Europeana Blog

On this blog, discover stories and content from Europeana Collections, which provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, artworks, recordings and more.

Europeana works with thousands of European archives, libraries and museums to share cultural heritage for enjoyment, education and research.

Europeana is an initiative of the European Union, financed by the European Union’s Connecting Europe Facility and European Union Member States. The Europeana services, including this website, are operated by a consortium led by the Europeana Foundation under a service contract with the European Commission.

The European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the information and accepts no responsibility or liability whatsoever with regard to the information on this website. Neither the European Commission, nor any person acting on the European Commission’s behalf, is responsible or liable for the accuracy or use of the information on this website.

Go to: https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en

JSTOR.org

JSTOR provides access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.

We help you explore a wide range of scholarly content through a powerful research and teaching platform. We collaborate with the academic community to help libraries connect students and faculty to vital content while lowering costs and increasing shelf space, provide independent researchers with free and low-cost access to scholarship, and help publishers reach new audiences and preserve their content for future generations.

JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization that also includes Artstor, Ithaka S+R, and Portico.

Go to: https://about.jstor.org/

Jonathan Carey ~ Centuries Of Persian Manuscripts, Now At Your Fingertips

These two images come from the miniature book, Ghazalīyāt-i shaykh Saʻdī, containing excerpts of classical Persian poetry. Library of Congress, African and  Middle East Division, Near East Section Persian Manuscript Collection

In the weeks leading up to the vernal equinox, it’s common to see people across Iran busily clearing their homes of clutter. Rugs hang outside in preparation for a good beating, to rid them of a year of dust. This is all done in preparation for Nowruz, also known as the Iranian or Persian New Year. The holiday typically falls around March 20 but is celebrated for weeks with a variety of celebrations, ceremonies, and traditions. So who says the Library of Congress can’t get in on the festivities?

To wish you a Nowruz Pirouz, the library has made 155 rare Persian manuscripts, lithographs, and books dating back to the 13th century available online for the first time. The collection of illuminated manuscripts includes texts such as theShahnameh, an epic poem about pre-Islamic Persia likened to the Iliad or the Odyssey, along with written accounts of the life of Shah Jahan, the 17th-century Mughal emperor who oversaw construction of the Taj Mahal. Other manuscripts focus on religion, philosophy, and science. Some are written in multiple languages, with passages in Arabic and Turkish. This wide range highlights just how cosmopolitan the collection is.

Go to: https://www.atlasobscura.com/persian-manuscripts-online

Trump’s 2020 Budget Rewards The Wealthiest Individuals

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Gerald Epstein is Professor of Economics and a founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Donald Trump’s 2020 budget proposal represents the wildest version of neoliberalism yet. It is just the latest evidence that the United States has become a plutocracy run by an oligarchical elite bent on destroying the last vestiges of a democratic polity.

Trump’s fiscal budget proposal threatens to exacerbate all of the major problems facing the U.S. economy and society today “in order to fund more goodies for the wealthy,” according to radical political economist Gerald Epstein. In this interview with Truthout, Epstein — the co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute and a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — discusses why the Trump budget proposal is a blatant power grab, why we need to think about economics beyond GDP growth, and why the U.S. government is incurring more debt that does not even begin to address the problems the country faces.

C.J. Polychroniou: Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal, which has been quite fittingly proposed by some critics as “a budget for a sick and declining America,” includes major cuts across all programs and agencies with the exception of the military, which receives additional increases for defense spending. In your view, what’s the logic driving this budget proposal, and what would be the likely consequences for U.S. society and economy if it were to be implemented?
Gerald Epstein: Let me start with the latter part of your question by saying that, if Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal were to be implemented, the consequences would be simply disastrous. Indeed, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a reliable source of information on federal budget and tax policy, has catalogued the “little shop of horrors” that make up Trump’s budget. As you indicated, the budget proposes deep cuts in non-defense discretionary spending (NDD) alongside sizeable increases in military spending. The Trump budget proposes cutting the NDD funding by 11 percent after adjusting for inflation. But the overall cuts on key social programs would be even greater than this, because the Trump budget protects or even increases some categories of NDD. As the CPBB says, the budget proposal increases discretionary funding for Homeland Security by 15 percent, while cutting funding for Health and Human services by 12 percent, Housing and Urban Development by 18 percent and the Environmental Protection Agency by a whopping 31 percent. The budget calls for even deeper cuts in the years after 2020; for example, in 2029, it would lower NDD by about 40 percent below current funding in 2019 adjusted for inflation. The budget would take away medical insurance from millions of people by repealing the Affordable Care Act and making deep cuts to Medicaid. It would also cut many other programs for the poor, including food stamps and housing assistance. Trump proposes all this in order to fund more goodies for the wealthy. According to the CBPP, the budget would extend the 2017 tax breaks for rich individuals, making the very rich and the military industries the major beneficiaries of the budget proposal. Read more

Workplace Surveillance Is Central To Capitalist Exploitation

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Ivan Manokha – Centre for Technology and Global Affairs – University of Oxford

Surveillance of employees in the workplace through the use of advanced technology represents the latest phase in the long history of capitalism to maintain control of workers and to increase productivity through intensified forms of exploitation. Is surveillance capitalism an updated version of Big Brother or something even more sinister? Does it really increase productivity? Are workers accepting of surveillance? And how do we ensure that surveillance capitalism does not completely wipe out privacy and individual rights? In this exclusive Truthout interview, Ivan Manokha, a lecturer at Oxford University and a leading scholar in surveillance studies, offers penetrating insights into the above questions.

