This question is thrown up by the awareness of the deepening contradictions at the world-wide level of civilization. In this context politicians often talk of a ‘clash’. It seems right to explore the reasons for these contradictions, which have their roots in history. The author believes it is not possible to talk en bloc about ‘eastern culture’, or ‘the civilization of the East’. On the other hand, he thinks the expressions ‘western culture’ and ‘western civilization’ do refer to a concrete reality. And this is because the West is in many respects a coherent idea, particularly in terms of religion. We need to attend to the ever topical relationship between Faith and Science, which emerged in culture's earliest times, and ask ourselves why the main monotheistic religions, with the notable exception of Christianity, have held back the development of science and technology. Though we often focus on exchanges between East and West, travelling in a westward direction (the return of many of Hellenic civilization's achievements via Arab thought), we should certainly not ignore the movements in the opposite direction which are closely related to an attraction towards the achievements of the great eastern civilizations.

The problem with utopia is that it lends itself to a form of idolatry which creates a confusion between the order of values sought and the historical event. In trying at all costs to become reality in the here and now, the dream turns into a nightmare. The confusion is threefold: confusion between the utopian objective aimed at but not yet realized and the end situation resulting from an action; confusion between the imaginary representation of an order of values and a particular social situation; and finally confusion between the rule of conduct and a mandate to bring about the ideal society no matter what the odds. So utopia, transformed into an ideology, leads to a frightening mode of thought: justification of absolute power in pursuit of the supreme good.

The author aims to synthesize the content and principal results of four decisive stages in the development of research around borders. He redefines the concepts, methods and areas of application of those parts of the research. He stresses particularly the contemporary period, highlighting discussion of postmodern approaches. The first group of these approaches emphasizes the evolution of territorial identities and relations betweent centre and periphery, the main factors in establishing borders and their functions. The second group stresses the importance of geopolitical factors, including cultural differences between neighbouring territories. To a huge extent security considerations preoccupy this group, which tries to explain changes in border regimes. The third group is concerned with the influence of perceptions of the contemporary world's diversity on political elites and public opinion. Finally other approaches analyse borders starting from a combination of political and institutional factors as well as perceptions of cross-border networks at several territorial levels.

Even though utopias are potentially dangerous, we nonetheless need utopian visions. Loss of hope and utopia means loss of humanity. But how can we stop utopia turning into dystopia? Utopia thought of in terms of perfection, purity and exclusivity imposes its version of a better life as the only possible one. On the other hand the utopianism of opposition does not seek perfection, or removal of opportunities for evolution. Its goal is progress and not repression of human beings. It is not utopianism that is at fault, the problem arises rather from the conviction that a particular utopia can bring about the only correct way to live.

The close identification of Jean d'Ormesson with the CIPSH, of which he was Secretary-General, is legendary. CIPSH, a UNESCO-affiliated non-governmental organization, is seen as emblematic of the post-Second World War era when the humanities came together in 1949 to trade critical responses in a single forum. Jean d'Ormesson's relationship with UNESCO helped demonstrate the significance of this international network and consolidate the role of Diogenes as a voice close to UNESCO's own, sharing the same goals.

The constitutions of the decolonized new nations were marked by the process of the devolution of power. This process had an impact on the agenda setting and arena setting embedded in these constitutions. ‘Agenda’ refers to the conduct of political affairs and ‘arena’ to the delimitation of the powers of Parliament, the design of constituencies, etc. As a special feature, federalism was introduced by several constitutions. It emerged as a device for the gradual devolution of power. In some instances it proved to be a permanent asset (India), in others it was contested (Nigeria) or rejected (Rhodesia). None of the new constitutions contained adequate provisions for the civilian control of the armed forces. The armed forces were simply taken for granted and their potential political role disregarded. But in many new nations political power was soon usurped by the armed forces and constitutional government was suspended.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and former Yugoslavia was followed by the achievement of independence by a number of the republics they used to comprise. This gave rise to the appearance of what the author calls ‘quasi-states’ on the territory of the newly independent entities. Emerging from ethnic conflicts, the new units are being kept going by the action of an external protector (be it Russia, Armenia, Serbia or NATO). A quasi-state does not enjoy full international recognition, but functions nonetheless as a genuine state entity with its administration, army and financial system - all controlled by the protector. Its existence continually threatens the peace and security of the region in which it is situated, keeping it in a state of permanent tension.

If utopias in the western cultural tradition owe their model of ideal, final, unitary order to the objective basis of metaphysics, have they not, like metaphysics, undergone a dissolution in Heidegger's sense of Verwindung? Insofar as the very notion of unity, like that of an ultimate metaphysical foundation, now reveals its violence and will to domination and as we are interested instead in thinking utopia as a ‘project for emancipation’, the author suggests replacing the unity that was hitherto characteristic of utopia with a multiplicity that is defended as a value and not as a phase of ‘confusion’ to be overcome.

Complexity of interpretation of the archaeological evidence about early human migrations here concerns both the exclusively African origin of the earliest ancestors of the species Homo, and the African or polycentric genesis of Anatomically Modern Humans (AMH). Through the medium of tool production remains - blade technologies in particular - Kozlowski traces the chronology of early extra-African migrations to re-examine their causes, including environmental change. Technological innovations prove to be a means by which the population movements of North Africa and Southern Europe can be tracked: from the archaic Homo sapiens to AMH (600,000 to 200/150,000 years BP); and the subsequent spread of AMH (50,000 to 30,000 BP).

