Journal articles on the topic 'Europe – Social policy – 20th century'

The family policy landscape changed dramatically across and within European societies during the 20th century. At the same time, family life courses have become more complex, unstable and unpredictable. However, there are no empirical studies that attempt to link changes in family policies with increasing family life course complexity. In this study, I address two research questions: (1) What is the association between family policies and family life course complexity? and (2) Do these associations vary by the life course stage at which individuals experience family policies? Retrospective data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe are used to construct the family life courses of individuals from the age of 15 to 50, born between 1924 and 1956, from 15 European countries. I use metrics developed in sequence analysis that incorporate life course transitions and unpredictability to measure the complexity of family formation. Annual policy information from 1924 to 2008 for each country are combined to generate cohort indices for three policy dimensions: familization, individualization and liberalization. These cohort metrics express the policy experiences of individuals over the course of their lives, rather than at a specific historical time point. I find that while familization is associated with less complex life courses, individualization is related to higher levels of complexity. Furthermore, my results indicate that the levels individualization experienced early and later in the life course are linked most strongly with complexity. I conclude that family policy reforms may partially account for increasing life course instability and unpredictability across Europe.

The research focuses on the study of public housing built in response to the urgent housing needs in Europe throughout the 20th century. These developments share many of the characteristics of their European counterparts. The Spanish case presents certain peculiarities in its development. The research aims to analyse the context -social, economic and political- that conditioned the massive construction of housing in Spain between 1939 and 1976. An analysis is made of the approved urban planning legislation, housing regulation and the identification of the responsible bodies.

The 20th century European welfare states appeared as the final products of all public activities undertaken to solve the 19th-century social issue. The welfare states’ infrastructure is founded on three main pillars: regulated labour markets, social transfers organized within social security systems and social services provided by specialists representing the variety of helping professions. In the 21st century the main field of social investment are social services and the role of professional helpers as agents of the well-being distribution is raising up. At the same time the framework of professional helping practices is reshaped due to evolution of social policy, changes of needs and expectations of citizens. The direction of ongoing changes is driven by such ideas as community-centred approach, personalization of support, concept of double empowerment (empowering both: social services users and deliverers), work on capabilities, cooperation between specialists representing the variety of helping professions and mutual consideration of competence. A special role in forming the new professionalism of helping practices is to be played by social work due to its special position among helping professions.

This paper deals with the poorly researched concept of fenced settlements (housing policy), which was developed in the USA in the middle of the 20th century, but has recently been particularly affirmed in NEO-liberal society, all over the world. Walled settlements also exist in social-democratic Europe, and the article studies the consequences of applying this concept, i.e. the influence of fenced settlements on the democratic spirit of the city and the democratic and development potential of the city, on the example of cities in Europe (France, Britain and Ireland) with lessons learned. Gated settlements have a number of negative effects on the community. For the needs of fenced communities, authorities often privatize roads, public spaces, and access to remaining public areas, to the detriment of the majority of residents, for whom entire complexes in the city remain inaccessible. This creates numerous social and spatial injustices, which actively undermines the democratic capacity of the city. These processes are in conflict with the democratic concept of the open city and the model of mixed housing, cultivated during the welfare state. The article relies on the analyses of existing research and studies of fenced settlements in the world through indicative examples and case studies (content analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison). Statistical methods, analysis of regulatory changes, interviews and surveys of tenants, development managers, politicians and officials were often used in these studies. The comparative method in this paper compares the similarities and differences of fenced settlements in various countries, which is the basis for conclusions and recommendations for optimal housing policy and urban development (synthesis). The article introduces this challenging topic into the debate space of political and social sciences (field of urban studies), presents the existing consequences, and through comparison allows us to synthetically arrive at recommendations for choosing the optimal housing policy (learning from experience).

The aim of the article is to elucidate the impact of Marxism and Nationalism on modernization processes in Eastern Europe from the perspective of their formation and mutual influence. Research methods: synthesis, induction, analysis, retrospective. Main results. During research we studied programs of both ideologies and compared their distinctive traits. Through analysis oftheoretical patterns of nationalism movements, different theories of public modernization and European point of view about backwardness, we found that Nationalism and Marxism significantly diverged around the role of statehood in culture and political changes. For Nationalism – state was the main aim and, simultaneously, result of nationalist movement activity. Further progress of nation was related to national state, which could provide certain conditions for cultural and economic development. Statehood in Marxists views was unwelcome; changes in society were related to social revolutionary movements without creation new state formations. State’s participation in transformation processes was, in theory, different for both ideologies. But when communists seized a power in the former Russian Empire, they faced a necessity of making their own statehood with its national policy. In fact, Nationalism became an artificial method on the way towards modernization of society. In conclusion, Eastern Europe modernization happened due to unification of communist and nationalist political thought. Scientific novelty of the paper is explained by analysis of works by Austrian Marxists, who made a theory for Soviet national policy. We explain this point by comparing some Austrian ideas to J. Stalin’s view on national question. The author also advocates the idea of existence some nationalistic traits during socialistic modernization in the USSR. Practical value of the research is a creation of background for studying Soviet ideology from new point of view. Type of article: empirical research.

This article aims to find the basis for claiming cultural homogeneity with Western Europe from a historical point of view. Additionally, by studying Hungarian literature, the article reveals characteristics of European culture during the transition to a post-socialist system such as political democratization, privatization and the establishment of the ownership system. The formation of civil society is also discussed. Social thoughts vividly shown in literature is a significant feature of Hungarian literature in the 20th century. For example, realism in the 19th century only exposed inequality and corruption in society but had no idea about initiating a revolution. However, in the 20th century, the direction of this revolution became apparent, and literature based on the socialism-based revolution emerged. Simultaneously, refusal and resistance to tradition were features of literature in the 20th century, and literature applying scientific analysis also appeared. However these tendencies captured the ideological viewpoint, and in terms of the form and style, it was more confusing and divisive than earlier days.

For centuries, Switzerland’s security system was based on the historically grounded neutrality and it was directed “inwards”, with few exceptions such as World Wars. Along with geopolitical changes in Europe and in the world in the 20th and 21st centuriy, the country was forced to re-evaluate its security policy. In the internal area, the Armed Forces were reorganized and modernized, creating one of a kind military organisation, well-equipped militia army based on obligatory army service for the citizens, civil defense and strong social need to defend the country. Contemporary threats to the European security have forced the Confederation to open itself to international cooperation, which resulted in joining to the UN and intensified cooperation with other organizations, including the EU and NATO. Switzerland returned to “active neutrality”, established extensive economic and assistance contacts, and joined – with other countries – peacekeeping, stabilization and observation missions with the UN mandate around the world. In the 20th and 21st century, Switzerland has become a country opened to international cooperation in many areas, not only economic but also political.

This article offers a contribution to the sociology of social science knowledge practices and expertise through the empirical lens of US nation building policies. Drawing on archival materials, including the State Department's Freedom of Information Act documents, and interviews with key policymakers we offer a comparative historical sociology of the US State Department as a site of nation building knowledge and expertise. In examining the evolving character of nation building expertise in three key moments across the twentieth century, we find that as nation building expertise and its attendant knowledge practices were redefined and institutionally relocated, the essential character of the expertise and data collection practices that were valorized shifted from social scientism in the 1910s to geopolitical empiricism in the 1940s to liberal legalism in the 1990s. This changing character of nation building knowledge practices at the State Department had an effect on the substance of US nation building policy.

