Publisher: Central European University Press

52.00 €

A Contemporary History of Exclusion. The Roma Issue in Hungary from 1945 to 2015

Author(s): Balázs Majtényi,György Majtényi / Language(s): English

This book discusses the history of the Gypsy/Roma issue in the context of Hungarian history, relying on state policy documents. The authors track events and narratives from the historical turning point of 1945 to the present. The volume argues that despite various political changes, official policies towards the Roma have been characterized by continuous exclusion. Written from an equality and human rights perspective, the volume breaks with the dominant discourse that has constructed the Roma from the viewpoint of the state and which, further, has long determined scholarly discourse.

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60.00 €

A Contested Borderland. Competing Russian and Romanian Visions of Bessarabia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century

Author(s): Andrei Cuşco / Language(s): English

Bessarabia―mostly occupied by modern-day republic of Moldova―was the only territory representing an object of rivalry and symbolic competition between the Russian Empire and a fully crystallized nation-state: the Kingdom of Romania. This book is an intellectual prehistory of the Bessarabian problem, focusing on the antagonism of the national and imperial visions of this contested periphery. Through a critical reassessment and revision of the traditional historical narratives, the study argues that Bessarabia was claimed not just by two opposing projects of ‘symbolic inclusion,’ but also by two alternative and theoretically antagonistic models of political legitimacy.By transcending the national lens of Bessarabian / Moldovan history and viewing it in the broader Eurasian comparative context, the book responds to the growing tendency in recent historiography to focus on the peripheries in order to better understand the functioning of national and imperial states in the modern era.Bessarabia―mostly occupied by modern-day republic of Moldova―was the only territory representing an object of rivalry and symbolic competition between the Russian Empire and a fully crystallized nation-state: the Kingdom of Romania. This book is an intellectual prehistory of the Bessarabian problem, focusing on the antagonism of the national and imperial visions of this contested periphery. Through a critical reassessment and revision of the traditional historical narratives, the study argues that Bessarabia was claimed not just by two opposing projects of ‘symbolic inclusion,’ but also by two alternative and theoretically antagonistic models of political legitimacy.By transcending the national lens of Bessarabian / Moldovan history and viewing it in the broader Eurasian comparative context, the book responds to the growing tendency in recent historiography to focus on the peripheries in order to better understand the functioning of national and imperial states in the modern era.

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53.00 €

Along Ukraine's River. A Social and Environmental History of the Dnipro

Author(s): Roman Adrian Cybriwsky / Language(s): English

The River Dnipro (formerly better known by the Russian name of Dnieper) is intimately linked to the history and identity of Ukraine. Cybriwsky discusses the history of the river, from when it was formed and its many uses and modifications by human agencies from ancient times to the present.From key vantage points along the river’s course—its source in western Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea—interesting stories shed light on past and present life in Ukraine. Scenes set along the river from Russian and Ukrainian literature are evoked, as well as musical compositions and works of art. Topics include the legacy of the region’s cultural ancestors as the Kyivan Rus, the period of Cossack dominion, the epic battles for the river’s bridges in World War II, the building of dams and huge reservoirs by the Soviet Union, and the crisis of Chornobyl (Chernobyl). The author argues that the Dnipro and the farmlands along it are Ukraine’s chief natural resources, and that the country's future depends on putting both to good use.Written without academic pretence in an informal style with dashes of humor, Along Ukraine's River is illustrated with original line drawings, maps, and photographs.

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11.95 €

An Orderly Mess

Author(s): Helga Nowotny / Language(s): English

This book was triggered by the recent geopolitical shifts and the turn towards an allegedly post-factual era.An Orderly Mess is a timely diagnosis of the current dissolution of the modern order, while highlighting the opportunities of messiness. The essay focuses on the temporal and spatial dimensions in which messiness becomes apparent today: broken time lines and fragmented spaces. Messiness is framed by a blurring of the world orderings inherited from modernity. Against the backdrop of rapid digitalization, we may find ourselves again in a phase of transition toward new ways of world ordering. The focus on messiness reveals the different patterns of order and disorder that underpin the current process of transition.In the second half of the volume the author revisits her 1989 book on Eigenzeit, which explored how moderns experience time, or are exposed to it. A quarter century later she finds that the new inventions of technology have challenged the traditional meaning of time (and also of space) even more, increasing the non-simultaneity of human existence. Today, small devices channel into one’s fingertips medial eigenzeit: the time that one has to oneself in order to spend it with those who are absent. The past has shrunk and the present extends to the future: “there is no pre¬determined future, only a future that is as radically open as it is inherently uncertain.”

