Category Archives: Book review (editorial review)

Tamyko Ysa, Joan Colom, Adrià Albareda, Anna Ramon, Marina Carrión, & Lidia Segura, Governance of Addictions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)

30/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Europe, abuse, addiction, drugÁrsæll Már Arnarsson

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.

Monika Djerf-Pierre & Mats Ekström, A history of Swedish Broadcasting – Communicative ethos, genres and institutional change (Göteborg: Nordicom, 2013)

29/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Sweden, broadcast, journalism, mediaBirgir Guðmundsson

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.

Zbigniew Wozniak, The Elderly in Social Policy. Towards a New Architecture of Gerontological Programmes (Development in Humanities, Volume 4, Lit Verlag, 2013)

28/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Welfare, ageing, care, elderly, isolationDianne Campbell

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.

Suzie Navot, The Constitution of Israel. A Contextual Analysis (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart, 2014)

27/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Constitution, Israel, LeylandEmilio Castorina

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).

Stephen Hastings-King, Looking for the Proletariat: Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Problem of Worker Writing (Leiden: Brill, 2014)

26/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Castoriadis, Socialism, barbarism, phenomenology, testimonyFloriana Ferro

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.

Iván Siklósi, A nemlétez?, érvénytelen és hatálytalan jogügyletek elméleti és dogmatikai kérdései a római jogban és a modern jogokban, (Budapest: ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, 2014; with detailed summary in English)

25/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Ineffectiveness; Juridical Acts, Invalidity, Roman law; InexistenceGábor Hamza

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.

Pia Guldager Bilde & Mark L. Lawall (eds.), Pottery, Peoples and Places. Study and Interpretation of Late Hellenistic Pottery (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2014)

24/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Archaeology, globalisation, glocalisation, hellenistic, potteryGiorgio Baruchello

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.

Pieter Bevelander & Bo Petersson (eds.), Crisis and Migration. Implications of the Eurozone Crisis for Perceptions, Politics, and Policies on Migration (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014)

23/09/2014Book review (editorial review)EU, Eurozone, Migration, crisisGiorgio Baruchello

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.

Sven-Olof Olsson (ed.), Managing Crises and De-globalization. Nordic foreign trade and exchange 1919-39 (New York: Routledge, 2014 pbk.)

22/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, UK, crisis, development, economic policy, exchange, fiscal policy, gold standard, growth, interwar, monetary policy, tradeGiorgio Baruchello

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)

Gaetano Roberto Buccola, Forme del centro. Percorsi analitici dal “Viaggio al centro della Terra” al nucleo dell’uomo (Palermo: Nuova Ipsa, 2013)

21/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Jung, Self, Verne, analysis, ego, psychologyGiorgio Baruchello

“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)

Jón Ólafsson (ed.), Lýðræðistilraunir. Ísland í hruni og endurreisn [Democratic experiments. Iceland in collapse and renaissance] (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2014)

20/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Constitution, Democracy, Iceland, crisis, finance, reformGuðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson

Iceland is among the countries that fared worst in the financial collapse of 2008-2009.

Mathias L. Pedersen & Jakob Christoffersen (eds.), Nordic Countries. Economic, Political and Social Issues (New York: Nova Science, 2012)

19/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, economicsJoan Nymand Larsen

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.

Lucy Grig & Gavin Kelly (eds.), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)

19/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Byzantium, Costantinople, Rome, civilization, late antiquityJóhann Páll Árnason

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.

Donald W. Jones, Economic Theory and the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2014)

18/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Mediterranean, ancient history, economicsMaria Pia Paganelli

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.

David Emmanuel Singh (ed.), Jesus and the Resurrection: Reflections of Christians from Islamic Contexts (Oxford: Regnum Studies in Global Christianity, 2014)

18/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Christianity, Islam, Jesus, dialogue, resurrection, theologyMaria Pia Paganelli

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.

Francesca Bregoli, Mediterranean Enlightenment. Livornese Jews, Tuscan Culture, and Eighteenth-Century Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014)

16/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Enlightenment, Italy, Jewish, Livorno, Reformism, Tuscany, emancipatonMaurizio Tani

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.

Kári á Rógvi, West-Nordic Constitutional Judicial Review: A Comparative Study of Scandinavian Judicial Review and Judicial Reasoning (Copenhagen: Djøf Publishing, 2013)

15/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Constitution, Nordic, judicial reviewRachael Lorna Johnstone

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).

Marlene Laruelle, Russia’s Arctic Strategies and the Future of the Far North (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2014).

14/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Arctic, CLCS, Russia, development, international law, law of the seaRachael Lorna Johnstone

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).

Francesco Giacomantonio, Sociologia dell’agire politico (Rome: Studium, 2014)

12/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Arendt, Bauman, Habermas, Marcuse, Philosophy, Politics, imagination, sociology., ŽižekValeria Ottonelli

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.

Per Eliasson, KG Hammarlund, Erik Lund & Carsten Tage Nielson (eds.), Historie didatik i Norden: del 1, historiemetvetanda – historiebruk (Malmö & Halmstad: Malmö högskola and Högskolan i Halmstad, 2012)

11/09/2014Book review (editorial review)Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, history, past, teachingÞorlákur Axel Jónsson

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.