Keywords: anthropology; postsocialism; transition; academism; Slovenia
This article addresses some of the aspects the academic sphere, science and intellectual culture under postsocialism offer for the understanding of transition issues in contemporary Slovenia. It starts with the surprise that has been caused by the bizarre commodification and domestication of anthropology in Slovenia, particularly at Slovenian universities, after 1990s, and tries to reflect social reception, institutional organization and academic status of anthropology in this country. Furthermore, through a specific case study of a violent debate which recently took place in Slovenia concerning the reasons for the absence of Slovenian universities on the notorious list of top 500 world universities, it tries to illustrate the essence of how academic spheres in transitional societies function. The conclusion presents some elements of social hypocrisy and discrepancy. It reveals certain facts that have taken place within the last few years, and thus helps us understand the contribution of the Slovenian state administration for science to the process of systematic transformation of this autonomous social domain of highly intellectual work into a turbo-neoliberal enterprise of wageworkers, academic lumpenproletarians, anti-intellectual jobbers, profiteers and money-spinners.
More...Keywords: Dimitrije Ljotić; Zbor; ideology; collaboration;
This article is an attempt at tracing the early ideological influences of Dimitrije Ljotić, founder and leader of the ZBOR party (1935–1940), and a leading ideologue of the collaborationist Government of National Salvation (1941–1944) under General Milan Nedić. This article will highlight the complexity and heterogeneity not only of Ljotić’s formative personal ideological development, but also the ideological precursors of his ideological synthesis in a wider European context.
More...Keywords: collective representations;collective memory;myths;stereotypes;collective identity
The aim of the text is to define and examine the concept of collective representations which was introduced by Émile Durkheim many years ago, but since that not many scholars have brightly analysed it. According to the author, collective representations can be described as the system of following elements: myths and stereotypes, collective memory, collective identity, axio-normative system (including culture and religion) and collective emotions. All the elements mentioned aboveThe aim of the text is to define and examine the concept of collective representations which was introduced by Émile Durkheim many years ago, but since that not many scholars have brightly analysed it. According to the author, collective representations can be described as the system of following elements: myths and stereotypes, collective memory, collective identity, axio-normative system (including culture and religion) and collective emotions. All the elements mentioned above are related to each other, so one can say that the system constantly works. That is why collective representations are not constant, they regularly evolve according to political atmosphere and ideological context.
More...Keywords: biographical epiphanies;context of laying;foundations of the qualitative thought collective
More...Keywords: Radicalisation; Russia; Muslim communities; ethno-political conflicts;
The phenomenon of ‘Islamic radicalism’ is an extremely significant one for Russia because of at least two circumstances: a) there areabout 20 million Muslims living in Russia (including 3.5 to 4 million migrant Muslims), and b) in the 15 years since the collapse of the USSR,Russia has been shaken by ethno-political conflicts with an apparent confessional component. Russia’s Muslim community is not uniform. Singled out in it may be two socio-cultural realms, the Northern Caucasian and the Tatar-Bashkir (for simplicity we call it Tatar), which, as a consequence of increased migrations, have recently been in active contact with each other alongside the direct participation of a third force – Central Asian Muslims. Without touching upon the differences between them, we note one characteristic: in the Northern Caucasus, radical tendencies and sentiments are stronger than in the rest of Russia. This characteristic sometimes makes it necessary separately to describe processes and situations related to Islamic radicalism.
More...Keywords: Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast; Slovakia; political identity;
For Slovakia, all of whose administrative regions may be considered as border regions since each of them has a certain area that lies along the national border, it is important to understand the situation in border areas and what forms and opportunities for regional cross-border cooperation are on the horizon. In this respect, the Prešov Self-Governing Region (eastern Slovakia) and Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast are no exception.
