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This text was presented at the discussion “Time and Signs”: Sociology in Intergenerational Dialogue, organized by the Bulgarian Sociological Association. It attempts to acces, from a contemporary viewpoint, the empirical sociological information contained in the study Ethnic Conflict in Bulgaria, 1989, focused on the turbulent socioeconomic changes.
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The article poses two questions: how glocality is constituted in modern Bulgaria; and how the “us” identities (“the local people”) and “them” identities (“the refugees”) are constructed. The author concludes that the perception of glocality is increasingly constituted around the axis of a local, concrete fear of a global abstract threat, leading to the re-traditionalization of locality. Based on Brubaker and Cooper’s distinction between identification and categorization, “us” is seen as an identification of the small local community, and “them” as a categorization, constructed by political and media actors, of the “refugees as a threat”. Thus, glocality is charged with tension from the start, because two different worlds meet there - the real face-to-face world and the world of virtual media images. The encounter between the real “us” and the virtual “them” proves impossible, and this impossibility could easily lead to serious clashes between actual groups.
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The aim of the article is to present a modern interpretation of the national policy of the Soviet government on the example of the issue of national minorities in Turkestan in 1917. The authors analyze a large amount of scientific material, including the documentation of congresses and resolutions of the government of Turkestan. Based on the research results, the authors conclude that the policies on national minorities under the administrative command system was contradictory and inconsistent. In general, the dynamics of the impact of the system on the sphere of national life turned out to be negative. Due to false ideological attitudes, the domination of administration, the poor scientific basis of policy, the national policy of the administrative-command system was, essentially and objectively, a denationalizing policy. The authors present a modern interpretation of this issue.
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The aim of this article to enhance knowledge of the nature of religious terrorism, one of the most inhumane ways of solving vital problems. Traditionally, the methodology of naturalism has predominated in studies on this type of social conflict. Moreover, the naturalist approach views this subject of research as it would any other. An alternative methodology is the activity approach. Clearly, there can generally be no conflicts outside the social activity of people. All arguments about the conflict (collision) of needs, interests, goals, positions, opinions, etc., are a figurative metaphor characteristic of the naturalistic approach. Undoubtedly, all the above-mentioned, so-called “components” of clashes, cannot exist outside their carriers. And their true role is manifested only in the concrete activity of people.The activity approach is applied here to analyze the causes of the conflict potential of modern globalization processes. The latter are a kind of triggering mechanism for an truly avalanche-like flow of problems in the economic, socio-political, cultural, spiritual and other spheres of life of the modern global community. At the same time, the article focuses on religious and terrorist activities among Muslims. In this perspective, the article provides an analysis of the peculiarities of the religious situation in Kazakhstan, which serves as the basis for individual manifestations of this kind of excesses on the country’s territory.The conclusion is that religious terrorism is an international phenomenon. It is associated with the activities of individuals who have blind, fanatical faith in certain religious ideologies. The terrorists, by their actions, are opposed to practically the whole world around them.
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The Demilitarized Zone between South and North Korea is often described as the most heavily guarded border on the planet, and the one with the largest presence of military force on both sides. It is a place of constant tension that may potentially explode, triggering a disastrous war. At the same time, it is associated with hope for peace. In South Korea, the DMZ is perceived in various, often contradictory ways: as a symbol of the tragic destiny of the Korean people, divided by ideology, politics and geopolitical interests; as an area of conflict, emphasizing the otherness of everything that lies beyond it, as a contact point between long-alienated brothers, as an ecological haven for rare plant and animal species, etc.The current study analyses the border and the area along it as a liminal space, exploring the different meanings with which the DMZ is endowed in South Korean society. The liminal properties of the space are shown to contribute to the DMZ’s function as a heterotopia that reflects and inverts certain relations within society. Applying the results of the analysis, the April 2018 summit between the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the South Korean President Moon Jae In, held at Panmunjom in the DMZ, is shown to contain ritualistic elements related to the liminality of the venue. Their meaning is interpreted in the perspective of recent political and diplomatic developments in the relations between the two countries.
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On June 13, 1992, with the help of the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, this journal sponsored a small conference on "The Demise of Yugoslavia." The editor's intention was not to provide any grand synthesis on the causes, course, and consequences of Yugoslavia's sanguinary end, which would in any case be premature, but rather to hear some preliminary views on these matters by a group by distinguished scholars and commentators. We were guided by the need to hear responsible voices of various provenances. Indeed, the intellectual rubbish wrought by the Yugoslav conflict, often from the cabinets of people with scholarly pretensions, simply defies comprehension and constitutes a separate chapter in the conflict's history. [...]
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The demise of Yugoslavia has occasioned much handwringing and no small amount of confusion among U.S. policymakers. Declarations of independence first by Slovenia and Croatia and then by Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia were disregarded, and the war itself was marginalized. Until May 1992 the concern for "stability" manifested itself chiefly in admonitions and the subsuming of the war under the category of "ethnic conflicts." The reluctance to identify Milosevic's aggression as the proximate cause, the omission of any assessment of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), and the balancing of Serb and Croat nationalism in an equation of hate followed from this posture. [...]
