While demographers have long been concerned with population increases, recent significant declines in fertility also warrant concern. So far, however, most researchers have focused on the causes of lower fertility rather than its consequences. This study makes a theoretical contribution by proposing a new conceptual framework, which suggests that growing up with fewer siblings is associated with more participation in voluntary associations. Using General Social Survey (GSS) from the US, the relationship between sibship size and participation in voluntary associations is empirically tested. It is found that there is a negative relationship between sibship size and participation in voluntary associations among American adults who have at least four siblings. These findings have implications for researchers who seek a better understanding of the consequences of declining sibship size, not only in the US but also in Europe. Specifically, these results have implications for several countries in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe, regions that have experienced ‘the lowest-low fertility’ in the last two decades.

This article analyses the role of transnational memory in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s novel Sepharad (2001). Because of the way this novel incorporates the memory of European totalitarianism and the Holocaust, it has been considered an example of multidirectional memory. Making use of Rothberg’s ‘map’ of the discursive field of public memory, this analysis shows that the transnationalisation of memory in Sepharad is conditioned, and to a certain extent restrained, by two factors: in the first place, the strong relation with the Spanish context of enunciation and the local debates on memory; and second, the tension between a transnational, ‘multidirectional’ perspective on memory and the desire to narrate universal experiences of victimisation.

The ocean carbon cycle plays a twofold role in the context of climate change: (1) through carbon dioxide gas exchange with the atmosphere and carbon cycle climate feedbacks, the ocean regulates the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere and hence has a strong influence on the heat budget of the Earth; (2) the paleo-climatic marine sediment core record is largely based on biogenic matter fluxes from the ocean surface to the sea floor, which are part of the marine carbon cycle. The ocean is important for global carbon cycling, primarily due to three factors: (1) the ocean is a huge carbon reservoir with a relatively short turnover time; (2) carbon dioxide in sea water is effectively dissociated inorganically into other substances; (3) marine plankton is keeping the surface ocean carbon dioxide concentration at a lower level than would a lifeless ocean. On intermediate to long time scales, the ocean provides the most important sink for anthropogenic carbon dioxide. The marine uptake kinetics for carbon dioxide work on a longer time scale than current and projected emissions by humans.

Starting from the premise that human knowledge develops in terms of paradigm shifts, the article draws attention to the problems caused by the demise of transcendent knowledge after the Newtonian paradigm shift. By the turn of the twentieth century, the ensuing ideology of endless progress, unfettered by emotional, affective and imaginative knowledge, brought about a split of cognitive cohesion observable in the increase of mental diseases and the birth of psychoanalysis. The trauma paradigm thus initiated an ‘ethical turn’ in the 1990s heralding a wider scientific and academic shift towards the recuperation of holistic knowledge.

Several philosophers of biology have argued for the claim that the generalizations of biology are historical and contingent.1–5 This claim divides into the following sub-claims, each of which I will contest: first, biological generalizations are restricted to a particular space-time region. I argue that biological generalizations are universal with respect to space and time. Secondly, biological generalizations are restricted to specific kinds of entities, i.e. these generalizations do not quantify over an unrestricted domain. I will challenge this second claim by providing an interpretation of biological generalizations that do quantify over an unrestricted domain of objects. Thirdly, biological generalizations are contingent in the sense that their truth depends on special (physically contingent) initial and background conditions. I will argue that the contingent character of biological generalizations does not diminish their explanatory power nor is it the case that this sort of contingency is exclusively characteristic of biological generalizations.

This article looks at the question of transnational memory in the work of contemporary Spanish playwrights, Juan Mayorga and Antonio Álamo. It analyses and interprets the theatrical devices employed by each playwright respectively and the construction of a poetics of memory. It then goes on to consider the multidirectional potential of the intertextual references to other authors, histories and events – most notably the Holocaust – in plays of Mayorga and Álamo. It is via these intertextual engagements that the plays confront the limits, or (im)possibility of representation and it argues that the authors dive into a vast network of European memory, which in turn serves as a ‘screen’ for the memory of Spanish people, as it throws light on the Civil War and Francoist Spain. Thus, experiences such as Stalinism, the Holocaust, and the Warsaw ghetto become icons of a transnational memory that places the reader/spectator in the position of co-participant in an introspective exploration designed to unsettle.

