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Social Representations of Gypsies in Europe: East-West Comparison

Social Representations of Gypsies in Europe: East-West Comparison

Author(s): Velina Topalova / Language(s): English / Issue: Special/2002

Keywords: Identity Processes and Minorities in Bulgarian Contexts; social representations of Gypsies in Europe; ethnic stereotypes of Gypsies; discrimination of the Gypsies; ethnic minority; the theory of social representation; new forms of racism in East and West

Analysis of data from a large cross-cultural comparative project leaded by J.A.Perez is presented, concerning the East-West differences in social representations of Gypsies in Europe. Quantitative as well as qualitative methods have been applied (standardised interview with questionnaire and word association test). Different components of the social representation of Gypsies have been studied: ethnic stereotypes and prejudices, social distance, identification and counter-identification with the Gypsies, racist attitudes, attribution styles explaining the Gypsies discrimination and the preferred types of solutions of the Gypsies minority problem. Data showed significant East-West differences in the social representation of Gypsies. In the Eastern European countries we found a greater social visibility of Gypsies and more negative but also more ambivalent attitudes in comparison with the Western European countries. Cross-cultural differences are interpreted in the frame of the theories of social representations, ethnic stereotypes, new forms of racism and interethnic cultural interference. The assimilative/integrative types of ethnic policy and their influence on the interethnic relations in cultural-historical aspect have been also analysed.

Turkey`s Harmless Tango Between East and West

Turkey`s Harmless Tango Between East and West

Author(s): Selma Mujanović / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2013

Keywords: Turkish Foreign Policy; Neo-Ottomanism; AKP Party; EU; the Balkans; the Middle East; Central Asia

Turkey got actively involved in world politics and international relations after AKP came to power in early 2000s. Turkey`s foreign policy since AKP came to power, has the theoretical basis in Davutoglu`s Strategic Depth. New doctrines rely on historical right inherited from the Ottoman Empire, which contributed towards Turkish pro-active and multi-dimensional foreign policy. Without forgetting traditional Western allies, Turkey has established itself as a regional power in the Balkans, Middle East and Central Asia with significant success. This paper attempts to analyze how Turkey has been playing a harmless tango between its traditional allies in the West and regions in the near abroad which had made Turkey a global player in the international relations. Then, it is important to analyze Turkey's transformation and its approved role by the Western powers as a strong Islamic country with secular governance in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The Last Best West: A Canadian Myth of Success

The Last Best West: A Canadian Myth of Success

Author(s): Łukasz Albański / Language(s): English / Issue: 15/2014

This paper demonstrates how social myths play an important role in creating the collective imagination and provides a more detailed look at the Canadian frontier myth. At the turn of the twentieth century, Canada was actively promoted as the Last Best West. The idea that Canada would follow the American experience (or even that the twentieth century would be “Canada’s century”) lies behind the characteristic settlement propaganda around the turn of the twentieth century, which also lies at the core of one of the most familiar social myths – the American Dream. This paper constitutes a sociological examination of such propaganda.

East Eats West: The Multi-Centered Reality

East Eats West: The Multi-Centered Reality

Author(s): Cristina Chevereșan / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2011

Keywords: Asian-Americans; California; cosmopolitanism; diversity; hybridity; (popular) culture; Vietnam

“As someone who straddles both sides of the Pacific, my ambition is to describe the marriage of East and West, their growing interdependence and, in the footsteps of V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie and Edward Said, convey a world of human flux and shifting borders and, ultimately, redraw the map of America, one based on a trans-Pacific sensibility”. This is how Vietnamese-American writer and journalist Andrew Lam introduced himself and his intentions in the 2004 PBS documentary My Journey Home. His 2010 volume East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres sets itself to fulfill the author’s declared goals. It is a complex, intriguing, informative and touching collection of essays, which retraces Lam’s experience as a constant traveler between worlds and languages. The mechanisms of cultural definition and negotiation are sharply and wittily captured, as the writer illustrates his and his family’s gradual integration into the ‘global tribe’. Where hemispheres overlap, there are uncharted territories to explore. Lam’s personal and professional discoveries reveal the potential of contact zones and offer insightful perspectives upon (im)migration and cultural identity.

Armed Checkpoints Reemerge in Albanian West Kosovo Strongholds

Armed Checkpoints Reemerge in Albanian West Kosovo Strongholds

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English / Issue: 12/2006

Keywords: paramilitaries; illegal checkpoints; Kosovo Liberation Army; UN

Armed Albanian groups have been stopping cars and asking drivers for identification, operating the checkpoints at night on village roads. In one village near Djakovica, a bastion of the former KLA, gunfire was exchanged between the armed group and police officers.

Security Issues in the Region of South and West Balkan

Security Issues in the Region of South and West Balkan

Author(s): Norbert Pap,Péter Reményi / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2007

Keywords: West Balkans; security

Technology Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Entrepreneurship in the West Region of Romania

Technology Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Entrepreneurship in the West Region of Romania

Author(s): Alexandru Roja / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; entrepreneurial ecosystem; information technology; strategy;

Technical progress and entrepreneurship have become drivers of economic and social stability and progress. To develop their new ventures, to generate value, and to validate and implement business ideas, entrepreneurs need a competitive business environment, we name it technology entrepreneur-ial ecosystem. Entrepreneurial new ventures competitiveness depends on the entrepreneurial ecosys-tem structure and components. Our research presents the main levels of information technology in-dustry linked with technology entrepreneurial ecosystems components. In the second part of our re-search we present the entrepreneurs perception about information technology entrepreneurial eco-system in the west region of Romania. Our objective was to find out the entrepreneurs point of view about opportunities and influences that they perceive in the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Why Germany Won’t Lead the West

Why Germany Won’t Lead the West

Author(s): Klaus Bachmann / Language(s): English / Issue: 01 (15)/2015

Keywords: German-Russian relations;Euromaidan revolution;Germany;sanctions policy

In the first days of the EuroMaidan Revolution, German media, politicians and the wider public saw the events in Kyiv through a simple and affirmative lens. However, once it became clear that a full-blown conflict between Russia and Ukraine was possible, the German public quickly reverted to its well-known pacifist reflexes. This was the moment when the pro-Russian attitudes of the German public coincided with German materialistic interests in avoiding sanctions and an interpretation of the events became easily susceptible to Russian propaganda.