Population control, as a major international development strategy, is a relatively recent phenomenon. However, its origins reach back to social currents in the 19th and early 20th centuries, culminating in an organized birth control movement in Europe and the United States. The conflicts and contradictions in that movement's history presage many of today's debates over population policy and women's rights. Eugenics had a deep influence on the U.S. birth control movement in the first half of the 20th century. After World War II private agencies and foundations played an important role in legitimizing population control as a way to secure Western control over Third World resources and stem political instability. In the late 1960s the U.S. government became a major funder of population control programs overseas and built multilateral support through establishment of the U.N. Fund for Population Activities. At the 1974 World Population Conference, Third World governments challenged the primacy of population control. While their critique led population agencies to change their strategies, population control remained a central component of international development and national security policies in the United States.

Mass housing neighbourhoods (MHN) represent the leading pattern of urban transformation and expansion in the second half of the 20th century, and accordingly evaluation, regeneration and redesign of the MHN represent a necessary and challenging task in the contemporary research context. In the practical scope of MHN rehabilitation, various holistic approaches and design strategies are identified that affirm both ecological transition and social transformation of these urban settings. However, the level of application of such approaches across Europe varies greatly, and requires research initiatives of a comparative nature that open a cross-geographical debate at the European level. Although there is a series of evidence-based studies that define the conceptual framework of MHN, i.e., large-scale housing settlements, through historical-interpretative and chronological analyses, the academic debate on practical and feasible MHN rehabilitation and their sustainable integration into the urban development of cities at European level is underdeveloped. The specific objective of this paper is to establish preliminary insights into the current level of MHN rehabilitation and to identify challenges for further actions through (1) a comparative analysis of MHN role models from the second half of 20th century, and through (2) insights from an implemented expert questionnaire. The research engages a comparative case study analysis as the primary method and analyses MHN in Germany (as a representative of Western Europe) and in the two ex-Yugoslav countries, North Macedonia and Serbia (as representatives of Eastern Europe). This research has highlighted the main obstacles and challenges for MHN rehabilitation and demonstrated the importance of a multiscale approach to MHN analysis, having in mind that through the distribution of design values at the analysed spatial levels (neighbourhood level, building level, and apartment level) the application of affirmative indicators within different design values group is recognised.

Based on the analysis of archival material, and combined with ethnographic fieldwork conducted among the Finnish Kaale (the Finnish Romani population) since 2011, this article looks at the historical intertwining of Roma religious and social activism in Finland from the beginning of the 20th century. A focus is placed on the role of the Gypsy Mission (Mustalaislähetys), nowadays Romani Mission (Romano Missio), in shaping both historical and present-day Roma policy, activism and mobilisation within the country. Founded in 1906, and initially led by non-Roma Evangelicals, its impact has nevertheless moved beyond a strictly Roma-focused/non-Roma-led mission. While rarely mentioned, Kaale were active participants within the organisation, and some of the earliest Roma activists were shaped within its midst. Furthermore, Roma mobilisation in the country continues to have a religious undertone, particularly in the contemporary transnational humanitarian work conducted by Finnish Kaale missionaries among Roma communities in Eastern Europe. Tracing the legacy of present-day religious mobilisation among Roma in Finland, as well as Finnish Roma’s active involvement in shaping Roma-projects elsewhere in Europe, is therefore crucial in revealing not only contrasts in how Roma activism may have manifested during the interwar period in Europe (from political to religious, from Roma-led to Roma-focused) but points to the present-day influence of Evangelical missions in shaping particular visions of the ‘future’ among Roma communities across Europe.

For the past few years, the world situation has been changing so rapidly that it could be called a "The Revolution." For example, there are the changes in Eastern Europe, the unification of Germany, and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the leader of the Communist nations and a major participant in the Cold War during the 20th century, from the historical stage. Moreover, North-Korea which has pursued an open-door policy and armed revolutionary unification for half n century, has begun a step by step effort For the establishment of peace. It has produced an atmosphere of detente on the Korean peninsula. All these world wide changes and North-South Korea developments toward peace cause people to fantasize about the unification of Korea. With this fantasy In their mind, people demand to spend more on economic and social welfare, and cut down on NDE.

AbstractAbraham Kuyper, Dutch Prime Minister (1901–1905) and modern Calvinist, was a controversial figure, not least in his foreign affairs. Yet while Kuyper's legacy has been felt in the world of religious, especially Christian, political, and social theory, very little has been made of Kuyper's actual record as a foreign policy maker and a Prime Minister. So, what was Kuyper's “Christian” perspective and policy on foreign affairs? Using newly available English translations, this article outlines Kuyper's “overseas manifesto” made most plain in Our Program, and compares it against Kuyper's commentary and policy in three major foreign crises: the Boer Cause, in South Africa; the “pacification” of Aceh, in modern-day Indonesia; and finally, the calamity of the Great War in Europe. From these I will paint an introductory, if general, picture of a serious, religious foreign policy maker, and a commentator on world affairs; a complex picture of religiously inflected policy in the early 20th century, with lessons and warnings for scholars of religion and foreign policy today.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the patterns of urban shrinkage defined a worldwide phenomenon. They are visible in all developed regions, especially in Central and Eastern Europe, on the background of the economic growth trajectories and social health improvements. Despite this fact, the public discourse in a post-socialist country such as Romania is only focused on urban decline and its demographic dynamics sliding, when in fact urban shrinkage is more advanced, even to the point of becoming a selective phenomenon in developed countries such as The Netherlands. Our focus on urban shrinkage was driven by the fact that Romania can develop a policy framing regarding urban shrinkage, using example practices from a developed country such as The Netherlands. Moreover, it can learn how to deal with urban shrinkage effects by establishing certain differences which can cope with veritable lessons from both sides. This paper firstly investigates the urban shrinkage phenomenon observed in three cities in Romania and in three cities in The Netherlands. Secondly, it presents an analysis of demographic statistical data using the shift-and-share method to emphasize the persistence of urban shrinkage in the age structure of the total population of shrinking cities from both regions. Thirdly, it offers some lessons from both countries, finally presenting a mutual learning framework that can be applied to other regions in Europe.

In the 1980s and 1990s West European welfare states were exposed to strong pressures to ‘renovate’, to retrench. However, the European social policy landscape today looks as varied as it did at any time during the 20th century. ‘New institutionalism’ seems particularly helpful to account for the divergent outcomes observed, and it explains the resistance of different structures to change through past commitments, the political weight of welfare constituencies and the inertia of institutional arrangements – in short, through ‘path dependency’. Welfare state institutions play a special role in framing the politics of social reform and can explain trajectories and forms of policy change. The institutional shape of the existing social policy landscape poses a significant constraint on the degree and the direction of change. This approach is applied to welfare state developments in the UK and France, comparing reforms of unemployment compensation, old-age pensions and health care. Both countries have developed welfare states, although with extremely different institutional features. Two institutional effects in particular emerge: schemes that mainly redistribute horizontally and protect the middle classes well are likely to be more resistant against cuts. Their support base is larger and more influential compared with schemes that are targeted on the poor or are so parsimonious as to be insignificant for most of the electorate. The contrast between the overall resistance of French social insurance against cuts and the withering away of its British counterpart is telling. In addition, the involvement of the social partners, and particularly of the labour movement in managing the schemes, seems to provide an obstacle for government sponsored retrenchment exercises.

