Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands PDF Author: Eleonora Fedor, Julie Narvselius
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215230
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past. A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands

Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands PDF Author: Eleonora Fedor, Julie Narvselius
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215230
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

Get Book Here

Book Description
Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past. A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.

Intercultural Conflict and Harmony in the Central European Borderlands

Intercultural Conflict and Harmony in the Central European Borderlands PDF Author: Mihai I. Spariosu
Publisher: V&R Unipress
ISBN: 3847006924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
This crossdisciplinary collection of essays combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to re-examine the most influential contemporary theories of intercultural relations and their application in various domains including historiography, sociology and cultural studies. A particular focus lies on Central Europe, historical Banat and Transylvania, but also on the current public policies toward ethnic and religious minorities as well as recent immigrants. It argues that much more complex approaches are needed, both historically and conceptually, in exploring intercultural relations. Thus, the political decision-making in East Central European countries and the European Union as a whole could benefit from a well-informed historical perspective by learning from the successes and errors of their predecessors.

The International Politics of East Central Europe

The International Politics of East Central Europe PDF Author: Adrian G. V. Hyde-Price
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719040979
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Established in the belief that imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an effect on the dominant as it did on the subordinate societies, the "Studies in Imperialism" series seeks to develop the new socio-cultural approach which has emerged through cross-disciplinary work on popular culture, media studies, art history, the study of education and religion, sports history and children's literature. The cultural emphasis embraces studies of migration and race, while the older political, and constitutional, economic and military concerns are never far away. It incorporates comparative work on European and American empire-building, with the chronological focus primarily, though not exclusively, on the 19th and 20th centuries, when these cultural exchanges were most powerfully at work. This work explores the sexual attitudes and activities of those who ran the British Empire. The study explains the pervasive importance of sexuality in the Victorian Empire, both for individuals and as a general dynamic in the working of the system. Among the topics included in the book are prostitution, the manners and mores of missionaries and aspects of race in sexual behaviour.

Constructing the Limits of Europe

Constructing the Limits of Europe PDF Author: Rumena Filipova
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838216490
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
This comparative study harks back to the revolutionary year of 1989 and asks two critical questions about the resulting reconfiguration of Europe in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: Why did Central and East European states display such divergent outcomes of their socio-political transitions? Why did three of those states—Poland, Bulgaria, and Russia—differ so starkly in terms of the pace and extent of their integration into Europe? Rumena Filipova argues that Poland’s, Bulgaria’s, and Russia’s dominating conceptions of national identity have principally shaped these countries’ foreign policy behavior after 1989. Such an explanation of these three nations’ diverging degrees of Europeanization stands in contrast to institutionalist-rationalist, interest-based accounts of democratic transition and international integration in post-communist Europe. She thereby makes a case for the need to include ideational factors into the study of International Relations and demonstrates that identities are not easily malleable and may not be as fluid as often assumed. She proposes a theoretical “middle-ground” argument that calls for “qualified post-positivism” as an integrated perspective that combines positivist and post-positivist orientations in the study of IR.

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire

Language Diversity in the Late Habsburg Empire PDF Author: Markian Prokopovych
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004407979
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
The Habsburg Empire often features in scholarship as a historical example of how language diversity and linguistic competence were essential to the functioning of the imperial state. Focusing critically on the urban-rural divide, on the importance of status for multilingual competence, on local governments, schools, the army and the urban public sphere, and on linguistic policies and practices in transition, this collective volume provides further evidence for both the merits of how language diversity was managed in Austria-Hungary and the problems and contradictions that surrounded those practices. The book includes contributions by Pieter M. Judson, Marta Verginella, Rok Stergar, Anamarija Lukić, Carl Bethke, Irina Marin, Ágoston Berecz, Csilla Fedinec, István Csernicskó, Matthäus Wehowski, Jan Fellerer, and Jeroen van Drunen.

On the Verge of History

On the Verge of History PDF Author: Izabella Agardi
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838216024
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
Rural women have not had a formative role in the public histories of Central Eastern Europe. Izabella Agárdi aims to correct that by concentrating on their life stories and their connections to general histories. She investigates how Hungarian-speaking, ordinary women in rural contexts born in the 1920s and 1930s remember and talk about the twentieth century they have experienced, and how, through their stories, they articulate historical change and construct themselves as historical subjects. In her analysis, Izabella Agárdi traces the interactions between micro- and macro- narratives as well as the specific tools women of this generation appropriate to talk about personal memories of their often traumatic past. From these stories, a particular mnemonic community emerges, one that speaks from a highly precarious position 'on the verge of history'. It is up to future generations whether these women's experiences will be remembered or forgotten.

