Request by Emmanuelle Morgan of the 20th Century Society to the Secretary of State, Stephen Byers MP, requesting government intervention into the planned demolition of the Liberty Building, Eastern Boulevard, Leicester. A Grade II listed building built 1918/9 which housed a shoe factory. The e-mail suggests that the building be used for residential use. An attached cutting from the Leicester Mercury shows the request was not met.
The study of social mobility enables us to assess the extent to which a given society is "open". Addressing this issue is particularly crucial in our democratic societies, where it is expected that the place of individuals in society should no longer be determined at birth, but rather by individual quality. The present inquiry investigates this issue in the context of Switzerland, a country characterised by specific institutional settings, notably through the close association its educational system shares with the labour market. Through a detailed empirical analysis based on robust statistical analyses carried out from a unique tailor-made dataset, I demonstrate that Swiss society has not become more open throughout the twentieth century. Although some barriers have lost some salience, Swiss society has overall remained extremely rigid. In particular, because it channels individuals into highly segmented tracks very early on, the Swiss educational system does not attenuate social background differences. Thus, Switzerland is found in a particular configuration where an individual's place in society is highly determined not only by his or her educational attainment, but also by his or her social background. In other words, Switzerland constitutes a sort of "non-meritocratic meritocracy". - L'étude de la mobilité sociale permet d'évaluer dans quelle mesure une société donnée est « ouverte ». S'intéresser à cette question est particulièrement crucial dans nos sociétés démocratiques, où il est attendu que la place des individus ne soit plus déterminée à la naissance, mais plutôt par les qualités individuelles. La présente étude examine cette question dans le cadre de la Suisse, un pays aux caractéristiques institutionnelles spécifiques, particulièrement de part le lien étroit que son système éducatif entretien avec le marché du travail. A travers une analyse empirique détaillée fondée sur des analyses statistiques robustes menées à partir d'un jeu de données unique construit sur-mesure, je démontre que la société ...
Among the foreign influences in the Balkans, the Italian one was probably the last to express itself, but certainly not the least important. From the early 19th century, the Italian national movement, and later the Italian kingdom, was first a source of inspiration, and then a potential ally; finally, it would become an economic and political rival for the Balkan nations. Yet, the history of the two shores of Adriatic evolved in similar if not identical stages. The Risorgimento ended in 1870 and most of the Balkan states won their independence in 1878. The liberal Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance, while the Balkan states opted in their turn for one alliance or the other among the Concert of European powers at the turn of the century. The World War I brought to an end the respective national unifications on both shores of Adriatic and set the stage for their conflict or – in some cases – their alliances, in view of their respective strategies during the interwar period. The brief and inconclusive Italian war in the Balkans (1940-1943) ended in utter defeat, and opened the way for a different type of relations between Italy led by Christian Democrats and communist (with the exception of Greece) Balkan states. Economy and culture were the basis of relations between Italy and the Balkans in the post World War II period. ; Special Editions 123. Institute for Balkan Studies of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
'Complicated Entanglements: Rethinking Pluralism in the 21st Century' is an interdisciplinary conference that aims to examine the recent resurgence of discourse around multiculturalism in the cultural sphere. This conference brings together major scholars from Anthropology, Art History, Canadian Studies, English, French, Political Science and Sociology as well as artists, community activists, cultural policy makers, and an exciting group of emerging young curators. Our intention, through the conference, related exhibition, international co-publication and creation of a web-based community is to consolidate current work being done on pluralism in the arts, and to foster a collective and on-going forum for debate. While much has been written on multiculturalism in the social sciences, comparatively little has been done in the arts, where artists, writers, filmmakers and performers imagine and define who we are as a nation. Timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Canadian Multiculturalism Act and recent discussions of race, religion and culture around events such as 9/11 and the Bouchard-Taylor commission, this conference could not be more relevant or more timely. ; Complicated Entanglements: Rethinking Pluralism in the 20th Century , conference, ICI Berlin, 4–6 April 2008
