“How We Understand Populism?” Popular Responses to Populist Politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Maja Bojanić,Valida Nikšić / Language(s): English / Issue: Special 2/2019

The new populist tendencies that characterize much of the modern globalized world have not bypassed the new democracies in the post-Communist countries. The pattern of populism tends to adjust to different societal contexts and while much research, both theoretical and empirical, on this phenomenon has been conducted in the countries of the European West, literature is scarce concerning the rise of populism in the European periphery. Additionally, populism has existed in the United States and South America, but its recent manifestation in the former Socialist states, starting from the 1990s, remains greatly under-researched. In fact, populist tendencies in national politics are especially interesting to study in post-transition countries that experienced destructive conflicts in the period following the collapse of Communism. Bosnia and Herzegovina is precisely such a country. Hence, the purpose of this article is to analyse and clarify the specificities of modern populism in the Bosnian political sphere, which is marked by ethnic divisions and ethno-nationalist tendencies rooted in the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords which ended the 1992–1995 war. More precisely, this study will explain the ways in which populism generates power for the ethno-nationalist elites and reinforces their political and economic supremacy. Applying discourse that emphasizes the permanent antagonisms between the three major ethnic groups, fear, belligerence and the “us” vs. “them” paradigm, right-wing populists rely on prosaic rhetoric which undermines the country’s re-integration and societal healing, as well as its Euro-Atlantic integration. Against the backdrop of classical works on populism, we examine the populist behavior and tendencies of major populists in terms of the following indicators: the role of language and culture; ethnicity (the “us” vs. “them” discourse) and promotion of cultural harmony through emotions and simple language (the focus here is on ethnic harmony), coupled with anti-establishment discourse. Moreover, this study will investigate how such parties construct “the people” based on ethnicity and religion, whether their organization tends to adapt to current political trends in a “chameleon-like” way in order to achieve success, be influential in politics and connect with other parties, and what is the observed level of populism. In order to do so, we have conducted twelve interviews with respondents from the general public of voting age and of mixed ethnic backgrounds (18 years and above) across Bosnia and Herzegovina, since the parties in question hold significant power across the land.

„Автентичната“ селска депопулация на България

Author(s): Nickolay Tsekov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2017

For more than seven decades the scope and pace of depopulation of rural areas in Bulgaria have been describing as one of the most significant social evils and obstacles before the development of the country. The pace of depopulation of villages in Bulgaria in the second half of 20-th century is among the highest in the world. Although serious damages that rural depopulation has been causing to the country and to the chances of its rural areas for positive demographic, social and economic development, there are not many studies dedicated to the problems and consequences from rural flight leading to the desertification of vast no urbanized areas. In the paper below we are representing a new approach towards studying of the pace of rural depopulation. The focus is put on comparing rates of depopulation and its spatial expansion by tracking the dynamics in the number of so called “authentic” rural population. The shortest explanation of this term is that it is the population that has always been rural for the entire period of study.

„Вкупом негодни станаха“

Author(s): Ivaylo Ditchev / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

The essay discusses the reason for the marginalizaton of human and social sciences today. Besides the economic and social aspects of the problem, their decline is linked to the permanent feeling of crisis of culture itself. As well as to the deideologization of the humanitarian intelligetsia, who avoid to fight for changing of the world.

„Все още живи, но вече напуснати“: биографични образи на грижата за възрастни хора и болни от деменция

Author(s): Teodora Karamelska / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2019

The article reconstructs the biographical images of care for people of advanced age and people with dementia, in the perspective of caregivers (relatives or social assistants) in a family environment or in an institution. The author discusses the potential of religiousness and of the narrative biographical construction of identity as a therapeutic resource for dealing with borderline life situations related to aging and illness.

„Всеки ред е усилие, а не природа“. Разговор на Майя Грекова със Стефан Попов по повод на книгата му Атлантис. Дезинтеграция на политическите тела

Author(s): Maya Grekova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1-2/2017

„Всичко в името на плана, всичко за благото на плана“: за неизбежността на авариите и катастрофите в условията на социалистическата индустриализация в България. (За Д. Вачков. Аварии и катастрофи. Хроника на социалистическата индустриализация)

Author(s): Pepka Boyadjieva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2018

„Да (де)конструираш Европа: капитализъм, солидарности, субективности“ (29.08.–1.09.2017 г., Атина)

Author(s): Svetlana Hristova,Siyka Kovacheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2017

„Дайте ни мъжете, пуснете ги да си дойдат и те ще ни намерят всичко, което ни трябва“ – Първата световна война, женските бунтове и политиките на женска еманципация

