The IWM is a place where people and ideas meet“—that’s how we like to describe ourselves. This issue of the IWMpost shows that we really mean what we say. Following an international debate at Vienna’s Akademietheater on the condition of democracy in Europe and in the world today (see page 4), Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and Polish journalist Sławomir Sierakowski met to exchange their ideas on the subject. Taylor is Permanent Fellow at the IWM, Sierakowski currently Visiting Fellow at the Institute. You can read their discussion about democratic challenges such as the eurocrisis, populism and nationalism on pages 5 to 7.
Whoever talks about democracy should not ignore the ongoing Arab revolutions. This year’s conference in the series “Modes of Secularism and Religious Responses” was therefore mainly devoted to political Islam. Two questions were at the center of the talks: what does Muslim immigration mean for European secular democracies? And, conversely, what does secularity mean to the new democracies in the Middle East? Tariq Modood and Nader Hashemi answer on pages 8 and 10. A conference chaired by historian Timothy Snyder was also concerned with revolutions. Looking back at the “long nineteenth century”, the presentations of the invited specialists focused on the revolutionary emergence of the first nationstates in Europe. Surprising though it may be, neither France nor Germany were the first nation-states in the modern sense of the word, but Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Greece. The cradle of Europe, says Snyder on page 11, is therefore located in the Balkans.
Greece, by the way, was not only one of the first European nationstates. As everyone knows, the ancient Greek polis of the Athenians was also the first democracy. This is the starting point of Marc Plattner’s remarks about the interrelation and interaction between democracy and the media, to be found at the end of this issue. What their common history tells us about today’s political and media landscape ultimately leads back to the question: how’s democracy doing?
Sven Hartwig
Download the IWMpost 107 as a PDF
Contents
News
“Good Jobs” in a “Good Economy” / by János M. Kovács
Debating Europe
A Plan B for Europe
“Facebook Revolutions don’t produce social glue” / by Charles Taylor and Sławomir Sierakowski
Conference on Religion and Secularism
Secularism, Still Alive / by Tariq Modood
The Mosque and the State / by Nader Hashemi
Conference on the Balkans
The Birth of Nations / by Timothy Snyder
Unwanted Citizens / by Constantin Iordachi
Conference on Jan Patočka
Der Schleier der Vernunft / von Ludger Hagedorn
Nietzsche’s Challenge / by James Dodd
Lectures and Discussions
Essays on Postsocialism
Sex After Socialism / by Ivan Bernik
Serbia’s Guilty Pleasures / by Vukša Veličković
From the Fellows
Vom Simulakrum zum Fetisch / von Christine Blättler
Fellows and Guests, Varia
Publications
Guest contributions
Changing Media, Changing Democracy / by Marc F. Plattner
Der gläserne Bürger / von Michael Naumann