The importance of the fundamental principles of punishment in criminal policy — remarks against a background of causes and results of “mass incarceration” in the United StatesIn the last century, in the United States, there was a significant change in the paradigms of punishment. In the 1970s the ideology of rehabilitation collapsed and reforms, which aimed at restoring justice in punishment and reduction of the prison population, were initiated. In the next decade, the movement aiming at liberal reforms lost the social and political support and was replaced with the repressive criminal policy. At the same time, a rapid increase in the prison population started which has been referred to in the criminological literature as the phenomenon of mass incarceration. After four decades of continuous growth in the number of persons deprived of their liberty there is no doubt that the social and financial consequences of a repressive system of punishment proved to be dramatic. For this reason, issues concerning the restoration of justice and rationality in punishment have again been discussed in the United States.Many European countries also experienced the “punitive turn” in the criminal policy at the end of the 20th century, although its scale was incomparable with what happened in the United States. It does not mean, however, that American discussions on the philosophy of punishment and criminal policy are irrelevant for Europe. Multidimensional negative effects of the American policy of mass incarceration indicate the dangers resulting from ignoring the basic principles of punishment that protect against abuses of the state’s power to punish. Additionally, they encourage a serious discussion about the integration of punishment theories with the empirical knowledge on the results of sentencing and sentence enforcement.

Thomas Karlsson & Jussi Simpura: Changes in living conditions and their links to alcohol consumption and drinking patterns in 16 European countries, 1950 to 2000 The aim of this article, as part of the drinking pattern analysis of the ECAS project, is to examine how changes in living conditions have affected the formation and dynamics of European drinking habits in 1950–2000. The development of living conditions in post-World War II Europe shows that the same trends have emerged in all the current EU member states. Some of the most important changes we recognize include increasing urbanization and the emergence of the service sector. While we can distinguish similar patterns in the development of living conditions in the EU member states, this is not the case in the development of alcohol consumption. Overall alcohol consumption in the wine countries has been decreasing, while the consumption levels have been on the rise in the beer and former spirits countries. The changes in living conditions – which we can see as a part of the modernization process – have produced almost opposite results in different countries and at different times. This also applies to the development of drinking habits and alcohol consumption in the EU member states during the latter part of the 20th century.

Following the shift in therapy of tuberculosis in the mid-19th century, by the beginning of the 20th century numerous tuberculosis sanatoria were established in Western Europe. Being an institutional novelty in the medical practice, sanatoria spread within the first 20 years of the 20th century to Central and Eastern Europe, including the southern region of the Panonian plain, the present-day Province of Vojvodina in Serbia north of the rivers Sava and Danube. The health policy and regulations of the newly built state - the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians/Yugoslavia, provided a rather liberal framework for introducing the concept of sanatorium. Soon after the World War I there were 14 sanatoria in this region, and the period of their expansion was between 1920 and 1939 when at least 27 sanatoria were founded, more than half of the total number of 46 sanatoria in the whole state in that period. However, only two of these were for pulmonary diseases. One of them was privately owned the open public sanatorium the English-Yugoslav Hospital for Paediatric Osteo-Articular Tuberculosis in Sremska Kamenica, and the other was state-run (at Iriski venac, on the Fruska Gora mountain, as a unit of the Department for Lung Disease of the Main Regional Hospital). All the others were actually small private specialized hospitals in 6 towns (Novi Sad, Subotica, Sombor, Vrbas, Vrsac, Pancevo,) providing medical treatment of well-off, mostly gynaecological and surgical patients. The majority of sanatoria founded in the period 1920-1939 were in or close to the city of Novi Sad, the administrative headquarters of the province (the Danube Banovina at that time) with a growing population. A total of 10 sanatoria were open in the city of Novi Sad, with cumulative bed capacity varying from 60 to 130. None of these worked in newly built buildings, but in private houses adapted for medical purpose in accordance with legal requirements. The decline of sanatoria in Vojvodina began with the very outbreak of the World War II and they never regained their social role. Soon after the Hungarian fascist occupation the majority of owners/ founders were terrorized and forced to close their sanatoria, some of them to leave country and some were even killed or deported to concentration camps.

The enlargement of the European Union is an almost everywhere accepted necessity, but at the same time of course also a compromise. Economies or regions of different economic, social, institutional, etc. development become united in Europe with a territory from the Atlantic to the Eastern borders of Poland, Slovakia and Hungary, from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. This integration process going along with the worldwide globalisation will imply a new distribution, or a redistribution of the factors of production. First of all the human capital will be touched by this development.2 One of the most important results found by social sciences in the 20th century is the realisation of the immense role played by human factors in the process of economic development. The extremely high efficiency of human capital and the high mobility could diminish the regional differences in the economic development and therefore in the social life. But even this is one reason for the mentioned re-allocation of the human capital. In the frame of a very simple static model (See e. g. Bishi – Kopel [2002]) the flow of human capital between different regions – called the European Union and the New Member States – will be analysed. The introduction of search costs extends the field of policy-analysis.

The Balkan crisis is the result of a series of conflicts in various areas of political, economic and social life in the former Yugoslavia. Relations between the former republics show the complex character of European security. Without a sustainable development of the whole region, it is impossible to guarantee security throughout the European continent. Europe was shaken by the bloody events that marked the break-up of Yugoslavia. No one could have imagined that such violent military clashes could take place in a European country, 50 years after the end of World War II, and that hundreds of thousands of people would seek refuge throughout Europe. It was clear from the beginning of the crisis in Yugoslavia that the war would continue for many years and if the international community did not intervene the result would be many casualties. The United Nations, the European Union and the OSCE tried to prevent military conflicts between the nations of the former Yugoslavia, but they failed. National elites pursued a policy aimed at creating nation-states and had outside support from influential forces. To achieve this goal they were willing to pay any price. The collapse of the former Yugoslavia, in fact, meant the end of the process that had defined the development of Western Europe since the beginning of the 20th century, in the time between the two world wars. It was the beginning of nation-states. The Balkans had lagged behind in its transformation for many reasons and unlike Western and Central Europe, the Balkan states found themselves in a different wave of historical development, accompanied by conflict and chaos. The collapse of socialism had an impact on this situation, causing new economic and political conflicts. From this point of view, all the efforts of the European and international communities, aimed at controlling the situation after the break-up of Yugoslavia, had no chance of success.

In the 20th century, liberalism stood up in a fight against two authoritarian (totalitarian) regimes – the nazi one and the communist one. This lead to conclusion on the “end of history” – the end of the world competition in common forms. It took little time to make sure that sharp turns of historical processes are unpredictable, etatist (authoritarian, statist) regimes are diverse, and liberalism has to argue for its historically superior role in a dispute with them over and over again. In some cases, and in some ways, authoritarian regimes have proven to be more effective than liberal ones. This was discussed by qualified experts at international workshops held in Moscow in 2017–2018. Following these discussions, a book was published in 2019. The proceeding of the dispute is represented in this article. The liberal strategy has been searching for a synthesis of freedom and equality for more than a century. However, in practice, their organic convergence is problematic. It is difficult to balance the aims of liberals and socialists, and therefore, to define possibilities and limits of a dialogue between them. Social state is one of the main ideas that liberal parties bring to elections. But it is hard to compile with material and administrative resources concentration in state hands. Nations are a reality of the modern world. Building and developing civil nations within the borders of one state (and particularly of interstate formations) is the task that has no vivid and familiar solutions. The same as the problem of nation-state sovereignty (the apologetic attitude to which has become widespread) has no simple and unambiguous solution. The apparent success of illiberal (and in some countries – anti-liberal) methods of partial modernization is one of the most сruel surprises sprung on the liberal doctrine and policy by modern world processes. All this makes the promotion of liberal values in Europe and Russia very challenging.

