La idea de la ciudad en el pensamiento europeo: de Voltaire a Spengler

A lo largo de dos nerviosos siglos de transformaciones sociales, el problema de la ciudad se impuso, sin dar tregua, a la conciencia de pensadores y artistas europeos. La respuesta de estos intelectuales sufrió infinitas variaciones, porque el cambio social provocó transformaciones de ideas y valores aún más proteicas que las transformaciones producidas en la sociedad misma. Nadie piensa acerca de la ciudad inmerso en un aislamiento hermético. Por el contrario, las imágenes se forman al atravesar una pantalla perceptiva que se origina en la cultura heredada y se transforma por el impacto de las experiencias personales. Por eso, la investigación de las ideas acerca de la ciudad producidas por intelectuales nos obliga a superar un marco estrecho para detenernos en múltiples conceptos y valores sobre la naturaleza del hombre, de la sociedad y de la cultura. Es imposible, en un trabajo breve, situar en un contexto adecuado la idea de ciudad y sus cambios a partir del siglo XVIII. Sólo me propongo presentar aquí unas pocas posiciones, con la esperanza de que el esquema resultante sugiera otras líneas de investigación.Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Socia

La idea de la ciudad en el pensamiento europeo: de Voltaire a Spengler

A lo largo de dos nerviosos siglos de transformaciones sociales, el problema de la ciudad se impuso, sin dar tregua, a la conciencia de pensadores y artistas europeos. La respuesta de estos intelectuales sufrió infinitas variaciones, porque el cambio social provocó transformaciones de ideas y valores aún más proteicas que las transformaciones producidas en la sociedad misma. Nadie piensa acerca de la ciudad inmerso en un aislamiento hermético. Por el contrario, las imágenes se forman al atravesar una pantalla perceptiva que se origina en la cultura heredada y se transforma por el impacto de las experiencias personales. Por eso, la investigación de las ideas acerca de la ciudad producidas por intelectuales nos obliga a superar un marco estrecho para detenernos en múltiples conceptos y valores sobre la naturaleza del hombre, de la sociedad y de la cultura. Es imposible, en un trabajo breve, situar en un contexto adecuado la idea de ciudad y sus cambios a partir del siglo XVIII. Sólo me propongo presentar aquí unas pocas posiciones, con la esperanza de que el esquema resultante sugiera otras líneas de investigación.Facultad de Periodismo y Comunicación Socia

Karl Polanyi in Budapest: On his political and intellectual formation

Copyright © Archives Européennes de Sociologie 2009.A major thinker and inspiring teacher, Karl Polanyi's contributions have long been influential in a variety of disciplines, notably economic sociology and economic history. Two of his innovations, substantivist economic anthropology and the “double movement thesis,” are recognized as seminal. All of the works for which he is known, however, were written late in life, when in exile, and very little is known of his Hungarian writings, virtually none of which had, until now, been translated. Despite his fame, the biographical literature on Polanyi remains modest: some studies provide invaluable insights, yet all are brief. This article attempts to make some headway in remedying these lacunae. It sketches the contours of that extraordinary historical-geographical conjuncture in which he was formed, and explores his intellectual and political engagements in the Galilei Circle and the Radical Bourgeois Party. It seeks in particular to elucidate the complex roles played by questions of nation, ethnicity and class in the life of the young Karl Polanyi

Keeping tradition alive: just war and historical imagination

The just war tradition is one of the key constituencies of international political theory, and its vocabulary plays a prominent role in how political and military leaders frame contemporary conflicts. Yet, it stands in danger of turning in on itself and becoming irrelevant. This article argues that scholars who wish to preserve the vitality of this tradition must think in a more open-textured fashion about its historiography. One way to achieve this is to problematize the boundaries of the tradition. This article pursues this objective by treating one figure that stands in a liminal relation to the just war tradition. Despite having a lot to say about the ethics of war, Xenophon is seldom acknowledged as a bona fide just war thinker. The analysis presented here suggests, however, that his writings have much to tell us, not only about how he and his contemporaries thought about the ethics of war, but about how just war thinking is understood (and delimited) today and how it might be revived as a pluralistic critical enterprise

Pacifism in Fin-de-Siècle Austria: The Politics and Limits of Peace Activism

The late Habsburg Monarchy produced two of the most renowned peace activists of their day: Bertha von Suttner and Alfred Fried. In comparison to these two Nobel Peace laureates, the main association of Austro-pacifism – the Österreichische Friedensgesellschaft (ÖFG) – is less well known. The article concentrates on this organization, which had been founded in 1891, and it draws attention to the political and intellectual environment in which it operated. The ÖFG originated in the milieu of Austro-German liberalism, but had an ambivalent rapport with liberal politics. The Austro-pacifists' focus on supranational principles and dynastic loyalty sat uneasily with the national dimensions of Cisleithanian politics. The obstacles encountered by the ÖFG illustrate wider aspects of the political culture of fin-de-siècle Austria, ranging from the question of militarism in Austrian society to the challenges created by socialist and nationalist movements. As a whole, the article highlights the inherent limitations of Austro-pacifism, as reflected in its quest for respectability and its acceptance of the social and political order

The Anthropocene monument:on relating geological and human time

In the Parthenon frieze, the time of mortals and the time of gods seem to merge. Dipesh Chakrabarty has argued that with the advent of the Anthropocene the times of human history and of the Earth are similarly coming together. Are humans entering the ‘monumental time’ of the Earth, to stand alongside the Olympian gods of the other geological forces? In this paper I first look at the cultural shifts leading to the modern idea of separate human and Earth histories. I examine the changing use of monuments to mediate between human and other temporalities. I explore the use of ‘stratigraphic sections’ as natural monuments to mark transitions between the major time units of Earth history, and the erection of intentional monuments nearby. I suggest that the Anthropocene, as a geological epoch-in-the-making, may challenge the whole system of monumental semiotics used to stabilise our way of thinking about deep time