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11. The Musician

Author:
Asaf Avidan
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
I was born in a nation of immigrants. Over the 62 years of its existence, Israel has become a melting pot of social and cultural exchange. Poles, Germans, Yemenites, Moroccans, Egyptians, Russians and more— all foreigners that have unintentionally contributed their traditions to the biological and cultural composition of Israel.
Topic:
Immigration
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Europe, Israel, and Egypt

12. A Nobel Sensibility

Author:
Horace Engdahl
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Because of the attention that the literature prize attracts across the world and because of its prestige, the Nobel laureates have inevitably come to be seen as forming a kind of modern canon. This has provoked the critical reproach that many of the 20th century's greatest writers are missing from the list, and that it includes too few women and not enough non-Europeans. I believe that the Academy members who comprised that first Nobel Committee in 1901 would have been terrified had they realized what they were about to set in motion. Certainly in those first few years no one thought of the prize as a means to define a canon. (Nor was the concept of a canon applied to contemporary literature— that is a late development.) Alfred Nobel's will intends to reward a literary work published in the previous year—a single book, not a body of writing. Nobel clearly wanted the literature prize to act in the present, rather than crown masters for all time. As it turned out, the Swedish Academy gave the prize a distinctly monumental character. In doing so, it could appeal to the wording of the Nobel Foundation's statutes, the final document that directs the activity of the Nobel Prize committees. According to the statutes, older works may be awarded, “if their significance has not become apparent until recently.” This concession was used to motivate the practice of considering a lifetime's creativity rather than an individual work. The phrase “during the preceding year” was interpreted in a broader sense, as a demand for the continued viability of a work.
Political Geography:
Europe

13. The Roots of Hate

Author:
Michael J. Jordan
Publication Date:
09-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
Heves, Hungary—The past few years have been turbulent for Szabolcs Szedlak, far worse than most Hungarians could have imagined two decades ago, when they tore a hole in the Iron Curtain and changed their world. Szedlak, 34, came of age during the tumult of the postcommunist transition from dictatorship to democracy. Back then Hungarians were told, and many believed, they'd become like neighboring Austrians—a BMW in every driveway. Just don't remind folks of those daydreams in this bleak corner of northeastern Hungary.
Political Geography:
Europe

14. Imagining Iraq, Defining Its Future

Author:
Missy Ryan
Publication Date:
05-2010
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
BAGHDAD, Iraq—In a neglected graveyard, headstones of British soldiers lie discarded in the sand, sheared off by nearby bomb blasts, toppled by vandals, and crumbled by the passage of 90 years since these young men died in an unfamiliar desert land while their generals and statesmen conjured up a country called Iraq. The British war cemetery, which sits on the edge of a Baghdad thruway, is one of the visible reminders of the first Western occupation of modern Iraq, when European powers divvied up the spoils of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I and British administrators endowed Iraq with the foundations of a modern state.
Political Geography:
Iraq and Europe