More...Keywords: Croatia; ARK; antiwar; 90s; politics; activism;
Politički aktivizam može biti opasan pothvat za one koji u njemu sudjeluju i gotovo uvijek frustrira one protiv kojih je upravljen. Organiziranje proturatnih građanskih inicijativa i sudjelovanje u njima posebno je kompleksno u zajednici koja sebe percipira kao žrtvu oružane agresije. U takvim okolnostima, otpadnici dolaze u nesiguran položaj: svoju odanost društvu u kojem djeluju afirmiraju artikuliranjem jednog vrijednosnog sistema različitog od onoga koji je široko prihvaćen. Na početku ratova za jugoslavensko nasljeđe, kada je Jugoslavenska narodna armija pod vodstvom srpskih oficira počela granatirati Vukovar, hrvatski građanski aktivisti i aktivistkinje našli su se u takvoj situaciji. Kako su sukobi postajali intenzivniji i približavali se Zagrebu na manje od 50 kilometara, aktivisti su se suočili sa dilemom: kako javno izraziti svoje proturatne osjećaje i istodobno priznati pravo sunarodnjaka na oružanu samoobranu. Antiratna kampanja Hrvatske (ARKH), mreža proturatno orijentiranih pojedinaca i pojedinki, građanskih inicijativa i organizacija, proizašla je iz brojnih nastojanja aktivistkinja i aktivista da nađu pravi omjer između potrebe da se, s jedne strane, spriječi sveopću militarizaciju njihovog društva, a s druge, da se ne ospori legitimnost upotrebe oružja ili pribjegavanja vojnoj intervenciji.
More...Keywords: aging; quality of life, education; third age;
Data on demographic trends in developed countries indicate the need for increased attention and a better approach to care for older adults. Better health care results in increased life expectancy, which as such poses certain challenges to society. Life expectancy accompanied by good health alone often does not guarantee an individual’s satisfaction. Due to an accelerating pace of life and continuous lifestyle changes, social exclusion of retired older adults from the community appears to be increasingly present. To reduce the occurrence of this phenomenon and enable this population group to remain active members of the community, it is important to offer them the opportunity for education. After the analysis of European trends, the paper points out the need for continuous strategic planning and more agile organization of education in the Republic of Croatia. Special attention is given to the situation in the city of Osijek, which is a center for education in Osijek-Baranja County. The types and usefulness of the most common forms of education conducted in the period from 2015 to 2020 are also presented.
More...Keywords: language education; foreign language teaching; culture; culture pedagogy; diachronic analysis
The main purpose of the article is to diachronically illustrate the most important paradigms of teaching culture in glottodidactics (language education), understood in an interdisciplinary perspective as a field that combines sciences such as pedagogy, psychology, sociology and culturology. One of the research areas of language education is teaching foreign languages, which plays a particularly important role in promoting the knowledge of other cultures, (inter)cultural skills, as well as appropriate attitudes towards the representatives of these cultures. The perception of cultural issues has changed with the development of language teaching methodology. In the era of the dominance of the formalistic approach, from the mid-nineteenth century, the monocultural-national model prevailed, since the second half of the twentieth century the paradigm has changed: the culture-oriented model by ‘small k’ has developed, then, the intercultural model, and finally the transnational one. The article presents their most important characteristics and discusses socio-political conditions that have brought about changes in the cultural worldview.
More...Keywords: biohumanities; integration of sciences; complementarism
Since the late 1990s, there has been a transformation both of traditional understandings of the humanities as a field where humans as social beings are central and of the commonplace opposition of interpretative and experimental sciences. What is evident is a revival of discussions on the integration of the humanities and natural sciences. In this text, I offer an analysis of particular contexts in which the term “biohumanities” appears alongside an outline of selected cases where there has been a crossing of the biological and the social. My research here shows that the current “biological turn” in the humanities and social sciences is leading to fundamental transformation of understanding of the human, life, kinship, lineage and community, as well as of emotions, consciousness, and free will. In bringing about the integration of the humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and Earth sciences, biohumanities (alongside ecohumanities and geohumanities) often offers a way of transcending “cultural determinism”. The examples of complementary research presented here on the ontology of human remains and the environmental history of mass graves demonstrate that the monoculture of the humanities and social sciences often limits and indeed sometimes prevents the development of interesting research questions that would expand knowledge on particular phenomena. It can even leave certain questions out of bounds as it promotes hermeneutics as the fundamental mode of analysis.