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48.00 €

Broken Masculinities. Solitude, Alienation, and Frustration in Turkish Literature after 1970

Author(s): Çimen Günay-Erkol / Language(s): English

Broken Masculinities portrays the post-dictatorial novel of the 1970s in all its complexity, and introduces the reader to a 1968-era Turkey, a period which challenges Turkey’s now reinforced Islamic image by portraying the quest for sexual liberation and critical student uprisings. Günay-Erkol argues that the literature written after the 1970 coup in Turkey constitutes a coherent sub-genre and needs to be considered together. These novels share a common ground which is rich in images of men and women craving for power: general isolation, sexual-emotional frustration, and a traumatic sense of solitude and alienation.This book is an original and significant contribution to two major fields of study: (1) gender and sexuality with respect to formation of subjectivity through literature, and (2) modern literature and history through the study of Turkish literature. The chief concern in this book is not only literature’s response to a particular period in Turkey, but also the role of literature in bearing witness to trauma and drastic political acts of violence—and coming to terms with them.

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52.00 €

Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague. Longing for the Sacred in a Skeptical Age

Author(s): Bruce R. Berglund / Language(s): English

Six million people visit Prague Castle each year. Here is the story of how this ancient citadel was transformed after World War I from a neglected, run-down relic into the seat of power for independent Czechoslovakia—and the symbolic center of democratic postwar Europe. The restoration of Prague Castle was a collaboration of three remarkable figures in twentieth-century east central Europe: Tomáš Masaryk, the philosopher who became Czechoslovakia’s first president; his daughter Alice, a social worker trained in the settlement houses of Chicago who was founding director of the Czechoslovak Red Cross and her father’s trusted confidante; and the architect, Jože Plečnik of Slovenia, who integrated reverence for Classical architecture into distinctly modern designs. Their shared vision saw the Castle not simply as a government building or historic landmark but as the sacred center of the new republic, even the new Europe—a place that would embody a different kind of democratic politics, rooted in the spiritual and the moral.With a biographer’s attention to detail, historian Bruce Berglund presents lively and intimate portraits of these three figures. At the same time, he also places them in the context of politics and culture in interwar Prague and the broader history of religion and secularization in modern Europe. Gracefully written and grounded in a wide array of sources, Castle and Cathedral in Modern Prague is an original and accessible study of how people at the center of Europe, in the early decades of the twentieth century, struggled with questions of morality, faith, loyalty, and skepticism.

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58.00 €

Coca-Cola Socialism. Americanization of Yugoslav Culture in the Sixties

Author(s): Radina Vučetić / Language(s): English

This book is about the Americanization of Yugoslav culture and everyday life during the nineteen-sixties. After falling out with the Eastern bloc, Tito turned to the United States for support and inspiration. In the political sphere the distance between the two countries was carefully maintained, yet in the realms of culture and consumption the Yugoslav regime was definitely much more receptive to the American model. For Titoist Yugoslavia this tactic turned out to be beneficial, stabilising the regime internally and providing an image of openness in foreign policy.Coca-Cola Socialism addresses the link between cultural diplomacy, culture, consumer society and politics. Its main argument is that both culture and everyday life modelled on the American way were a major source of legitimacy for the Yugoslav Communist Party, and a powerful weapon for both USA and Yugoslavia in the Cold War battle for hearts and minds. Radina Vučetić explores how the Party used American culture in order to promote its own values and what life in this socialist and capitalist hybrid system looked like for ordinary people who lived in a country with communist ideology in a capitalist wrapping. Her book offers a careful reevaluation of the limits of appropriating the American dream and questions both an uncritical celebration of Yugoslavia’s openness and an exaggerated depiction of its authoritarianism.

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57.00 €

Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag. Deportation of Czechoslovak Citizens to the USSR and the Negotiation for their Repatriation, 1945-1953

Author(s): Milada Polišenská / Language(s): English

After the entry of the Red Army into Czechoslovak territory in 1945, Red Army authorities began to arrest and deport Czechoslovak citizens to labor camps in the Soviet Union. The regions most affected were Eastern and South Slovakia and Prague. The Czechoslovak authorities repeatedly requested a halt to the deportations and that the deported Czechoslovaks be returned immediately. It took a long time before these protests generated any response. Czechoslovak Diplomacy and the Gulag focuses on the diplomatic and political aspects of the deportations. The author explains the steps taken by the Czechoslovak Government in the repatriation agenda from 1945 to 1953 and reconstructs the negotiations with the Soviets. Polišenská tries to answer the question of why and how the Russians deported the civilian population from Czechoslovakia which was their allied country already during the war.

