September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Michele Mioni
The scientific literature focused on the british welfare state agrees with the periodization of two great periods of consensus in the post-war Britain about the social policies. The first period had coincided with the so called „golden age“ in Western Europe, approximately from 1945 to 1973. This welfare state had been inspired by the principles of the Beveridge Plan and by the keynesian economic policy. The consensus concerned both the welfare state and the economic policies, and it had been characterised by an universalistic social security system, the free national health service and a set of policies to encourage the full employment. This model fell into a crisis during the decade from 1970 to 1980, when the economical pillars whereupon the „classic“ welfare state were built collapsed one by one. At the same time, the rise of neoliberals theories has challenged in the dominant political discourses the previous keynesian orthodoxy in the matter of economic policy in Britain. The same continuity of certain aspects of social policy from Thatcher’s to New Labour’s governments allowed us to identify a new consensus toward welfare policies. The reforms implemented by governments ensued from 1979 have been characterised by the structural reform of the social security system and by a sort of „return“ to the residual, individual and private sector-oriented ways of social intervention, which in some sense had characterised also the social policies in Great Britain before 1945.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Leila El Houssi
Characterized by strong cross-culturalism, thanks to a social stratification and cultural dynamism that provided fertile terrain for modernization, Tunisia underwent a process of „secularization from above“ promoted by Tunisia’s President Bourguiba following the country’s independence from France in 1956. Nevertheless, this secularism succeeded in maintaining a respect for Islam allowing Tunisia to be identified as an Islamically secular nation, differentiating itself from other Arab countries. With Ben Ali’s rise to power, the new government made every effort to be viewed as a bastion of secularism by the Western world. At the same time, the authoritative regime sought to suppress opposing forces, which had found support in many sections of society rediscovering religious elements as a tool of resistance. These elements, however, were not seen in the revolt against Ben Ali’s regime in January 2011 but rather surfaced later in the elections held in October 2011 with the victory of the Islamic Party Ennahda. After more than 50 years as a secular nation, Ennahda seems to be moving the country along a very different path than the one set by Bourguiba. One wonders whether Tunisia will continue to be Islamically secular or if the end result will be a country where Islam prevails over secularism.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Angel Duarte, Angeles Gonzàlez
The aim of this paper is to analyze the accommodation of the Catholic Church to the new conditions of their own power and influence indemocratic Spain. At the same time, it aims to connect these conditions with the accelerated process of secularization experienced by Spanish society as a whole, in the last years of the twentieth century. Consensus and the good intentions expressed when Democratic Transition are over. Renewed conflictual climate governments relations between political powers, citizenship and Catholic hierarchy. Anti-clericalism, secularism and neo-Catholicism increase the division of public opinion. A question from the past reappears with winds that sometimes are threatening to democratic life. Education, family-model, divorce, gay marriage, laws on abortion and the limits to scientific experimentation with stem cells, the public funding of the Church and so on have been the elements of an agenda that has ended being a new battlefield. The Catholic and anticlerical responses have highlighted the limits of previous secularizing process.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Fulvio ContiEven Italy, like much of the Western world, has been affected in recent decades by an intense process of secularization. This secularization of private costumes and the desacralization of religion, however, did not produced a decrease in th…
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Camilla Poesio
This article focuses on Hitler’s visit in Venice from 14 to 16 June 1934. Mussolini and Hitler met each other for the first time. Unlike Mussolini, Hitler wanted to meet the Italian Politician since long time. Why the Fascist regime accepted to meet the new chancellor? Why it took place in Venice? Was the visit really insignificant like has been seen for a long time? This article argues that the Fascist regime used Hitler’s visit for propaganda goals and chose Venice for symbolic and political reasons. The event had a deep impact. Especially Hitler was impressed with Mussolini who showed himself in different ways, like leader of Fascist party, leader of Fascist militia, club-man of the high venetian society, brain of venetian modernisation, devoted catholic, „father“ of venetian orphans. The meeting didn’t produce significant political developments, but had a transnational impact: three years after, the first Mussolini’s visit in Germany was organised on the model of Hitler’s one.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Jacqueline Lalouette
Called «laical» in the constitutions of the Fourth and Fifth Republic, France is periodically animated by wide and passionate debates about laicity, a term considered by different juridical and philosophical points of view. Among the polemics, we remind the agreement (concordato), that is operative too in Alsace-Lorraine – because these regions were Germans when a new law to separate State and Church was approved – and the private schools (previously called «free»), that obtain important public founds according to the Debré law of 31 december 1959, a norm never accepted by the most inflexible laicist exponents. From the 1980s, the debate about laicity refers above all the presence of Islam in France: the dressing of the headscarf or burqa, the consumption of meat halal, the construction of mosques, and so on. Extremely hostile towards muslims, radical right movement presents itself as a great defender of laicity. Today, further problems foment the debate as the trans- formation of social customs or the bioethic issues – euthanasia, stem cells, gay marriage, and continually there is a fight between religious leaders and pro-laicity groups. Morover, there is a link between laicity and feminist associations, that consider the religions largely guilty of discriminations suffered by women.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Giancarlo MoninaThis essay runs through some of the milestones of the Italian historiographical debate about the relationship between history and computing. The main aim of the paper is to give a systematic budget of the Italian debate since the beginn…
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Jean-Philippe Schreiber
The regime of relations between State and religions which prevails in Belgium can be seen as very laïque, even if the term laïcité doesn’t appear in the Constitution as such, the word still not existing in 1831. After the compromise of 1830-1831 between Catholics and liberals, which led to the adoption of a Constitution resting on the principle of a very marked separation between State and religion, the Belgian institutional history was for more than a Century dominated by a politico-religious cleavage, which profoundly divided the Belgian society. This cleavage revised, while maintaining firmly the constitutional principles, the spirit of the Constituent and led to a system which its based on two paradoxical pillars: a compromise on education that resulted in 1958-59 in the formalization of a system widely favorable to the Catholic demands; a Belgian society which gradually broke loose from the practice and from the doctrine of the Church since the 1960s, to end during these last twenty years in a strong secularized community, where the weight of the catholic morality very strongly became blurred. At this stage, the consideration of cultural diversity did not lead to a step backward. So that Belgium, while financing certain cults and the laic humanist movement, and even by considering the denominational private school as a „functional public service“, is an eminently progressive country today, turning the back in the influence of the religious constraint in the public place.
September 16, 2013, 10:00 am, Edizioni FrancoAngeli - Last issue of MEMORIA E RICERCA (43/2013), Allgemein.
Massimo RubboliIn the United States, the idea that modernity brings about secularism and that is in the long term incompatible with religion has been proved wrong. In fact, the development of modernity has not led to a progressive dismissal of religion…