The Years of Great Silence

The Years of Great Silence PDF Author: Jonathan Otto Pohl
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 383821630X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This monograph provides a detailed yet concise narrative of the history of the ethnic Germans in the Russian Empire and USSR. It starts with the settlement in the Russian Empire by German colonists in the Volga, Black Sea, and other regions in 1764, tracing their development and Tsarist state policies towards them up until 1917. After the Bolshevik Revolution, Soviet policy towards its ethnic Germans varied. It shifted from a generally favorable policy in the 1920s to a much more oppressive one in the 1930s, i.e. already before the Soviet-German war. J. Otto Pohl traces the development of Soviet repression of ethnic Germans. In particular, he focuses on the years 1941 to 1955 during which this oppression reached its peak. These years became known as “the Years of Great Silence” (“die Jahre des grossen Schweigens”). In fact, until the era of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (rebuilding) in the late 1980s, the events that defined these years for the Soviet Germans could not be legally researched, written about, or even publicly spoken about, within the USSR.

Inventing Majorities

Inventing Majorities PDF Author: Mykhailo Minakov
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838216415
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
The recent history of post-Soviet societies is heavily shaped by the successor nations’ efforts to geopolitically re-identify themselves and to reify certain majorities in them. As a result of these fascinating processes, various new ideologies have appeared. Some are specific to the post-Soviet space while others are comparable to ideational processes in other parts of the world. In this collected volume, an international group of contributors delves deeper into recent theoretical constructions of various post-Soviet majorities, the ideologies that justify them, and some respectively formulated policy prescriptions. The first part analyzes post-Soviet state-builders’ fixation on certain constructed majorities as well as on these imagined communities’ symbolic self-identifications, in- or outward othering, and national languages. The second part deals specifically with post-Soviet ideas of sovereigntism and the way they define majorities as well as imply changes in internal and external policies and legal systems. These processes are analyzed in comparison to similar phenomena in Western societies. The book’s contributors include (in the order of their appearance): Natalia Kudriavtseva, Petra Colmorgen, Nadiia Koval, Ivan Gomza, Augusto Dala Costa, Roman Horbyk, Yana Prymachenko, Yuliya Yurchuk, Oleksandr Fisun, Nataliya Vinnykova, Ruslan Zaporozhchenko, Mikhail Minakov, Gulnara Shaikhutdinova, and Yurii Mielkov.

Putin's Predicament

Putin's Predicament PDF Author: Bo Petersson
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838210506
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongman-image projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US. After a first deep crisis of legitimacy manifested itself by the massive protests in 2011–2012, the annexation of Crimea led to a lengthy boost in Putin’s popularity figures. The book discusses how the Crimea effect is, by 2021, trailing off and Putin’s charismatic authority is increasingly questioned by opposition from Alexei Navalny, the effects of unpopular reforms, and poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, Russia is bound to head for a succession crisis as the legitimacy of the political system continues to be built on Putin’s projected personal characteristics and—now apparently waning—charisma, and since no potential heir apparent has been allowed on center stage. The constitutional reform of summer 2020 made it possible in theory for Putin to continue as president until 2036. Yet, this change did not address the Russian political system’s fundamental future leadership dilemma.

Between Lenin and Bandera

Between Lenin and Bandera PDF Author: Anna Kutkina
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 3838215060
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
On 8 December 2013, Ukraine’s central Lenin monument in Kyiv was pulled down. In the following months, in what became known as the “Leninfall,” Ukraine swept away hundreds of communist monuments, expressing an explicit desire to break away from the Soviet past and, implicitly, from Russia. This book examines the evolution of post-Euromaidan de-Sovietization beyond the issues of toppling of old statues and implementation of new anti-totalitarian laws. It explores decommunization as both a political and cultural phenomenon that exposes the multivocality of the Ukrainian population and involves various forms of dialogical interaction between ordinary citizens and the state. Posters, graffiti, or street names are physical and discursive canvases where old meanings are being contested and re-articulated, and where new political symbols that combine nationalist and democratic elements are being defined.