Author(s): Snezhana Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2018

Studying the various forms of women’s political and civic activity during the First World War, the article reveals a different resource of women’s agency (and emancipation), i.e., the affective environment of women’s experience (their pain and their social suffering). Emphasizing the problem of (micro and macro) corruption, a specific social phenomenon that the anger of women made publicly visible, the article also stresses a new process, i.e., “becoming aware of what it means to be a woman” and “what it means to be a man” (beyond the horizon of defined gender roles). The author reveals why it was precisely the anger of women (the poor one’s, in many cases uneducated) that expressed “the horror of their coercive situation showing its face” (M. Duras). Thus, the article is an attempt to rethink the national modern project and certain mechanical and idealistic interpretations (by left-wing and right-wing historians) of the growth of political awareness among new historical subjects: the people, the workers, women. Thus the author emphasizes how the new joint communities of men and women were formed (communities that cut across gender, social and class divisions) in the course of resistance against the threatened ontology – what is in fact just and what isn’t. In this way, the moral boundaries of society were revealed (inasmuch as the fact that those boundaries were being crossed provoked joint resistance against this transgression). Along with this, other boundaries (those between good from evil) became clearly perceptible, and hence, a “new ethical society” became suddenly thinkable (a society in which hunger, bad hygiene and death from social diseases, such as typhus fever, tuberculosis, alcoholism, would no longer be part of the normal order of things). The article attempts to show how it was precisely the emancipation of (ordinary and often uneducated) women from their forced passivity and social unhappiness that contained other views of women about the social world.

„Един тъй малък свят“: Международната мрежа на социолозите франкофони във времето и пространството

Author(s): Patricia Vannier / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2017

Created in 1958 by Georges Gurvitch and Henri Janne to resist the domination of the American sociology, the international association of the sociologists of French-speaking represents the third international association of sociology today. At first, this article looks back to the circumstances of its foundation and to the stake in French as working language in international congresses to try then to establish the characteristics of this French-speaking network of the sociology in the time and the space. It examines its policy of membership, the places of its congresses and its themes but also the composition of its executive offices. So, since the 1980s, the sociologists of Maghreb and Middle East, Black Africa and Eastern Europe became a little more visible but the French-speaking network remains always dominated by France and other founding countries (Belgium, Canada and Switzerland). Finally, the world of the AISLF appears as “small world” nevertheless very necessary for the sociological plurality and its dynamism.

„Една непреведена творба е само наполовина публикувана“

Author(s): Jean-Pierre Grossein / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2015

Max Weber’s unambiguous conceptual apparatus, achieved by means of lexical systematization, should unconditionally be found in the translations of his works as well, in order to ensure the correct approach to them. To achieve this goal, it is necessary two conditions to be fulfilled: genuine linguistic competence of the translator, but also genuine understanding of the questions raised by Weber.

„Завива ли надясно“ младото поколение в посткомунистическите страни? Анализ на избрани случаи

Author(s): Krystyna Szafraniec / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1-2/2017

The characteristics of the so-called Y generation in post-Communist countries indicate that this generation is considerably disappointed by the changes; it is lost, full of fears, and willing to accept political solutions of an authoritarian and xenophobic kind. More distinctly than ever, these solutions are perceived by them as a better way of resolving their life problems related primarily to entry into adulthood (entering the labor market, creating a family, achieving status). This is evident when observing young people’s sympathies and political decisions, which, in many of these countries, indicate a clear “turn to the Right”. Although the tendency in Western countries is similar, its local background is different, and its political consequences might also be different. The paper shows the semantic complexity of the spatial aspect of Left vs. Right in order to describe, using the term “turn to the Right”, the scope and specificities of this phenomenon in several selected countries. The article also explains the factors that make young people in these countries more susceptible to Right-wing political proposals.

„Излишният“ друг: африканските специалисти, формирани в България през 1960–1990 г.

Author(s): Svetla Koleva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

Being present without traces before, living unnoticed today, the African specialists having finished their university studies in Bulgaria in the 1960s-1990s, raise the question of the relationship to the Other, of its importance in the construction of the social, of social recognition/non-recognition. What do the institutional vacuum and the administrative impasse in which African graduates from Bulgarian universities find themselves show? What does the contrast visibility–invisibility, presence–absence mean in Bulgarian society yesterday and today? Through the forms of institutionalized invisibility and daily rejection of Africans living in Bulgaria, the article problematizes the social invisibility of the Other as a social relationship that makes the Other useless, as a form of useless otherness.

„Като цветенце в асфалта, което търси да пробие“: родителски образи на деца с интелектуални увреждания и аутизъм

Author(s): Gergana Mircheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2019

The article traces the images that parents produce of their children with intellectual disabilities and autistic disorders. The analysis combines concepts, influenced by E. Goffman’s theory of stigma, on the one hand, and critical disability studies, on the other. The role of the normative discourses that filter individual response to disability is considered, but a zone of possible resistance to these discourses is also outlined. It is argued that parents’ stories contain both negative and positive representations, which are entangled, have complicated temporal dynamics and reveal ambivalent experiences. These dual images are located within several registers: denial and/or acceptance; normalcy and/or difference; punishment and/or gift; suffering and/or joy. The main aim of the study is to find out to what extent and in what forms the representations that parents provide and the hybrid children’s identities they construct, reproduce but also contest the existing normative conventions of life with disability, of parenthood, childhood, and subjectivity. The article focuses on the conventions of “normality” which have a prescriptive, and therefore, a normative character, and whose contents are determined by psycho-medical and more general socio-cultural scripts.