The transition ‘from planned to market economy’ in the former Soviet Union and in several countries in post-communist Europe is one of the most sweeping social transformations of the second half of the 20th century. It is widely accepted that this transformation was driven by a shared belief in the market’s superior ability to deliver economic growth, to create wealth and contribute to the well-being of the populations after the demise of the defunct socialist ideology. However, the element of utopian fantasy undergirding the grand projects of socialism and the market is usually ignored, often with detrimental results. The study draws on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis to propose an alternative reading of the process of transition, as an exchange of one powerful fantasy for another. My key contention is that as long as the common utopian dream of social harmony underlying both projects will not be recognised for what it is, which is in itself an unattainable desire of the human psyche, the illusory dreamlands will continue to exist and so will their violent political consequences. The study uses the example of public health policy development in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia to illustrate how unacknowledged fantasy leads to violent utilitarianism as it was manifested in socialism, and is now repeated differently but no less tyrannically in the market. In conclusion, I argue for integrating fantasy as a constitutive element of political projects and explore the possibility of the autonomous (self-determined) mode of governance that Cornelius Castoriadis (1987/2005) theorised on and juxtaposed to the heteronomous ways of organising ruled by master signifiers present in various ideologies.

Abstract As other countries of Central and Southeastern Europe, the Republic of Serbia at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century entered the process of universal transformation, which in essence represented a powerful political and economic movement for thorough changes in all parts of social and economic life. The central place in total transformational processes was taken by property, that is ownership transformation. The purpose of this research are numerous changes and the effects caused by the ownership transformation, that is privatisation in all economic activities, and in tourism as well. The research methods used in this paper are: analysis method, synthesis method, abstraction method, generalisation method, comparison method, as well as mathematical and statistical methods. The research results show that the effects of the privatisation in the tourism activities of Serbia are rather devastating. Besides, there were no necessary changes in other elements of business transformation (organisational, managerial, personnel, technological and other), what is the decrease in quality of tourist offer in Serbia and its bad position on the international tourism market. Taking into account that the Republic of Serbia has included the development of tourism amongst the priorities of its actual economic policy and development strategy, results of this research should by its originality, scientific approach to the subject of the research, quality and expertise, complete research material in this scientific field, also to point out new possibilities of Serbian tourism development to creators of economic, touristic and investment politics.

Today the alcohol monopolies in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway) are under strong attack by the European Union. In order to analyze and understand this process of change it is important to look back on the origin of the alcohol restriction systems and monopolies from an historical perspective. This article deals with the making of the Swedish restriction and monopoly system in the early 20th century. The period from January 1914 to August 1920 was characterized by a bitter conflict in political interests over the prohibition issue. More and more organizations entered the struggle about alcohol, while simultaneously the question was increasingly interwoven with the more general change in society and the struggle for democracy and universal suffrage. The political discussion of the time about the question of a general prohibition on alcohol illustrates in a clear, concrete way how the historical development of the political culture influenced the conduct of the political actors. The struggle between the prohibition movement and in particular the interest organizations of the employers and employees in the alcohol industry was a struggle between powerful special interests. The question comes down to how intense conflicts between strong intersts can be resolved in the Swedish political system. We must ascribe decisive significance to the fact that the political actors were influenced by the political culture in which they operated. If we look at the prohibition issue in its societal context, then, the result, according to my overall view, is that the Swedish culture of political consensus - with an emphasis on the employment aspect - had no room for such a radical and controversial solution as prohibition. In a political culture characterized by compromises, political consensus, a holistic view of society, and with the influence of strong, well-organized special interests in the corporative administrative system, the complicated and politically unique Bratt restriction-system was the Swedish solution to the problem of prohibition. It was not politically possible to impose prohibition, which would lead in particular to large-scale unemployment, nor was it politically possible to pursue a liberal alcohol policy dominated by private profit motives. The compromise between the special interests left room for the restriction system, and the employment question must be seen as having been decisive for the attitude towards the prohibition issue and the holistic view of society. It is obvious that the temperance question, like many other social issues, was seen as a state interest in the years around the turn of the century. There has been general talk of the active state, which in the era of organized capitalism increasingly changed character by not being confined solely to the public sphere but also intervening in the private sphere. The temperance question is a distinct example of the increased ambitions of the government in the field of social policy. It is obvious that a restrictive and fiscal alcohol policy requires an intervening state with strong popular support. Therefore it is likely that there is no possibility of maintaining monopolies and restriction systems in the new political culture - with politically weaker nation-states - which is on the way to being created in an integrated Europe. This historical reflection indicates great changes in connection with diminishing influence of the nation-state over alcohol policy in the political arena.

Selv om der blev etableret visse f&aelig;lles foranstaltninger i noget af det filantropiske byggeri, der sk&oslash;d frem i 1850'erne og 60'erne, h&oslash;rte det egentlige kollektivhus det 20. &aring;rhundrede til: En boligbebyggelse med selvst&aelig;ndige lejligheder, i nogle tilf&aelig;lde for grupper med s&aelig;rlige boligbehov, med tilknyttede f&aelig;llesfaciliteter for beboerne. I udgangspunktet centralk&oslash;kken med spisesal og restaurant, andre aflastende servicetilbud for den daglige husf&oslash;relse, daginstitution, indk&oslash;bsmuligheder og senere tillige selskabslokaler, g&aelig;stehotel, hobbylokaler m.m.<br /><br />Abstract<br />As one of the first places in Europe, cooperative housing was built on Frederiksberg in 1903 by a philanthropic building society under the management of principal Otte Fick. During the years 1916-1930, the Danish Welfare State's housing policy was established. In this connection, the municipality of Copenhagen stood behind the policy by subsidizing eight blocks of cooperative housing - in all<br />1,125 flats - through a considerable amount of public funds. In Copenhagen itself and on Frederiksberg, non-profit housing associations as well as entrepreneurs supported this policy.<br />While most of the cooperative housing had central kitchens with dining rooms, some had a number of common facilities such as day-care centres, domestic help and/or modern washers and dryers. Some of the cooperative housing also had a local grocery store for the residents and the surrounding neighbourhood.<br />The cooperative housing was planned by some of the leading architects of that era and the majority of the flats had a room with a box bed, a small kitchen and an entrance hall; and all the flats had a toilet, a shower, and central heating. There was also a plan which encompassed flats facing out to corridors. The design of the cooperative housing included closed or open courtyards, L-shaped houses,<br />or blocks of flats surrounded by small gardens. Furthermore, it was considered innovative to build residential properties intended for certain social groups that had specific housing requirements. On the housing market, it was particularly troublesome to acquire self-contained flats for single parents with children and<br />elderly women - primarily people from the working class and the lower middle class.<br />In 1930, the Danish capital, comprised of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, was on the forefront of housing development compared to the rest of Denmark and internationally. It would also create an important foundation for widespread building construction of cooperative housing in the future. However, this type of housing never really caught on in the ordinary construction business in the<br />20th century. On the other hand, it succeeded in positioning itself as an essential means of housing especially for both handicapped and elderly people.<br />