C.J. Polychroniou: In the age of flexible capitalism, surveillance technologies have become extremely widespread among advanced capitalist societies, with as yet unclear implications. In your view, what is the primary aim and function of the new spying and surveillance technologies?
Ivan Manokha: The key distinguishing feature of capitalism is the existence of a labor market, i.e. in capitalism human labor is commodified — it is bought and sold in a market place. From the point of view of employers, purchasing labor represents a production cost, and their objective is to make sure that it is utilized to the maximum of its productive potential. This, in turn, requires surveillance and it may be observed that capitalism as a socioeconomic system has always involved workplace surveillance for this reason.

It is actually misleading to use the term “surveillance capitalism” following, in particular, the work of Shoshana Zuboff, now widely employed to refer to the current phase of capitalism with new — digital and biometric — technologies entering the workplace. Capitalism has always been “surveillance capitalism” because in this system the main objective of any business activity is to maximize profits — to make sure that the resources purchased and employed — including labor — are used with the maximum efficiency.

The function of new technologies, as this has always been the case with respect to workplace surveillance, is to seek to maximize worker productivity. This may be achieved in two ways: by extending the amount of time that employees work (e.g. by reducing the duration of breaks, by extending hours of work in the workplace or encouraging employees to work from home after the end of the working day, etc.), or by intensifying the labor process (the speed with which workers move, the number of tasks they complete per unit of times, etc.).

Modern workplace surveillance technologies have the potential to enable employers to do both: to monitor more precisely and continuously the time employees spend to actually work, including the timing of lunch and toilet breaks, as well as to better scrutinize and measure their performance (continuously measuring output, developing performance scoring systems and rankings, etc.).

Here a special mention needs to be made of the so-called “platform labor” — the rise of different digital platforms that bring together clients and “independent contractors,” the euphemism platforms use to refer to their laborers and service providers. They do not know their workers and have to rely on various indicators of performance to measure and compare their productivity, and the central role here is played by customers who perform the role of proxy managers — they evaluate and rank the performance of workers (e.g. of Uber drivers, of cleaners of TaskRabbit, etc.). In short, new workplace surveillance technology is used to improve the capacity of employers to monitor employees, something that they have always done. Read more

Carl Cederström ~ Ons geluksideaal – Een nieuwe blik op een versleten idee

• door: Linda Bouws

Carl Cederström – Ills. Joseph Sassoon Semah

Carl Cederström, auteur van The Wellness Syndrome en ‘Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement’ onderzoekt in Ons Geluksideaal – Een nieuwe blik op een versleten idee onze opvattingen van geluk. Hij omschrijft het geluksideaal als een expressie van wat mensen wensen en verlangen als het gaat om het goede leven.

Het geluksideaal bereikte zijn hoogtepunt in de jaren zestig met de Oostenrijkse psychoanalyticus Wilhelm Reich en zijn onconventionele interpretatie van seksuele driften. Reich combineerde de eis om authentiek te zijn met de voorwaarde van seksueel genot: het ideaal van seksuele en existentiële bevrijding. Het ideaal dat dat het rijke Westen nu al bijna een eeuw beheerst zijn weliswaar geworteld in het begin van de twintigste-eeuwse Europese psychiatrie, en de tegencultuur van de jaren dertig, maar leidt alleen tot de huidige hedonistische consumentencultuur. Authenticiteit, genot, narcisme en zelfontplooiing vormen het hart van dit geluksideaal, en voor ons geluk zijn we zelf verantwoordelijk.
Multinationals en reclamebureaus dringen ons levens op die steeds meer onbevredigend, onzeker en narcistisch zijn. Zelfontplooiing werd decennia later niet een doel op zich maar een manier om je eigen marktwaarde te vergroten. Trainingscentra leerden grote groepen mensen hoe ze persoonlijke bevrijding konden combineren met financieel succes. Grote ondernemingen ontleenden inspiratie aan de ‘human potential movement’. Dit specifieke geluksideaal werd opgenomen en verwerkt in bedrijfsculturen. De grens tussen productie en consumptie aan de ene kant en het streven naar geluk aan de andere kant vervaagden. Geluk kon via werk worden bereikt.

Cederström vraagt zich af of nu, in een tijd van schaarste en onzekerheid, andere alternatieven zijn te bedenken voor een zinvol geluksideaal.
Hij sluit zijn boek optimistisch en ietwat hoogdravend af: “In plaats van geluk te definiëren in individualistische termen en waanvoorstellingen, zullen we het in de toekomst moeten zien als een collectieve strijd van toewijding aan de waarheid.”
Tegenover het hedonisme en individualisme van de vorige generaties stelt Cederström een andere visie op het goede leven, gekenmerkt door een grotere betrokkenheid bij de wereld. Als we ons laten leiden door liefde, vriendelijkheid en solidariteit kunnen wij onszelf en onze maatschappij opnieuw uitvinden.

Carl Cederström is verbonden aan de Stockholm Business School.

Carl Cederström – Ons Geluksideaal – Een nieuwe blik op een versleten idee. Ten Have, Amsterdam, 2018. ISBN 9789025906740

Linda Bouws – St. Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten