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The role of international organizations in fostering the evolution of education systems worldwide emerged in the 1950s, and the OEEC-OECD, in particular, contributed to shaping the so-called 'education-economic growth' paradigm. First, its education agenda was the push to spread technical and vocational education, being one of the key means for preparing citizens for modern society in a Cold War context. In addition, the spread of these relevant skills provided solutions to actual problems that affected the less-developed Western European countries. Consequently, Mediterranean Europe became a laboratory for new visions and practices for development. In the educational field, these countries were an ideal environment to observe the changes underway and, above all, evaluate the actual outcomes of these early programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the liberation of the Second World War, the governing parties in both Belgium and The Netherlands agreed that it was necessary to punish the collaborators. But the notion that the large majority had to be ‘re-educated’ for social reintegration also very soon prevailed in both countries. Collaborators had to be ‘cured’ to become full democratic national citizens again, and their punishment was designed to achieve this. Although in the last few decades the research scope of transitional justice has developed greatly and has contributed to an ever more nuanced picture of the punishment of collaboration in the post-war period, the question of to what extent prisons were used as places to ‘improve’ enemies of the state during a regime change has largely been overlooked. But precisely by studying the execution of the punishment, underlying ideologies and interests are exposed, and we can see how well defined citizenship was. This paper, with the aid of the Dutch–Belgian comparison, considers how post-war re-education was approached in those countries and what this says about the meaning of imprisonment during regime changes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since March 2013, the news has been dominated by young Muslims from European countries leaving for Syria to join the armed struggle against the Assad regime. This is especially remarkable in light of the fact that it would appear that, until very recently, European foreign fighters were far and few between. The armed struggle is a topic that is widely discussed among young Muslims on social media such as Facebook. During the research on which this article is based, I analyzed conversations between young Muslims on Facebook and also conducted interviews with a number of them. The key question was: Why is it that so many young people use social media to profess their willingness to sacrifice their lives in armed struggle while at the same time most of them are not prepared to turn their words into deeds? Despite all the media reports, the fact remains that of the large number of young Muslims who are potentially ready to go into battle, the vast majority prefer to stay at home for the time being. When I confronted the participants in these discussions with this inconsistency they offered a number of reasons as to why martyrdom was not yet granted to them. The way in which these considerations shape their lives and the role played by their religious convictions form the subject of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fundamental changes in Europe's political map following the end of the Cold War have led to a new competition of hegemonic interpretations of history and national memory. In particular this has happened in the former socialist Eastern European countries (notably in the Baltic States, Poland, and Western Ukraine) where there has been a big demand to establish a new state identity distancing these countries from the socialist past. For the Russian socio-cultural and political environment the given identity political demand has created a challenging terrain in which symbolic, and irrevocably political, resources for national identity are forced to be calibrated in line with domestic and foreign policy concerns. In this regard, the public usage of "The Great Patriotic War" and its ramifications has been the most notable manifestation, which exhibits the political significance of history in these identity debates. In order to grasp the manifestations of this significance, this article examines the uses of the terms "The Great Patriotic War" (Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina, VOV) and "The Second World War" (Vtoraia mirovaia voina, VMV) in the Russian mainstream media over the course of the last ten years. For this purpose the Integrum databases (Russian-language media corpus of more than 400 million documents) provide a productive tool for specified queries related to VOV and VMV allowing the examination of major themes that these two terms activate in the Russian public discourse. We argue that whereas the VOV signifies the "inner" canonized framework for discussing the war within society, it is the VMV which figures as VOV's counterpoint in terms of activating "outer" frameworks for the war's public discussion. In relation to the broader identity political context, the study expands the question of how the era of the Second World War is treated in Russia, and the potential limits of this discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates a number of conceptual and empirical issues relating to the ambiguity of the concept 'civility'. By asking what kind of problems 'civility' was a response to, it highlights the ambiguity of the concept in a long-term historical context and demonstrates this in a number of key areas for twentieth-century European history: the relationship between civility and violence, civility and the un-making of death, civility and recognition, civility and subjectivity, as well as the dynamic relationship between inclusion and exclusion that characterises the practice of civility particularly in colonial and post-colonial contexts. It then develops a number of themes highlighted by the use of 'civility' as a historical concept, arguing that contemporary meanings of the concept has to be incorporated in empirical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU civil protection captures important aspects of the changing security landscape of post-Cold War Europe and the role that the EU now plays in providing safety and security to citizens and societal functions inside and outside the Union. Since the mid-1990s the EU has also promoted regional cooperation on civil protection in the Euro-Mediterranean area. This article aims to explore the issue-level dynamics of Euro-Med civil protection