Social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups, together with public policy and management objectives. The essay indicates and discusses the most important contemporary problems, solving of which requires social innovations. Social innovations precondition the progress of civilisation. The world needs not only new technologies, but also new solutions of social and institutional nature that would be conducive to achieving social goals. Social innovations are experimental social actions of organisational and institutional nature that aim at improving the quality of life of individuals, communities, nations, companies, circles, or social groups. Their experimental nature stems from the fact of introducing unique and one-time solutions on a large scale, the end results of which are often difficult to be fully predicted. For example, it was difficult to believe that opening new labour markets for foreigners in the countries of the European Union, which can be treated as a social innovation aiming at development of the international labour market, will result in the rapid development of the low-cost airlines, the offer of which will be available to a larger group of recipients. In other words, social innovations differ from economic innovations, as they are not about implementation of new types of production or gaining new markets, but about satisfying new needs, which are not provided by the market. Therefore, the most important distinction consists in that social innovations are concerned with improving the well-being of individuals and communities by additional employment, or increased consumption, as well as participation in solving the problems of individuals and social groups [CSTP, 2011]. In general, social innovations are activities aiming at implementation of social objectives, including mainly the improvement of life of individuals and social groups together with the objectives of public policy and management [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017]. Their implementation requires global, national, and individual actions. This requires joint operations, both at the scale of the entire globe, as well as in particular interest groups. Why are social innovations a key point for the progress of civilisation? This is the effect of the clear domination of economic aspects and discrimination of social aspects of this progress. Until the 19th century, the economy was a part of a social structure. As described by K. Polanyi, it was submerged in social relations [Polanyi, 2010, p. 56]. In traditional societies, the economic system was in fact derived from the organisation of the society itself. The economy, consisting of small and dispersed craft businesses, was a part of the social, family, and neighbourhood structure. In the 20th century the situation reversed – the economy started to be the force shaping social structures, positions of individual groups, areas of wealth and poverty. The economy and the market mechanism have become independent from the world of politics and society. Today, the corporations control our lives. They decide what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work and what we do [Bakan, 2006, p. 13]. The corporations started this spectacular “march to rule the world” in the late 19th century. After about a hundred years, at the end of the 20th century, the state under the pressure of corporations and globalisation, started a gradual, but systematic withdrawal from the economy, market and many other functions traditionally belonging to it. As a result, at the end of the last century, a corporation has become a dominant institution in the world. A characteristic feature of this condition is that it gives a complete priority to the interests of corporations. They make decisions of often adverse consequences for the entire social groups, regions, or local communities. They lead to social tensions, political breakdowns, and most often to repeated market turbulences. Thus, a substantial minority (corporations) obtain inconceivable benefits at the expense of the vast majority, that is broad professional and social groups. The lack of relative balance between the economy and society is a barrier to the progress of civilisation. A growing global concern is the problem of migration. The present crisis, left unresolved, in the long term will return multiplied. Today, there are about 500 million people living in Europe, 1.5 billion in Africa and the Middle East, but in 2100, the population of Europe will be about 400 million and of the Middle East and Africa approximately 4.5 billion. Solving this problem, mainly through social and political innovations, can take place only by a joint operation of highly developed and developing countries. Is it an easy task? It’s very difficult. Unfortunately, today, the world is going in the opposite direction. Instead of pursuing the community, empathic thinking, it aims towards nationalism and chauvinism. An example might be a part of the inaugural address of President Donald Trump, who said that the right of all nations is to put their own interests first. Of course, the United States of America will think about their own interests. As we go in the opposite direction, those who deal with global issues say – nothing will change, unless there is some great crisis, a major disaster that would cause that the great of this world will come to senses. J.E. Stiglitz [2004], contrary to the current thinking and practice, believes that a different and better world is possible. Globalisation contains the potential of countless benefits from which people both in developing and highly developed countries can benefit. But the practice so far proves that still it is not grown up enough to use its potential in a fair manner. What is needed are new solutions, most of all social and political innovations (political, because they involve a violation of the previous arrangement of interests). Failure to search for breakthrough innovations of social and political nature that would meet the modern challenges, can lead the world to a disaster. Social innovation, and not economic, because the contemporary civilisation problems have their roots in this dimension. A global problem, solution of which requires innovations of social and political nature, is the disruption of the balance between work and capital. In 2010, 400 richest people had assets such as the half of the poorer population of the world. In 2016, such part was in the possession of only 8 people. This shows the dramatic collapse of the balance between work and capital. The world cannot develop creating the technological progress while increasing unjustified inequalities, which inevitably lead to an outbreak of civil disturbances. This outbreak can have various organisation forms. In the days of the Internet and social media, it is easier to communicate with people. Therefore, paradoxically, some modern technologies create the conditions facilitating social protests. There is one more important and dangerous effect of implementing technological innovations without simultaneous creation and implementation of social innovations limiting the sky-rocketing increase of economic (followed by social) diversification. Sooner or later, technological progress will become so widespread that, due to the relatively low prices, it will make it possible for the weapons of mass destruction, especially biological and chemical weapons, to reach small terrorist groups. Then, a total, individualized war of global reach can develop. The individualisation of war will follow, as described by the famous German sociologist Ulrich Beck. To avoid this, it is worth looking at the achievements of the Polish scientist Michał Kalecki, who 75 years ago argued that capitalism alone is not able to develop. It is because it aggressively seeks profit growth, but cannot turn profit into some profitable investments. Therefore, when uncertainty grows, capitalism cannot develop itself, and it must be accompanied by external factors, named by Kalecki – external development factors. These factors include state expenses, finances and, in accordance with the nomenclature of Kalecki – epochal innovations. And what are the current possibilities of activation of the external factors? In short – modest. The countries are indebted, and the basis for the development in the last 20 years were loans, which contributed to the growth of debt of economic entities. What, then, should we do? It is necessary to look for cheaper solutions, but such that are effective, that is breakthrough innovations. These undoubtedly include social and political innovations. Contemporary social innovation is not about investing big money and expensive resources in production, e.g. of a very expensive vaccine, which would be available for a small group of recipients. Today’s social innovation should stimulate the use of lower amounts of resources to produce more products available to larger groups of recipients. The progress of civilisation happens only as a result of a sustainable development in economic, social, and now also ecological terms. Economic (business) innovations, which help accelerate the growth rate of production and services, contribute to economic development. Profits of corporations increase and, at the same time, the economic objectives of the corporations are realised. But are the objectives of the society as a whole and its members individually realised equally, in parallel? In the chain of social reproduction there are four repeated phases: production – distribution – exchange – consumption. The key point from the social point of view is the phase of distribution. But what are the rules of distribution, how much and who gets from this “cake” produced in the social process of production? In the today’s increasingly global economy, the most important mechanism of distribution is the market mechanism. However, in the long run, this mechanism leads to growing income and welfare disparities of various social groups. Although, the income and welfare diversity in itself is nothing wrong, as it is the result of the diversification of effectiveness of factors of production, including work, the growing disparities to a large extent cannot be justified. Economic situation of the society members increasingly depends not on the contribution of work, but on the size of the capital invested, and the market position of the economic entity, and on the “governing power of capital” on the market. It should also be noted that this diversification is also related to speculative activities. Disparities between the implemented economic and social innovations can lead to the collapse of the progress of civilisation. Nowadays, economic crises are often justified by, indeed, social and political considerations, such as marginalisation of nation states, imbalance of power (or imbalance of fear), religious conflicts, nationalism, chauvinism, etc. It is also considered that the first global financial crisis of the 21st century originated from the wrong social policy pursued by the US Government, which led to the creation of a gigantic public debt, which consequently led to an economic breakdown. This resulted in the financial crisis, but also in deepening of the social imbalances and widening of the circles of poverty and social exclusion. It can even be stated that it was a crisis in public confidence. Therefore, the causes of crises are the conflicts between the economic dimension of the development and its social dimension. Contemporary world is filled with various innovations of economic or business nature (including technological, product, marketing, and in part – organisational). The existing solutions can be a source of economic progress, which is a component of the progress of civilisation. However, economic innovations do not complete the entire progress of civilisation moreover, the saturation, and often supersaturation with implementations and economic innovations leads to an excessive use of material factors of production. As a consequence, it results in lowering of the efficiency of their use, unnecessary extra burden to the planet, and passing of the negative effects on the society and future generations (of consumers). On the other hand, it leads to forcing the consumption of durable consumer goods, and gathering them “just in case”, and also to the low degree of their use (e.g. more cars in a household than its members results in the additional load on traffic routes, which results in an increase in the inconvenience of movement of people, thus to the reduction of the quality of life). Introduction of yet another economic innovation will not solve this problem. It can be solved only by social innovations that are in a permanent shortage. A social innovation which fosters solving the issue of excessive accumulation of tangible production goods is a developing phenomenon called sharing economy. It is based on the principle: “the use of a service provided by some welfare does not require being its owner”. This principle allows for an economic use of resources located in households, but which have been “latent” so far. In this way, increasing of the scope of services provided (transport, residential and tourist accommodation) does not require any growth of additional tangible resources of factors of production. So, it contributes to the growth of household incomes, and inhibition of loading the planet with material goods processed by man [see Poniatowska-Jaksch, Sobiecki, 2016]. Another example: we live in times, in which, contrary to the law of T. Malthus, the planet is able to feed all people, that is to guarantee their minimum required nutrients. But still, millions of people die of starvation and malnutrition, but also due to obesity. Can this problem be solved with another economic innovation? Certainly not! Economic innovations will certainly help to partially solve the problem of nutrition, at least by the new methods of storing and preservation of foods, to reduce its waste in the phase of storage and transport. However, a key condition to solve this problem is to create and implement an innovation of a social nature (in many cases also political). We will not be able to speak about the progress of civilisation in a situation, where there are people dying of starvation and malnutrition. A growing global social concern, resulting from implementation of an economic (technological) innovation will be robotisation, and more specifically – the effects arising from its dissemination on a large scale. So far, the issue has been postponed due to globalisation of the labour market, which led to cheapening of the work factor by more than ten times in the countries of Asia or South America. But it ends slowly. Labour becomes more and more expensive, which means that the robots become relatively cheap. The mechanism leading to low prices of the labour factor expires. Wages increase, and this changes the relationship of the prices of capital and labour. Capital becomes relatively cheaper and cheaper, and this leads to reducing of the demand for work, at the same time increasing the demand for capital (in the form of robots). The introduction of robots will be an effect of the phenomenon of substitution of the factors of production. A cheaper factor (in this case capital in the form of robots) will be cheaper than the same activities performed by man. According to W. Szymański [2017], such change is a dysfunction of capitalism. A great challenge, because capitalism is based on the market-driven shaping of income. The market-driven shaping of income means that the income is derived from the sale of the factors of production. Most people have income from employment. Robots change this mechanism. It is estimated that scientific progress allows to create such number of robots that will replace billion people in the world. What will happen to those “superseded”, what will replace the income from human labour? Capitalism will face an institutional challenge, and must replace the market-driven shaping of income with another, new one. The introduction of robots means microeconomic battle with the barrier of demand. To sell more, one needs to cut costs. The costs are lowered by the introduction of robots, but the use of robots reduces the demand for human labour. Lowering the demand for human labour results in the reduction of employment, and lower wages. Lower wages result in the reduction of the demand for goods and services. To increase the demand for goods and services, the companies must lower their costs, so they increase the involvement of robots, etc. A mechanism of the vicious circle appears If such a mass substitution of the factors of production is unfavourable from the point of view of stimulating the development of the economy, then something must be done to improve the adverse price relations for labour. How can the conditions of competition between a robot and a man be made equal, at least partially? Robots should be taxed. Bill Gates, among others, is a supporter of such a solution. However, this is only one of the tools that can be used. The solution of the problem requires a change in the mechanism, so a breakthrough innovation of a social and political nature. We can say that technological and product innovations force the creation of social and political innovations (maybe institutional changes). Product innovations solve some problems (e.g. they contribute to the reduction of production costs), but at the same time, give rise to others. Progress of civilisation for centuries and even millennia was primarily an intellectual progress. It was difficult to discuss economic progress at that time. Then we had to deal with the imbalance between the economic and the social element. The insufficiency of the economic factor (otherwise than it is today) was the reason for the tensions and crises. Estimates of growth indicate that the increase in industrial production from ancient times to the first industrial revolution, that is until about 1700, was 0.1-0.2 per year on average. Only the next centuries brought about systematically increasing pace of economic growth. During 1700- 1820, it was 0.5% on an annual average, and between 1820-1913 – 1.5%, and between 1913-2012 – 3.0% [Piketty, 2015, p. 97]. So, the significant pace of the economic growth is found only at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Additionally, the growth in this period refers predominantly to Europe and North America. The countries on other continents were either stuck in colonialism, structurally similar to the medieval period, or “lived” on the history of their former glory, as, for example, China and Japan, or to a lesser extent some countries of the Middle East and South America. The growth, having then the signs of the modern growth, that is the growth based on technological progress, was attributed mainly to Europe and the United States. The progress of civilisation requires the creation of new social initiatives. Social innovations are indeed an additional capital to keep the social structure in balance. The social capital is seen as a means and purpose and as a primary source of new values for the members of the society. Social innovations also motivate every citizen to actively participate in this process. It is necessary, because traditional ways of solving social problems, even those known for a long time as unemployment, ageing of the society, or exclusion of considerable social and professional groups from the social and economic development, simply fail. “Old” problems are joined by new ones, such as the increase of social inequalities, climate change, or rapidly growing environmental pollution. New phenomena and problems require new solutions, changes to existing procedures, programmes, and often a completely different approach and instruments [Kowalczyk, Sobiecki, 2017].

