Urban Communities and Memories in East-Central Europe in the Modern Age

Urban Communities and Memories in East-Central Europe in the Modern Age PDF Author: Aleksander Łupienko
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104011105X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This edited volume studies the logic of community formation and the common view of the past to show how various social bonds of communities functioned during the modern national era of East-Central Europe from the late eighteenth century until today and how multifaceted this group-building really was. Through an overview of selected examples of communities in East-Central European urban centres, mainly the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its successor empires, the volume shows the potential of re-interpretation or adaptation of the past as a crucial tool for assuring social cohesion and for strengthening the image of group boundaries. It studies not only textual sources but also the cultural construction of local historical writings such as oral tradition and municipal publications, as well as symbolic objects such as epitaphs, plaques, monuments and public edifices. The contributors explore the actual creativity employed by these communities to envision their past and their future in homage to the ideals of centralised nationalism or regionalism and how these strongly ethnically marked historic spaces can be interpreted, celebrated or neglected. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of regional urban history and cultural diversities, memory cultures and community formation.

Urban Communities and Memories in East-Central Europe in the Modern Age

Urban Communities and Memories in East-Central Europe in the Modern Age PDF Author: Aleksander Łupienko
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 104011105X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
This edited volume studies the logic of community formation and the common view of the past to show how various social bonds of communities functioned during the modern national era of East-Central Europe from the late eighteenth century until today and how multifaceted this group-building really was. Through an overview of selected examples of communities in East-Central European urban centres, mainly the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its successor empires, the volume shows the potential of re-interpretation or adaptation of the past as a crucial tool for assuring social cohesion and for strengthening the image of group boundaries. It studies not only textual sources but also the cultural construction of local historical writings such as oral tradition and municipal publications, as well as symbolic objects such as epitaphs, plaques, monuments and public edifices. The contributors explore the actual creativity employed by these communities to envision their past and their future in homage to the ideals of centralised nationalism or regionalism and how these strongly ethnically marked historic spaces can be interpreted, celebrated or neglected. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of regional urban history and cultural diversities, memory cultures and community formation.

Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe

Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe PDF Author: Uilleam Blacker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317428382
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
After the Second World War, millions of people across Eastern Europe, displaced as a result of wartime destruction, deportations and redrawing of state boundaries, found themselves living in cities that were filled with the traces of the foreign cultures of the former inhabitants. In the immediate post-war period these traces were not acknowledged, the new inhabitants going along with official policies of oblivion, the national narratives of new post-war regimes, and the memorializing of the victors. In time, however, and increasingly over recent decades, the former "other pasts" have been embraced and taken on board as part of local cultural memory. This book explores this interesting and increasingly important phenomenon. It examines official ideologies, popular memory, literature, film, memorialization and tourism to show how other pasts are being incorporated into local cultural memory. It relates these developments to cultural theory and argues that the relationship between urban space, cultural memory and identity in Eastern Europe is increasingly becoming a question not only of cultural politics, but also of consumption and choice, alongside a tendency towards the cosmopolitanization of memory.

Framing History in East-Central Europe and Beyond

Framing History in East-Central Europe and Beyond PDF Author: LIT Verlag
Publisher: LIT Verlag
ISBN: 3643962231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Book Description
During the 1970s todays Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung, BMBWF) supported the founding of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Austrian Chair at Stanford University in California. These foundings were the initial incentives for the worldwide `spreading' of similar institutions; currently, nine Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies exist in seven countries on three continents. The funding of the Ministry enables to connect senior scholars with young scholars, to help young PhD students, to participate in and to benefit from the scientific connection of experienced researchers, and to get in touch with the national scientific community by `sniffing scientific air', as the Austrians like to say. Furthermore, it aims to avoid prejudices, and to spread a better understanding and knowledge about Austria and Central Europe by promoting scientific exchange. This volume contains the annual reports (2018/2019 & 2019/2020) of the Center Directors and the papers of their PhD students, which discuss various topics on mostly (East-)Central European History from several perspectives and in different centuries. Ferdinand Kühnel, Postdoc researcher at the Institute of East European History, University of Vienna Nedžad Ku?, PhD candidate at the Institute of East European History, University of Vienna Marija Wakounig, Professor at the Institute of East European History, University of Vienna

Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe

Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe PDF Author: Angela Jianu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000901807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The historiography of death, memory, and testamentary practices is already abundant in Western Europe and a fairly large number of extra-European regions. For East-Central Europe there are many short studies in various regional languages, mainly on anthropological/ethnographic aspects of the funeral rituals. This is an edited collection of studies by international scholars on the interlocking themes of attitudes and discourses on death, commemorative practices, and inheritance/testamentary strategies in the Balkans and East-Central Europe. These and other related themes are addressed comparatively and cover areas including Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and areas of the former Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria from the perspective of imperial – Ottoman and Habsburg – legacies. Pro refrigerio animae: Death and Memory in East-Central Europe contributes to this subject by: linking anthropological/religious/cultural approaches to death to the legal/economic aspects of inheritance/commemoration; adding a still absent East-Central European and Habsburg, Balkan, and Ottoman dimension to the study of death, memorialization, and testaments; and presenting an abundant primary and secondary material in English translation and thus placing research on death and testaments by East-Central and Greek scholars within the international scholarly circuit.