in order to address the main themes of this volume, policy convergence, differentiation and region-building. The main conclusion is that the strong operational component in Euro-Med civil protection has fostered the build-up of a transgovernmental network around the Mediterranean which might serve the goal of partnership and even community-building in the Euro-Mediterranean area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For much of their existence, the Soviet-type regimes of Central and Eastern Europe were accused of suffering from a “legitimacy crisis”. It is argued in this contribution that not only are such assumptions tainted by Cold War biases but that the nature of these regimes, combined with the inherent complexities of legitimacy, mean that such claims have limited credence. It proposes that studying a particular phenomenon in the post-communist world—in this case lustration—provides us with new insights into the legitimacy of the communist regimes in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic and Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews some of the critical assessments of the Bologna Process, notably by Neave and Amaral and Teichler. Other secondary material referred to includes Reinalda and Kulesza, Corbett and Greatrix. It is arguable that the Bologna Process is part of the generally over-bureaucratic and very costly context of European Union (EU) continent-wide activity, except one that (perhaps depressingly) involves a much larger range of nations than those which are formally members of the EU. I do here need to declare an interest in that I am what in the UK is call a 'Eurosceptic', perceiving the EU to be a grotesquely expensive, fraudulent and sclerotic entity that is in grave danger of its major original advantage (probably avoiding a third European civil war during the second half of the last century) being significantly outweighed by its growing disadvantage as now an over-interventionist and over-ambitious and under-competent example of 'big government'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the political, cultural, and social make-up of Europe and its effects on European identity. Teachers of European identities must ensure that they consider migration, the changing role of the nation-state and Europe's reasons, the legacies of the Cold War and imperial practices, and the reshaping of administrative boundaries when educating students. The author details her method in creating a class design for undergraduate students in a European identity course at the University of Minnesota.

The article explores the innate tension over African-American participation in the Great War, highlighting the perception of W. E. B. Du Bois, a black civil rights activist. According to the author, Du Bois held the paradoxical notion of African-Americans participating in a war for freedom and democracy in Europe, when they felt themselves bereft of these at home in the U.S. Du Bois believed that the question of participation easily elicited an emphatic yes as he dreamed of a radically adjusted postwar society in the U.S. In addition, he thought that African-American patriots returning from the fields of Flanders would push the country toward replication of the social democracies of Europe and bring home the perceived multicultural ideals of France.

This article examines what race has meant in and to Europe. If Europe has different, if related, histories of racial thinking, expression, imposition, and exclusion, how has it been shaped, in part, as specific region in the figure of race even as race, in the aftermath of World War II, is largely denied as a category applicable to human groups? And what today does Europe as a region, and the societies constituting it with all their internal variations, contribute, especially in the popular imaginary, to the extensions of racial meanings and to thinking critically about the racial ordering of social structure, racist exclusions, and social markings? This study is concerned with mapping the racial contours of contemporary European self-conception, historically understood, tracing the figures in the European imaginary of the European, the black, the Jew, and the Muslim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Security agendas in Europe have gone through some striking modifications over the last couple of decades, reflecting changes in both the nature and the scope of post-Cold War security concerns. While the traditional security concerns have not completely disappeared, new sources of insecurity and instability have emerged out of the post-Cold War politico-strategic environment in Europe's peripheries. Turkey sits at the nexus of this hitherto marginalized theatre of risks and challenges. Thus, while investigating this new and broader security environment for Europe and then locating Turkey's role and place in such milieu, this article argues that Turkey has a critical role to play in this endeavour of achieving security and stability in both Europe and its surrounding regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores some issues in relation to oral history and memory that emerge in Alessandro Portelli's The Order Has Been Carried Out. I examine the contemporary role of the oral historian, the relationship between the present and the past in memory work, and make some comments about how we might articulate the field of oral history with memory studies more closely for the enrichment of Both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The two central vectors of the military confrontation of the Cold War were the strategic nuclear stand-off and the military confrontation in Europe. Both at a political and the military-technical level, the military balance in Europe was a central factor in the perception of the threat and the deliberations about strategy. This article examines the perception that the Warsaw Pact had of its opponent, the NATO alliance, in the military confrontation in Europe. It does so by looking at the evolution of the military balance in Europe and analyzes how military doctrine and strategy evolved in response to the military situation and the perceptions of NATO capabilities in doctrine, using documentation, from East German archives, that sheds new light on the controversies surrounding Warsaw Pact military strategy in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the significance of war memorials in the construction of collective European or Western self-conception and identity. War memorials as religious icons and historical records; Two most common forms of public monument; Common iconography and epigraphy; Summary, repetition and reformulation of the drama of the Passion of Christ in War memorials.