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62.00 €

Dynamics of Class and Stratification in Poland

Author(s): Irina Tomescu-Dubrow,Kazimierz M. Słomczyński,Henryk Domański,Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow,Zbigniew Sawiński,Dariusz Przybysz / Language(s): English

This book is about long-term changes to class and inequality in Poland. Drawing upon major social surveys, the team of authors from the Polish Academy of Sciences offer the rare comprehensive study of important changes to the social structure from the communist era to the present.The core argument is that, even during extreme societal transformations, key features of social life have long-lasting, stratifying effects. The authors analyse the core issues of inequality research that best explain “who gets what and why:” social mobility, status attainment and their mechanisms, with a focus on education, occupation, and income. The transition from communist political economy to liberal democracy and market capitalism offers a unique opportunity for scholars to understand how people move from one stratifi cation regime to the next.There are valuable lessons to be learned from linking past to present. Classic issues of class, stratification, mobility, and attainment have endured decades of radical social change. These concepts remain valid even when society tries to eradicate them.

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62.00 €

Eurasian Integration and the Russian World. Regionalism as an Identitary Enterprise

Author(s): Aliaksei Kazharski / Language(s): English

This volume examines Russian discourses of regionalism as a source of identity construction practices for the country's political and intellectual establishment. The overall purpose of the monograph is to demonstrate that, contrary to some assumptions, the transition trajectory of post-Soviet Russia has not been towards a liberal democratic nation state that intended to emulate Western political and normative standards. Instead, its foreign policy discourses have been constructing Russia as a supranational community which transcends Russia's current legally established borders. The study undertakes a systematic and comprehensive survey of Russian official (authorities) and semi-official (establishment affiliated think tanks) discourse for a period of seven years between 2007 and 2013. This exercise demonstrates how Russia is being constructed as a supranational entity through its discourses of cultural and economic regionalism. These discourses associate closely with the political project of Eurasian economic integration and the “Russian world” and “Russian civilization” doctrines. Both ideologies, the geoeconomic and culturalist, have gained prominence in the post-Crimean environment. The analysis tracks down how these identitary concepts crystallized in Russia's foreign policies discourses beginning from Vladimir Putin's second term in power.

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57.00 €

Expanding Intellectual Property. Copyrights and Patents in Twentieth-Century Europe and Beyond

Author(s): / Language(s): English

The book deals with the expansion and institutionalization of intellectual property norms in the twentieth century, with a European focus. Its thirteen chapters revolve around the transfer, adaptation and the ambivalence of legal transplants in the interface between national and international projects, trends and contexts. The first part discusses the institutionalization of copyright and patent law in the frame- work of the bigger political and economic projects of the twentieth century. The second and third parts of the collection review relevant processes in the communist regimes and the post-communist societies, respectively. The essays point at processes of enculturation, trans-nationalization and universalization of norms, as well as practices of incorporation and resistance. The contributors lay a particular emphasis on the role and activity of social actors in the establishment and validation of intellectual property norms and regimes, from the function of experts and creation of expert cultures to the compelling power of popular street protests.

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45.00 €

Free Speech and Censorship around the Globe

Author(s): / Language(s): English

Free Speech and Censorship around the Globe contains stories about how imagination and rational thinking in wildly different cultures capture, imagine, and conceptualize what freedom of speech means. This book treats the reader not as a tourist, but as a traveler. It does not stop at every famous tourist site that have been the most visited. Instead, it goes up many side streets. It provides an opportunity for curious people who would like to understand whether free speech can be contextual to take a journey of exploration. It draws a map of the concepts and contexts of free speech in the second decade of the 21st century. 1989 and 2011 are only two recent turning points when freedom of speech and freedom of the press emerged, or at least powerful efforts were made to support their emergence, although disheartening backlashes followed in several countries. The book also tells many other free speech narratives that emerged, or evolved outside the frames of 1989 and 2011, also with several troublesome repercussions. Reborn restrictions to free speech—as have taken place, for example, in some Central European and East European countries, such as the backlash in Hungary that received broad international attention—make the critical assessments presented in this volume especially timely. Comparative studies must help to avoid such backwards steps and to create enabling environments needed by any culture in order to develop and sustain the spirit and practices of freedom of speech.

