We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
Prisoners can reduce jail terms by 30 days for each work of ‘scientific value’ they publish.
More...
European Commission ponders disciplinary action; media watchdogs howl over Warsaw’s ‘violation of fundamental EU values.’
More...
The history of Roma was asserted as soon as social awareness of the ethnic group has been raised. The rationalism,cosmopolitanism and the peculiarity of the 18th and 19th centuries ensured a major support with this regard. The interest in the Roma was generated by the discovery of the Orient which fascinated the Western World due to its ethnic and cultural diversity. Thus, the cosmopolitanism and peculiarity of this alternate world, the closeness of the "noble savage" have created a topos in the literary world.
More...
History played and still plays an important role in the nation building process in Romania. When occurring, in a rather silenced historians' world, the debates are always among equals and do not touch issues related to the Other, such as the deep scars of the Romanian past, for example Roma slavery. There is no room yet for the Roma in the Romanian master narrative. Oral history might be a challenge for the master historical narrative, because it provides a voice to those not belonging to the dominant group, it is still highly conditioned by the limits imposed by the Roma-non-Roma dialogue. Roma tell sometimes different stories, in a different manner, other times they tell similar stories in similar manner with the non-Roma. I argue that these narratives, collected from the Roma, are more often than not complementary rather than contrasting to the non-Roma narratives and they are essential both for writing about and understanding the communist regime in Romania as a whole. This chapter deals with the content and shape of Roma life stories, trying to analyze how and what Roma say - or do not say - when remembering the(ir) past.
More...
Cortorari Gypsy communities in Transylvania describe them selves as being different from other Gypsy "nations" living in this area.When the discussion reaches the subject of the community/communities of Cortorari/ Căldărari (copper smiths) they emphasize the most important thing that we should take in to consideration: the strict tradition applied in various aspects of everyday life. The article is based on oral history interviews conducted during two field research campaigns in some of the(mostly former) Copper smiths Roma communities. It aims at analysing the Cortorari’s identity/ identities in post-war Transylvania in terms of their traditions and how these have changed or not over the years in the Cortorari’s everyday, family and professional life. Some of the research questions the essay aims to provide answers to are: How are traditions maintained and transferred from one generation of Cortorari to another? How is "modernization" perceived and how does it emerge and influence the community? How do elder and young Cortorari Roma perceive or relate to them? What changes (if any) does the young generation notice in terms of their traditions? And how does the clash between tradition and modernization influence the young generations of Cortorari? Some relevant answers can be provided based on the interviewees’ recollection of their past as a group permanently connected with the Romanian society, finding sometimes pertinent explanations, often of historical nature, for the changes they have undergone as an ethnic group in post-war Transylvania.
More...
The present article aims to analyse the manner in which Roma women from the town of Sebes remember their lives during the Communist era, with emphasis on their memories in regard to their work environment, when participation in the labor market was mandatory and according to the law everyone who was able to work, was required to do so.Using the methodology of oral history, it will be studied how Roma women, who were employed in factories of the town, relate to their workplace while bringing into attention aspects such as relations between minority-majority, gender issues, nostalgia towards the Communist era, differences between the urban and rural environments, potential mentality changes and behavioral changes.
More...
The aim of this paper is to trace the correlations between socio-economic status and stereotypes in the construction of the identity of the Romani minority. To this end the paper will focus mainly on contemporary representations of the Romani people in American media, in particular the reality TV show My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding and other related shows, such as Jersey Shore and its British spin-off, Geordie Shore. In the analysis I will be interested mostly in how stereotypes are made to fit the general format of the show and, in the case of My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding, repackaged as authentic ethnic culture. The aim of the comparison is to illustrate the fact that, though both Jersey Shore and My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding claim to offer an insight into the everyday lives of a particular ethnic minority, both shows follow a similar frame that has little to do with their respective subjects’ ethnic background and more to do with their social and economic background. The overlap between social and ethnic background can prove to be particularly problematic in the case of the Roma, since there is a distinct lack of counter-narratives and, historically, Romani cultural identity has always been tied to a particular social and economic class. Thus I will also attempt to integrate these representations into a broader historical perspective on the formation of Romani identity in order to better understand the problematic nature of contemporary representations of the Roma.
More...