More...Keywords: Michel Vieuchange; Smara; animal; desert; ecopoetics; travel
The present paper focuses on the travel notes by Michel Vieuchange (1904-1930), a young Frenchman who decided to explore Smara, a holy Muslim city, forbidden to foreigners and situated in the middle of the desert. The aim of the paper is to analyse the travelogue from an ecopoetic perspective, that is to show how this difficult, lonely and exhausting travel (Vieuchange reaches Smara, but dies on his way back home) affects the way the traveler describes his contacts with non-humans. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one shows how Vieuchange depicts in his notes animals, and particularly flies and camels. The second reveals his attitude towards the desert and the last one focuses on the way he describes Smara.
More...Keywords: predator; victim; new sensitivity; heroism; victimization; Dieudonné
The article presents an analysis of Belgian author Adeline Dieudonné’s bestselling novel "True Life" in relation to contemporary humanistic reflection on the relationship between humans and animals, in particular by such philosophers as Jacques Derrida or Elisabeth de Fonteney. The novel is also analysed in the context of the emergence of a new sensitivity, which Jean-Marie Apostolidès labels as the “culture of victimization”. The purpose of the hunting images appearing in the novel is to criticize traditional cultural codes related to the “culture of heroism” (Apostolidès), responsible for shaping interpersonal relationships on the basis of the predator-victim relation. Dieudonné postulates the need to redefine traditional social roles, and also treats her work as a form of literary “intervention” aimed at creating conditions for non-aggressive coexistence of all living beings.
More...Keywords: animal; coexistence; ecocriticism; humanity; non-human; Louis Pergaud
This article provides insight into the works of a French writer, Louis Pergaud (1882-1915), seen through an ecocritical lens. The study of Pergaud’s animal texts: De Goupil à "Margot" (1910), "La Revanche du corbeau: nouvelles histoires de bêtes" (1911) and "Dernières histoiresde bêtes" (posthumous edition, 2020) reveals that the author can be seen as a precursor of “environmental writings”. The way in which Pergaud sensitizes us to the animal suffering and to the fact that the boundary between the human and the animal species is hard to break will be examined. The said boundary impedes the redefinition of our relationship with the non-human actors, which is yet necessary. Also the language used by the author in order to bring closer the two realities – the animal and the human one – and his willingness to ensure them a more peaceful coexistence will be analysed.
More...Keywords: Vintilă Horia; diary; dreams; visions; Saint Clare of Assisi; threshold;
Written in French and Romanian, Vintilă Horia’s autobiographical work dedicates an important amount of space to the recounting of dreams: memorable nocturnal dreams, as well as poignant daytime reveries of the self that tells of itself are transcribed, often commented upon and interpreted. The writer pays extreme attention to signs, that is to say, in baudelairian terms, to the forest of symbols he traverses. On the other hand, the experience of exile and wandering, so painful to the author, have elevated the Home Country, in his view, to the status of an absolute, mythical and heavenly place, and thus have created inside his subconscious a parallel geography of the world. However, sometimes, this particular type of experience, which is situated on the plane of the “imaginal world” (Henri Corbin), increases in intensity with lightning speed: a certain oneirical threshold is crossed without warning; and then we readers find ourselves, in the company of the subject expressing himself but also through him, immersed in the midst of a visionary space. These are some of the most important aspects that we aim to briefly analyse in this paper, browsing through a remarkable autobiographical body of texts, comprising some 1500 pages, that this great exile and Goncourt winner (1960) has left behind.
More...Keywords: interim space; dream vs reality; cultural frontiers; time; threshold;
"The Second Chance" [La Seconde Chance] is the second novel that C. V. Gheorghiu, the Romanian writer of French expression, published in France, after the Second World War. The author considers that the title mirrors perfectly the definition of the exiled and his intention of highlighting the drama of the man that is forced to leave his own country and live in another space - a « second hand life » perceived as a second chance. The space imagined in the narrative is dualistic, with characters pondering between identity and otherness, interior and exterior, the threshold among these two universes being s symbolic of freedom and captivity. This paper has the objective of identifying the meanings that C. V. Gheorghiu attributes to the space of the action and to the cultural content featured by the binary construction of the spatial coordinates.
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