Around the Bloc: Buckwheat Panic Grips Russia, Czech Leader Urges ‘Finlandization’ of Ukraine
Plus, 'Western values' blamed for infertility in Kazakhstan, and a Russian journalist fights deportation from Poland.
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Plus, 'Western values' blamed for infertility in Kazakhstan, and a Russian journalist fights deportation from Poland.
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The article discusses the controversial nature of home in Marilynne Robinson’s novels Home and Gilead. Family histories of two aging ministers – the Rev. Ames and the Rev. Boughton – are narrated in a way that brings together transcendentalist admiration of human uniqueness, political urgencies of the mid-20th century, theological dilemmas, and ideas of domesticity, identity and belonging. The concepts of uprootedness (Simone Weil) and home as an asylum and prison (Tadeusz Sławek) are used to analyze Robinson’s novels. The article views the representation of home as a place that challenges the alleged American tolerance and open-mindedness and subverts traditional patterns of domesticity.
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The paper examines and compares some of the 1960s’ most representative expressions of social critique: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Richard Sennett’s The Uses of Disorder, in an attempt to demonstrate how each of those intellectuals, social critics and visionaries, in their own distinct way, called for a radical departure from the established notions of the social and spatial order amidst the growing public fears of insecurity stimulated by the rising crime rate, the spread of racism and xenophobia, and the continuing “white flight” to the suburbs.
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Fredreric Jackson Turner’s seminal essay on the significance of frontier in American culture interestingly posits the development of railways as extension of the buffalo trail. The presentation of his ideas in 1893 not only followed the announcement of the closing of the frontier by the superintendent of the U.S. Census (1890), but was also the time of the near-extinction of bison whose number declined from about 600,000,000 at the end of the 18th century to 300 in 1900. In the paper I will try to tone the Indian traders’ transformation of the buffalo trail into a railway with the replacement of buffalo herds by cow droves as well as the popularity the song “Home on the Range” which in a way mythologized the domestic coexistence of people with the roaming buffalo. Drawing from Thoreau’s hypothesis that cows are buffalos within and capable of reasserting their “native rights,” I will look at some examples of the return of the buffalo in the 20th and 21st centuries as, however simulated, attempts at a return to homes on the range, and at living on the frontier, even if the frontier has been relocated to the vicinity of the Fermilab bosons where a small buffalo herd is maintained.
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In a number of interviews, Toni Morrison refers to America as Foreigners’ Home. This conceptualization is linked to the historical processes related to the formation of the New World by immigrants who sought to make America their new homeland. Upon their expropriation of land from native inhabitants, there arose a need for a labor force to work the acquired land that engendered forced chattel African immigration to America out of which grew a particular African-American experience. Enslavement as well as Jim Crow segregation induced within the New World black American community feelings of foreignness, “a long way from home”. One of their survival strategies and forms of resistance against oppression was the development of another sense of home over against the oppressive conditions that engulfed them. In her novel Home, Toni Morrison reconstructs the journey of a black Korean War veteran, Frank Money, who reaches a sense of homeliness in the racially segregated South despite failing to realize the citizen-soldier ideal and being victim and witness to continued widespread racist oppression. He attains a sense of belonging and security upon returning to the black community of Lotus, Georgia, where black people are regarded as foreign because of their settlement there as forced exiles. The community, by its unity, manages to domesticate this foreigners’ home, which enables Frank Money, the traumatized black veteran, to perceive Lotus as an empowering space contrary to the alienation he felt before his engagement in combat abroad.
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This paper examines Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (1992) from the perspective of campus spatial modalities and their use or abuse by a privileged group of students. As in other campus mystery novels, the supposedly egalitarian and democratic space of the campus is transformed into an elitist enclave by a group of students who use knowledge-as-power in order to plot the murder of threatening intruders into their exclusive world. The unexpected turn of events brings about the disenchantment of Richard Papen, a low-class but talented, young Californian who enrolls to Hamden, Vermont with high academic expectations. At the same time as it introduces a series of personal disillusionments it also creates a crisis of meaning in the American campus in general.
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Kobieta przy (filmowym) stole. Wegetarianizm, polityka mięsa i płeć kulturowa
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Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. It starts with dinner - Seder. Family gathered on this day drink red wine as a symbol of freedom and happiness. They eat matzo - flat bread to remember that Hebrews left Egypt grabbing unready bread leaven. The central place of the table is taken by the Seder plate with zeroa – shank bone, beitzah – roasted, hard – boiled egg, karpas – a vegetable, maror – bitter herbs, chazeret – bitter vegetable, charoset – sweet dessert. Most of described traditional dishes are visible in Seder scene of films Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) and Café Society (2016) by Woody Allen. In both films the extended families are gathered together. Their members’ personalities reflect symbols of Seder dishes.
