The history of mnemonic concepts encompasses utopian and sceptical views that produce either a hypertrophic memory or denounce any representation as false. Each literary text incorporates or stores other texts, thus mnemonic space unfolds between and within texts. In storing and accumulating cultural data, the literary text in its intertextual dimension functions as part of cultural memory. A fantastic text points to a silenced repressed memory, confronting culture with its oblivion. Yet the fantastic in restoring the displaced and vanished parts of culture is not merely a mnemonic memory: its speculative potential strives for arbitrary creations that erase the accepted mnemonic imagery.

There are 7.6 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Syria, and an additional 5 million people have taken refuge in Syria’s immediate neighbourhood: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Among these countries, due to its open border policy, Turkey has received the largest number of Syrian refugees. As of 31 August 2016, there are more than 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. This article will concentrate on the findings of a recent qualitative and quantitative study conducted among Syrian refugees in Istanbul, with a particular focus on their strong attachment to this city. I shall claim that historical, cultural and religious forms of affinity are likely to particularly attach the Sunni-Muslim-Arab-Syrians originating from Aleppo province to Istanbul. This article is expected to contribute to the discipline of Refugee Studies by shedding light on the historical and human elements, which are often the missing elements in such analysis.

Within the framework of a general discussion of ‘the state of the welfare state’ in economically advanced West European democracies, this paper offers an account and interpretation of how the Nordic welfare states, often perceived as the most comprehensive and ‘generous’ welfare states, met a number of challenges in the 1990s. Economic problems were most critical in Finland and Sweden in the early 1990s, and social policy reform activities with the aim of modifications of programmes and cutbacks in expenditure have been most pronounced in these countries. A single common denominator for Nordic welfare state development in the 1990s is a somewhat less generous welfare state, but Norway is generally an exception. The basic structure of the welfare systems has been preserved, and social, health and welfare issues are consistently of high priority for governments and voters. The welfare state is highly valued in Scandinavia, but more space for market and other non-governmental welfare solutions is likely to grow in the future.

By looking at science as a search process, disciplinary demarcations become secondary, and new combinations—which occur all the time—can be better recognized. The practices of natural science contain social science components (to discipline the world) and humanities components (telling of stories), and the quality of these components can be enhanced. The search perspective unifies science and scholarship; the important differences are not between natural science, social science and humanities, but between ‘grammar’, ‘(hi)story’ and ‘nomology’, three ideal–typical approaches in search processes. Existing scientific/scholarly developments and new combinations can be located on this map. An integrated science policy should create a stimulating environment for new combinations.

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.

The paper offers a conceptual framework for interpreting the actions, rhetoric and decisions of the Hungarian communities living in neighbouring countries. Its main topic is covering how post-communist social transformations have been linked to the images these different communities have of the future, including expectations, principles and strategic goals.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become a vital element for building a long-term relationship with a company’s stakeholders. Different dimensions of a company’s social initiatives in terms of internal and external CSR activities influence the satisfaction of employees with the purpose of improving the CSR application. The aim of this research is to examine the level of employees’ awareness of the implementation of CSR in Serbian and Russian companies. A comparative analysis between these two countries was carried out in order to perceive the differences in attitudes of employees, their job satisfaction, and consequently the implementation of CSR. The hypotheses of the developed model were tested by using the Multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis. The obtained results offered several implications for scholars and practitioners that should be considered when formulating and implementing CSR actions.

This is a historical account from my personal perspective of the development over the last few decades of the standard model of particle physics. The model is based on gauge theories, of which the first was quantum electrodynamics, describing the interactions of electrons with light. This was later incorporated into the electroweak theory, describing electromagnetic and weak nuclear interactions. The standard model also includes quantum chromodynamics, the theory of the strong nuclear interactions. The final capstone of the model was the Higgs particle discovered in 2012 at CERN. But the model is very far from being the last word; there are still many gaps in our understanding.

A long history of analysis has taken apart organisms into molecular structures. However, the understanding of how biological forms are put together in development and evolution has eluded biologists until very recently. Comparative molecular data on genes in different phyla is uncovering an extraordinary conservation since Precambrian times of gene structures associated with functions. The implications of these findings and our increasing knowledge of how genes control development in a few model organisms, invites a consideration of possible approaches to tackle the problem of how organismic forms are constructed and evolve.

Charles Darwin has had an extraordinary impact on many aspects of human affairs apart from revolutionizing biology. On the 200th anniversary of his birth, the Cambridge Darwin Festival in July 2009 celebrated these contributions to the humanities, philosophy and religion and the approach to medicine, economics and the social sciences. He is a man to revere. It is no discredit to him that the science of evolutionary biology should continue to evolve. In this article I shall consider some of the ways in which this has happened since his day.

At the end of November 1755, news of the Lisbon earthquake spread rapidly to all capital cities of Europe. Horrific reports gave rise to a wealth of sensational journalism. As Samuel Johnson and others attest, this was particularly marked in Great Britain. The catastrophe remained a popular subject of flysheets, newspapers, and engravings for months on end. The event was magnified many times over in the eyes and minds by the popular press, which led to forms of public distress. For the first time in the western world, the press, on the occasion of the Lisbon earthquake, helped create the illusion of proximity and unity between the peoples of different nations in Europe. As Voltaire said, ‘L'Europe ressemblait à une grande famille réunie après ses différences’.