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History teaches us that people do not always measure up to the expectations of revolutions. Brecht once suggested that in such cases it might be easier "to dissolve the people and elect another." But in 1989 the leaders of the East German revolution did not have this choice. Instead, they watched their socialist revolution become a national revolution. In the beginning East German demonstrators shouted, "we are the people"; in the end they insisted, "we are one people," and exclaimed, "Germany united is my fatherland." Not without pathos, the wellknown East German author Christa Wolf reportedly said, "these are not my people." [...]
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Review of: Asim Mujkić - Avdo Humo, Moja generacija, Zenica: Vrijeme, 2019.
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The series of articles that follows confront a fundamental question of socio-political development-the nature of social allegiances, and the two main classification systems that have been proposed to explain them-class and nation. All of the articles revolve around issues raised by Roman Szporluk in his book Communism and Nationalism: Karl Marx versus Friedrich List, published by the Oxford University Press in the spring of 1988. Readers who would like to enter fully into the themes of the articles may wish to read Szporluk's book first, but this is not a prerequisite, since the issues raised are of such far-reaching importance in the debate over the relationship between social and political explanations, not to mention the theory of nationalism, that each article stands on its own as a commentary on these issues. [...]
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The mere suggestion of a category "East European nationalism" may appear artificial. This is especially true if, as in the present consideration, the category embraces all of what is commonly termed "East Central Europe" and the Balkans, plus the European portions of the Soviet Union. Unquestionably there are pragmatic reasons for considering simultaneously the strength of nationalist forces throughout the bloc dominated by Moscow, and even within polities (Yugoslavia and Albania) which were once but are no longer part of this bloc. [...]
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Recent decades have witnessed an accelerating population movement from Africa and Asia to Europe and North America. This trend has interfered with the stability of Western urban life, thereby eroding a relatively homogeneous Western urban culture and traditional European urban values. And more worryingly, this process has also decreased safety due to violent gang related crimes as well as potential terrorist threats, mainly in big cities across Western Europe and USA. One could therefore argue that the role of urban scholars should be to question and critically inquiry this harm being caused. Therefore, this contribution discusses the issues of safety and trust (and lack thereof), amid intensified mass immigration and related security threats in urban neighbourhoods across the Western world today.
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Review of: Aladin Kučuk - Edin Radušić, BOSNIAN HORRORS, Antiturski narativi o Bosni u britanskom javnom diskursu i njihove političke posljedice 1875-1878, Sarajevo: Udruženje za modernu historiju / Udruga za modernu povijest, 2019, 230 str.
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Review of: Anastasiia Starchenko - Understanding Ukraine and Belarus: A Memoir. By: David R. Marples. Publisher: E-International Relations, 2020.
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The main goal of this article is to show the conditions and circumstances of the formation of Muslim nation in communist Yugoslavia and the increase of its significance during and after the civil war 1992-1995. Furthermore, author presents the characteristics of contemporary nationalism, and distinguishes specific Balkan nationalism, which is often chauvinistic, ahistorical, militant and exclusive, of ethnocultural character. The identity of Bosnian Muslims originated from belief that their origin, language and culture related to Bosnia and Herzegovina, which makes them different from the Turks and other Islamic nations living in the Ottoman Empire. The genesis of forming Muslim nation in Yugoslavia is interpreted in various ways by the researchers. There is a hypothesis that it has been developed thanks to activity of young people who convinced Josip Broz Tito that such decision would reduce tensions between the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina. According to the Author, Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina can’t be a separate nation, above all, since the followers of Islam were nationally indifferent, and their cultural legacy is completely different than Serbian and Croatian legacy.
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On May 14, 2018—exactly 73 years to the day after the order issued by the Internal Affairs Section of the Central People’s Liberation Committee of Vojvodina— Mr. Mirko Bajić, the president of the Bačka Bunyevs’ Alliance (BBA), informed the general public about a request by which the alliance “demanded that, without further ado, the parliament of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina (APV) adopt a declaration to pronounce” the aforementioned order “an act of forced assimilation ... and annul it.” Mr. Bajić also explained that the initiative to annul the May 14, 1945 order had been submitted to the APV parliament more than a year and a half earlier and, despite initial support by the APV government, no declaration had been adopted by the time of Mr. Bajić’s statement.
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Review of: Robert Orttung - Taras Kuzio, Putin’s War Against Ukraine: Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (Toronto: Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, 2017), 490 pp.
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The concepts ethnicity, religion and politics are problematic even at the level of conceptualization. However, the interdependence of ethnicity, religion and politics as social dynamics in fostering the development of a nation has become imperative across the globe. Nigeria is multi-ethnic with cultural differences between its component ethnic groups has been crippled by series of political unrest, ethnic chauvinism, youth restiveness, corruption, religious bigotry and extremism, and other social vices that undermine national development. Therefore, it is against this backdrop that this study examines the effects of ethnicity, religion and politics on national development in Nigeria. A descriptive method was adopted and cross-sectional data were collected across the twenty five Local Government Areas in Delta State with the aid of a structured questionnaire. Non-probabilistic sampling techniques comprising of purposeful and convenience techniques were used to elicit information via questionnaire from 400 respondents. Data collected were analyzed using correlation and regression analysis. The findings of the study showed that ethnicity, religion and politics negatively and significantly impacts national development in Nigeria. On the basis of these findings, the study recommends among others that the nation needs a purposeful leadership that has a vision of how to place its citizens at the centre of political project without recourse to ethnic chauvinism and sees acquisition of political power as not an end in itself but a means for serving the collective welfare of its people regardless of their ethnic origin.
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