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This article examines the identity and communication difficulties that immigrants or their descendants face when trying to adjust to their new home while preserving their old cultural values. As it tries to offer a general perspective of these issues, the present article relies on a rich but synthesized critical framework and borrows examples from well-known texts such as: Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Third and Final Continent", Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Monica Ali's Brick Lane, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "The Teacher", Yiyun Li's A Thousand Years Of Good Prayers and Hari Kunzru's "Raj, Bohemian" in order to facilitate the understanding of the existence in multiple an in-between spaces.
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Overtime, the Romanian Orthodox Church has suffered a series of significant and decisive transformations. Thus, taking in order to survive and be able to maintain its position in society, its leaders accepted to make sacrifices which implied being part of the political system. Hence, in order to prevent massive atheisation, a new political-social-spiritual interference occurs, that has both beneficial and harmful effects. This way, the Romanian Orthodox Church gets involved in several identity crises, but through the collective consciousness and historical sacrifices, it manages to regain its position in society.
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În centrul analizei de faţă se află imaginea de sine a criptoprotestanţilor austrieci (protestanţi tăinuiţi) din secolul al XVIII-lea, aşa cum se prezenta ea înaintea transmigrării acestui grup de populaţie în Transilvania. Mai apoi analiza urmăreşte transformările instituite la ciocnirea landlerilor – cum va fi denumită această populaţie în Transilvania – cu realităţile transilvănene, marcate la rândul lor de complicatele maşinării ale administraţiei săseşti, de toleranţă şi intoleranţă deopotrivă. Materialul insistă mai ales asupra experienţei individuale a celor proscrişi din cauza confesiunii protestante, bazându-se pe surse cu caracter de experienţă individuală nemijlocită – cum ar fi scrisori, texte de interogatoriu, scrieri memoriale, notiţe biografice, jurnale de familie.
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The present paper aims at unveiling the narrative challenges posed by the critically acclaimed novel, 'How the Garcìa Girls Lost Their Accents'. Drawing on her life, Julia Álvarez's first novel proves a page-turner, sprinkled with witticisms and scrambled English sayings that underlie powerful messages. High-spirited characters, in pursuit of their happiness, Julia Álvarez's imaginary projections prompt readers to dwell on their voices long after they have finished reading the novel. I entirely agree that the Dominican American writer, Julia Álvarez, succeeds in committing to readers' memory a well-articulated, vibrant literary work that vividly captures the ebb and flow of living as an immigrant in America.
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Among the priority objectives of the Romanian educational policy, highlighted after 1990, which are convergent with the objectives of the European dimension, we may note: the democratization of the Romanian educational system, the improving quality of education, special focus on the social role of education, the development of Romanian cultural values, promoting Romanian culture identity in the world culture, training responsible active citizens to contribute to the development of a democratic society. The compatibilization of the Romanian educational system with European structures and systems involve the following lines of action: reducing the amount of information and educational programs in the European curriculum, converting reproductive education to creative education, improving infrastructure and widespread electronic communication, building partnerships between educational institutions and the economic, administrative and cultural environment, educational management oriented towards competitiveness and performance. Among the lines taken into account in the reform of Romanian education, the reform of the curriculum is an essential segment and this is now a distinct theme in the sciences of education. The program of the curricular reform is a coherent approach to the national education policy, designed and developed according to current European trends and practices.
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An intercultural approach of the educational problem draws as action direction towards recognizing representations, references and values within diversity, towards sustaining the dialogue and the ideas exchange among the persons and the groups whose axiological perspectives are different, various and not rarely divergent. Once communication phenomenon was overspread, cultures ad identities could change and all of them participate, in the meantime, in transforming other cultures, but also in their own transformation process, aspect that from a perceiving and practical point of view constitutes a dialectic relationship with specific material forms, according to two coordinates space and time.
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From the perspective of anthropology, play is defining the human being as art and religion. Starting from the "homo ludens" concept, I turned my attention to the traditional children's games in the village of Mândra, Braşov County, because the local variants of childhood folklore are the vectors of a cultural specificity that identifies a community.
