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The article analyses the process of choosing different strategies of identification bythe Bulgarians in Ukraine. The present state of the “identification processes” againstthe background of the “war of memory” and the “invented traditions” places themamong the priority problems of science and politics.The subject of analysis are the specifics of the formation of collective memorywhich are at the root of the choice of identification strategy: commemorative practices,mechanisms for memorialization of the past, the correlation between the localgroup history and the national strategies of Bulgaria and Ukraine. The conclusionis that the choice of identification behaviour is influenced by the efficiency of thesocial adaptation under the specific historical circumstances. The social resources atdisposal of the group in any particular moment influence the choice of vectors of thecollective memory and predetermine the formation of defensive practices aiming topreserve the group.
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The aim of the article is to show how and to what extent global ideas for sustainable development and use of natural resources are understood and implemented in Bulgaria by revealing and analyzing some of the specifics of two parallel and interconnected trends aimed at achieving sustainable agriculture. These are organic farming and relocalization of food through the implementation of the concept of food sovereignty represented on the local level by Hrancoop movement. The views of the bio-farmers and their connectedness to the concepts of alternative agriculture are also presented, as well as the policies, regulations and subsidies in the agricultural sector and the protection of the environmental. Crucial for the producers are personal motives, interest and experience rather than particular global ideas.
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This research deals with two topics concerning mixed parentage rearing practices in Bulgaria. On the one hand, it is the naming the offspring with regard to the name giver(s) and principles of name-choosing, deriving from parent(s)’ cultural heritage and affected (or not) by the living-in social environment. On the other hand, there is the matter of the non-Bulgarian language acquisition, whose development is a question of micro managing of each of the families (and in many cases of each of the partners). Parents’ decisions, regarding these topics, set the manner in which others look at the mixed offspring, as well as how the children accept themselves as bearers of two cultural backgrounds.
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The study is devoted to Bulgaria’s role in the principal conceptions of Polish foreign policy between thetwo great wars. Both states functioned in a radically different geopolitical constellation of powers, however they had one similarity. Poland belonged to the major European beneficiaries of the World War I, because due to this conflict itregainedits independence after along period of partitions. Bulgaria lost the First World War. The country had to conclude a very uncomfortable peace treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine. But both states were in conflict with themajority of their neighbors. A unique perspective for Polish-Bulgarian cooperation was possible in the framework of thePolish conception of “Intermarium” Bloc. Unfortunately, this vision appeared only as a theory.
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“Prometheanism” meant the political cooperation of interwar Poland with non-Russian peoples and nations in Russia directed against the tsarist, and later the Soviet empire. The Promethean movement included representatives of Ukraine (Ukrainian People’s Republic – UNR), Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Mountaineers of the Northern Caucasus), Crimean and Volga Tatars, Turkestan and nations inhabiting Finland (Ingria, Komi, Karelia), as well as a part of the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks. This article focuses on the relations between the Polish side and individual nations and structures of the Promethean front, on those turning moments in its development, as well as on the political and organisational evolution of the Promethean movement.
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The goal of this essay is to reevaluate state socialism’s environmental record. Zsuzsa Gille argues that state socialist modernity had its own view of nature and materials, as well as a largely misunderstood ethical stance to consumption that is ignored in today’s studies of capitalocene examining the interrelations of capitalism and climate crisis. This article provides a view not so much of the environmental advantages and disadvantages of central planning or “backwardness,” but rather demonstrate a unique economic logic that arguably carried some potential for a greener postsocialism. Instead of returning to the rightfully criticized Anthropocene term, however, Zsuzsa Gille argues for a more central role for waste and materiality in our understanding of the current dilemmas around global environmental problems.
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This essay employs contemporary peasant mobilizing discourses and practices to evaluate the terms in which we understand agrarian movements today, through an exercise of historical specification. First, it considers why the terms of the original agrarian question no longer apply to agrarian change today. The shift in the terms corresponds to the movement from the late‐nineteenth century and twentieth century, when states were the organizing principle of political‐economy, to the twenty‐first century, when capital has become the organizing principle. Second, and related, agrarian mobilizations are viewed here as barometers of contemporary political‐economic relations. In politicizing the socio‐ecological crisis of neoliberalism, they problematize extant categories of political and sociological analysis, re‐centring agriculture and food as key to democratic and sustainable relations of social production.