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67.00 €

From Central Planning to the Market. The Transformation of the Czech Economy, 1989–2004

Author(s): Libor Žídek / Language(s): English

This book describes the process of the Czech economic transformation from the beginning of the 1990s to the country’s entry into the European Union in 2004. This transformation is divided into four periods: an initial recession caused by the transformation; economic growth in the mid-1990s; a recession connected to the currency crisis of 1997; and recovery and growth from 1999 until 2004, when the analysis ends. The examination covers the main aspects of the transformation—an overall view of the process, political transition, economic policy, economic results (GDP development, infl ation, unemployment), changes in outside indicators (balance of payments), privatization, transformation of the fi nancial sector, and changes in the business sector and institutional development.The book also compares Czech development in this transformative era to those of Poland and Hungary. As in Hungary and Poland, the Czech Republic underwent an exceptional qualitative shift from a system centrally planned to one that was market-based. The book concludes that despite mistakes and hardships, the overall transformation process in Central Europe has been successful.

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58.00 €

Great expectations and interwar realities. Hungarian cultural diplomacy, 1918–1941

Author(s): Zsolt Nagy / Language(s): English

After the shock of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, which Hungarians perceived as an unfair dictate, the leaders of the country found it imperative to change Hungary’s international image in a way that would help the revision of the post-World War I settlement. The monograph examines the development of interwar Hungarian cultural diplomacy in three areas: universities, the tourist industry, and the media—primarily motion pictures and radio production. It is a story of the Hungarian elites’ high hopes and deep-seated anxieties about the country’s place in a Europe newly reconstructed after World War I, and how these elites perceived and misperceived themselves, their surroundings, and their own ability to affect the country’s fate. The defeat in the Great War was crushing, but it was also stimulating, as Nagy documents in his examination of foreign language journals, tourism, radio, and other tools of cultural diplomacy. The mobilization of diverse cultural and intellectual resources, the author argues, helped establish Hungary’s legitimacy in the international arena, contributed to the modernization of the country, and established a set of enduring national images.Though the study is rooted in Hungary, it explores the dynamic and contingent relationship between identity construction and transnational cultural and political currents in East-Central European nations in the interwar period.

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45.00 €

Hungarian Culture and Politics in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1711–1848

Author(s): Gábor Vermes / Language(s): English

This book describes and analyzes the critical period of 1711–1848 within Hungary from novel points of view, including close analyses of the proceedings of Hungarian diets. Contrary to conventional interpretations, the study, stressing the strong continuity of traditionalism in Hungarian thought, society, and politics, argues that Hungarian liberalism did not begin to flower in any substantial way until the 1830s and 1840s. "Hungarian Culture and Politics in the Habsburg Monarchy" also traces and evaluates the complex relationship between Austria and Hungary over this span of time. Past interpretations have, with only a few exceptions, tilted heavily towards the Austrian role within the Monarchy, both because its center was in Vienna and because few non-Hungarian scholars can read Hungarian. This analysis redresses this balance through the use of both Austrian and Hungarian sources, demonstrating the deep cultural differences between the two halves of the Monarchy, which were nevertheless closely linked by economic and administrative ties and by a mutual recognition that co-existence was preferable to any major rupture.

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19.00 €

Hybrid Renaissance. Culture, Language, Architecture

Author(s): Peter Burke / Language(s): English

The movement we know as the Renaissance used to be regarded as the replacement of one system of ideas and literary and visual conventions (the “Gothic”) with another system (the “Classical”). However, it has become increasingly obvious that Gothic and Classical coexisted for a long time, and also that they interacted, producing hybrid forms not only of thought, art, literature and especially architecture, but also of language, literature, music, philosophy, law and religion. As the Renaissance movement spread outside Italy, to other parts of Europe and also beyond, from Goa to Quito, different local traditions made their contribution to the mix. Given the interest in cultural hybridity long shown by Natalie Davis, this theme allows Burke to pay homage to the work of Davis as well as to explore what was for long a neglected theme in Renaissance studies.