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Experiencing the world though lips, as the newborn does it by sucking the mother's breast, is comforting the intensive stimulation of hunger, so eating provides relief, fulfills the need of not only repletion but also of the contact and the connection as well. Feeling hunger is experienced as frustration while getting the food as gratification. Film makers have often presented food on the axe with extreme polarities: frustration vs. gratification, showing the issue from multiple intriguing viewpoints. There is also another side of the same aspect; gloomy, shocking, sometimes disgusting. The intense frustration of the need for closeness converts into sadistic fantasies about damaging the objects that stimulate lust. Damaging them by devouring. X muse not only remained indifferent to this phenomenon but also questioned it in a way that frequently surprises with its esthetics and variety.
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A rise of interest in issues of heredity and advances in medicine in the nineteenth century resulted in the widespread medicalization of social phenomena. Theories formulated in the field of natural sciences increasingly served as a tool to explain unacceptable patterns of social behaviour, including prostitution which began to be seen as a biologically determined condition. As a main channel for the spread of STDs – some of them potentially transmissible across generations (congenital syphilis) – prostitution became one of the major concerns of medical professionals. Thus, what was previously a sin and an insult to middle-class moral standards, now came to be seen as a health menace to the entire population. In times of increased competition between nation-states, the latter argument played an even more important role, and the ruling elites sought to tighten control over what they perceived as ‘dangerous bodies’. As campaigners against the ‘great social evil’ also analysed prostitutes’ social milieu, discourses on the causes of prostitution were highly confusing. One source of confusion was Morel’s theory of degeneration, in which the author skilfully combined environmental influence with the concept of hereditary pathology. Additionally, some authors still adhered to a much older explanation for social ills. The construction of an evil ‘Other’ – typically unscrupulous Jew – responsible for planting various physical and/or moral ‘plagues’ in a victimized population, thus threatening its biological existence. The fear of deterioration, inevitably leading to extinction, unified proponents of old-style and modernist anti-vice campaigners. This article offers an overview of expert narratives on the causes of prostitution in the early decades of twentieth century Poland.
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In this article Śmieja suggests that Jerzy Andrzejewski’s male-centred imagination is rooted in the writer’s homoerotic desire. By imagining relationships between men that take place outside of the Oedipal model, Andrzejewski’s works threaten both the social order and the coherence of the subject himself. In order to stabilize his male-centred vision on a textual level, Śmieja argues, Andrzejewski draws on the model developed by Witold Gombrowicz, while on a biographical level it is Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński who fulfils this stabilizing function.
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This article outlines the notion of censorship in affect as a principle structuring the realm of visibility of homosexuals in Polish theatre. Niziołek explores the relationship between society’s homophobia and ways of establishing the national community. This project attempts to deconstruct Poland’s dominant paradigm of national theatre by tracing counter-public queer performance in public theatre shows.
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The article focuses on the legal framework and its mechanisms for control of law enforcement and prevention of crimes, committed by children. Presented is the sparing procedure for interrogation of a child in a specialized room – the so-called “Blue Room”. It is not easy to be a child who will be questioned, neither to be the specialist who will apply the procedure. A beautiful and cozy place is the right place to interrogate and to ensure achieving better results.
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Concept of the political appeared for the first time in Carl Schmitt’s theory, implying the autonomy of political decision making specific in relation to other spheres of human actions such as economy and art. With the postmodern political theory, concept of the political starts to be used in combination with the notion of politics, as a sort of counterbalance to political power of established government and its efforts to fully master the society. One of the pioneers of postmodernism, Michel Foucault, believed that the resistance to totalitarian efforts of every politics is performed through caring of self (souci de soi), that is, through our individual action manifested as a sort of micropower and representing a counterbalance to official politics. That way, individual action represents the action which limits government’s efforts to fully equate politics and social life. Thus, certain sorts of consumption, as one of the fundamental economic activities, can be interpreted as a sort of political activism. Consumption, as a resistance to official politics and economy, can in contemporary context be noticed in projects like slow-food nutrition, buying of second-hand products, rejecting to ware cloths made of fur, rejecting to purchase from socially irresponsible corporations. Political activism can be noticed in production as well, which can be seen in the examples of Marx’s analyses of this activity. For Marx, only in communist epoch, production becomes an important activity because only then it is transformed from slavery work into a means through which individual capacities and senses are developed. In the communist epoch, with the abolition of private property, production becomes free and creative activity. In contemporary context, “free and creative production” can be perceived in the organic food production, use of already used materials when making cloths and furniture, hand-made production of cosmetic products, in so called home-made production. As it can be seen, consumption and production don’t necessarily have to represent products of global capitalism and ways through which the control over the working class is performed. On the contrary, these economic practices can represent both a form of political actions and to, as a “postmodern” concept of the political, function as a means in struggle against domination of capitalism and politics’ efforts to identify itself with the society.
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The system of modern society is based on the assumptions of the ideology of neoliberal economics. In modern society people with disabilities are subjected to the symbolic violence of adaptive and inclusive rehabilitation programs. Their goal is to activate the disabled, adapting them to the lifestyle of the functional majority of this society. The paternalistic social system does not tolerate the dissimilarity of disabled people and deprives them of the right to autonomous and sovereign self-determination. Discrimination against people with disabilities is particularly pronounced in the case of women who are doubly discriminated against: on grounds of sex and illness or disability.