The debate on the existence of laws in individual and social behaviour dates back to the very beginnings of economics as a modern science. In adopting the concept of natural laws from classical mechanics, economics originally evolved as ‘social physics.’ But is it really appropriate to transfer the idea of precise and accurate laws to social life and social science? We attempt to answer this question by scrutinizing the methodological foundations of the discipline. In particular, this paper addresses the concepts of rationality, historicity, and objectivity – all located at the very heart of economics and all essential in developing a viable, empirically corroborated theory to face and embrace economic complexity.

This article examines the increasing competition in the academic market between conventional terms such as postcolonial and anglophone literature and their cognates, and the newly current term world literature. Even in postcolonial studies circles, world literature is increasingly taken to refer not only to ‘the best ever written’, as before, but to literature produced within and in response to a globalizing world. The paper explores the different valences of this shift, and the tensions and contradictions it has generated within the wider anglophone literary field.

Vitis vinifera was first planted in South Africa by the Dutchman Jan van Riebeeck in 1655. The first wine farms, in which the French Huguenots participated – were land grants given by another Dutchman, Simon Van der Stel. He also established (for himself) the Constantia estate. The Constantia wine later became one of the most celebrated wines in the world. The decline of the South African wine industry in the late 1800s was caused by the combination of natural disasters (mildew, phylloxera) and the consequences of wars and political events in Europe. Despite the reorganization imposed by the KWV cooperative, recovery was slow because of the embargo against the Apartheid regime. Since the 1990s, a large number of new wineries – often small family operations – have been created. South African wines are now available in many markets. Some of these wines can compete with the best in the world.

In the early modern period (1500–1800), shipping and trade within Europe were the domain of individual merchants and small companies organised on a temporary basis. Outside Europe, however, new financial and commercial institutions such as permanent joint stock companies came into existence in order to limit the risks. These large institutions played an important role in inter-continental trade and shipping, albeit that their role in Asia differed from that in the Atlantic, where small companies as well as individual merchants remained the dominant form of organisation. In addition, privateers played an important role in the Atlantic economy in times of war while piracy could flourish in those parts of the overseas world where the Iberian trade circuits bordered on those of France, England and the Dutch republic. The conclusion points to the fact that a direct link between the overseas expansion of Europe and its industrialisation might be difficult to construct, but that the creation of long distance trading companies created the institutional environment that must have facilitated Europe's rapid economic growth after the middle of the eighteenth century.

This paper aims to explore the nature of digital culture research, and the fitting methodology. Although it is still felt to be a novelty, it is not so different from the more general domain of Cultural Studies. The aim of research for both domains is meaning, or the challenge to understand the dynamics of the encoding and decoding process. Both domains endorse a wide variety of subjects, although typically the concrete methodology of Cultural Studies still remains restricted to qualitative approaches. The question of quantitative data and their analysis is highlighted in digital culture, and we should consider both its opportunities and limitations for the research at hand. In our reflection, Cultural Studies research emerges as a performative enterprise, and this is one of its unique distinctions as a research domain.

In the first chapter of his celebrated Mimesis (1946) Auerbach discussed a specimen of Ancient Greek literature (Homer) both as the starting point of a European literary history of realism and as a comparandum to biblical storytelling. Both lines of approach have recently been given new impetuses. On the one hand there is Martin West's The East Face of Helicon,1 which does not merely compare early Greek literature and Near Eastern literature but describes the former as largely a product of the latter. On the other hand there is the series Studies in ancient Greek narrative, edited by Irene J.F. de Jong, which describes the early development of – what will become quintessential – European storytelling devices in Ancient Greek literature. Both scholarly projects, independently, have put the same urgent question on the agenda: how exactly are we to evaluate resemblances between ancient Greek literature and contemporary Near Eastern literature and later European literature. Can we speak of some form of historical connection, i.e. one literature taking over devices and motifs from another literature, or should we rather think in terms of typological resemblances, i.e. of the same narrative universals being employed at different places and at different times? Or is there some middle way to be found in the recent cognitive turn of comparative literature? Despite the methodological problems involved, investigating the history of European literature is an extremely rewarding task. The project of Europe as an economical and political unity has at the moment reached a critical phase. Literary scholars can contribute to this issue by showing the cultural unity of Europe, a mission that is just as urgent as it was in 1946, when Auerbach published his Mimesis.

