Summary current issues in a historical perspective overview
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Course
Current Issues in Historical Perspective
Institution
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
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3. security
• A new cold war – similarities and dissimilarities
• Post-Cold War or new Cold War – in which epoch do we live? „The decade of living
dangerously” (Kevin Rudd)
• Tension: welfare (trade) – security – freedom
• End of history, return of history?
• Song ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’
4. EU integration
• Institutional integration vs hidden integration & disintegration
o European integration = messy outcome of myriad forces
5. socio-economic transformation
• Does Eastern Europe exist? An alternative path into modernity in Eastern Europe?
• East Central Europe as a social and economic laboratory? Repercussions of 1989 for
the West. The future of the continent?
• The legacy of the revolution of 1989? End of Cold War end of ‘short’ 20th century
(Hobsbawm). End of cycle starting with the October revolution? End of history?
6. urbanism, urbanity
• Continuity new town and smart city?
• The right to the city? Cities for whom?
• Challenges: new role of urban governance: migration, transition, and transformation
of economy (environment)
• Decline or rise of the European city (center)?
7. economy
• New social mobility. Rise of the middle classes. New life-styles. Limited social
mobility? Explanations? Success stories more and more difficult to repeat
• End of boom as experience. Challenges for politics / welfare state
• End of illusion preventing crises by planning / economic steering
• Inequality within countries and between European countries (see session EU
integration)
• East-West structural differences (see session transformation East-Central Europe)
• Keynesianism failed 1970s, neoliberalism failed 2000s.
o Future?
• Happiness (0.4% life satisfaction per 1% GDP)
, Historical perspective overview Cato Sluyts
8. political transformation
• 50s and 60s as period of political stability in Western Europe, but:
• Exceptional circumstances (Postwar recovery, absence of right-wing extremism, Cold
War, wartime origins)
• Degree of democracy to be qualified: corporatism, still partial exclusion of large
groups (women)
• More tensions than often acknowledged
• Completely different development in Eastern Europe (and partially Southern Europe)
• Postwar consensus order carried seeds of current populism?
9. environment
• Ozone layer depletion (ozone shield and gap) / regulation
• Intergovernmental Panel Climate on Change (IPCC), 1988
• Kyoto protocol 1997 (reduction greenhouse gas)
• ‘Secondary’ effects and problems: generational justice? Global justice à Climate
change and migration crisis
• Preparing for the inevitable (political transformation) technical-economic transition
and its costs à Décroissance / degrowth vs. technological solutions and capitalist
efficiency
• Elon Musk, Grimes (‘Miss Anthropocene’) = personification of potential technological
solutions eg: electronic cars, go to mars
10. media and the internet
• Democratic potential of internet and disillusion
o Negative effects platforms on democracy (echo chambers, radicalization)
• Data ownership
• Political and social implications: towards neo-feudalism?
• States (economically) dependent on tech-companies and challenging them at same
time (technical/digital sovereignty EU)
• Role of state (EU) and regulation
11. law and history
• Steep learning curve since Nürnberg trials, thanks to important work by UN
• Serving justice is crucial for validity of international law
• Justice ≠ Reconciliation
• Perception of tribunal is crucial
• Ukraine: no easy and quick solutions to hold Putin accountable
12. socio-cultural change
• 1968 and today’s ‘identity politics’ – similarities and differences
• Group identity as empowerment or restriction?
• Cohesion of a leftist movement?
• Example Daniel Cohn-Bendit (‘the totalitarian temptation in the social movements’)
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