices that have remained constant or have changed and to assist students to develop and articulate values that will be fitting for contemporary practice. Recently, excerpts from the series were examined with a group of nursing students and key learnings were found. These are shared in this paper for the benefit of educators planning to utilise public discourse as triggers to engage nursing students in discussions about nursing values, nursing history and representations of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its claim of contemporary exceptionalism, the notion of superdiversity raises suspicion among historians. However, historians would do well to not dismiss the entire superdiversity debate as more hype that does not concern them. As a multidimensional perspective on diversity, encouraging researchers to examine the interplay of many different factors that condition people's lives and to move beyond an ethno-focal perspective, superdiversity could be of interest to historians as well. This article shows how the notion can help historians debunk some of the homogenizing categories that tend to characterize the representation of past immigrant populations. The paper uses a superdiversity lens to examine migration to the city of Ghent from 1960 to 1980. It is an open invitation to historians to accept the challenges that superdiversity poses and to provide a proper historicization of the concept, thus furthering its theoretical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What Western academic literature described as ethnic or cultural Tibet in fact implies something composite and processually constructed: Tibet then often appears as a typical example for explanations of collective identity (and ethnicity). Such approaches increasingly are applied in present-day anthropology and historical studies, highlighting the historical conditions and the politically, socially and ideationally constructed features of identity. In Tibet, identity-building was strongly related to the spread of Buddhism. The new religion was introduced in the time of the Tibetan Empire (seventh to ninth century), but it was only its later spread (from the eleventh century) that led to the effective, all-embracing establishment of Buddhism in the Highlands. It was interlinked with regionally different forms of political manifestations—the founding of Buddhist kingdoms at the periphery and the emergence of monastic hegemonies in the central regions. These developments correlated with processes of conversion, which in its narrative model is described as an act of conquest, taming and civilizing the physical universe and which in theory actually never ends. Apart from considering current anthropological discussions of the phenomenon of religious conversion, this paper will include a comparative view of the history of Christianization in early medieval Europe (especially in Western Europe—the Frankish kingdom and the barbarian zones North of the Rhine and the Danube, fifth to tenth century). Inter alia this also raises questions about the initial social forces and interests promoting the new religion's adoption, and to what extent formal similarities with the Tibetan case are ascertainable in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's European Union is keen to point out that one of Europe's main characteristics is its linguistic diversity. Some early-modern scholars, however, emphasised the notion of European monolingualism, even though Europe's linguistic diversity was as obvious in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries as it is today. These scholars advanced the argument that, in a distant past, Europeans had spoken one single language. This article focuses on the first scholar to really substantiate this idea. In his voluminous Germania antiqua (1616), the Leiden founder of historical geography, Philippus Cluverius, set out to prove that Europe had once largely been populated by people who shared one single language and a set of distinctive customs. After analysing Cluverius' argument and his linguistic image of Europe, the article will outline the intellectual background behind his claims and map his work's impact on later representations of Europe in terms of language. Even when most early-modern scholars admittedly rejected the idea of Europe as a historical linguistic unity, the paper will show that the notion of Europe was a crucial point of reference in the linguistic scholarship of the early-modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I investigate the resonance of the volumeThe Empire Strikes Backwithin the debates on racism in Germany since the late 1970s. I am interested in this long-term intellectual exchange in light of the current need to conceptualize racism in a European framework and thereby reflect upon the characteristics, concepts and possibilities of such a framework. I begin by situating the debate at that time within the context of the New Left. What connected both situations, in Germany and the UK, was an inscription of the then-ongoing anti-colonial and decolonial struggles of the South in the North, not least through the ‘retaliatory effect’ of migration movements and struggles of migration arriving in Europe. I argue that the understandings of racism and anti-racism are grounded in a materialist framework and that the concept of articulation helped and continues to help thinking the complexity and heterogeneity of the social. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Family systems appear to be an important factor framing people's individual behavior. Thus far, family systems have been primarily addressed on a macro regional level with indirect measures. Revisiting Reher (1998) and the family ties criterion, the main question of this paper is to examine to what extent we perceive family structures differently in Europe by taking direct measures of the structures of people's broader social networks into consideration. Based on the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we derived two indicators of family regimes based on individual-level data regarding the density of ego social networks: contact frequency and geographic proximity among network members. We aggregated these data and mapped them on the NUTS 2 level regions for various locations in Europe. The results of our analyses exhibit that, based on these two network indicators, significant differences in family structures between European regions exist. These results confirm the classification of strong family Southern and comparatively weaker family Northern European regions to a large extent, though substantial regional differences in and between countries are also revealed. Our findings demonstrate that the classification of European regions largely depends on which indicator of network density we consider. This is particularly obvious in the Eastern European regions where the classification markedly differs according to the type of network indicator. Intriguingly, social networks in Central European regions can be characterized as rather loose, often even looser than the ‘traditional’ weak ties in Scandinavia. Family regimes can, therefore, be regarded as a construct of multiple dimensions of which one dimension may be classified as weak while the other can be strong at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Energy' presents a number of complex and interrelated challenges regarding the environment, economy, and politics. In this paper, we argue that cartography should help clarify our understanding of energy issues, but ask whether this has in fact been the case. In a review of over 100 articles pulled from twenty-three peer-reviewed geography journals, we qualitatively assess energy maps published since the early 20th century, examining trends in topic and cartographic technique. Energy maps in geography journals have focused on North America and Western Europe while relying on proportional symbols, grayscale production, and the analysis of energy phenomena at the national scale-tendencies that in many instances have limited our understanding of the ways in which energy is actually consumed. Simultaneously, cartographers are limited to the energy data available to them, frequently precluding small-scale consumption analysis or consideration of diurnal and seasonal trends. We argue that the future of energy cartography relies on access to consumption data coupled with greater user interactivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In post-war years, penicillin played a fundamental role in radically changing the system of pharmaceutical research and production, with US firms and research centres taking the lead. As with other areas of science and technology it also became a domain in which European actors sought to adapt to and counter US policies and practices of hegemony, becoming part of a broader pattern of US—European relationships during the Cold War. Three European companies succeeded in catching up with the Anglo-American companies and became large antibiotics producers. This paper reconstructs the story of one of them, Lovens Kemiske Fabrik (now Leo Pharma), and of its Leo-penicillin, focusing on previously unexplored material from Leo Pharma corporate archives and on other archival sources. Loven's case is particularly interesting, because the Danish firm had no substantial pre-war expertise in fermentation, the key technical skill required in penicillin production. More specifically, the argument is that the choices of pharmaceutical companies played a major role in the European answer to the invasion of American penicillin, finding market, rather than state-sponsored, methods to counter US hegemony. This response, though, also highlighted the limits of European capabilities in the 1940s and the early 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe, the age of the governess coincided with the age of nationalism. This paper explores the connection between them in the specific context of intercultural education by foreign governesses. It argues that nationalism, with its focus on the identification and projection of a distinct national character, led to the stereotyping of European countries and, by extension, the stereotyping of foreign governesses. It further contends that the clichéd images of the English Miss, German Fräulein and French Mademoiselle, which were international, powerful and largely negative, had, on the whole, a detrimental effect on governesses and their working relationships with employers and pupils. It concludes that stereotyping along national lines adversely affected both visitor and host by promoting formulaic and prejudicial attitudes one to the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interactions between scientific travel, politics, instrument making and the epistemology of scientific instruments in Napoleon's Europe. In the early 1800s, the German astronomer Franz Xaver von Zach toured Italy and Southern France with instruments made by G. Reichenbach in his newly-established Bavarian workshop. I argue that von Zach acted as a broker for German technology and science and that travel, personal contacts and direct demonstrations were crucial in establishing Reichenbach's reputation and in conquering new markets. The rise of German instrument making highlights the complexity of the scientific relationship between the centre and the peripheries in Napoleon's empire, and reveals the existence of diverging views on the role of instruments and of their makers. In von Zach's view, Reichenbach's instruments could not penetrate the French market because Parisian astronomers focused on mathematical astronomy and, for both political and epistemological reasons, dismissed instruments