What is happening to perceptions of time, durability and reality in the 21th century? This anthology explores a diversity of uncommon insights about time, as seen from our historical and geographical standpoint. It sheds new light on how construction, perception and regulation of time influences a person’s whole being in the world, collectively and individually, in the short and long run, fro…
Umami is now commonly identified as the fifth “basic” taste quality, joining sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. It must be emphasized that the term taste quality refers to human (and perhaps other species) psychological representations, not to the ligands that elicit those representations; for example, NaCl elicits a salty taste in humans, but sodium chloride itself is not …
Why did Yugoslavia fall apart? Was its violent demise inevitable? Did its population simply fall victim to the lure of nationalism? How did this multinational state survive for so long, and where do we situate the short life of Yugoslavia in the long history of Europe in the twentieth century? The Complete History of Yugoslavia by Marie-Janine Calic provides a concise, accessible, comprehensive…
History, genres, world cinemas, A-Z of directors, top 100 movies.
At the turn of the 2020s, identity seems to remain an omnipresent and somewhatunseizable term, serving different views in and outside academia, in politics,in everyday talk, in intellectual and popular jargon, as well as in the arts. While,currently, identitarian ideologies and essentialist notions of identity that tend tosimplify and reduce life experience to simple factors globally …
Sexual violence1 in all its forms, whether intra- familial, within institutions, an-onymous, or during conflicts, although frequent and widespread as can be seen in all the media reports, is a crime for which anecdotal accounts and scholarly reports seem to suggest that the victims in their great majority do not receive redress. It is a crime with high levels of attrition (Kelly, Lov…
When people talk about the ‘abortion question’, what they generally mean is something like this: how should we balance the protection of unborn human life against the rights and interests of a pregnant woman to control her own body? Possibly, they also have in mind a further important (but analytically distinct) issue: how should law (criminal or otherwi…
n a suggestive passage, Wilfred Thesiger, or, as his Arab friends affectionately called him, Mubarak bin London, described his encounter with the people of the Empty Quarter in the following terms:“The northern Arabs had no traditions of civiliza-tion behind them. To arrange three stones as a fireplace on which to set a pot was the only archi-tecture that many …
In many countries, the political backlash against neoliberalism has mainly been a retreat from democracy, with a decline in independence of the judiciary and the monetary authorities, increased control of the media, and manipulation of elections for purposes of authoritarian control. The economic dynamics and the impact of neoliberalism, i.e. deregulation and liberalized markets, is just one ca…
For thousands of years the oceans have been highly prized and have providedus with efficient transport and a plentiful supply of food. Therefore, it seemsobvious that our modern society should continue to use the oceans andmaximize the benefits. There might be great treasures of valuable materials,new bio-compounds and endless energy. However society is reluctant tochange an…