This article is the story of the partition of Moldova into two republics after the short war of the Dniestr in 1992. It is for the most part a narrative drawing on field notes gathered in June 1993 from witnesses and actors in the drama. Its consequences have relegated Moldova, a flourishing soviet republic well known for its high-quality wines and its specialized industrial products within a large military-industrial complex, to the rank of one of the poorest post-soviet entities, struggling with terrible problems of survival. Numbers of its inhabitants have been thrown into every kind of trafficking (drugs, prostitution, illegal work). This story and its commentary aim to reveal the exacerbation of tensions that occurred between the end of perestroïka and the breakup of the USSR - a period of confused loyalties, inter-ethnic and nationalist crisis, and difficult negotiations between the great powers over sharing out zones of influence.

In this exploration into the close relation between terror and law, I attempt first to show that the relation between terror and law is not a simple question of relating violence to law, but to the very process of constitution making. Second, laws relating to terror may or may not find a formal place in the constitution, but this relation is essential to the working of the basic law, of the foundational concept of the rule of law. Third, intelligence gathering occupies a key place in this relation, and this activity, which has no mention in the constitution almost anywhere in the world, is the fulcrum on which reasons of state stand. Fourth, intelligence is the close monitoring of human movement, of the body, of the physical activities, and in this physical form of politics we have the meeting of the body and reasoning, terror and constitution, violence and law. And finally, the article describes a specifically Indian experience; yet may have larger significance in terms of retrieving the history of constitution making.

Telematic technologies, so-called, will impinge increasingly on personal and professional lives in the decades to come. Digitized data are already transforming international communication and the way we live our everyday lives. Sharper conceptual instruments are needed to help us analyse how to deal with these changes, as technological evolution outpaces the cultural, and the nature of the questions to be resolved is semantic rather than technical. The Turing and the Chinese room tests are invoked to help examine how man and computer can work together. But however well provided we are with syntactic and semantic knowledge, it is the absence of a developed pragmatics that stands in the way of truly intelligent computers and search engines that can do more than match symbols - i.e. identify matching content via genuinely pluridisciplinary linkages.

Like any construction of the human mind, ideologies and utopias are products of reason and social imagination. The human interactions they feed off are nowadays being intensified by processes of globalization. Utopian projects, which are by nature ambitious, consist of dreams of freedom and equality but the voluntarist character of their implementation very often takes them far from their declared objectives. Thus utopia frequently tips over into ideology. In order to survive, utopia has to go through a process of ‘universalization’ that allows ideas from different cultures to develop and mature in contact with one another. By forging bonds between individuals and cultures, this process could define the outlines of a constantly evolving global civil society. Universalization of conceptualizations that transform and motivate us, such as the global inclusivity of human rights, freedom and justice, builds an ethic of peace for the emergence, beyond frontiers, of an extended society such as that envisioned by the American philosopher John Dewey.

The author undertakes the job of analysing the real situation of the media in Albania from the viewpoint of the complex relations being set up between the spheres of religion and communications in the post-communist period. In the course of his argument he shows how religion is adopting a form in which events and stories of a communications order are being confused. These basic dimensions are assuming a particularly noteworthy aspect because Albanian society has the specific features of a multi-faith environment where Muslim, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, etc. practices and rites can be found. The author also stresses the respect for norms and values of a secular model that precisely distinguishes the various spaces for discourse and intervention by actors. He notes how recent democratization has managed to facilitate a renaissance of religious usage, even though some priests may express a harsh view of the forms of expression of modernity. Churches and mosques are elaborating their own particular narratives of Albanian history, creating in this way the features of an interpretative multi-stranded story.

In the face of the alienating effects of the current globalization it is appropriate to assess the brutal historical experience of Spain's conquest and colonization of America. From that confrontation were born innovative mixtures, unanticipated metamorphoses and the polymorphous reality to be seen in today's Latin-American cultures. Utopia, in the context of the globalization we are now experiencing, is composed of interculturalism, the very many opportunities for exchange and crossfertilization. Traditional utopian discourse must henceforth reconcile the universal values of reason with passions, differences, fragmentation and the diversity of cultures.

Recent growth in international scholarly exchange owes much to a major revolution in the technical, principally electronic, means of communicating. These are reinforced by new institutional frameworks created to foster international scientific communication and cooperation. The author, looking back at earlier ways of exchanging information, examines the Minutes of the Philosophical Society of Finland from 1873 to 1925, and is impressed by the personalities involved and the issues debated. Particularly in a time of technology, it is worthwhile to be reminded of the importance of relationships and personal contacts to maintaining the quality of academic debate.

During the imperial period, French colonial law developed regimes of exception for indigenous peoples in contravention of the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. These were justified by the need to secure order and by the claim that ‘natives’ were too ‘backward’ for the juridical principles upheld by the Declaration to apply to them. Introduced as temporary measures in Algeria in the 1840s, these measures, which discriminated between the French settler ‘citizens’ and the native ‘subjects’, became firmly entrenched by the Third Republic, supported by the emergence of the ‘colonial sciences’ and the International Colonial Institute in the late 19th century. The exception became the rule. The colonial juridical regimes were derogatory of principle in two major ways: they subsumed universality to territoriality and defined the personhood of indigenous peoples according to racial, cultural or religious affiliations rather than as part of a shared humanity. Two particularly exorbitant measures of wide application were administrative internment without right of review and collective responsibility of a group for individual actions. Such regimes of exception persisted in French colonies until after World War II.