Beginning with a quotation of Karl Popper about the difference between natural (physical) and normative law, the normative notion of law is explained as a product of cultural development. In the field of normative law there exists a distinction between laws made by human authorities in a formal procedure and natural law perceived by human reason, often entering into common law and statutory law (e.g. human rights). Law corresponds with reality in the sense that relevant aspects of reality are transcribed by abstract notions and combined with legal consequences. There exists a hierarchy of laws, a pre-eminent position of the legislative over other state functions and the supremacy of the constitution

Translated by Chase Raymond

Based on the work of theoreticians prevalent in the field of Memory Studies (Rothberg, Nora, Radstone, Aguilar, Faber, de Diego, Gómez López-Quiñones and Labanyi), this article analyses the films The Devil Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth by the Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro as examples of a memory-formation that is deeply entrenched within Spain’s current political, legal and cultural debates on the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship and the political immunity institutionalised by the Transition’s pact of silence. At the same time, as emerging from ‘otherlands’ of memory, Del Toro’s films are good examples of how multidirectional memories react to universal/transnational concerns about traumatic pasts and violations of human rights.

For many centuries, Roma/Gypsy people have been an oppressed and stateless minority. Until 1989 most Roma/Gypsy people resided in the former Central and Eastern European communist countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Roma/Gypsy became one of the communities that were regarded as a scapegoat for post-Communist society's ills. Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, Roma/Gypsy communities were not welcomed in the West and much of the persecution they endured in the East they saw repeated in the West. The European Union (EU) has sought to place Human Rights as a focal point of its approach in all matters including the issue of Roma/Gypsy communities. Since 2007, Romania and Bulgaria, two states with large numbers of Roma/Gypsy, have become members of the EU. In the last few years France (and Italy) have been cautioned on their expulsion of Roma/Gypsy people. Not only have these actions contravened the European Union charter on Human Rights, but just as seriously, France and Italy have actually expelled citizens who are members of another European Member State because they were Roma/Gypsies. Turkey, on the other hand, as the home of one of the oldest and largest Roma/Gypsy settlements, had for long periods of time subjected Roma/Gypsy people to a life of social and economic disadvantage. Recently this has changed, ironically as part of Turkey's EU accession process. The aim of this article is to explore and compare the actions of European member States (France and Italy primarily) on the question of Roma/Gypsy integration with their integration in future EU accession states such as Turkey. The EU's moral high ground with regard to minorities seems to be ruined by the deplorable behaviour of some of its member states on the question of Roma/Gypsies while Turkey, which has an uneven record on human rights violations, has shown greater, although contradictory concern for the fate of the Roma/Gypsies.

The downfall of the Communist regime in the Soviet Union was at first considered by sociologists as a matter of transition from a dictatorial to a democratic regime. As a result, they inferred an affinity between the ongoing processes in the states constituting part of the Soviet Empire and the process of democratization occurring in Latin American or Southern European states. Shortly afterwards, however, the disparity between the various processes became obvious, when in some of the post-Soviet states the dictatorial regime lingered on, while others returned to a dictatorial regime after having been democratic in the past. Thus, sociologists have, in fact, no guidelines to account for the regime changes in these states, and it is also not clear what type of regime developed during Yeltsin’s presidency and what type of regime is developing in Russia under Putin.

Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way. (Nikolai Gogol)

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. (Winston Churchill)

This article examines Michael Ondaatje’s 2001 novel Anil’s Ghost, placing it within the context of a history of disappearance as a form of state terrorism on a global level. It contests the controversial response that Ondaatje’s work received, which alleged lack of political engagement in the novel on account of what critics saw as its ‘Westernised approach’. Instead, what is argued here is that Anil’s Ghost presents a particular form of ‘working through’, first by approaching disappearances through the embedded lives and subjectivities of targeted populations, and second by using the specific historical and local setting in Sri Lanka to explore the politics of disappearances as a global phenomenon.