NEO-PROTESTANT CONFESSIONAL EDUCATION AND THE PROCESS OF COUNTER-SECULARIZATION IN POSTSOCIALIST ROMANIA

Author(s): Raluca Bianca Roman / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

Romania is currently experiencing two apparently opposite phenomena: a secularization process, through the reconfiguration of traditional religious values and practices and a concomitant process of religious revival, through the institutionalization of various counter-secularizing strategies enacted by religious organizations. The contact with new religious ideas and their influence on individuals’ life choices after the fall of communism made religious organizations rethink their strategies and engage in more militant approaches. Neo-Protestant organizations have become important social agents on the contemporary public scene, and they intensively operate in order to diminish the effects of secularization. The institutionalization of Neo-Protestant confessional education has turned into a primary driving force in this respect. The present study analyses the differences in the configuration of religious, moral and social values among students socialized after 1989, comparing high-school students from a Neo-Protestant school with their peers from a public school. Confessional education constitutes an environment which incorporates formal education within a specific moral and religious education, according to the worldview of the faith community. The evaluation of the impact of the confessional education on students’ adherence to traditional Christian precepts and the internalization of norms aiming to guide their adult lives suggest that confessional education serves as a major pillar for Neo-Protestant counter-secularization in Romania.

REVITALIZATION OF RELIGIOSITY AS NORMALIZATION? – ROMANIA IN EUROPEAN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Author(s): Gert Pickel / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

Two different perspectives of the development of religiosity in Eastern Europe oppose each other. On the one hand, researchers assume that the cessation of socialist repressions of the church and religion will be followed by a revitalization of religion in the region. In particular, supporters of the market model of religion infer a higher chance of increasing religious competition and pluralization from the opening of religious markets, which leads to an increase in religious vitality. On the other hand, supporters of the secularization paradigm consider the situation in Eastern Europe to reflect a premature secularization. Consequently, after an initial revitalization of relig-ion, they hardly expect any significant return to religion. However, until today, the trends of the development of religion and bonding to the church in Eastern Europe as derived from comparative analyses, prove to be contradictory. We find both trends toward the revitalization of religion as well as trends toward secularization. Apparently, quite a few countries follow the West European trend of secularization after having reached a certain peak of revitalization. Other countries – among them the countries in the Russian realm as well as Romania – continue to display a relatively continuous increase in rates of bonding to the church and subjective religiosity. The main hypotheses of this article can thus be stated as follows: the latter group of countries have not yet reached the threshold of “religious normalization” at which point they follow a process of secularization. This is mainly due to the relation of the degree of modernization. In addition, we have to take path-dependent developments into account as many Eastern European states are currently experiencing a “cultural defense”, which contributes to a renaissance of “traditional” religion as it relates religion to the nation. Hence, neither the assumption of a prema-ture secularization nor the assumption of a revitalization are likely to hold true completely. Instead, the social context is crucial. This in turn supports a contextualized secularization theory which is related to the social structure.

RELIGION AND POLITICAL VALUES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Author(s): Gergely Rosta / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

The aim of the paper is to study the change of the relation between religiosity and political attitudes in the first decade after the fall of the communism. The basic theoretical background is Lipset and Rokkan’s cleavage theory (1967), as well as the secularization thesis. On the empirical basis of the 1990 and 1999 waves of the European Values Study, the changing effects of religiosity on party preference, left-right ideological self-identification and political participation are investigated. As alternative explanatory factor to “cleavages”, Inglehart’s postmateralism-index (1990) was also introduced in the analysis. The micro-level scrutiny of contextual effects of denominational affiliation and the level of secularization is employed for explaining cross-country differences at the macro level.

DIMITRIE GUSTI ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS OF THE WILHELMIAN ERA

Author(s): Imre Pászka / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

This study follows a double aim, relying on Dimitrie Gusti’s autobiography. The first is to reveal his path of life, focusing on his social networks, the university world of a Wilhelmian era, and to reconstruct the memories about his professors. The second purpose is to reveal how Gusti himself thought about that era, what was his understanding of it, what kinds of impressions, experiences did he retain from those years. Did he realize that, during his university years, modern science was about to change in epochal and paradigmatic ways? We look at Gusti’s biography as being divided into three narrative episodes: the beginnings at Berlin, the continuation of his academic career at Leipzig, and the final period at Berlin. The attempt to construct Gusti’s narrative life history is rather difficult, given that in his autobiography most episodes are not based on his own personal recollections or recalled reflections, but they derive from second-hand sources. The reason is that during the era of his studies, the contact with his epoch-making professors was mostly formal. His memories of Simmel’s rhetoric and his sociology indicate that, because of Gusti’s social background, Simmel’s syllabus of sociology was not relevant for him, since his conceptualizations were not applicable in the rural atmosphere where Gusti was born, where a nation was just at the beginning of the modernization process. In Gusti’s autobiography, the narrative is subjective and intentional, self-representative to affirm personal identity and legitimacy, with pedagogic and narcissistic purposes. In spite of the fact that the term “auto-sociology” was created by Gusti, his actual autobiography covers only the first 25 years of his life. Therefore I tried to reconstruct his biography not solely based on self-representations, but also on external accounts on the social history of the era and some “additives” about the characteristics of the social milieu.

