If not even earlier, then at the latest when Oxford Dictionaries selected ‘post-truth’ as Word of the Year 2016, did the global public become aware that ‘truth’ is not an uncontested and finite concept but a social construct. Are we, then, standing on the threshold of a new ‘post-truth age’ as – for instance – The Independent has claimed? (Norman 2016) Certainly, the Word of the Year 2016 has cast a bright light onto the case that there is not ‘one truth only’ but that there are facts that can be interpreted – or rejected – in different ways. This means that truth is ‘produced’, but is it produced as scientific or religious truth or as political truth? Just think of `fake news´ and its strategic use in influencing elections, as in the case of the latest presidential elections in the US or Brazil, or the leave campaign in the case of the Brexit referendum. Thus, the production of truth is undertaken by society, at least on the level of concrete actions. This situation becomes more complicated if we consider modern complex society. The increasing globalization of economies and societies has made the world more complex than it has ever before been.
We study the extent to which events transmitted by the media affect Greek bond interest rates by analyzing qualitatively articles in global newspapers during the Greek debt crisis. We focus on dates with strong changes in the yield to maturity of Greek government bonds in order to test whether news coverage matters for financial markets. We relate our results to a quantitative measure of media coverage using the novel method of topic models and examine days with a high level of a quantitative topic series. News coverage seems to matter on the majority of dates. However, we also find dates without crucial events and media coverage but that have strong changes in the bond yield and that seem affected by sources other than the media. The quantitative news measure regularly reveals relevant news articles on the days we analyzed.
Within the debate of nationalism versus internationalism, this chapter describes the development of international cultural heritage law, analyzes the notions and concepts used in this context, and highlights the existing shortcomings and loopholes in national and international legal frameworks in this field. First, the chapter explores the concept of a World Heritage Trust, and argues that the procedure used to designate World Heritage sites has become a national contest between States to obtain as many designations as possible, rather than the international and non-partisan procedure intended. Second, the chapter addresses the issue of trafficking in movable cultural heritage, by arguing that an exclusive focus on patrimony and national export laws (nationalism) is unidimensional and insufficient to protect movable cultural heritage from trafficking. In contrast, the mutual recognition of export laws through export and import regulations is a much more comprehensive and truly international approach (internationalism). In view of recent developments at the national level in Germany, as well as at EU level, the chapter demonstrates coordination between export and import regulations is necessary to protect cultural heritage against destruction and trafficking.
The debate on the return and restitution of cultural property is by no means a new one. In recent years, however, the debate – stimulated by French President Emmanuel Macron’s speech in 2017 – extended to include the question of how to deal with collections from colonial contexts. Whereas international law provides a legal framework for how to deal with war-time looting (the 1954 Hague Convention) and the present-day trafficking in cultural property (the 1970 UNESCO Convention), no such legal regime exists for cultural objects removed during colonial times. Nevertheless, as this article illustrates – with a focus on recent examples in Germany – current developments indicate a movement towards new political and ethical schemes on how to deal with collections from colonial contexts and, in a broader sense, how to come to terms with the colonial past. In Germany, this includes the return of cultural objects and human remains to Namibia as well as the transfer of ownership of all Benin Bronzes held by German institutions to Nigeria.
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