The 1980s proved to be a tough decade for European welfare states. The post-war ‘welfare consensus’, which perhaps had never been quite so strong or coherent as many contemporary historians and commentators had assumed, was finally laid to rest. The five great spectres identified by Beveridge want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness had not been humbled by public welfare provision despite its ever growing scale and cost. At the beginning of the 1980s the OECD published a report on The Welfare State in Crisis which pointed out that as welfare state expenditure had roughly doubled as a percentage of national income in most west European countries since the late 1950s, so economic growth rates had plummeted. The European welfare states appeared to produce few positive welfare benefits, and this minimal achievement was produced at enormous cost which was to the detriment of overall economic growth and societal well-being.

The history of the Americas from the colonial period is marked by a large influx of persons from Europe and Africa. Fiction in 20th Century Latin America is marked by ties to the Chronicles and the history of human melding in the Americas, with a natural flow of social and religious syncretism that shapes the unique literary aesthetics of its literatures as may be witnessed in representative authors of genuine merit from different regions of Latin America.

The article deals with the European aspects of the US foreign policy in the 2nd half of the 20th century. It also includes studies of the transatlantic relations of the described period and the exploration of an American influence on European integration processes. It is determined that the United States has demonstrated itself as a partner of the Western governments in the post-war reconstruction and further creation of an area of US security and prosperity. At the same time, it is noted that the American presidents have differently shaped their administrations’ policies towards Europe. The greatest supporter of the European integration processes was President Eisenhower. Among other things, the US President believed that Europe would become a key ally of the United States, thus, he considered the union of Sweden, Greece, Spain and Yugoslavia as a solid foundation for building a “United States of Europe”. After Eisenhower administration, European affairs, to a lesser extent, were taken up by such Presidents as Johnson, Carter, Reagan and Clinton. Showing no personal interest, Kennedy, Nixon and Bush-Sr. were forced to support the transatlantic dialogue, understanding the inevitability of European integration and the need for the United States to cooperate with the new consolidated actor. The United States aimed to strengthen its position in the European space, moving to that purpose by using NATO mechanisms and applying the policies of American protectionism against the communist threat. The main competitor of the United States for strengthening national positions in Europe was France led by General de Gaulle, who believed that the affairs of Europe should be resolved by European governments without the American intervention. However, NATO continued to serve as a springboard for the U.S. involvement in European affairs. At the end of the 20th century, through the close links between the EU and NATO, the USA received new allies from Central and Eastern European countries. It is concluded that after the end of World War II, Europe needed an assistance that the United States willingly provided in exchange for the ability to participate in European issues, solving and partly controlling the integration processes. The study found that, despite the varying degree of the American interest in transatlantic affairs, Europe has consistently been remaining a zone of national interest for the United States.

In recent years, Europe has witnessed social movements that break away from the conventional patterns typical of 19th and 20th century movements. The party-or trade union-organised social movements, very much centred on 19th century political and economic issues, or the New Social Movements centred on more universal values such as peace, environment, gender, ethnicity, of the 20th century seem to be changing their 'repertoire'. At the beginning of the 21st century, parties and trade unions have been losing their leading role in the organisation of demonstrations and strikes and collective actions prepared and led by specific actors have given way to new forms of social action, without leaders, without organisation, without headquarters, and which use social networks as a form of mobilisation. These are social movements that contest not to have more rights but to exercise those that exist, a full citizenship that offers the freedom to express one's opinion and the regalia of participation in political, economic, social, educational areas. In Europe, there are various types of such movements, but we will highlight the "Geração à Rasca (Scratch Generation)" movement in Portugal and that of the "Indignados (Outraged)" or 15 M in Spain, both started in 2011, and which had repercussions in the main European capitals. Using a qualitative methodology, through these protest movements we seek to understand how the complexity of today's social movements and their non-institutionalisation represent a challenge to European democracy.

Human Right to Environment is one the most relevant Third Generation Human Rights which includes new universal needs arisen from the last third of 20th century. These new human rights add as an additional layer to the First Generation Human Rights (civil and political rights from the end of 18th century) and to the Second Generation Human Rights (economic, social and cultural rights from 19th century).

Over time, the concept of social movement has evolved as society has changed, but has always implied collective action in the public space. The form of social contestation has changed, according to the conjuncture of each historical period. In 18th century, the transition from the Old Regime to Liberalism provoked movements considered by some authors as “primitive” or “premodern”, as they were spontaneous, sporadic and depoliticized. Industrial society of the 19th century gave rise to the labor movement and trade unionism, which from then on organized the social movements. In the 20th century there were changes and innovation in the collective way of acting, there was the emergence of a series of social movements that differ from the traditional in terms of the objectives and actors involved, such as the pacifist, ecologist, feminist movements, acting on the fringes of parties and unions. The 21st century has witnessed a set of movements that begin on social networks, such as Generation Scratch, Outraged, Occupy Wall Street, Screw the Troika, and quickly outgrow local scales to become global. Through the use of a theoretical and conceptual framework derived from the theories of social movements and taking into account the current transformation of collective action that has been witnessed in the 21st century, we intend to verify if we are facing a new social phenomenon or another phase of “repertoire” change.

This commentary provides a glimpse into a conceptual history approach to the topic of public health. I focus primarily on the history of public health during the first half of the 20th century. I will also reflect on its entanglement with the social sciences in later times. The first two sections discuss three core elements of the concept of public health: the “public” or collective that the term refers to, “health”, and finally, “public health” as “health of a collective”. These elements are historical and political concepts, which means that they do not have a fixed definition, but need to be placed in their historical and political contexts. In the final section, I discuss some connections between social science and public health during the 20th century.

The article considers political, economic, social and cultural aspects of Brazilian-African cooperation at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century. At the present stage, after two decades of active development, Brazilian policy towards Africa has been losing momentum. Nowadays the cooperation between Brazil and African countries requires developing a new strategy.

For much of the 20th century, language policy and planning has been essentially overlooked except as an academic enterprise, being of serious interest largely only to a small coterie of specialists scattered thinly around the world. Still, at present, only a handful of universities in the world offers anything more than a random course in language policy/planning or simply subsumes the entire field in a couple of lectures in the introductory course in sociolinguistics. In the last decade of the 20th century, real-world events have thrust language policy and planning into prominence. The collapse of the former Soviet Union and the powerful resurgence of language loyalties in various Eastern European polities, the rapid economic unification of a multilingual Europe, changing global patterns of immigration, and global economic difficulties have coalesced to create new linguistic conditions and focus attention on long existing linguistic inequities. These conditions have brought into serious question the western notion of an idealized identity between nation and national language. This volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics has attempted to draw together various emerging perspectives on language policy and planning and to examine emerging circumstances in a selected set of illustrative areas:

Pampean (Argentina) megamammal species are seen nowadays in different museums around Europe. These specimens were collected from the late 18th century until the early 20th century. They represent and have inspired the most important milestones in natural sciences during the 19th century, and were collected for social, political and economic reasons, both in South America and Europe. In these collections, paleontological, historical and archaeological realms are merged. Currently, they are useful at research and educational levels, contributing to worldwide society, whilst modern technological advances allow equal access to these materials, which has been especially necessary during the coronavirus pandemic.

The article discusses the main components of the military-political strategy of Russia in the «short» 20th century – from 1900 to 1991. Special attention is paid to how the foreign policy and the use of Armed Forces were planned. Reconstructing the intellectual ideas that created the framework of the foreign and military policy of the Russian state at that time, the author focuses on the elements that unite the leaders of Russia of the 20th century from Nikolai Romanov to Mikhail Gorbachev. Such issues as the «globalization» of the USSR in world affairs, relations with neighboring Asian centers of power, such as China and Iran, the sphere of «special state interests» of the USSR in Eastern Europe are discussed in the work. The evolution of Russian military strategy in the 20th century is studied: from betting on victory in the World War in the first half of the century to focusing on the actions of expeditionary groups during the Cold War. The article analyzes in detail the strategic deterrence measures carried out by the Armed Forces of the USSR in the 1950-1970. The issue of the resources of military-political strategy is considered separately.

The paper deals with the roots and features of current Russian economic problems as a combination of structural and institutional crises, cyclical and external shocks. Mobilization and liberalization are discussed as two key economic policy alternatives. The analysis includes historical retrospection which provides some important lessons from economic development in the 20th century. Special attention is paid to the desirable policy to stimulate economic growth.

