Anthem European Studies – serie

The euro was originally seen as another stepping stone to a politically unified Europe. Yet with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the unification of Germany, the need for European political union as a means to ensure peace in Europe disappeared. Due to the fading will for full political union, the euro project lost the prospect of a stable platform in the foreseeable future. As a result, the euro crisis forces policymakers to develop a new architecture for EMU. ‘Europe’s Unfinished Currency’ proposes that this can only be done by way of a currency union of sovereign states, which in itself is a unique historical experiment as no such union has ever survived to date. This volume offers ideas of how the EMU could potentially work, and sketches scenarios of how things might evolve in case of failure.Key Insights: *Outlines the origins of the euro within the quest for the unification of Europe. *Explains the historical failures of past monetary unions, including the Latin and Scandinavian currency unions, the US dollar standard and the Austro-Hungarian union. *Posits that the European Central Bank in cooperation with a European Monetary Fund should act as the lender of last resort to all systemically important borrowers, including governments, to safeguard price stability. *Proposes a new EMU architecture, which includes the creation of a European Monetary Fund.*Discusses possible mutations of the EMU in case of failure.

Qualifications systems are useful tools for modernising education and training. This publication focuses on the reality of policy development in different countries. After reminding the reader that education and training systems, and therefore qualifications systems, are always closely integrated with a country’s social and cultural priorities, this volume shows that there is evidence from a range of countries that learning can be enhanced by developing the recognition of learning through qualifications and by defining qualifications levels.

This book explores an important, emergent issue: what types of reforms are required to enable welfare states to preserve sustainability? For the purpose of this study, a sustainable welfare state is one that can remain the guarantor against social risks and adverse economic trends for all segments of their respective societies and satisfy sound fiscal criteria (such as the Maastricht requirement for all members of the EMU that their fiscal budget deficit does not exceed 3% of the GDP), without imposing considerable financial burdens on future generations.

Via an ethnographic study of the community festivals of Siena Province in central Italy, ‘Festivals, Affect and Identity’ investigates the affective and fluid aspects of reality to establish an integrated perspective on issues of continuity and rupture, tradition and modernity, and nature and culture. Offering an illustration of the explanatory power of continental philosophy, this text demonstrates the accessibility of highly abstract critical theory when examined in relation to specific events and their detailed analysis.

The French Second Empire (1852-70) was a time of exceptionally rapid social, industrial and technological change. French literature also underwent fundamental changes during this period as writers embraced ‘modernity’ and incorporated new technologies, fashions and inventions into their work. Focusing on cultural areas such as exhibitions, transport, food, dress and photography, ‘Changing France’ shows how apparently trivial aspects of modern life provided Second Empire writers with a versatile means of thinking about deeper issues. This volume brings literature and material culture together to reveal how writing itself changed as writers recognised the extraordinarily rich possibilities of expression opened up to them by the changing material world.

Despite its international influence, Polish theatre remains a mystery to many Westerners. This volume attempts to fill in current gaps in English-language scholarship by offering a historical and critical analysis of two of the most influential works of Polish theatre: Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘Akropolis’ and Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. By examining each director’s representation of Auschwitz, this study provides a new understanding of how translating national trauma through the prism of performance can alter and deflect the meaning and reception of theatrical works, both inside and outside of their cultural and historical contexts.

A new edition of Kaplan’s landmark study on eighteenth-century French political economy, reissued with a new Foreword by Sophus A. Reinert. Based on research in all the Parisian depots and more than fifty departmental archives and specialized and municipal libraries, Kaplan’s classic work constitutes a major contribution to the study of the subsistence problem before the French Revolution and the political economy of deregulatory reform. Anthem Press is proud to reissue this path breaking work together with a significant new historiographic companion volume by the author, “The Stakes of Regulation: Perspectives on ‘Bread, Politics and Political Economy’ Forty Years Later.”

This timely book offers a unique insight into the individual and collective experiences of movement and resettlement among Russian migrants 'returning' to the Russian Federation over the period 1991–2002. Moya Flynn uses different levels of analysis (local, regional, national and global) to open up fresh perspectives on the nature of the Russian migration regime and government migration policy. The book offers the first in-depth examination of non-governmental development in the area of migration in post-Soviet Russia and provides new understandings of the experience of migration and resettlement at the individual level, specifically through an exploration of understandings of 'home' and 'homeland' and a focus on the role of migrant networks.

This timely book offers a unique insight into the individual and collective experiences of movement and resettlement among Russian migrants 'returning' to the Russian Federation over the period 1991–2002. Moya Flynn uses different levels of analysis (local, regional, national and global) to open up fresh perspectives on the nature of the Russian migration regime and government migration policy. The book offers the first in-depth examination of non-governmental development in the area of migration in post-Soviet Russia and provides new understandings of the experience of migration and resettlement at the individual level, specifically through an exploration of understandings of 'home' and 'homeland' and a focus on the role of migrant networks.

There has never been a more important time to understand Russia's relationship with Europe and it is the subsequent sense of unease both in Russia and Europe which provides the focus for this investigation and which will make it of use to specialist and general readers alike.

For most of its history Europe was a thoroughly average part of the world: poor, uncouth, technologically and culturally backward. By contrast, China was always far richer, more sophisticated and advanced. Yet it was Europe that first became modern, and by the nineteenth century China was struggling to catch up. This book explains why. Why did Europe succeed and why was China left behind? The answer, as we will see, does not only solve a long-standing historical puzzle, it also provides an explanation of the contemporary success of East Asia, and it shows what is wrong with current theories of development and modernization.

This book makes the case for the independence of Kosova – the former province of 'old-Yugoslavia' and now temporarily a United Nations-led International protectorate – at a time in which international diplomacy is deeply involved in solving the contested issue of its 'Final Status'. The aim of the book is to counteract the anti-Albanian propaganda waged by some parties, but never to propose a counter-propaganda hostile to others or to the goals of a democratic Kosova.