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In this paper I compare the quality of inter- and intra-ethnic friendships. Findings of previous studies suggest that interethnic friendships are less likely to be characterized by closeness and intimacy than friendships among same-ethnic peers. I analyze data of a Hungarian panel study conducted among Roma and non-Roma Hungarian secondary school students. Descriptive analysis of 13 classes shows that interethnic friendships are indeed less often characterized by a co-occurring trust, perceived helpfulness, or jointly spent spare time nomination than intra-ethnic ones. This association holds if I include self-declared ethnicity as well as peer perceptions of ethnicity into the analysis. Analyzing self-declared ethnicity of students I also find that interethnic relations are less often reciprocated than intra-ethnic ones. If I concentrate on ethnic peer perceptions, however, I find that outgoing nominations of non-Roma students are more often reciprocated by classmates perceived as Roma than by classmates perceived as non-Roma.
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The article presents the results of an analysis of attitudes towards the importance of components of national identity – cultural, ascriptive and civic –based on data collected from a survey conducted in seventeen European countries.Differences in identity formation between countries with specific historical legacies(democratic traditions, dominant religious denomination, and ethnic composition)and structural characteristics (GDP per capita, level of urbanization, migration rate,and tertiary education attainment rate) are analysed, as well as the significance of different individual predictors (gender, age and university education). The main hypothesis, that modernization processes influence the strengthening of the civic component, as well as the weakening of ascriptive and cultural components, was confirmed. However, the results suggest that the modernizing effects of the examined factors (economic, cultural and political) are visible only up to a certain level of development, whereupon they tend to decrease their influence. The strongest influence on the strength of civic components is recorded for an economic factor – GDP per capita. Although civic components proved to be dominant in shaping the national identities across the examined countries, the other two traits – ascriptive and cultural – do not disappear, testifying to the still hybrid nature of national identity.
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In this article we review the methods used by television news channels in their reporting of the clashes between the Hungarian police and refugees at the Serbian-Hungarian border on 16th of September 2015. With the help of content analysis we examine the techniques used by each editorial board to portray events differently,resulting in dissimilar effects on recipients. During the analysis we examine news coverage for one specific day as presented by Hungarian, German and pan-European broadcasters. German news programs were chosen for comparison with Hungarian ones due to the fact that most of the refugees were heading towards Germany. We conclude that there are significant differences between the information that was broadcast according to television channels; owner expectations presumably play an important role in this.
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The article focuses on the labour market situation and opportunities of the Hungarian vocational students. After briefly placing the topic in an international context, the study introduces the findings of the Hungarian empirical researches. Due to the differences between the various national education systems, it is not easy to make international comparisons; therefore I chose former socialist countries with characteristics similar to those of Hungary. When comparing the relevant data, it became clear that obtaining a diploma provides more advantages in Hungary. Hungarian researches suggest that vocational schools mostly attract students with poor competence test scores at the end of primary school. Also a significant proportion of these students are disadvantaged. Vocational students are the most likely to drop out of the system and their return to the school later is sporadic at best. Although a completed VET improves their employment conditions and prospects, many of the graduates will leave their profession or do unskilled labour. Their labour income varies greatly depending on their type of trade and experience gained.
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On the 26-27th of November, the Central European University’s Center for EU Enlargement Studies and the Hungarian MTA KRTK VGI co-hosted several presentations and keynote lectures at the CEU campus in Budapest. The conference proved highly attractive for our community of economic sociologists in light of the recent response to the framework provided by CEU’s Dorothee Bohle, as well as the presence of high profile scholars in the field; namely, Martin Myant and Andreas Nölke.
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The book Representing Mass Violence by Joachim J. Savelsberg, professor of sociology and law, about representations of violence in Rwanda, is a very thoughtfully conceptualised and written work. Though the theme of media analysis may sound limited, the way in which this research was planned, carried out and interpreted demonstrates a high level of theoretical and empirical craft. Savelsberg, along with his team, analysed 3387 news reports and conducted interviews. The outcome is this book, divided into 4 parts: Justice versus Impunity; Aid versus Justice: The Humanitarian field; Peace versus Justice: The Diplomatic Field; and Mediating Competing Representations: The Journalistic Field. Before the first part, the author gives a brief introduction to the research.He starts with a famous quote by W.I. Thomas, “If men define situations as real,they are real in their consequences”. This statement represents his guiding line in exploring the violence in Darfur in the first decade of the 21st century, which he does through perspectives of human rights, criminal law, humanitarianism, and diplomacy. The conflict was widely covered in the media but the coverage was influenced by various sources, which alone does not explain the variation in the representations of violence in Darfur. The author states that his main discovery is a response to the question ‘‘How do global actors, national contexts, and distinct fields interact to create at times conflicting social constructions of reality?’’. Among the important components of the research are discussions of the criminalization of human rights violations, the embeddedness of actors in competing fields (of criminal justice, diplomacy and humanitarian aid), the role of the media, interactions between global and national actors, and the consequence of knowledge on responses to violence.
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n this book Dan Ariely follows the topic he started to discuss in his prior book, the Predictably Irrational: stating that there is logic and consistency behind irrational human thinking and actions. Ariely goes into more details and leads the general topic of irrationality through a narrow-down approach to the topic of cheating, one of the fields we could observe to work irrationally in some cases, and even within that to cheating within organizational environment.
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In the book of Distant Love Beck and Beck continue the work which was written in the Normal Chaos of Love by arguing that the classic family has begun to give away to the multiplicity of new type of families. Normal Chaos of Love has showed how single parent families and patchwork families have emerged due to successive marriage and divorce. Distant Love also focuses on new type of families, but it considers the global pictures by introducing the concept of world families. As Beck and Beck summarize it, the aim of the book is to “focus on the globalization of love”; however, it does not rely on own research or empirical results but illustrates its points with several examples taken from other studies.
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Representative politics is in crisis. Trust in politicians is at an all-time low.These are the initial remarks in Simon Tormey’s new book. Simon Tormey is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Sydney. His research areas are Contemporary Political Theory and Global Politics, Critical Theories and Global Civil Society. In his new book his main research questions are the following:Why do people reject representative politics? Where does that rejection come from? What comes after representative politics?
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The paper argues that the Balkans are not a single-type cultural- political and conflictogenic space where religions are the basic factor, but a heterogeneous zone made up of specific states, in each of which religion or religions have a specific positive cultural status and/or conflict potential (persistently or in certain period). The qualitative changes that have taken place in Christianity as a faith and an institution, both in the West and East (including the Balkans) during the second half of the 20th century have shown that Christianity has become more dependent on and responsive to the fundamental cultural specificity of each particular society in which it exists. The thesis is emphasized that in the conflictual configuration of “Other” in the Balkans (of ethnic, nationalist, cultural type) religion is not a pro-active factor but functions in interacting with a number of other factors (the Weberian idea of religious “strands”), coming to the fore in certain situations.
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This paper is an anthropological study of processes that lead to the traumatization of a society, and of processes that result in forgiveness and reconciliation as chosen ways of dealing with post-conflict situations. The area on which the research is focused is Southeastern Europe, or more precisely Croatian and Serbian societies and relations. As cultural anthropology has not developed any special theory to deal with the causes of traumatic experiences in cultures and societies, this study uses the conceptions of closely related cultural sociology, formulated in Jeffrey Alexander's works. According to Alexander cultural trauma occurs when members of a collectivity feel they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and irrevocable ways. Insofar as they identify the cause of trauma, and thereby assume such moral responsibility, members of collectivities define their solidary relationships in ways that allow them to share the sufferings of others. In thinking that the suffering of others might also be our own societies expand the circle of the we. According to the same theory, when social groups refuse to recognize the existence of others' trauma and suffering, they not only diffuse their own responsibility for the suffering but often project the responsibility for their own suffering on these others. It is necessary then, for any process of reconciliation to be successful, that groups recognize suffering of others and their own responsibility. From the fact that social groups might refuse to participate in the process of trauma creation, it is obvious that trauma does not exist naturally, but that trauma is a social construction, a socially mediated attribution. This paper and research are also designed as an anthropological comparison with a huge sociological research of religiosity in Croatia done in 2000, partly also focused on the topic of reconciliation. Anthropological research of young believers for this paper was conducted in 2014 and 2015 in Croatia, with interview used as the main research method. The main results show that: there still exists an important difference between proclaimed and practical believers; both Catholic Church in Croatia and Serbian Orthodox Church are expected to work on forgiveness and reconciliation; ecumenism is highly valued; readiness for taking part in common Catholic-Orthodox meetings and services is ubiquitous; and that the readiness to forgive and conciliate is real and substantial. The research confirmed the vision of youth believers as a group that is especially ready to conciliate and actively work on the processes of reconciliation and forgiveness, and that there is a solid basis for the success of these processes in contemporary Croatian society.
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This paper presents a case study about a reunion of the evicted members of the German national minority in Vojvodina, who after almost five decades came to visit their homeland, and the local population in Gakovo. The case study attests about lengthy and very complicated process in resolving post-conflict situations. The process’ launch is dependent on the willingness of the individuals involved to face not only one’s own pain caused by the enemy, but also on ability to comprehend, during an encounter with “the dark side of one’s past”, sufferings and humiliation experienced by the adversary. Awareness and acceptance of one’s own responsibility in the conflict are a prerequisite for forgiveness and reconciliation of the opposing parties. The outcome of this process is uncertain to the very end and conditioned upon the entire network of interlocking political, economic and cultural factors.
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The paper presents and discusses changes in certain dress and clothing practices and their effects on conflict within oneself and others. In this context, the paper analyzes certain conflict situations faced by the Goranci females in Belgrade. This conflict was brought about by the changes that have occurred in the females clothing during the second half of 20th and the first decade of 21st century. The focus is placed on changes that were initiated by external factors - legislation, migration and fashion trends. Accepting novelties in dress and clothing was not always simple and easy, especially if they implied the elimination of those garments implying a certain symbolic significance within the Goranci community and female subculture. Besides, changes in clothing imply and initiate changes in other spheres of life, especially in the sphere of (self) identification, on several levels at the same time (gender, religious, ethnic, etc.). The initiation of the clothing changes impacted the women in such a way to become somewhat at odds with themselves, to feel discomfort because of the fear that the (non) acceptance of the novelty could cause conflicts with some family members and relatives. A reconciliation with oneself and others imply that a women accepts a new way of dressing, but also the rest of whatever this may imply. Such reconciliation - assessed in this way - is not an end in itself. It is a process that involves several aspects simultaneously, and clothing is just one among them. In addition, a reconciliation on a personal level does not imply in itself reconciliation with others, and vice versa. Conflicts due to clothing do not represent an exception in this respect, but proved to be indicative for understanding complex socio-cultural processes such as reconciliation.
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How do we ethnographically chart the ways in which a recent war-ridden past features in everyday identifications of young adults, who have little or no direct experience of that past? One way is to treat this question as a matter of how everyday knowledge is constituted and transferred between individuals, as well as how historical legacies, cultural and political models enter their life-worlds, what they think and know, and who they are. These inquiries stood at the core of the study I conducted among two high-school classes between 2007 and 2009 in Novi Sad. This article will shed light on my main conclusions and problematize the notion of collective confrontation with the past. My contention is that arguments for collective confrontation with the past, together with official policies informed by this discourse, need to take into account social psychological mechanisms of identity construction in order to avoid the assumption that knowledge and moral insight can be mapped onto people’s minds.
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In this paper I want to review the thinking of some Italian republicans’ ideologists and patriots for what concerns the matter of National orders of Southern Slavs, with more attention to the Western Balkans. I argue that the Republicans had a particular conception of the National issues, different from the concepts of Nation and Nationality as intended by the Socialists, the Liberals and the Monarchists. Also I would like to underline a particular sensibility on the matter of the Nationality in Balkans by that Italian patriots subjected to the Austrian crown. Of course I will deal with the ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini, that has already been well studied by the Italian, Slav and International historiography, but also the ideas of Tommaseo, Italian from Dalmatia, republican but not on the same positions of Mazzini, of Attilio and Emilio Bandiera, Venetian patriots near to Mazzini’s thinking, but independent in actions and political practice. I will also give some elements about the vision of the International order of liberals, monarchists and, overall, not Austrian’s subjected. The study of those topics appears very current in this period of crisis of the state-nation concept and seems useful to reconsider concepts such as unity, integration and solidarity of Europe and between Nations.
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This paper discusses the position of the key social and political actors in contemporary Serbia, referring to the broadly accepted concept defined as “European values”. The article focuses on the so-called “Belgrade Pride Parade”, a highly contested event in the Serbian public, which is at the same time considered as the essential part of the EU accession process. Through the analysis of the media discourses related to the “Pride” events in 2010 and 2014, the paper shows the complex relation between the officially proclaimed politics of “European integration” and still very strong nationalist discourses, inherited from the 1990s. The aim of the article is to analyse the present hegemonic struggles between the political forces defending “traditional”, conservative values and the political agents that promote “dangerous”, liberal “European” ideas, such as protecting the rights of sexual minorities. The comparative analysis of the media representation of two events in 2010 and 2014 shows the changes in the public narrative. I argue that the violent clashes that occurred in 2010 Belgrade Pride Parade between the police and the members of right wing organisations were mostly the result of the lack of the political will among the Serbian elites, followed by ambivalent media representations, promoting at the same time the necessity of accepting “European values” and justification of violence. On the other hand, the absence of violent events in 2014 shows the will of the state apparatus to secure the “Pride”. However, the media reports on the event, as well as the public statements made by Serbian officials, still remain ambivalent towards the very nature of the “Pride”, justifying it only by the pressure made by the EU and the protection of constitutional rights. Moreover, the presence of new narratives in the media, discussing the high price of organizing such event, shows the shift in the public discourse from common nationalist arguments to the new, neoliberal rhetoric. This change doesn’t indicate the radical shift of the social climate in Serbia from conservative to liberal, but, more likely, establishes Serbia as just one of the many states on the European periphery, operating within wider framework of neoliberal agendas.
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The paper examines the issue of inconstancy and academic exclusion of the term mentality, which occur despite a long history of its being studied by several scholarly disciplines and a broad usage in various public spheres. Being of the opinion that, in the academic sense, the term mentality is like a sinking river - intermittently present and absent - the authoress reminds us of dominant paradigms of mentality studies, both the ones that use the term and those that rejected it, but nevertheless addressing it from the perspective of contemporary theoretical concepts and under different names. Apart from the academic exclusion, the necessity for developing a more adequate analytical approach lies in the instrumental-associative potentials of mentality-related contents in their political and propagandist usage, as well as in their adaptability to different forms and means of communication. In the opposite case, by avoiding themes and phenomena that are not in academic fashion, we deprive ourselves of the knowledge of the academic community that creates that fashion and the apparent status quo. Similarly, in case of ceasing to question narratives on mentality properties, we deprive ourselves of the knowledge of communities that create such narratives and their interest derived from the placement of such narratives.
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In this paper J. M. Coetzee’s novel Waiting for the Barbarians is seen as fundamentally disrupting the binary logic that underpins colonial discourse. The binary constructs an image of the civilized, rational and good, and the primitive, irrational and evil on the opposite sides of a fixed border. In this novel, as well as in colonial reality, the binary dissolves into ambivalence, overlap and often complete inversion of the two opposed constructed identities. This paper analyses the novel Waiting for the Barbarians identifying as the most important themes - the ambivalence and inversion of colonial identity, which are seen as a reflex of the fear of the indigenous other. The analysis focuses on the motifs of vision and surveillance in the novel, and Lacan’s psychoanalytic notions of the gaze and the scopic drive. It is observed that these concepts figure prominently in the narrative by establishing ambivalent psychological relationships of power between the main characters, discovering ambivalence within the characters and the inversion of their constructed colonial identities.
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