History of relations between France and the Islamic world goes back to the first centuries of Hijra, when the Franks first faced the Caliphate and its troops in the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. On the eve of the New times Paris had already developed its numerous contacts with Turkey, Iran and the Arab West — the Maghreb area. The conquest of Algeria (from 1830) formed a basis of the French colonial empire in Africa and Asia with the growing role of Islam in political activities and ambitions of Paris. Millions of Muslims in French colonies contributed to growth of political and economic progress of their metropoly with its pretensions to become a great Muslim power. Meanwhile, thousands of them lost their lives during two great world wars of the 20th century. Waves of immigration gave birth to an impressive Islamic community (‘umma), in France, reaching about a million of residents by the middle of the 20th century. With the growth of Muslim immigration from Africa and the Middle East a number of Muslims among the natives of France also augmented. By the end of the last century the Muslims formed as much as about 10 % of the whole population of France. The “French Islam” born at the dawn of the 20th century. after a century of its evolution became an important civilizational reality of Europe, at times more attractive for the local youth than traditional Christian values, or the new ideals, brought with the winds of globalism, multiculturalism and a “non-stop consumerism”.

In the 19th century, the development of natural science and the emergence of enlightenment gradually gave birth to social science in modern Europe. As Europe opened the door to China in the middle of the 19th century, Western academia began to pay attention to China, and Western theories and methods progressively entered China and were accepted by Chinese scholars. Most saliently, some Christian missionaries and Orientalists have completed more serious studies of Islam in China, and published several corresponding works and research results on this basis. During this period, those who studied Islam and Muslims in China could be divided into two categories. the Religious people, including Christian missionaries. and Scholars, including Orientalists. Subsequently, when Western missionaries entered China, they found the presence of a large Muslim group, so they began to study them and organize missionary work. Although this missionary activity proved unsuccessful in terms of the number of converts to Christianity, it maintains a certain positive significance regarding religious and cultural exchange, and cross-civilizational interaction. Documents recording the encounters between Christianity and Islam in China since modern times are scattered in journals such as Chinese Repository, The Chinese Recorder, Friends of Moslems, The Moslem World and China’s Millions.

Tony Judt: socialism, intellectuals and postwar Europe sketches an intellectual and historiographical profile of the British Jewish historian Tony Judt (1948-2010). His historical studies concerned French socialism between the 19th and the 20th century, the relationship between French postwar intellectuals and communism, and the East European dissidents. In his masterpiece, Postwar, Judt broadened his historical perspective to Eastern Europe and focussed on the political, social, cultural and economic experiences of the European postwar period.

The article presents various circumstances (social, legal, philosophical and scientific) connected with the care, upbringing and education of people with disabilities from the early modern era to the beginning of the 20th century. Particular attention was to the history of people with disabilities in the Polish lands. The author tried to recall the activity of leading educational activists, pedagogues and scientists – animators of special education in Poland, Europe and the world. The text also contains information related to the activities of educational and upbringing institutions (institutional, organisational, methodological and other aspects).

In February 2019, the German federal government announced its new “National Industry Strategy 2030.” Many economies—including the United Kingdom (2017), European Union (2017), and Saudi Arabia (2018)—have announced national industrial strategies addressing the competitive threat of the People’s Republic of China’s 2015 “Made in China 2025” 5-year economic plan to become a global leader in 10 advanced technology manufacturing sectors. The use of the 20th-century term “industrial policy” heralds back to public policy antecedents of what is now evolving globally in the 21st century as national “industrial strategy,” a concept explored in this article. Unlike traditional 20th-century efforts at industrial policy (which focused on public policy efforts to maintain domestic primacy of declining, older industries), national industrial strategy recognizes (and generally accepts) the international global economy as a foundation of competition. Most importantly, national industrial strategy focuses on technologically emerging industries as well as the national government working collaborative in a partnership with these emerging industries to meet future growth challenges and opportunities.

The paper is a critical review of two books devoted to the peculiarities of the formation, social life and personalities of the North Caucasian diaspora in 20th century Europe: the monograph “North Caucasian emigrants in France” and the biographical dictionary “North Caucasians in emigration in the 20th century”. The reviewer notes that their author Irina Babich introduced into scientific circulation a diverse, full of valuable information complex of materials from French archives, creating on that basis a number of historical and ethnographic studies of the North Caucasian communities of Europe in the 1920s – 1930s. In the monograph under review, the author analyzes the social structure, everyday life and culture of emigrants from the North Caucasus who arrived to France in different periods of the 20th century. The study of sociopolitical movements and religious life of the North Caucasian communities, carried out on the basis of archival sources, is of considerable scientific interest. The reviewer proposes to consider biographical dictionary, prepared by a research team consisting of I.L. Babich, T.A. Gladkova and L.A. Mnukhin as an addition to the well-known series of reference books on the history of the Russian diaspora in France, edited by L.A. Mnukhin in the 1990s – 2000s. The reviewed publications together make an important contribution to the further development of the issues of the Russian far abroad in Europe, revealing, at the same time, the potential of new thematic perspectives in the development of that large topic related to the history of the peoples of Russia, trends of modern global development, the transformation of the concept of “diaspora” in international humanities.

Cross-border cooperation has been considered an essential element in the development of professional social work and its education since its beginnings in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many social work pioneers promoted the principles of peace, war relief, human rights and international cooperation in dealing with social problems. In Central Europe, there was on the one hand an acceptance of diversity and different national traditions, and on the other hand a series of integration activities aimed at developing transnational common standards. Since the beginning of the 20th century, Alice Masaryková from Czechoslovakia and Helena Radlińska from Poland had been central figures in the professionalization of social work and social pedagogy in Central Europe. While Alice based social work mainly on sociology, Helena based it on social pedagogy. The aim of this article is to identify and search for the specifics and diversity of historical development and subsequent international dissemination of ideas and practices of professional social work and social pedagogy through the figures of Alice Masaryková and Helena Radlińska.

This article puts contemporary debates about the relationship between immigration policy and the welfare state in historical perspective. Relying on new historical data, the article examines the relationship between immigration policy and social policy in Western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the modern welfare state emerged. Germany already had comparably strict immigration policies when the German Empire introduced the world’s first national social insurances in the 1880s. Denmark, another early social-policy adopter, also pursued restrictive immigration policies early on. Almost all other countries in Western Europe started out with more liberal immigration policies than Germany’s and Denmark’s, but then adopted more restrictive immigration policies and more generous social policies concurrently. There are two exceptions, Belgium and Italy, which are discussed in the article.

The fast globalization of the second half of the 20th century and the advent of new demographic and migratory trends have awakened the social sciences to the growing complexity of regional cultural dynamics. Social scientists have begun to associate cultural diversity with modernity, predicting it as an inescapable and perennial condition of modern societies that affects, and is affected by, religious phenomena. However, few systematic, in-depth empirical researches have been made to assess these assertions. Thus, our paper puts forward the formulation of a diversity index (independent variable) based on four dimensions - linguistic, ethnic, religious, and place of birth - that is correlated with a (dependent) variable of individual religiosity. We conclude that, for the set of European countries and for the time period under analysis (1999-2014), theories of cultural diversity that link diversity to the displacement and recomposition of religiosity have no empirical validity.

The article examines the development of citizenship legislation in Great Britain from the 20th century to the present day. The authors analyze the influence of the historical context and political events on the formation of the current system of categories of British citizenship and on changes in the legislation on citizenship. Special attention is paid to understanding the institution of citizenship in the context of contemporary social cultural problems of British society, migration policy and the formation of national identity.