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Northern Dalmatia is a region of two cultural traditions — Dinaric and Coastal Adriatic — which intertwine in many aspects, including the wedding rituals. The coastal zone has been exposed to dynamic cultural change due to commerce and sea-faring activities, as well as to overseas emigration since the second half of the 19th c. Inland Dalmatia has remained more conservative in many aspects of everyday life. The wedding ritual always reflects, the cultural concepts and attitudes of a certain community in a certain time. At the same time it reveals the degree of conformity or resistance of various individuals to cultural norms. Culturally defined sex roles are demonstrated clearly in the wedding ritual. In northern Dalmatia, the power of an individual has been determined primarily by his/her sex. Despite numerous social and economic changes during the second half of the 20th c, the privileged position of men within this patriarchal cultural order is still expressed in all phases of marriage arrangements: asking betrothal and wedding proper. This ritual reality may stand in contrast to everyday life which deviates often from traditional norms.
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In the introduction, the author defines terms »customary law«, »customs«, »traditional society« etc., which are related to traditional norms and the social environment in which they exist. The article surveys codifications of customary norms and institutions, in different historical periods, of the territory which makes up present Yugoslavia. The end of the feudal system caused great changes which were relevant for the shaping of legal systems of various new states on the Yugoslav territory. Towards the end of the 19th century, under the influence of European trends of Historical School of law, legal historians and practitioners became interested in legal contents of traditional life. In this article, the author also analyses their studies and interests, their methods, the success of these studies, and their influence on formal legal (regulations of life. The most eminent authors, whose works brought advancement in views and actual research in the middle of the 19th century, are introduced. The author defines the development of scientific interest not only among lawyers, but among ethnologists and economists as well. In conclusion, important changes in the structure of life, in the content of customary law and in its subjects are accounted for, including the influence which legal theoreticians have had on development of legal ethnology since World War II.
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Die Stellung der Frau in der Geselschaft und in der Familie können wir nur in enger Abhängigkeit von der Stellung der Familienmitglieder beider Geschlechter und der Entwicklung der Familie als ein gesellschaftlicher Organismus und Profil einer traditionsgemässen Umgebung, wo entsprechende Familienstrukturen bestehen, betrachten. Dorfgemeinschaften konnten wir noch bis vor kurzem wegen der bestehenden kulturellen, wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Unterschiede im Vergleich zu grösseren urbanen Mitten und wegen der Gleichheit der traditionellen Charakteristiken und Normen als ein Traditionsgebiet anshen.
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In a period when the European integration process seems to be threaten by external factors, my thoughts go back in the Ancient age when the integrity of the Roman Empire seemed to be dissolve also by external forces. Then there were two main enemies: Barbarians invasion and attacks of others actors. Institutional and social establishments were threatened along with commercial networks.
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The continued presence and place of the Confederate battle flag in the modern United States of America is the focus of significant contemporary debate. Originating from the American Civil War the presence and use of the flag has spread through the United States of America and internationally, and its meaning has developed and changed far beyond its origins as a military flag. This paper addresses some of the contemporary uses of the flag. It situates the flag within current U.S. domestic political debates and considers how these relate to its usage in the UK and continental European rockabilly scene. It explains the reasons for the recent, widespread focus on the flag as a symbol of racism and white supremacy. The paper argues that despite some members’ shared view of the flag as a supposedly apolitical, longstanding symbol of the rockabilly scene, the rising threat of white supremacy and far right politics internationally has made the defence of the flag in these terms insufficient. It goes on to conclude that the rockabilly scene in the UK and Europe could, and should, abandon their use of the flag with no loss to its identity. Konfederatų kovos vėliava vis dar plačiai diskutuojama šiuolaikinėse Jungtinės Amerikos Valstijose. Atsiradusi JAV pilietinio karo metu vėliava išplito tiek Amerikoje, tiek už jos ribų, o jos reikšmė smarkiai pasikeitė; ji prarado ir originalią karinės vėliavos reikšmę. Šiame straipsnyje analizuojami keli šiuolaikiniai konfederatų vėliavos naudojimo atvejai. Autorius aptaria dabar vykstančias politines diskusijas apie vėliavą JAV ir mėgina paaiškinti, kaip jos susijusios su vėliavos naudojimu Jungtinės Karalystės ir kontinentinės Europos rokabilio muzikoje. Straipsnyje paaiškinamos priežastys, dėl kurių vėliava laikoma rasizmo ir baltųjų suprematizmo simboliu. Autoriaus teigimu, nepaisant kai kurių rokabilio muzikos atstovų požiūrio į vėliavą kaip tariamai nepolitinį, ilgalaikį rokabilio simbolį, vis didėjanti baltųjų suprematizmo ir radikalios dešinės politikos grėsmė tarptautiniu mastu paverčia šį požiūrį nepagrįstu. Straipsnyje daroma išvada, kad rokabilio muzikos atstovai tiek JK, tiek Europoje galėtų ir turėtų atsisakyti vėliavos neprarasdami savo kultūrinio tapatumo.
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