and material innovations from the peripheries. The German astronomer and his Italian colleagues, on the contrary, regarded Reichenbach's technical achievements as outstanding contributions to astronomy, and considered the political and cultural hegemony of the capital as a hindrance to the advancement of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a personal account of the growth of the field of traumatic stress in Europe, especially with the history of major disasters in the 1980s, the first European Conference in Lincoln in 1988, the formation of European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and its subsequent development, for example, with a federal structure and its own journal, and most important of all the way that the field as a whole has matured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the empowerment of the European Parliament over the years is due to its special role in providing a bridge connecting the public’s policy preferences on the one hand, and the legislative behaviour of elected officials on the other. As the only popularly elected EU institution, successive treaty reforms increased the EP’s political power. These reforms were accompanied by an explicit desire to see citizens’ involvement in EU politics increase and, in turn, provide support and legitimacy to the European integration project. This paper models MEPs’ track records on various political issues, and assesses the extent to which their output is in line with the positions their party campaigned on and the policy preferences expressed in public opinion. The findings suggest that there are discrete patterns of representation, where some parties are more inclined toward greater congruence with their selectorate and manifesto than others. Furthermore, the degree of congruence varies across policy issues and is shaped, to a large extent, by institutional arrangements and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article discusses the thesis that popular music in early twentieth-century Germany was Americanised by shifting the focus from the meaning and reception of music to the way it was produced and disseminated by professionals, from music publishers and composers to bandleaders and critics. Firstly, it stresses a key difference in the way the music business was modernised on both sides of the Atlantic around 1900. While in the US the sheet-music trade became ‘Taylorised’, the music business in Germany, as elsewhere in Continental Europe, was transformed into a rights industry. Secondly, the paper highlights the prominence of Austrian music producers and their repertoire in Germany and suggests that, at least in a business sense, popular music in Germany was Austrianised rather than Americanised. Thirdly, it proposes that ‘Jazz’ after the First World War was hardly a straightforward import of American culture, but a site where incumbents and newcomers to the music profession struggled for position. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Historians have labelled the development of modern mass-consumer societies in Europe as a process of ‘Americanisation’. Until today, the consumption of immaterial goods like vacations has been rather neglected by historiography. The purpose of this article is to verify the hypothesis that the United States served as a role model for European vacationing patterns and the evolution of the European travel industry. The paper demonstrates that a simple model of ‘Americanisation’ does not adequately represent the process of partial imitation, adaptation and alteration of American travel patterns through European societies and, more particular, through European holiday providers. National traditions and cultural differences of vacationing continue to exist until today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In most film histories of the twentieth century Hollywood's dominance has been indisputable. Apparently, European filmmakers were always facing one choice: either imitating the American style or finding a niche in the Hollywood system. This dominance is often referred to as evidence for an ‘Americanisation’ of popular culture in Europe. This article shows that this narrative leaves out a central development between 1927 and 1968: the nationalisation of popular European cinema. The paper asks which conditions facilitated and shaped national film cultures and shows how the political regulation of production in European countries, the momentum of the market, technology and the national industries contributed to the nationalisation of European film. Ultimately, however, the productions of these national cinemas resonated with audiences who sustained them for years following the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Post-medieval archaeology in Flanders (Belgium) is a comparatively young archaeological discipline, even in an historically important region with centres such as Antwerp, Bruges and Ghent. Originating in the slipstream of Flemish urban archaeology during the 1970s, the discipline has struggled for recognition ever since. As a result of more than 40 years of fieldwork, the material record of early-modern and modern history has changed drastically. Yet post-medieval archaeology has not reached its apogee. A framework with its own methods, teaching, research questions and theoretical approaches is still under construction. This paper aims not only at historiographical analysis of the field, but chiefly at defining a clear framework for positioning post-medieval archaeology in one of the most important regions in early-modern and modern Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of various sites of chemistry in the Lower Hungarian mining district, one of the most important mining regions in the Habsburg monarchy, during the eighteenth century. Focusing on the academic laboratory of the mining