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The migrations from Yugoslavia after the Second World War, which are of importance for this paper, started as early as in the 1950s, got more and more complex, and became the key socio-political and economic process. Leaving for West-European countries where they later settled permanently, the migrants were developing the new cultural context in which they live even today. In this paper, I will focus on the Serbs who settled in Vienna, Austria. Having moved into the new, unknown area, where they did not know the language or the cultural context well enough, the Yugoslavs started forming a place around which they would gather together and the place which they would use for the connection and identification with the mother country. Thus, in the 1970s, in Vienna, the Yugoslavs organized themselves and formed their first clubs. In this paper, my aim is to get an insight into the historical context of the beginnings and the development of these Yugoslav clubs, which, following the conflict national ideologies in their mother countries, started dividing on the national basis during the 1980s after which today’s national-ethnic clubs (Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian etc.) appeared. In the end, I will try to make a short summary, in diachronic terms, of the operating policy and the representation of primarily Serbian clubs, since I cover their policies in my field research, and thus make this paper the basis for further and wider research related to this topic
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The aim of this paper is to present the ways and forms in which traditional media have adapted to the digital world, primarily to the Internet social networks and the interactive possibilities provided by them. The research question is: do and to what extent the traditional media use the opportunities offered by social media. During the search for the answer to this question, the results of this academic research and the results obtained from the in-depth interviews with the editors of the web sites of the six leading traditional media in Serbia carried out by the author of this paper were analyzed. The conclusion is that traditional media use social networks predominantly to promote their online editions, and that those media which want to be influential in this filed use social network sites as a source of information and generate a new genre - a live blog.
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In this paper I show identity construction o f FC Obilić, Belgrade. Material for the research is collected in the first half of the 2002 and it is consisted of the monograph published for the club’s 75th anniversary, club advertisement materials (T-shirts and calendars) and the club’s museum. Discourse analyse used in the paper is the combination of the Foucaultian understanding of discourse and more “practical” use o f the term used in linguistics and conctructivistic psychology. Analysis is supplemented by Leach’s analyses of symbols’ logic usual in our ethnology. Taking into consideration that analysed materials are official representing materials of the club, discourse analyse used in the paper show club’s official ideology that could vary from that of the players of team’s supporters. Analyses shows that dominant discourse on which Obilid based its identity is combination of national ideology (very much based on the ideas of Orthodox Christianity and national heroism) and ideas of modernity formed in the selective use of “western values”. Basic identity connection established in the materials I used is between Serbianhood, Obilić (and football more generally, Arkan and modernity).
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Celebration o f Family patron’s day is very widespread among Serbs in general. The traditional model of celebration suffered many changes, which in practice resulted in many variations in terms of its form. Regardless of its relatively simple form of celebration, Family patron’s day still represents a very complex, amalgamating and multifunctional custom. In addition to religious aspects (both pagan and Christian), the celebration itself contains important social and symbolic ethnic identity issues. The latter one is the most emphasized among the Serbs living in Hungary. This paper briefly describes informants’ views with respect to the holiday as a symbol of ethnicity, and the holiday’s present day forms of celebration.
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Vasilica and Djurdjevdan are the two most important holidays in the yearly cycle among the Roma of Vranje (Southern Serbia). While they connect the celebration of Djurdjevdan (6th of May) mainly with the culture of the Serbian majority group (whose elements they assimilate, giving them a specific interpretation), Vasilica is considered to be a true Roma holiday. During the discussions, all the informants emphasized that Vasilica is the most important Roma holiday, more significant than Djurdjevdan. Vasilica consists of two segments. The date of the first one, which can be called the preparation, greeting and celebration of Vasilica, is a fixed one (from 12th to 17th of January, 14th of January being the actual holiday), while the date of the second segment — farewell to the goose — is set individually by every household. This paper offers a thick description of both segments of Vasilica, depicting the way it has been celebrated between 2001 and 2004 in the settlements Gornja Čaršija and Sarajina of Vranje. It also includes selected statements of the informants, as well as the text of the local TV broadcast dedicated to the celebration of Vasilica. The different explanations of the origin o f this most important Roma holiday, in light o f the current identity problems in Serbia — both of the majority and of the minority group — point to the complexity and polysemy o f the answer to the question: Who am I? The aim of this paper is to offer an empirical insight into the situation.
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Immigrant organisations decisively influenced the gathering of Serbs in Chicago and the formation of their ethnic community. These organisations also contributed to the preservation of their ethnic identity. A part from that, they influenced the formation of the specific culture of American Serbs, as well as the affirmation of the immigrants in the wider American society.
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In this paper the author deals with the issue of ethnic identification of the contemporary Serbian community / national minority in Hungary. Several aspects of the problem are taken into account: self-identification, symbols of identity and the criteria of belonging to the group, dual identity and the distance “us:them ” .