Attempting to combine cultural history with translation studies, this article examines translation between languages as a special case of a more general phenomenon, translation between cultures. It surveys printed translations made in Europe between 1500 and 1700, discussing which kinds of people translated which kinds of book from and into which languages. Particular attention is given to the reconstruction of the early modern ‘regime’ of translation, in other words the manner (free or literal, domesticating or ‘foreignizing’) in which translations were made.

The Olympic Games are an invention of the ancient Greeks. They were held in Olympia in a quadrennial rhythm, without interruption for ca. 1200 years. Compared with the modern Olympics, the ancient programme was small: running events (over several distances), the pentathlon, and the so-called ‘heavy’ events: wrestling, boxing and pankration. Various equestrian events (with and without chariots) completed the programme. This programme is discussed with the athletes, their social background and ideology. Although in ancient Olympia a wreath of olive-leaves – a forerunner of our modern gold medal – was the first and only prize, there was no amateurism in Greek athletics. Olympic athletes happily participated in highly rewarding money games both before and after the Olympics. Money was not despised; abuse of money, in the form of Wine, Women and Song was criticized, but some athletes, then as now, were unable to resist the temptations of life.

Analysing structural conditions for interdisciplinarity, this paper focuses on the characteristics of four factors in the organization of the sciences: disciplines, institutions, rewards and funding. It is argued that interdisciplinarity is less likely to involve disciplines that are strongly integrated, i.e. where task uncertainty is low and the dependence among researchers is high. Likewise, it is claimed that interdisciplinarity is likely to be hampered by strong departmental organization structures. Interdisciplinarity is also considered to become less likely as quality control is specifically discipline oriented and also when funding is concentrated and in the hands of scientific elites. In contrast, interdisciplinary research may be found in research environments with weakly integrated disciplines in institutions with weak or no departmental structures, and where disciplinary reward systems are weak in systems with a variety of funding.

Despite its postmodern articulation, the spatial turn is productive for literary studies because, paradoxically revisiting Kant’s modern attempt to base the structure of knowledge on the presumably scientific character of geography and anthropology, it has improved methods of historical contextualization of literature through the dialectics of ontologically heterogeneous spaces. The author discusses three recent appropriations of spatial thought in literary studies: the modernization of traditional literary geography in the research of the relations between geospaces and fictional worlds (Piatti, Westphal), the systemic analysis of the genre development and diffusion with the help of analytical cartography (Moretti), and the transnational history of literary cultures (Valdés, Neubauer, Domínguez, and so on). In conclusion, the author presents the tentative results of the research project ‘The Space of Slovenian Literary Culture: Literary History and the GIS-Based Spatial Analysis’, which might represent a matrix for further developments of the spatially-oriented literary science. Using GIS technologies, the project maps and analyses data about the media, institutions, and actors of Slovenian literature in order to explain how the interaction between ‘spaces in literature’ and ‘literature in spaces’ has historically established a nationalized and aesthetically differentiated literary field.

Although the representation of women in science and research has improved significantly over the past few years, women are still far from enjoying the same presence and visibility as their male colleagues. This article depicts the current situation by providing recent data, and it explains why more efforts are still needed. It introduces key concepts that are important for a better understanding of the situation of women in science. Some special attention is given to the particular state of affairs of female scientists in the former communist countries. Finally, the article introduces networking activities as a key tool for strengthening women’s position in the world of science and research. It presents the main findings of a recent study on women’s engagement in international research networks, which proved to have tangible positive career implications for the researchers involved. Thus, the article calls for further efforts to encourage female scientists, both senior and junior, to actively engage in research networking activities in order to shape their profiles, strengthen their position and contribute their expertise to international research.

Among Bosnian and Herzegovinian ethno-confessional nations there exist three parallel and conflicted historical memories. The dominance of patriarchal social forms without democratic tradition is the most profoundly rooted cause of this condition of mutual alienation and forms a major obstacle on the path towards the creation of a democratic political culture. The Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (henceforth BiH) in 1995, also contributes to this situation by cementing the status of ethnic divisions in the country, thus leading to its disintegration.

Turkish migrants constitute the largest migrant community as well as the largest migrant entrepreneurial group in many European countries. Recent studies state that today 1 in 10 Turkish families is self-employed and the number of Turkish entrepreneurs operating all over EU member states has exceeded 100,000. Projections suggest that 190,000 Turkish entrepreneurs will be living in the EU member states in 2020 while employing over 1 million people. An increasing involvement of second-generation migrants in entrepreneurial activities, as well as the new orientations from traditional to non-traditional sectors and transnational activities, has led to a transformation from ‘Migrant Entrepreneurship’ towards the ‘New European Entrepreneurship’.

This article focuses on the relationship between political parties and interest groups in contemporary democracies. Although this is a key topic for assessing the evolution of representative political systems and the quality of democracies, the theoretical and empirical studies have not developed a cumulative body of knowledge. As well as the lack of an integrated perspective, we argue that the literature on this topic has remained conceptually fuzzy and has failed to elaborate a common approach to examine how parties and interest organisations interact. Although some researchers point to a weakening of relations between parties and interest groups, the most current data point not to disappearance but to a change in the way both political actors interact. This article contributes to updating the research on the topic and also sheds light on why the literature has remained segmented. The study shows that the variety of conceptualisations, approaches and typologies has led to incongruent – and often non-comparable – results. The final section identifies a number of research gaps and suggest new topics and approaches that can unify this object of study in the near future.