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It doesn’t take much imagination to associate climate change with revolution. If the planetary order upon which all societies are built starts breaking down, how can they possibly remain stable? Various more or less horrifying scenarios of upheaval have long been extrapolated from soaring temperatures. In his novel The Drowned World from 1962, today often considered the first prophetic work of climate fiction, J. G. Ballard conjured up melting icecaps, an English capital submerged under tropical marshes and populations fleeing the unbearable heat towards polar redoubts. The UN directorate seeking to manage the migration flows assumed that ‘within the new perimeters described by the Arctic and Antarctic Circles life would continue much as before, with the same social and domestic relationships, by and large the same ambitions and satisfactions’ – but that assumption ‘was obviously fallacious’. A drowned world would be nothing like the one hitherto known. In more recent years, the American military establishment has dominated this subgenre of climate projection. Extreme weather events, the Senate learned from the 2013 edition of the ‘worldwide threat assessment’ compiled by the US intelligence community, will put food markets under serious strain, ‘triggering riots, civil disobedience, and vandalism’. So far, the sworn enemies of revolution have dominated this frenzy of speculation. Little input has come from the other side: from the partisans of the idea that the present order needs to be overthrown or else things will turn out very badly. But if the strategic environment of counterinsurgency is shifting, so is – by definition – that of revolutionaries, who then have just as compelling a reason to analyze what lies in store. The imbalance in the amount of preparation is glaring. Those who pledge allegiance to the revolutionary tradition – in whose collective mind the experience of 1917 will probably always loom large – should dare to use their imagination as productively as any writer of intelligence reports or works of fiction. One might begin by distinguishing between four possible configurations of revolution and heat.
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The following research is historical and pedagogical and it aims to put an emphasis on the form development and contents line of the extracurricular education in children’s organisations in Bulgaria from 1944 to 1990. The specific kinds of extracurricular education, intellectual, patriotic, international, aesthetic, moral, physical and one related to labour are presented with their specific features typical for the separate stages of the researched period as well as with their correlation. The reconstruction of extracurricular education in children’s organisations, dating back from half a century, is of specific purpose. Contemporary reflexions make it possible to apply certain extracurricular practices from the second half of the 20th century in contemporary structures concerning informal education.
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The paper uses the concept of microenvironment both literally and figuratively, as a targeted focus of the scientific research on delimited spaces. And the human space is the entire world of both cultural meanings and physical factors, landscapes and systems which constitute the “nest” of the human species. The point is that though there are microenvironments, the human space is more than the ensemble of all their types. Thus, the core of the paper structures around the manners in which both the scholars and the large public in different positions treat these two hypostases of space. The present situation of the treatment of space has its origin in both the different scientific traditions of the concept of space – transposed into “worldviews” (something more than philosophy) and the social relations with their constructions of practical and conceptual order. Accordingly, the paper highlights some aspects in the evolution of scientific boarding of space: especially the research of matter-energy-information as underpinning the representations of space, the objectivity and the constructed character of space, space as a receptacle or as a relation, and also continuity and discontinuity in/as space. The scientific approach of space has erased the speculative philosophy as source of knowledge about it, but this scientific approach took place after the development of philosophical speculative theories about space. The “science of space” has arrived to the demonstration of the inexistence of a unique space for all the living beings – and in some respects, for humans – and at the same time to the dialectics of objective measurements and treatment of the subjective spaces. The main concepts through which people envisage space are nowadays those related mainly to environment, to ecology. They are confronted with anthropocentrism, but first of all with the difference between the advances in the present science and, on the other hand, the inertia of practical treatment of space. Concerning science, the research of both microenvironments (of different sizes) and the ecology of Earth shows the necessity of coherent global policies in order to slow the various crises of the human space: it’s too late to stop them; but not because of objective natural logic of the processes related to space, but because of the socially induced postponement. The present crisis of the human space is so huge that one speaks about the end of the human species. The critique of this theory shows that the future is open, but at the same time that today more and more people search for and experience new ways of life. The necessity of these ways is deduced not from ideal social models but from scientific research. Therefore, the problems of space are under the sign of time, even more clear, of emergency.
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The advancement of science and the change of moral norms in a market-driven society not only generate prosperity but also challenge the future of humankind. Most of the changes and problems in the environment can be foreseen if we turn to the knowledge that we acquire through ecology not only as an interdisciplinary but also as a transdisciplinary science. It is of no less important though that this knowledge should be rationalized in accordance to values and moral norms – in terms of a philosophy that explains the meaning of the technologically changing world and the consequences for the future.
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The trade union movement has been going through fundamental changes in the past decades, but it is still the biggest organized social movement in the world. Because of this, it’s really important to see the trade unions’ position in climate struggles. The following article describes two distinct strategies regarding the issue of climate change: the strategy of “social dialogue” is trying to achieve reforms within the system of global capitalism, whereas the aim of the “social power” strategy is to fight for radical structural changes in order to stop climate change. The latter strategy builds heavily on the tradition of trade union politics that tries to respond to the members’ needs both within and outside of the workplace, by building institutions that tackle issues from the housing crisis to the care crisis. At the end of this paper, we shortly discuss the relevance and potential of such strategies for Hungarian trade unions.