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The article discusses the influence of western subcultures on the Polish stadium hooligans and analyses the symbols and gestures characteristic of these groups, as well as outlines the Polish stadium symbolism. On the basis of her own research, the author provides the answers to the following questions: Which dominates at the Polish stadiums – symbolism or gestures? What kinds of symbols are most frequently used by the Polish pseudo-football fans? The author also determines the times when this symbolism was demonstrated the most often, and lists the places where certain symbols were frequently exhibited, as well as the types of matches (home and international) during which it happened.
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This article aims at presenting the pseudo-football fans subculture with a view to their individual and group activity, as well as the selected tactical rules and methods of recognising and detecting the so-called stadium crimes and offences. Attention has also been paid to the importance of information in the countering the phenomenon and the special role of using the overtly intelligence sources in the actions of the services responsible for security and public order as a whole.
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Vuk Karadžić avait enregistré dans son Dictionnaire, publié en 1818, les suivants noms ethniques du peuple albanais: Arnautin („Albanais”), Arnautka („Albanaise”); ensaite le toponyme Arnautluk („Albanie”); l’adjectif arnautski, -ka, -ko („albanais, e”); le verbe arnautiti; le substantif arnauienje et les autres. Tout cela est enregistré dans la partie lexicale de la langue serbe. Dans la partie allemande du Dictionnaire il a cité les exemples suivantes : Albanese et Arnaut, Amautinn; Albanien, albanesisch; Arnauten machen; das Albanisieren; et en latin: Albanus, Albana; le toponyme Albania; l’adjectif albanus, -a, -um et les expressions : facto esse Albanum; more albani. Vuk a emprunté de la langue turque l’ethnique Arnaut (in) et ses dérivés, en les adaptant à la langue serbe par les suffixes généralement. Le terme ethnique ottoman pour les Albanais Arnaut est dérivé du grec moyen Arvanitis (Arbanitis, Albanites) par l’omission de la terminaison -is (-es), par la métathèse v-n > n-v, ensuite par le changement i-u après v. Le terme ethnique Albanese et le dérivé albanesisch (au lieu de Albaner et albanisch), que Vuk avait enregistré dans son Dictionnaire, a été employé alors dans cette forme sous l’influence de la langue italienne. Les noms ethniques dont on parle dans la partie latine de ce Dictionnaire, ont la forme usitée dans cette langue: Albanus, Albana; Albania. Ces formes se sont élargies tout d’abord dans les langues romanes et plus tard dans les autres langues, ainsi qu’elles sont devenues aujourd’hui les noms nationaux communs, c’est-à-dire le nom du pays des Albanais.
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For the first time in the modern era, the most powerful state in the world – which is supposed to become China – will not be one of the West and will be one with very different civilization roots. In the West, there is a widespread assumption that as countries modernize, they also westernize, but on the Chinese case, this is an illusion. At the same time, there is an assumption that modernity is a simple product of competition, markets and technology. But that’s not the case. Modernity is equally shaped by history and culture. China is not like the West nor will it become like this. It will remain fundamentally different in many aspects. The question is how can we try to understand what China is? In this regard, the problem we face in the West is that there is a conventional approach on China by which we understand it through western terms, using western ideas. What is clear is that using western concepts we cannot understand anything about this state. The world can be understood and interpreted only within particular cultural and linguistic framework. Each state owns specific lenses through which it perceives the world and so is China. We need to be very objective and seek getting a sense of the shades which make China being Chinese. There is a specific Chinese identity and strategic culture we need to discover and try to understand it in order to make clear what truly represents the nowadays Chinese doctrine and also how the future may be shaped.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore to what extent the violence in Southern Thailand is the product of a hybrid insurgency (a concept understood more along the lines of what research literature calls “criminal insurgency”). Today, in the aftermath of Ukraine, it is fashionable to talk about hybrid warfare. But it may be useful to understand this hybridization of conflict in the larger context of what former SACEUR, Admiral James Stavridis called convergence (and where the possibilities may be endless): ”the merger of a wide variety of globally mobile human activities, each of them individually dangerous but representing a far greater threat when they combine”. I will proceed by defining the problem and by showing why this is mainly an insurgency. In this context, it is important to understand how the Thai state handled the challenge posed by the communist insurgent groups during the Cold War, with a focus on what lessons where learned at the time, but later forgotten. The enabling factors and causes that triggered the relapse of the insurgency in 2004 and set the ground for the current violence will be assessed in the fourth part. In the final part, I will focus on explaining how the traditional insurgency evolved gradually into a criminal type insurgency and will try to suggest ways to deal with this phenomenon.
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