"Why the – mostly misinterpreted – theory of Sándor Rácz Romano, the theory on the culture of separation became so popular? Why concepts of underclass and social disadvantage do not fit either?" asks the author. Concepts do matter, since if it were "the culture of segregation" accepted as the starting point then it would be obvious that what the culture of separation means in fact is the result of a certain economic and social development and it is not a national/ethnic
What is Russian… why, by the way what is Hungarian?
Presenting the semi-periphery of the world system is continued in this issue of Eszmélet by analysing Latin-America. Articles on car culture – both manufacturing and consumption -show the link between the state socialist past and present "postmodern" capitalism. The comparison method is used in both cases to show similarities and differences. It becomes clear, how motorisation incorporated the catching-up feature of state socialism and such attributes as the mixture of voluntary and administrative communities.
Global prostitution and environmental damage both inherent of the present capital system question the system-supporting attitude of intelligentsia also on moral grounds. It is unveiled again that liberalism also includes the fight for global inequalities and for the lack of freedom. We often pose ourselves as if we were actually decision makers and it were only our task to save starving people. For instance if we are unsatisfied with the outcomes of colonisation then we transform our discontent from structural challenges to antidotes that are useless in solving the fundamental problem, like saying: "We cannot settle the poor of the earth to the arable lands abandoned in Europe!" Large scale decisions can only be made by Obamas but they make no such decisions.