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Anna Bugajska’s recent book Engineering Youth: The Evantropian Project in Young Adult Dystopias (2019) is an important and thought-provoking inquiry into the field of young adult literary criticism. While for the average reader, young adult narratives may be associated with juvenile tales created with an intent to provide escapist entertainment, a true connoisseur of youth literature is well aware of an immense didactic potential of this genre. Bugajska certainly belongs to the latter category as she diligently engages with young adult dystopias to highlight the immense critical power of these texts. In the following review article, the author of the paper is going to offer a brief commentary on the critical perspective that Bugajska employs to explore the notion of evantropia. The first section of this review discusses Bugajska’s volume as a part of utopian intellectual tradition, the second section postulates that ideas presented in Engineering Youth enrich literary criticism in the field of speculative fiction and children’s and young adult literature, the third section briefly discusses the layout of the volume and the content of each chapter, the fourth section presents an overview of selected core ideas that Bugajska presents in her work and in the last section the author of the paper offers his final thoughts on Engineering Youth.
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The paper is based on the results of a study of Russian citizens’ images of their own and foreign countries. Methodology included a survey with a number of open-ended questions, in-depth interviews, methods of cartography, semantic differentials and a projective test. The study has shown that such factors as an event context, cultural traditions, psychological conditions of Russian society and communication strongly influence country’s perception. Our results have proved that Russians in general do not share territorial expansionism. Recognition of the Russian culture and the value system by others is more important for them. Though at the current moment national „inferiority complex”, widely spread in 1980–2000s, still manifests itself, a new tendency, based on the growth of a national pride that started in 2014, strongly influences social moods. Our analysis of Russians’ perception of other countries enabled us to distinguish categorization mechanisms used by our citizens. So the images of other countries include „neighbors” (post-Soviet countries), „strategic partners” (India and China), „forgotten allies” (Latin America and Africa), „significant «other»” (individual European countries and a less significant EU), „enemy image” (USA) and the „tourist Mecca” (Turkey and Thailand).
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Some reminiscences of Adam Michnik on Jerzy J. Wiatr and Zygmunt Bauman and some other public scholars at the time of the Polish People’s Republic and after its peaceful demise in 1989/1990. Main topics of the discussion between Adam Michnik and Jacek Raciborski concern the dynamics of the social and political changes that led to the regime change, the tension between their spontaneity and their conceptualization, social and psychological contexts of decision making at that time, and the issue of responsibility of people handing over power peacefully: if and how let them be a part of the transition without punishing them for previous crimes.
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The main purpose of Helena Barbara Balcerek’s article is to present an original project aimed at the amplification of both the language potential (communication competences) and the literary-cultural potential of sixth-grade primary-school students. The project’s method consists in problem-based learning which integrates literary-cultural content-oriented teaching and language education (including rhetoric) with educational and prosocial processes. Reflections yielded by an in-depth analysis and interpretation of texts used in the project as well as discussions concerning the problem of human values and needs lead, as it turned out during the project’s execution, to ecological issues and climate challenges facing the contemporary world. A large group of students have come up with practical ideas as to the use of available resources as means to resolve the climate crisis and to undertake pro-ecological actions.
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Anouk Herman’s aim in this article is to introduce the ecofeminist theory of the animal subject and its absent referent in the poetry book Matecznik by Polish author Małgorzata Lebda. Ecofeminism provides tools for elaborate analysis of the conceptual connections between women (as well as persons of nonbinary identities) and animals and may be used as a theoretical background for ecocritical research on literature. Ecofeminist philosophers Carol J. Adams and Marti Kheel have developed theories regarding relationships of human and non-human phenomena. They examine the issues of sexuality and carnality in the context of the killing and hunting of animals, themes which constitute important motifs in Lebda’s poetry.
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This article explores the significance of Earth in the futurological vision presented by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel titled 2312, maintained in the genre of climate fiction. Intense technological development together with the progressive degradation of the natural environment served as the foundation for a pessimistic perspective, which resulted in the motif of leaving our planet in order to build life anew in other parts of the universe in the literary discourse. Robinson contrasts this direction in thinking about the future with an optimistic narrative, centred around restoration and a return to roots. The text provides an analysis of such an approach, and shows the speculative nature of the picture of humanity outlined in Robinson’s novel. In addition, the aim of the article is to point out the links between the work and a trend which is developing in the space of science fiction – solarpunk.
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