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Exploring the conditions of news reporting in today’s information-flooded society, Observing News and Media in a Complex Society looks into the strands of systems theoretical studies of the mass media, journalism and the empirical studies of inter-media agenda setting. Journalism is increasingly exposed to diverse perception and facing its selectivity observed by the public. Considering this context, this book focuses on the movement of solution-oriented journalism, which seeks a new way to answer the question “what is journalism for?” and invites us to expand our understanding of media’s societal role in the societal process of problem-solving and meaning construction.
Translator:
The German-Austrian social theorist and philosopher Leo Kofler (1907–1995) represents what Oskar Negt once called ‘unmutilated, living Marxism’. Throughout his life he dealt with issues of history and modernity, Marxist philosophy and the critique of ideology, philosophical anthropology and aesthetics. In this volume, author and Kofler biographer Christoph Jünke elucidates the contours of his philosophy of praxis, traces an arc from the socialist classics to postmodernism, and outlines the socialist humanist thinker’s enduring relevance. The book also includes six essays by Leo Kofler published in English for the first time.

The main work was first published in German as Leo Koflers Philosophie der Praxis: Eine Einführung in sein Denken by Laika Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-944233-33-8. Copyright by Laika Verlag.
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Antonio Gramsci is one of the most globally celebrated figures of twentieth-century Italy, renowned in the world for his contributions to philosophy, political theory, sociology, cultural studies and historiography. Yet his work has been equally discussed, debated and contested within Italy itself, a constant reference point – whether in fervent agreement or angry polemics – for parties and tendencies across the Italian left from the late 1910s down to our present day.
In this fundamental overview of Gramsci’s reception in Italy and his contested legacy within a range of traditions, Guido Liguori provides a balanced view of the many uses to which Gramsci’s thought has been put, with a particular focus on the important relationship with the Italian Communist Party leader, Palmiro Togliatti.

This book was first published in Italian as Gramsci conteso: Storia di un dibattito 1922-1996 by Editori Riuniti, 1996 (2nd Ed. 2012).
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This study – the first full-length monograph in English on the subject – discusses the genesis of Theodor Lessing’s philosophy of history as mainly expressed in his books Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (1919 and 1927), as well as its philosophical implications. Lessing on the one hand vehemently denies that historians can know the past as it actually happened. On the other hand, and rather surprisingly, he emphasizes the exceptional importance of history within a culture, because of what he calls its religious function. His penetrating analysis of history is remarkably relevant for ongoing debates on the very nature of history.
Volume Editors: , , and
Recent developments within and beyond Europe have variously challenged the very idea of Europe, calling it into question and demanding reconsideration of its underlying assumptions. The essays collected here reassess the contemporary position of a perceived “European” identity in the world, overshadowed as it is by the long antecedents and current crisis of triumphalist Eurocentrism. While Eurocentrism itself is still a potent mind-set, it is now increasingly challenged by intra-European crises and by the emergence of autonomously non-European perceptions of Europe. The perspectives assembled here come from the fields of political, cultural and literary history, contemporary history, social and political science and philosophy.

Contributors are: Damir Arsenijević, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Vladimir Biti, Lucia Boldrini, Gerard Delanty, César Domínguez, Nikol Dziub, Rodolphe Gasché, Aage Hansen-Löve, Shigemi Inaga, Joep Leerssen, and Vivian Liska.
Views of the Cuban Communist Party on the Collapse of Soviet and Eastern European Socialism
In Cuba Was Different, Even Sandvik Underlid explores the views of Cuban authorities, official press, and Party members as they reflect back on the collapse of Soviet and Eastern European socialism. In so doing, he contributes to a better understanding as to why the Cuban system – often associated with Fidel Castro’s leadership – did not itself collapse. Despite the loss of its most important allies, key ideological referents, and even most of its foreign trade, Cuba did not embrace capitalism.

The author critically examines and analyzes the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe as reported in the Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma, both as they unfolded and subsequently through the lens of additional interviews with individual Party members. This focus on Cuba’s Communist Party provides new perspectives on how these events were seen from Cuba and on the notable resilience of many party members.
The main hypothesis of the volume is that globalization is a cultural phenomenon. Therefore, the book offers an explanation of how globalization emerged from cultural exchange between groups, nations, and religions. The articles in this volume register the thematically multi-dimensional and theoretically complex contribution of Polish research on globalization. Polish debates on globalization, as presented in this book, on the one hand reflect international disputes and controversies, and on the other hand address local issues. As their crucial feature, the articles in this volume exhibit a special sensitivity to historical and contemporary cultural contexts. They do not approach globalization as an abstract process, instead exploring it through the lens of clearly defined factors.
For the last thirty years the year 1989 has symbolized a European annus mirabilis, standing for such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the impending collapse of the Soviet Union. Cultural and political transformations in Western Europe due to the rise of the migrant crisis are now echoed in East-Central Europe. In Europe Thirty Years After 1989, the authors jointly explore the recent history of former socialist countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech republic, the Baltic States, and Russia. Thirty years ago some of these countries stood as a paradigmatic example of peaceful and liberal patriotism, but during the past thirty years some countries have experienced transformations in their values, memory and identity. A shift towards illiberal democracy has occurred, although not without the overlapping trends in Western and Southern Europe. This book is for those who wish to join and learn from the search for an interpretation and answer(s) to the question: what happened to the legacy of 1989 over the past thirty years, and why did these changes and transformations occur?
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Marx's oeuvre is vast but there are key elements of his ever evolving, class-based contribution to social theory. Declining usefulness for him of Hegelian philosophy and his deepening confrontation with Ricardian political economy were expressions. While the French edition of Capital is closest to Marx’s mature thought, Engels did not understand how work on Russia related to Marx’s evolution, and Engels distorted the outcome. Accumulation of capital is particularly difficult conceptually, including use of ‘primitive accumulation’, and is carefully addressed, as is composition of capital. After Marx, Luxemburg is the most significant contributor to Marxism and her works on political economy and on nationalism are highlighted here. The modern topic of state conspiracies, too often avoided, concludes the book. Troubling issues, however, remain.
Volume Editor:
The question of evil is one of the oldest and most intensely studied topics in intellectual history. In fiction, legend and mythology the boundary between good and evil is often depicted as clear-cut, at least to the reader or listener, who is supposed to understand such tales as lessons and warnings. Evil is something that must be avoided by the hero in some cases and vanquished in others; it is either the exact opposite of the expected good behaviour, or its complete absence. Even so, for the characters in these didactic fictions, it turns out to be deceptively easy to fall to the infernal, ‘dark’ side. This volume draws on the expertise of an interdisciplinary group of contributors to chart events and deeds of an ‘evil’ nature that have been lived in the (recent) past and have become part of history, from individual to institutionalised evil.