Translation Rights TQE / War and Peace in the 21st Century An European Perspective

In January 2002, while the impacting images of September 11th and the war on Afghanistan were still very recent, the city of Barcelona held the seminar titled «War and peace in the 21st century. An European perspective», directed by Manuel Castells and Narcís Serra, and organised by the CIDOB (Centre of International Information and Documentation of Barcelona) Foundation and by the City Council of Barcelona. On the one hand, the participants and the subjects assured the interest of this exchange, on the other hand, the circumstance of its international quality placed it on the front line the public debate. The result of this encounter is this passionate contrast of opinions between academics such as Alain Touraine, Ulrich Beck and Mary Kaldor, experts such as Andrés Ortega and Carlos Alonso Zaldívar, and politicians such as Javier Solana and Erkki Tuomioja.

Security and its recipes, terrorism and its causes, stability and its problems, these are some of the subjects treated by the authors, as well as the contradictions, possibilities, and perspectives of Europe in the current turbulent context. It is a plural book where many different, and at times discordant, voices are expressed, as in all true debates. Political intellectuals or intellectual politicians, analysts or protagonists, all of them know of the transformations that the new relation between war and peace has provoked in the world, and all of them look to Europe and to the paper that it can carry out in this new worldly context.

Narcís Serra (Barcelona, 1943) is a Doctor of Economic Sciences and the president of the CIDOB (Centre of International Information and Documentation of Barcelona). He has a long political curriculum: mayor of Barcelona (1979-1982), Minister of Defence (1982-1991) and vice-president of the government (1991-1995).

Manuel Castells (Hellín, Albacete, 1942) is one of the best known Spanish academics within the international panorama. He is a Doctor of Sociology and Human Sciences from the University of Sorbona, and has been a Sociology professor at Berkeley University, as well as a visiting professor

at another 15 universities. Outstanding among his works is the trilogy about the information era: economy, society and culture. He currently directs the Institute for Internet Investigations at the University Oberta of Catalunya.