The Burden of the Past

The Burden of the Past PDF Author: Anna Wylegala
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253046726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
Essays on how chaos, totalitarianism, and trauma have shaped Ukraine’s culture: “A milestone of the scholarship about Eastern European politics of memory.” —Wulf Kansteiner, Aarhus University In a century marked by totalitarian regimes, genocide, mass migrations, and shifting borders, the concept of memory in Eastern Europe is often synonymous with notions of trauma. In Ukraine, memory mechanisms were disrupted by political systems seeking to repress and control the past in order to form new national identities supportive of their own agendas. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, memory in Ukraine was released, creating alternate visions of the past, new national heroes, and new victims. This release of memories led to new conflicts and “memory wars.” How does the past exist in contemporary Ukraine? The works collected in The Burden of the Past focus on commemorative practices, the politics of history, and the way memory influences Ukrainian politics, identity, and culture. The works explore contemporary memory culture in Ukraine and the ways in which it is being researched and understood. Drawing on work from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and political scientists, the collection represents a truly interdisciplinary approach. Taken together, the groundbreaking scholarship collected in The Burden of the Past provides insight into how memories can be warped and abused, and how this abuse can have lasting effects on a country seeking to create a hopeful future.

The EU and Central & Eastern Europe

The EU and Central & Eastern Europe PDF Author: Heiko Pleines
Publisher: ibidem-Verlag / ibidem Press
ISBN: 3838259483
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
The changes in post-socialist Central and Eastern European countries have been affected by external influences more than any preceding wave of democratization. The contributions in this volume reflect the wide variety of Europeanization processes taking place in Central and Eastern Europe. They not only serve to illustrate the significant differences among post-socialist transformations, but also highlight the variety of theoretical concepts and methodological approaches at our disposal to research different aspects of Europeanization in the broader context of globalization and identity changes. The first part of the book deals with Europeanization ‘from above’, i.e. with the European Commission’s deliberate promotion of specific rules and related policies during the integration process. In the second part of the book, the perspective shifts to Europeanization as a process of changing perceptions, values and identities. The third and final part of this book goes beyond the Europeanization approach. It places Europeanization in the context of the various globalization pressures on civil society. This book presents some of the best papers of the Changing Europe Summer School on “Central and Eastern Europe in a globalized world“, held at the University of Bremen, Germany in July/August 2008.

Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe

Identities In-Between in East-Central Europe PDF Author: Jan Fellerer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000497275
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
This volume addresses the question of ‘identity’ in East-Central Europe. It engages with a specific definition of ‘sub-cultures’ over the period from c. 1900 to the present and proposes novel ways in which the term can be used with the purpose of understanding identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘majority’ or ‘minority’. Instead, a ‘sub-culture’ is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural practices, ethnic and social identifications, or religious affiliations as well as concepts of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects.

Religion in Modern Europe

Religion in Modern Europe PDF Author: Grace Davie
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199241244
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This work examines religion as a form of collective memory: a memory held in place by Europe's institutional churches, but under increasing pressure due to rapid social and economic change.

Sounds of the Borderland

Sounds of the Borderland PDF Author: Catherine Baker
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317052412
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Sounds of the Borderland is the first book-length study of how popular music became a medium for political communication and contested identification during and after Croatia's war of independence from Yugoslavia. It extends existing cultural studies literature on music, politics and the state, which has largely been grounded in Western European and North American political systems. It also responds to an emerging fascination with the culture and politics of contemporary south-east Europe, expanding scholarship on the post-Yugoslav conflicts by going on to encompass significant social and political changes into the present day. The outbreak of war in 1991 saw almost every professional musician in Croatia take part in a wave of patriotic music-making and the powerful state television system strive to bring popular music under its control. As the political imperative shifted from securing national survival to consolidating a homogenous nation-state, the music industry responded with several strategies for creating a national popular music, producing messages about the nation and, in the ongoing debates over the origins of the folk music that inspired many songs, a way to define the nation by expressing what Croatia was not. The war on ethnic ambiguity which cut through individuals' social and creative lives played out across the airwaves, sales racks and gossip columns of a small country that imagined itself a historical and cultural borderland. These explicit and implicit narratives of nationhood connect many political phases: the months of fiercest fighting, the stabilised front, the uneasy post-war years when the symbolic frontline region of eastern Slavonia had still not returned to Croatian sovereignty, the euphoria and instability after the end of the Tudjman regime in 2000, and Croatia's fraught journey towards the European Union. Baker's book provides valuable insight into the role of music in a wartime and post-conflict society and will be essential reading for researchers and students interested in south-east Europe or the transformation of entertainment during and after conflict.

Jewish Culture and Urban Form

Jewish Culture and Urban Form PDF Author: Małgorzata Hanzl
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000684717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Across a range of disciplines, urban morphology has offered lenses through which we can read the city. Reading the urban form, when conflated with ethnographic studies, enables us to return to past situations and recreate the long-gone everyday life. Urbanscapes – the artefacts of urban life – have left us the story portrayed in the pages of this book. The notions of time and space contribute to depicting the Jewish-Polish culture in central Poland before the Holocaust. The research proves that Jewish society in pre-Holocaust Poland was an example of self-organising complexity. Through bottom-up activities, it had a significant impact on the unique character of the spaces left behind. Several features confirm this influence. Not only do the edifices, both public and private, convey meanings related to the Jewish culture, but public and semi-private space also tell the story of long-gone social situations. The specific atmosphere that still lingers there recalls the long-gone Jewish culture, with the unique settlement patterns indicating a separate spatial order. The Author reveals to the international cast of practitioners and theorists of urban and Jewish studies a vivid and comprehensive account. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike studying Jewish communities in Poland and Jewish-Polish society and urbanisation, as well as all those interested in Jewish-Polish Culture.