THE SOCIO-CULTURAL SPACE OF PENTECOSTALISM IN PRESENT-DAY TRANSYLVANIA: DYNAMICS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALIZATION IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Author(s): Simion Pop / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

The present paper approaches from a particular angle the dynamics of religious pluralization in post-communist Romania. It explores the remarkable case of Pentecostalism and its implications for a more complex understanding of the processes of religious pluralization taking place in Romania after 1989. The major arguments of the paper are articulated through ethnographical insights into the socio-religious processes that made possible the successful anchoring of a particular Pentecostal congregation in a Northern Transylvanian town. The ethnography is organized around the investigation of three main processes that, I argue, create and maintain the specific socio-cultural space of Pentecostalism in Transylvania: 1) the individualization of faith, 2) the articulation of the Pentecostal authority regime and 3) the emergence of the Pentecostal form of congregational life. This classification is rather analytical because, on the ground, all of these processes are intrinsically related and mutually enhanced. Its relevance comes from the fact that on one hand it expresses more systematically the major articulations around which the socio-cultural space of Pentecostalism is configured against the background of "traditional" churches. On the other, it reveals some of the crucial concerns of Pentecostals themselves, when it comes to defining their way of being "true Christians".

A SPIRITUAL AMUSEMENT VILLAGE: MANUFACTURING DIFFERENCE IN THE WALLACHIAN COUNTRYSIDE

Author(s): Alice Forbess / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

This paper presents an enthnographic snapshot of the religious field in the Wallachian countryside at the turn of the millennium. It examines how three local groups, Romanian villagers, Orthodox nuns and Rudari villagers made use of fields of social action newly opened by the collapse of socialism, such as democratic politics and religious devotion, to gain access to power and economic resources during a period characterised by accelerated social differentiation. It is argued that issues of morality and social justice, economic interests and cosmic concerns became inextricably interwoven as rights and entitlements were claimed and contested on the basis of both historical ‘evidence’ and religious notions and practices, with the latter often being used to offset the unreliability of the former. As the three groups grew apart under the new economic and political conditions, the interplay of memory and amnesia, interwoven official and alternative local histories and a newly found Orthodox religiosity became the tools of choice for articulating difference.

RESTITUTION OF PROPERTY, RELIGIOUS COMPETITION AND SENSE OF JUSTICE: CLAIMS OVER THE ROMANIAN GREEK CATHOLIC CHURCH PATRIMONY

Author(s): Stéphanie Mahieu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2009

The article focuses on disputes over the Romanian Greek Catholic patrimony after 1990. Based on extended ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Transylvania, in three local situations (Bixad, Cluj and Ieud), it analyses the strategies and the arguments put forward by the persons and institutions involved in the disputes, and in particular the two main actors: the Greek Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. The first claims ownership over the buildings used by the latter. While the Greek Catholic Church notably used a juridical argument, based on owner’s rights, the Orthodox Church used a demographic argument, based on the number of believers attending each church. Many other arguments are presented. A particular emphasis is put on the interrelation between juridical and non-juridical forms of (dis-)agreement in situations of potential conflict. The article stresses the gap between legal decisions and their implementation in practice, and shows that such decisions do not systematically prevent violence. Almost twenty years after the beginning of the claims, and despite the failure to agree on a global frame to resolve the Greek Catholic patrimony problem, most conflicts were nevertheless resolved peacefully. One explanation for this general calm is the building of new churches, both by the Greek Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. Another possible answer has to do with the relative failure of the Greek Catholic renewal process in Romania. Finally, as a result of massive migrations from Romania in the last years, it seems that the struggle over property has also calmed down by lack (or at least weakening) of contenders.

Ja sam zagušena reka

Author(s): Sergej Roić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 52/2006

One short story by Sergej Roic.

Io sono un fiume strozzato

Author(s): Sergej Roić / Language(s): Italian Issue: 52/2006

A short story by Sergej Roic.

Sosire la Bucureşti

Author(s): Thomas Prinz / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Fragments of the novel "Arrival in Bucharest" by Thomas Prinz (Ankunft in Bukarest - Köln, Dittrich Verlag, 1996).

Fiziologia spionului

Author(s): Adrian Mihalache / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Article about the heroes of spy fiction: choosing a name, showing (or not) virility, exercising seduction and patience. An analyisis and comparison of of the features of the fiction heroes and the standards and requirements of the real life ones.

Aura violenţei: "Fracţiunea Armata Roşie"

Author(s): Jörg Hermann,Wolfgang Kraushaar / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

RAF: a product of the disintegration of the student movement at the end of the 60ies. Memories, interpretations, hypoteses.

Duşmance - o poveste de iubire

Author(s): Isaac Bashevis-Singer / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Fragment from the novel "Enemies - A Love Story".

Joseph Brodsky şi Polonia

Author(s): Irena Grudzinska-Gross / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Article trying to describe the relationship between the poet Joseph Brodsky and a country - Poland.

Disoluţie şi încremenire: Universul sumbru al prozatorului Gerog Klein

Author(s): Eberhard Falcke / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Istoria şi dialectica terorismului

Author(s): Andrei Pippidi / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

În căutarea lui Marcel Proust

Author(s): Walter Benjamin / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Corespondenţă de la Dragan Velikić - Căi navigabile la Belgrad

Author(s): Dragan Velikić / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

Belgrade´s face after the war: changes, improvements, replacements, appearances, news, consequences.

Corespondenţă de la Martin Šimečka - Cum să ne ruşinăm

Author(s): Martin M. Šimečka / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001

The inhabitants of the little countries in Central Europe live with a sentiment of shame and they often do not realize that. Article about contrasts: Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, about a united Europe and also about the egoism of the countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the countries in Western Europe and the division of Europe and also reasons for all these to happen.

Jurnal 1946-1949

Author(s): Max Frisch / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 39/2001