„Между историята и вечността“: философският избор на Мишел Фуко през 50-те години

Author(s): Elisabetta Basso / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2016

This article examines the manner in which Foucault is being related to the existential psychopathology during the 50s, according to the newly deposited Foucauldian archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2013. In particular, the text concentrates its attention on an unpublished and unedited manuscript: one of the courses of lectures at the University of Lille done by Foucault in 1952–1954, and especially the course on “Phenomenology and Binswanger” (1953–1954). While analysing this Foucault’s course of lectures where the emphasis lies on the philosophical reflexion on the anthropological problem of psychopathology, we are becoming finally able to throw some light upon Foucault’s project of analysing the historicity of the ‘forms of experience’ – a project that has been placed in the very heart of Foucauldian “archaeology” of madness in 1961.

„Ненужното“ като изследователски проблем

Author(s): Velislava Petrova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2020

The paper analyses the construction and transformation within the academic studies of the materialities related to the “wasted” or the “useless” and more precisely the phenomena of waste and garbage. The main thesis is that if we abandon the definition of waste and garbage through the notion of “uselessness” and „dirtiness, the categories of waste and garbage change. Reapplying a definition of waste as a resource transforms its status into the one of an economic phenomenon. That transformations produces its own impacts, which could be positive and related to a better treatment options or negative and related to hazardous effects on health and welfare.

„Социологически снимки“ на общества в движение. Разсъждения за „арабската пролет“

Author(s): Rahma Bourqia / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: Special/2015

In these past two years, Arab societies have witnessed uprisings that represent a challenge to sociologists trying to understand the social processes underlying the dynamics of these events. These societies are now on the forefront of the media without always being the subject of sound sociological reflection that might make a consistent contribution to sociological theory. Here lies a project that yet remains to be undertaken. It should be noted that classical sociology has focused its analysis either on the structural factors or on the function of social factors animating societies. During the past few years, a new sociology has started dealing with singularity, unpredictability of phenomena, with uncertainty and risk, within Western societies, which remain the focus of research. Without renouncing such a hegemonic sociology and its conceptual tools, sociology should be reoriented so as to grasp the movement that Arab societies are going through, within the framework of a complex sociological reality where political, socio-cultural and religious factors and strategies of actors interlace. This article raises some of the issues related to the production of sociology of societies in movement.

„Социологията на религията 1945–1989“ и по-нататък: теми, теории, издания (James Beckford. 1990. „The Sociology of Religion 1945–1989“. In: Social Compass 37 (1). 45–64)

Author(s): Nonka Bogomilova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1-2/2017

„Социологията“ на Макс Вебер: поглед откъм историята на неговото творчество

Author(s): Klaus Lichtblau / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2015

The article considers Weber’s move from history to sociology and from cultural science to verstehende sociology. While these issues are not new, this article scrutinizes them in terms of the complete history of the works of Max Weber, which are now available through the publications of the Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe. Also considered is the relation between Weber’s early use of stages theory of historical development and the individualism imputed to him. At root is the changing relation of methodology to his substantive studies in social economics, law, domination, religion and universal history.

„Съгласувано“ детство: плурализиране на родителските грижи при семейства от центъра на София

Author(s): Nevena Dimova / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2019

In this article I look at the specifics of an ever more popular model for raising children in central Sofia. In this model the everyday life of the family focuses on the extracurricular activities of the children and the engagement of the parents with their organization and realization. In the Sofia version of “concerted cultivation” (Lareau, 2011) children attend at least two after class activities which burdens them with additional work, while their parents face substantial time and financial engagements. In comparison to practices of “concerted cultivation” in other cultural contexts where extracurricular classes are seen as enrichment activities, institutionalized forms of play and children’s socialization, my contention is that among the studied families in central Sofia the engagement of children with multiple educational after school classes can be seen as a major strategy for increasing their social capital and gaining advantage in uncertain times. Parents invest in their children’s academic development to compensate for insecurities of the present and worries about the future. The instability of their own economic position, as well as their personal experiences and will to provide better alternatives for their children are the main factors which contribute to the creation of a new image of childhood by these parents – that of a work environment and preparation stage for successful future.

„Ще си затворя очите и ще опитам“ (бедността като фактор за въвличането в трафик на хора)

Author(s): Alexey Pamporov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2019

The current article discusses the research outcomes of series case studies on pre-identification of trafficking in human beings in segregated ethnic quarters in seven settlements in Bulgaria. The research methodology bases on mixed methods approach of randomized samples among households with extensive migratory experience abroad and focused group discussions with such a migrants, grounded on gender-sensitive vignette questions. Based on the quantitative dimension the economic deprivation and poverty are illustrated. Base on the quantitative finding a typology of involvement is build, considering sham marriages of single mothers (after child marriage); commercial sex services of married women forced by their husbands or within the extended family; informal commercial sex services of male heads of households; and baby-trade in the large families.