Rendszerkritikai útkeresés 1989 után (Antikapitalista baloldal)

Author(s): Tamás Gerőcs,András Pinkasz / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 23/2018

This volume, edited by Eszmélet (Consciousness) is a collection of writings that seek to find a new role for the anti-capitalist cause in the Hungarian left since the regime change. The collection covers documents on the social and political experience of the capitalist transition, and debates amongst the contributors of the journal on that pieces of experience. The closing chapter is an evaluation of the workers’ council activity in 1956. The message of the volume can be summarized as the historical perspective of communal initiatives like the workers’ council in the revolution of 1956. The initiatives were beyond their own historical perspectives and carry more universal teachings that should be applied to the more recent crises-prone times.

Szolidáris gazdaság és kapitalizmus

Author(s): Ágnes Gagyi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 27/2020

In face of the global economic and climate crisis, a growing consensus of green, feminist and left movements converges around the idea of a reproductive, democratic economy. This article reviews the specific new models that have gained currency in recent discussions due to support by new Western movements, and then places these models in global and Hungarian contexts. First, it shows how new streams of thinking about reproductive autonomy in economy fit into a long-term tradition of critical thought on capitalism - and particularly, the tradition of critical research and strategic organizing that conceived capitalism not only in its relation to wage labor, but in terms of long chains of accumulation that reach from wage labor to various forms of informal, free and bonded labor, and “cheap” nature. Then, the article shows how system-level contradictions between capital’s limited accommodation capacity and labor’s reproduction have played out in the long crisis of the postwar global cycle starting from the 1970’s. It shows how labor’s capacity to reproduce itself outside of capitalist relations has served both as a puffer and a resource for maintaining relations of accumulation despite a decline in accommodation capacity, and as a new ground for anti-capitalist political organizing. The last part of the article looks at Hungary. It reviews the main shifts through which reproductive labor has been incorporated into accumulation streams throughout the history of modernization, and how growing areas of informal reproductive labor have been part of the social negotiation of the global crisis since the 1970’s locally. The article concludes that informal reproductive labor works as a systemic component in today’s accumulation regime. On the one hand, this shows its power - without the bottom-up subsidies informal reproductive labor provides to capital, systemic structures of accumulation would collapse. On the other hand, this shows that the capacities of reproductive labor are subordinated to accumulation streams. The question of solidarity economy, from this perspective, is how this existing capacity for reproduction can be organized in such a way that connects its power in growing reproductive circuits, and shields them from extraction.

Był dziedzic, nie ma dziedzica: ziemiaństwo w praktykach zbiorowego pamiętania lokalnych społeczności wiejskich na Kielecczyźnie

Author(s): Anna Wylegała / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2020

This paper focuses on one specific aspect of the Polish collective memory, namely – on the memory of the landed gentry and their expropriation from the Polish countryside conducted by the communist government in 1944. The communists expropriated the gentry, gave most of the land to the peasants and irreversibly changed social and economic structure of the Polish countryside. The paper analyzes how the very fact of the gentry’s historical presence and later expropriation is represented in the collective memory of the local village communities, and how it is used in the creation of the local memory scope and historical identity. The theoretical focus is on the acts of collective remembrance as understood in the work of Jay Winter, and then on the public aspect of the collective memory. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, this paper focuses on the case study of two villages which give examples of particularly active commemorative practices connected with the symbolic legacy of the expropriated landowners.

Кръгла маса „Книжовници и книги (Предвъзраждане и Възраждане)“. Паисиеви четения 2020, Пловдивски университет „Паисий Хилендарски“, Филологически факултет

Author(s): Diana Ivanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 2/2021

Туризъм, антропология и местно икономическо развитие

Author(s): Miglena Goranova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2020

The article offers an analysis of the relationship between tourism and local economic development from an anthropological point of view. The development of tourism is a result of local community policies for the purpose of economic development and the deployment of potential on the ground. The article examines a specific case, Sapareva Banya Municipality, and tracks the changes in the choice of natural and cultural resources for the construction of a tourist destination.

Печалният завършек на Новото славянско движение, 1947 – 1948

Author(s): Biser Petrov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2021

The article examines the activities of the established at the end of 1946 Pan-Slavic Committee in Belgrade which, however, lasted only a year and a half. The Committee was created with the intention of being the centralized and ruling body of the Kremlin-born Slavic Movement after June 22, 1941. The emergence of the Committee came at a time when relations between the partners of the Anti-Axis Coalition had begun to deteriorate, and this circumstance inevitably made a direct impact on the tasks it was assigned. After the final bloc division of Europe and the Tito – Stalin split, the very existence of the Pan-Slavic Committee became meaningless, since the political exploitation of the idea of Slavic unity no longer fitted into the new realities and this resulted in its abolishment in the mid of 1948.

От Черната смърт до Холерата. Борбата срещу епидемиите в историческа перспектива, XIV – XIX в.“

Author(s): Albena Simova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2021

Към политическата икономия на Aприлското въстание 1876 г.

Author(s): Pencho D. Penchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2021

Based on a politico-economic analysis, the paper provides answers to important questions about the April Uprising of 1876: why the Bulgarians revolted, why many Bulgarians did not revolt, and why the uprising was relatively short as a time-span. According to the available primary sources the Bulgarians who revolted in April 1876 revolted because they were relatively wealthy and as such they had something to lose. Revolutionary sentiments, however, did not prevail in their political views concerning the Bulgarian question. Here comes the role of the propaganda lie about the authority planned massacre of the Bulgarians. As a result, live and property of the future rebels, were considered as endangered. The response to the threat is a risky and desperate anti-state uprising. The organizers of the uprising did not overcome the free-rider problem. The population in the insurgent settlements was left to pay the price of putting the Bulgarian question before Europe. Additional difficulties in the implementation of a relatively mass riot pose the short deadlines for its preparation. They resulted in high prices of and do not allow the supply of larger quantities of weapons and gunpowder.

Размисли за русофобията във Великобритания през първата половина на XIX в.

Author(s): Lubomir Krastev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2021

This article explores some of the most important aspects of the beginnings and early development of Russophobia in Britain. In the first half of the 19th century public opinion started to shift from Francophobia to Anti-Russian sentiment. The reasons for this were political and cultural. Britons were afraid of the Russian expansionism and felt contempt for the Russians as being less civilized than other European nations. A great impact on the British perception of Russia made Emperor Nicholas I and his conservative and despotic policies. Thus, the period between the Vienna Congress of 1815 and the outbreak of the Crimean War was marked by increasing Russophobia, that shaped the political view of the British people.

A PRUDENTIAL PERSONALIST ETHICAL APPRAISAL OF HUMAN CLONING

Author(s): Peter O.O. Ottuh / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

Numerous uncertainties are hanging over the biotechnology of human cloning which has prompted medical ethicists and religious organizations to ask questions that bordered on its ethical and religious considerations. In cloning humans, ethical and religious issues arise both in its clinical and laboratory settings hence, the morality of manipulating human genes is the foremost ethical issue among scientists and religious scholars. Therefore, this paper evaluated the human cloning technology using the personalism and prudential personalism ethical-religious models to arrive at a workable moral paradigm. To achieve this objective, the paper employed the phenomenological and critical-literary literature review methods. The paper argued that previous ethical and religious researches have not adequately employed the ‘ideal’ ethical models to appraise the morality of human cloning hence; using the personalism and prudential personalism ethical-religious models were appropriate to reveal that every human life has worth and its commodification is an aberration. The paper concluded that based on the paradigm of prudential personalist ethics, cloning humans (especially, human reproductive cloning) negates respect for human life, human dignity, and communal goods hence it should not be practiced.

Читалищни народни университети

Author(s): Penka Tzoneva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2021

165 years separate us from the creation of the unique structure for Bulgarian education – the library community centers. The evolution of their functions has an unchanging focus – raising the cultural and educational level of the population regardless of gender, age, beliefs, ethnicity and religion, carried out in different, historically originated forms. One of them is the Library folk university – a higher form of library education in its capacity of the most popular extracurricular education. The derived practices and approaches applied by the people's universities in the process of education of the local population according to its real spiritual and social needs are a valuable experience for the modern educational policy, called to be an active factor for self-education and lifelong learning.

Правата на човека в обучението по история и цивилизации в VІІІ клас

Author(s): Georgi Yakimov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 5/2021

This article aims to clarify the role of the textbooks in History and Civilizations in 8th grade for mastering the knowledge and forming of concepts by the school students in the field of human rights. By studying the modern era, they get to know the ideas and efforts of society for the enforcement of these rights. The article examines, compares and analyzes the current textbooks at the beginning of the high school education. The good examples of lessons, exercises and practical activities in the textbooks that pay the most attention to the problem of human rights are given. Having an idea of them is an important part of the modern civic culture of young people. Knowledge of the struggles for human rights and their evolution is a part of the civic education of the school students and the basis for their active involvement in a democratic civil society.

Църквата „Св. Антоний“ в Мелник – чудотворни обекти и ритуални практики

Author(s): Yana Gergova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2020

Anthony is a highly honoured saint, considered to be a patron and a defender of various diseases. The church “St. Anthony” in the smallest town in Bulgaria – Melnik – is known exactly for its healing aspect and can be identified as one of the most sacred cult sites in the surroundings, connected with numerous stories of miracles, healings, interesting and rare ritual practices. The modern state and functioning of the church is a complex of different components that build the role and importance of the cult site as a very attractive place for pilgrimage and healing. Besides of the cult of the patron itself, these components include also various miraculous objects, iconographic features, the location of the church, and characteristic stories of miracles, media, and personal representations and interpretations. In this article, I will examine the cult of St. Anthony in the city and church dedicated to him through the prism of two basic elements – miraculous objects or other ones in the church area and beliefs and ritual practices related to them. It is precisely the connection between the different components of the cult site, combining diverse objects of pilgrimage, honoring, and usage, that creates a truly unique context in which this church, the only one in the country until recently dedicated to the St. Anthony, exists. The analysis is based on observations from conducted fieldwork studies in Melnik and bibliographic and online surveys in the period 2016–2018.

Католическият празник Тяло и Кръв Христови в българско и полско село (Съпоставително изследване)

Author(s): Natalia Rashkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2020

In the thirteenth century, in the calendar of the Catholic Church, a special day is established to honour the Holy Communion – the bread and the wine, turned into the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. The feast is celebrated everywhere in the Catholic world with a solemn liturgy and a procession. The article presents in a comparative perspective fieldwork observations and documentation of this Catholic feast in two villages in Bulgaria and in Poland: the village of Oresh, Svishtov region (in 1995 and 2015) and the village of Złaków Kościelny, Łowicz district, Łódź voivodeship (in 2016). The author outlines the specific characteristics in performing of the feast in the two communities (Corpus Christi in Oresh; Boże Ciało in Złaków Kościelny), conditioned by differences in the confessional and cultural history as well as by different conditions of practicing the religious traditions.The comparative study shows the significance of local identity, expressed through elements of inherited traditional culture. For the Bulgarian Catholics, cultural identity is affirmed mainly through their religious affiliation, which is different from the official Orthodox religion, predominant in the country. The revival of the festive Catholic processions in modern times is an expression of the desire for a sustainable connection with the restored family and community confessional tradition. An essential expression of the local specificity in the religious festivity of the inhabitants of the Polish village is the adherence to traditional elements of the folklore culture, which have cultivated the local religious tradition.

За музикалнофолклорното творчество и работата на някои културни институции по време на пандемия

Author(s): Radka Bratanova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

The article regards and analyses examples from the new musical creation, inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Those examples are published on the global network and contain some intrinsic features of folklore. The most important among these features is the reaction to events or occurrences from the current life of society. Object of analysis is also the activity of certain cultural institutions, such as community centres (chitalishta), schools, dancing or hobby clubs, retired people’s clubs and schools for folklore singing and folklore instruments, during the pandemic. The author also features some cases of postponing or cancellation of festival activities on local level and the performance of local non-professional artists in such shows.

Barbora Půtová. Antropologie turismu. Praha: Karolinum, 2019

Author(s): Vladimir Penchev / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

Book review

Историческа памет и образи – различният подход към миналото

Author(s): Valery Stoyanow / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2021

Book review

Политически пърформанси в българския медиен поток

Author(s): Silvia Petrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 10/2021

The text presents the main conclusions based on the study of the political messages in the Turkish series broadcasted on Bulgarian television and on Netflix. The main political messages in the series, showed on Bulgarian television, are the responsibility for decisions, connect with the life of a woman and a child. Among the important political topics are: migration, education abroad and returning home, conflicts between rich and poor.

Ново изследване за руската позиция към Балканските войни 1912 – 1913

Author(s): Hristo Berov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2021

Кризите като катарзис: политически, социални, стопански и културни измерения на екстремните ситуации в историята

Author(s): Elitsa Nenova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2021