The right to the environment is one of the fundamental rights of the individual and collective rights. Hence, the legal environmental protection also requires ethical and economic elements that are derived from the principle of precautionary. Its assessment should always be interpreted in the context of the cultural changes taking place to promote new aims and values. Because of that, nowadays legal environment protection is is combined with the principle of sustainable development, which requires foresight in anticipating the possible consequences of human activities. Given the intensive development of technologies based on the use of living biologi- cal systems are as complicated as issues of intergenerational justice. Balanced deve- lopment policy, thus solving problems of resource use, taking into account the integrity of the nature's various elements. It requires education and development of environmental ethics witch should be understood as restrictive ethics, i.e. selection and willingness not to abuse the available resources. That ethics consists of accoun- tability and respect for future generations which also have the right to inherit the environment that fits for life and provides opportunities for development.
More...
The article is devoted to the analysis of the dominant ideal of beauty in the Victorian period. The author defi nes mechanisms of repression and symbolic violence over the body of the Victorian upper-class woman, connected with the phenomenon of social control over the woman’s body and identity. The author assumes that the desire to achieve physical beauty has always been a source of a biographical experience that was constitutive for a woman, a source of a separate identity for her in comparison with a man. The historical changes of the ideals of the beautiful body are expressive of the complex interactions between the social roles of women and the dominant ideology of femininity as well as scientifi c and medical knowledge.
More...
Тhe work provides an overview of the history of the production, use of salt and beliefs connected to it in Europe, including folk medicine and magic. Further words denoting salt and idioms and formulae reffereing to salt are discussed on by juxtaposition of Slavic, Balkan, Germanic, and other languages.
More...
The main purpose of this article is to look at local politics from political sciences perspective and topropose the understanding of local politics as, quite opposite to the dominating political narratives,a field of ideological character. We divide the text into two main parts: in the first one we focusmainly the theoretical side of the whole issue with its specifics and the issues of the political and ideological character of this level of political scene. In the second part it is our intention to closelyexamine the current political practices in this matter – basing, most of all, on the phenomenon ofpolish „urban movements”, and draw conclusions on the actual essence of (non)political characterof Polish local politics.
More...
Current debates about racism seem to be dominated by two main approaches: theory of cultural racism and the Marxist problematization of racism as a result of contradictions in economic and political spheres. The most recent conceptualization of the first orientation build on anti-essentialist notion of culture and identity developed by a number of authors disputing the problem of multiculturalism in the 1990s. One can refer to researchers such as Zygmunt Bauman, Ash Amin and Simon Weaver as representatives of this approach suggesting that race is a category constructed as the consequence of complex political and historical-cultural processes. Marxist perspective should be understood to a large extent as a criticism of the first orientation. Adherents of this camp (Edna Bonacich, Eric Hobsbawm or James Blaut) argue that all the „discursive strategies of racialization” analyzed within the cultural racism paradigm are a reflection of – or, more precisely: the façade hiding – more basic mechanisms in the sphere of production and productive relations (economic base): the exploitation of labor as a consequence of the capitalist pressure to minimize costs and maximize capital accumulation, made possible thanks to the existence (and maintenance) of „reserve army of labor” (displaced residents of villages during the industrial revolution as described by Marx; and cheap labor in the colonial plantation-slavery system and in peripheral zones and within postnational civic-immigrant societies of the contemporary world-system). I would like to emphasize a need to provide an approach combining, synthesizing together the two above theories where racism would be defined as a common thread of racist phenomena in concrete, historical narratives and practices. It is necessary to avoid both the „liquidation„ of the problem of racism, reducing it to a set of elusive tensions between social and discursive positions on one hand, and translating it exclusively (while looking for a „subject of emancipation”, ways to end the economic exploitation and complete the process of „national liberation”) onto the domain of instrumentalization of ethnic and cultural differences – on the other hand. This strategy may prove fruitful in reflections on contemporary racist tendencies avoiding oversimplifications on one hand and too hasty analogies – on the other.
More...
The text narrates the story of the printed edition of Andrzej Słowaczyński’s vaudeville Chłopiec studukatowy, which was the first to include the golden duck legend. It reconstructs the cultural and topographical context of the 1830 performance in Teatr Rozamitości in Warsaw (Variety Theater), and traces its phonological paradoxes. The vaudeville parodied Ferdinand Raimund’s Chłop milionowy, and today it remains a valuable testimony of both urban and regional folklore. Additionally, it exposes the social-spatial perceptions of the 19th-century Varsovians. Paradoxically, Chłopiec studukatowy owes its resulting commercial success to the literary, albeit cursory interpretations of the legend which followed.
More...