academy at Schemnitz, it examines connections between this prominent place of chemical knowledge and the more traditional sites of metallurgical production. It argues for the crucial role of experts in the process of shaping and using these sites: men who were not recruited exclusively from among the professors of the mining academy. The contributions of these experts-for instance, in seeking a solution to the contemporary problem of brittleness of copper-reveal an elaborate scientific and technical savoir faire, which served the mercantile goals of the Habsburg administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on two main topics which influence the contemporary and on-going debate about museums (and, among others, city museums): the existence of a collection and of a building dedicated to housing it. Then it deals with the question of the size of cities selected for the establishment of a city museum (large or small centres). Finally, the use of documentary, iconographical, cartographical sources and multimedia tools for the representation of urban changes over a long period of time is considered from the point of view of the necessity to communicate with a broad range of users (for example, tourists, citizens, new immigrants, children). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to assess the sustainability of neutrality in the early Cold War. This issue is examined through the study of Switzerland's armament policy. The Swiss were able to maintain their status of a permanent neutral after the Second World War, and thus succeeded in upholding a centuries-long policy. Their armed neutrality, however, required modern weaponry. In search of this material Switzerland turned to the West, while refusing to purchase weapons from the East. The paper argues that Switzerland's self-imposed policy of armed neutrality increased Swiss dependence on western armaments, and thereby endangered its neutrality status and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘Atlantic Gap’ usually refers to differences in religious commitment between the United States and Europe. In this paper, I argue that the gap extends beyond religious intensity to ‘regimes’ of religion and state, defined as the system of norms, rules, decision styles and other elements that influence how religion is treated in the public square. To illustrate the differences between the contrasting American and Western European regimes, I compare how the two systems react when a specific religious minority – Muslims – attempts to build religious facilities. In this case, despite comparable levels of public hostility to Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic, the American system provides considerably more legal protection to religious minorities than the Western European regime. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

National curricula are being challenged and transformed by the impact of migration and European integration. This paper examines how cultural diversity and Europe are intertwined in geography, history, and citizenship education curricula in Greece, Germany, and England. This question is explored using quantitative and qualitative methods through a case study of curriculum content and discourses of 5 years compulsory schooling in all three countries. One might expect Germany and Greece, which have historically embraced a more monocultural vision, as having largely similar approaches. Yet, the cross-national analysis illustrates that the relationships between European and multicultural values are put together in rather different ways depending on the school subject. Whilst history is ethnocentric in all three countries, Greek geography and citizenship curricula veer between ethnocentrism and Europeanism. In contrast, in England, notions of multicultural Britishness are reinforced in geography and citizenship education. German curricula privilege national and European topics, but attempts have been made to address diversity, particularly in geography. Curriculum analyses have hitherto largely focused on either national and European dimensions or multicultural and global dimensions. This study provides new insights into how these dimensions intersect and their combined effect on migration and citizenship education in European societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent contributions to knowledge about early journalism developed in different parts of Europe-Italy, France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain ... -have made it possible to trace a fairly precise map for the historical origin of this phenomenon. However, the scope of work carried out with a view to developing frameworks of interpretation to explain the reasons for this appearance is not as far-reaching. This paper reviews the recurring theoretical models found to date in the specific bibliography and proposes a new framework of interpretation, capable of encompassing the complexity and pan-European nature of early journalism in history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of experts in shaping European transport policies and the transport clauses in the Treaty of Rome in the formative post-war years of European integration. It argues that transport experts had a specific understanding of how to work together on the international level that clashed with the idea of creating a High Authority of independent experts without intimate knowledge of transport. Moreover, their ideas had been embedded in a policy network which co-ordinated the work of a number of international organizations. This network worked hard to prevent that a newly to be established Common Transport Policy would get off the ground. The paper explores the usefulness of the epistemic community concept to understand the activities of the network and what it accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]