NM. When thinking about Italy, one cannot avoid recalling one of its most characteristic contributions to the world’s culture and arts in particular, that is to say, Opera. And when thinking about Iceland and Opera, one cannot avoid recalling Iceland’s most celebrated tenor, Kristján Jóhannsson, who has recently returned to his native country after 30 years in Italy…
Read More...I was born in 1972, my father being from Naples and my mother from Reykjavík. My childhood and adolescence were heavily influenced by the international nature of my family life. My parents spoke mainly English together, as well as Icelandic being spoken with my mother and Italian also sometimes in the mix, creating a linguistic melting pot which was my home. I have benefitted immensely from this linguistic heritage as I am quite adept at learning languages and speak several fluently.
Read More...My long-standing relationship with Italy started on a cold, stormy night in Reykjavik. I was a second-year philosophy student and had decided I needed to broaden my horizon as I’m born and bred on this beautiful but harsh island in the North Atlantic.
Read More...In 1958, Harold Pinter wrote: “There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.” Upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, he added: “I believe that these assertions still make sense […] As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?”
Read More...The question whether journalism constitutes a profession or not has been widely discussed in the literature in recent decades without a definite conclusion. Indeed some suggest that much of the contradictory views on professionalism and the professionalization of journalism may be traced to the unclear meaning of the very term “professionalism” or “professionalization” (Nolan 2008). Thus it is possible to put simultaneously forth plausible arguments suggesting de-professionalization of journalism on the one hand, and further professionalization of journalism on the other, based on different interpretations of the term “professionalism”. The terms “professional” and “professionalism” can refer to different social phenomena in different contexts. Thus an ongoing professionalization of journalism can be taking place in one sense at the same time as de-professionalization in a different sense, and of course, these different trends can also be taking place simultaneously in different parts of the media environment (Nolan, 2008; Hallin&Mancini, 2004; Witschge&Nygren, 2009; Schudson, 2001). In determining an approach to the concept of a profession it is helpful to establish some general criteria, against which journalistic practice may be measured. In finding these criteria, guidelines are given by the discussion of traditional professions – doctors, lawyers – and on that basis some characteristics can been said to signify a profession. To what extent is the work of Icelandic journalists characterised by professionalism, and to what extent do they, as an occupational group, exhibit the features normally associated with professions? The following analysis suggests that Icelandic journalists fulfil many of the key conditions associated with professions and their development in recent decades has been one of increased professionalism.
Read More...In 1644 the debate for freedom of expression started in modern times thanks to John Milton’s Areopagitica, where he still argued about God in order to justify his quest for freedom. With the enlightenment God lost his unifying role for society and could no longer serve as justification. Two arguments were brought then forward to justify freedom of the press: One by the continental movement of the enlightenment; the other from within the movement of utilitarianism, and most influentially by John Stuart Mill. Both underlined the importance of truth; however, they differed in their understanding on what truth was good for. This difference in their arguments had a lasting impact on the debate on the limits of freedom of the press.
Read More...This paper comprises the text of the invited lecture presented at the international conference, “Tjáningarfrelsi og félagsleg ábyrgð – Kenningar og útfærsla” (Freedom of Expression and Social Responsibility – Theory and Practice), held at the University of Akureyri on 29 September 2014 and arranged by the Media Studies program and the Faculty of Social Sciences.
Read More...The author describes in his short text the regulatory framework for whistleblowing platforms in Iceland, especially with a focus on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI)
Read More...Official conference programme
Read More...Humans have always used psychotropic substances and share a co-evolutionary bond with the plants that supply them. This is a delicate relationship and requires only a small shift in power for the harm to outweigh the possible benefits of use. In contemporary society such changes can stem from our innate addictive tendencies as well as from the profit-seeking of others.
Read More...To write a book on the history of Swedish Broadcasting is an ambitious undertaking and many complicated questions arise as to which approach suits best the project and indeed how to define the subject matter itself. The editors of this volume, Ekström and Djer-Pierre, seem to have approached the task fully aware of its complications and argue convincingly in support for their chosen path.
Read More...This book seeks to lay out the issues surrounding ageing and care of the elderly in society, to examine the challenges this presents for future funding and to propose a new three-layered structural model for planning social policy relating to the elderly.
Read More...The central theme of Suzie Navot’s book, The Constitution of Israel. A Contextual Analysis, published by Hart Publishing, is the “work-in-progress” feature of the constitutional framework of the Israeli state. This is true in so far as the Knesset (one-chamber parliament having both constitutional and legislative power) has not yet established any unitary form to “basic laws” (pieces of fundamental laws ratified with a regular legislative procedure and called “basic” by the Parliament itself).
Read More...As it is written in the acknowledgments, Looking for the Proletariat is based on a doctoral dissertation, which was discussed at Cornell University in 1999, fifteen years before the publication of the book. Then the author decided to deepen his research and make order, giving birth to a very interesting book. Stephen Hastings-King spent some years in Paris, where he had the privilege of meeting Cornelius Castoriadis, one of the most important representatives of the Socialisme ou Barbarie movement.
Read More...The recently published book of Dr. Iván Siklósi, PhD, assistant professor of the Faculty of Law of the University “Eötvös Loránd”, is a precious contribution to the disputed dogmatical and terminological questions of inexistence, invalidity, and ineffectiveness of juridical acts (in this regard the terms “act in law”, “act in the law”, “juristic act”, “legal act”, and “legal transaction” are also used in English terminology) – in German: Rechtsgeschäft – in Roman law and in modern legal systems.