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57.00 €

Isaac, Iphigeneia, Ignatius. Martyrdom and Human Sacrifice

Author(s): Monika Pesthy-Simon / Language(s): English

What is the meaning of the martyr’s sacrifice? Is it true that the martyr imitates Christ? After the “one and eternal” sacrifice of Jesus why are from time to time new (and often quite numerous) sacrifices necessary? What is the underlying concept concerning the divinity? How do these ideas survive in present times?These are the kind of questions behind the inquiries in this monograph. The author investigates martyrdom as a (voluntary) human sacrifice and wishes to demonstrate how human sacrifice has been turned into martyrdom. The two emblematic figures of this transformation are Iphigeneia and Isaac. Pesthy argues that all the peoples in the environment in which Christianity came into being are characterized by a very ambiguous and hypocritical attitude toward human sacrifice: while in theory they condemn it as barbarian and belonging to bygone times, in concrete cases they accept, admire and practice it. The same attitude survives in Christianity in which martyrs replace the human sacrifice of olden days: they are real sacrifices, not symbolical ones. Our feelings about martyrs can be very different: we may admire their unbending courage and heroism or be irritated by their stubbornness, or even feel disgusted at the fanaticism with which they strove for death. But whatever our feelings may be, we must admit that a very strong motivation is needed to accept voluntarily or even seek death (and, in the majority of cases, a very painful death at that).

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52.00 €

Jewish Life in Austria and Germany since 1945.Identity and Communal Reconstruction

Author(s): Suzanne Cohen-Weisz / Language(s): English

Based on published primary and secondary materials and oral interviews with some eighty communal and organizational leaders, experts and scholars, this book provides a comparative account of the reconstruction of Jewish communal life in both Germany and Austria after 1945. The author explains the process of reconstruction over the following six decades, and its results in both countries. The monograph focuses on the variety of prevailing perceptions about topics such as: the state of Israel, one’s relationship to the country of residence, the Jewish religion, the aftermath of the Holocaust, and the influx of post-soviet immigrants. Cohen-Weisz examines the changes in Jewish group identity and their impact on the development of communities. The study analyzes the similarities and differences in regard to the political, social, institutional and identity developments within the two countries, and their changing attitudes and relationships with surrounding societies. It seeks to show the evolution of these two countries’ Jewish communities in diverse national political circumstances and varying post-war governmental policies.

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57.00 €

Landscapes of Diseas. Malaria in Modern Greece

Author(s): Katerina Gardikas / Language(s): English

Malaria has existed in Greece since prehistoric times. Its prevalence fluctuated depending on climatic, socioeconomic and political changes. The book focuses on the factors that contributed to the spreading of the disease in the years between independent statehood in 1830 and the elimination of malaria in the 1970s.By the nineteenth century, Greece was the most malarious country in Europe and the one most heavily infected with its lethal form, falciparum malaria. Owing to pressures on the environment from economic development, agrarian colonization and heightened mobility, the situation became so serious that malaria became a routine part of everyday life for practically all Greek families, further exacerbated by wars. The country’s highly fragmented geography and its variable rainfall distribution created an environment that was ideal for sustaining and spreading of diseases, which, in turn, affected the tolerance of the population to malaria. In their struggle with physical suffering and death, the Greeks developed a culture of avid quinine consumption and were likewise eager to embrace the DDT spraying campaign of the immediate post WW II years, which, overall, had a positive demographic effect.

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60.00 €

Muslim Land, Christian Labor. Transforming Ottoman Imperial Subjects into Bulgarian National Citizens, 1878–1939

Author(s): Anna M. Mirkova / Language(s): English

Focusing upon a region in Southern Bulgaria, a region that has been the crossroads between Europe and Asia for many centuries, this book describes how former Ottoman Empire Muslims were transformed into citizens of Balkan nation-states. This is a region marked by shifting borders, competing Turkish and Bulgarian sovereignties, rival nationalisms, and migration. Problems such as these were ultimately responsible for the disintegration of the dynastic empires into nation-states. Land that had traditionally belonged to Muslims—individually or communally—became a symbolic and material resource for Bulgarian state building and was the terrain upon which rival Bulgarian and Turkish nationalisms developed in the wake of the dissolution of the late Ottoman Empire and the birth of early republican Turkey and the introduction of capitalism.By the outbreak of World War II, Turkish Muslims had become a polarized national minority. Their conflicting efforts to adapt to post-Ottoman Bulgaria brought attention to the increasingly limited availability of citizenship rights, not only to Turkish Muslims, but to Bulgarian Christians as well.

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