Read More...Getting to know the past is never easy and the challenge is even more arduous when one faces prehistory or, as in this case, antiquity. Lack of material evidence, unevenness in its distribution, absence of or conflicting written sources are just some of the obstacles that historians and archaeologists must face.
Read More...Nordicum-Mediterraneum has been dealing extensively and repeatedly with the international economic crisis that still engulfs much of the world. It is therefore consistent with the editorial choices of the journal to include this review, which tackles a recent volume published by the Nordic Academic Press (NAP) dealing with both Nordic and Mediterranean scenarios and originating from a two-day conference organised in 2012 by Malmö University in cooperation with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres.
Read More...Almost twenty years before the end of a remarkably long life and an extremely productive career, the Canadian-born economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006) argued that one the of the decisive factors engendering severe financial crises, and a fortiori the economic crises resulting thereof, is “the shortness of public memory, especially when it contends with a euphoric desire to forget.” (“The 1929 Parallel“, The Atlantic Monthly, 1987)
Read More...“The human being, whatever her creed or culture, tends toward individualisation or, in other words, differentiation from her fellow beings in order to retrieve her own exclusive place in the world, via an incessant process of movement towards the centre allowing her to approach more and more closely her own soul’s nucleus. The tendency to move towards the Self corresponds, especially in certain stages of human existence, to a lesser investment of psychic energy into the closest components of consciousness and a partial renunciation of the most superficial psychic parts.” (185)
Read More...Iceland is among the countries that fared worst in the financial collapse of 2008-2009.
Read More...The book examines a range of interesting economic, political and social issues facing the Nordic countries; Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland – with seven of the ten chapters being on Sweden and Denmark, and the rest on Finland and Norway.
Read More...The discovery of late antiquity – as a distinctive period and a cultural matrix of later developments – is one of the most important breakthroughs of recent historical scholarship. It seems justified to speak of a discovery rather than a rediscovery: although there are considerably older precedents for the identification of late antique phenomena, especially in art history, no holistic understanding of the period as a cultural world was achieved before the late twentieth century.
Read More...This almost 600-page volume is not beach or bedtime reading. It is a majestic manual on economics. It is a sophisticated textbook-like volume covering basically the full spectrum of standard economic theory.
Read More...Jesus and the Resurrection is part of a trilogy of books about Christian thought about the relationship between Christianity and Islam from the point of view of Christians in a Muslim context. The previous two volumes are not reviewed here and have not been read by this reader.
Read More...Tuscany has a long history of Semitic presence within its territory. Phoenicians during the Etruscan times, Jews and Arabs as of the Middle Ages: they all have played a key-role in the political, economic and cultural history of Tuscany.
Read More...West-Nordic Constitutional Judicial Review is based on Kári á Rógvi’s doctoral dissertation, defended in 2009 at the University of Iceland with the esteemed Eivind Smith and Guðmundur Alfreðsson as thesis opponents. It provides an excellent account of judicial review in the West-Nordic tradition (Norway, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland) based on a selection of ‘leading cases, reminiscent of the common law approach to legal studies. As such, it is something of a novelty in the Nordic legal literature and a long overdue supplement to what Kári laments as the staid legal treatises that form the basis of Nordic legal educations (323-335).
Read More...Of all the World‘s land that sits above the Arctic Circle, 40% is Russian territory. Half of the Arctic coastline is Russia. Three quarters of the Arctic‘s 4 million residents live in Russia, which hosts the two largest population centres, Murmansk and Norilsk (xxxi). The Russian Arctic produces 2/3 of all Arctic GDP (Arctic Human Development Report 2004, 75-76).
Read More...One of the haunting themes of our time is the crisis of democratic politics in Western societies, marked by the decline of traditional political parties, the fading role of trade unions and workers’ organizations in the context of a globalized economy, the difficulty of grassroot movements to influence public institutions, and citizens’ increasing political apathy and disaffection for the electoral modes of democratic politics.
Read More...The book is the product of a conference on the actual challenges for the discipline of history in Nordic classrooms entitled “Historisk kunnskap – ett begreb i forandring” [Historical knowledge – a concept in a change] at the 27th meeting of nordic historians in Tromsö, August 2011.
Read More...The “Ukraine crisis” repeats a script as old as the Cold War, of which the Arctic was one of its main theatres and that, as suggested by Irina Zhilina in her 2013 study about NATO in the far north for issue 8(1) of Nordicum-Mediterraneum, could regain such a role, were frictions between East and West to resurface. And they have resurfaced. The ongoing Cold-War-like narrative vis-à-vis Ukraine features rising attacks by corporate states and media on the traditional whipping boy of Russia. As usual, “escalating the crisis” is the other Arctic super-power: the US. As usual, alarm about “increasing lawless aggression” is projection of US policy itself.
Read More...The churches began to rise high into the heaven. / In them the priests look towards the eternal light. / They preach the word of God, but many men are not able to understand it. / The heart is no longer heated. The wounds fail to heal. / Loneliness remains. There is no longer a priestess transmitting the sacred fire. / It became cold in the house of God. Men seek in vain for the fire / in order to warm up. / In individual despair begins.
[Brigitte Jacobs, Transformations and symbols of the great Cypride, in VV.AA., Agathodaimon, La Biblioteca di Vivarium, Italia 2002, p.51]
Read More...The International Conference “Romanian – Moroccan Forms of Manifestation in the European Space”, was hosted by the Institute for Political Sciences and International Relations (as a project started under the patronage of the UNESCO European Federation for Associations, Centers and Clubs and the ALUMNUS UNESCO Club, whose President and Vice-President – Daniela Popescu and Mihaela Varga – honored the conference with their effective participation) on April 9th and 10th, 2014.
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