The East-West Split in View of the History of Ideas

The East-West Split in View of the History of Ideas

Author(s): Jadwiga Staniszkis / Language(s): English / Issue: 21/2016

Keywords: East;West;Russia;Reformation;History of ideas

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Authoress looks for “paradigm of Russianness” – i.e. stable elements in the different phases of Rus­sian history. She finds it on the meta-level as the constant, repetitive mechanism of selection and interpretation of borrowings from the West. It is joined with the mechanism of civilization East-West di­vide. Authoress opposes Western Nominalism to the construct that defines to as Byzantine Nominalism or ontology of hypostases (with the “proper existence” that must be “extracted”) and Gnosticism (i.e. the assumption that knowledge concerning of this ontology gives title to power). The Russian borrowings from the Reformation is an example of the operation of this mechanism of selection and inter­pretation. It allows to extract, from the doctrine of predestination, knowledge about the causal relationships in time (and full flexibility of this time), and from the Thomistic ontology – will as an element of the extracting of the “proper existence.”It has created a “genotype of revolutionariness” present in Russia until modern times. From this perspective, special relationships between Russia and Germany join with a diagnosis intellectual kinship of Russia with Germany – by the influence of Byzantine Nominalism on Germany (and of course via Mohylan Academy – on Russia) and easier for this reason acceptance in Russia borrowings from German. Until Marxism with his hypostasis being in itself and being for itself.THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The presented research problem concerns the specifics of Russia in the context of the history of ideas, with sources of this specificity – found in early Christianity and in the split to the East and the West. There have been applied the methods of sociological analysis of history, anthropology of power, and comparative analysis.THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: After having initially defined the aim of the study, the fundamental concepts and terms. Then they were taken preliminary considerations on the paradigm of Russianness (genesis) and devel­oping of this category (deconstruction). This issue was presented in the form of the historical process. A further part of the study describes the phenomenon of the Russian revolutionary mentality. At the end of research deliberations have been presented the problem of secularization and the differences in this process between the West and Russia.RESEARCH RESULTS: The result of the study is to clarify the influence of ancient and medieval Christian ideas on the development “paradigm of Russian­ness” and Russian “genotype of revolutionariness” in the context of the division of Europe into the East and West. With the “distorting mirror” between East and West rather than the Russian “specificity.”CONCLUSSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: The setting a European frame of reference (mainly Reformation and Counter‑Reformation as well as lack in Russia of Augustinian concept of subject and Roman vision of the authonomy of form) as the main “axis” of Russian history is a perspec­tive field of research (research proposal). This field allows to avoid simplifying stereotypical interpretations – focusing on describing the civilizational dissimilar­ity of Russia, as a separated world, and external signs of Russian imperialism, as a major carriers of sense of the Russian history and its interpretation.

Protest and Marginalized Urban Space. 1968 in West Berlin

Protest and Marginalized Urban Space. 1968 in West Berlin

Author(s): Laura Bowie / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

Keywords: 1968; architecture; identity; exclusion; protest

This paper will explore the dynamic interface between politics, urban planning, architecture and culture, during the 1968 student protests in walled West Berlin. As a city that lost its function as a capital and its place at the forefront of global politics, the marginalised city, surrounded by the communist East, became place where new ideas about Germany’s identity were trialled and contested. In 1968, students held an exhibition that condemned current construction activities as being anti-social and reflective of greater issues within German society. In brief, the students condemned the zoning of the city, the denial of the past, the displacement of tenants into satellite settlements, and the destruction of nineteenth century tenements. The students campaign caused the remote Märkisches Viertel estate to become a ‘symbolic battleground for a struggle over the values of the modern city’. Thus the reflective connection between society at large and the urban environment was forged. This paper will bring into focus the dynamic and symbiotic relationship between protest and urban space, and demonstrate how the heated issues inherent in West Berlin at the time were both played out and mapped onto the marginalised spaces of the walled city.

British Constitutional Dilemmas of the West Lothian Question

Brytyjskie dylematy konstytucyjne „pytania z West Lothian”

Author(s): Łukasz Danel / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2017

Keywords: parliament; devolution; United Kingdom; House of Commons; constitution; West Lothian Question

The article describes one of the anomalies in the British constitutional system, known as the West Lothian Question. It concerns doubts whether members of the House of Commons who represent constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be eligible to vote on matters that relate only to England. At the same time, due to the laws of devolution, English parliamentarians have no influence on legal issues settled in the legislatures of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The author outlines the historical context of this legal paradox and analyses various ideas that could solve the problem, including changes in the House of Commons procedure introduced by David Cameron’s government in 2015. In the final part of the article, this issue is also shown in the context of recent political developments that may affect the future of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Reading Uspenskij: Soviet ‘semiotics of history’ in the West

Reading Uspenskij: Soviet ‘semiotics of history’ in the West

Author(s): Taras Boyko / Language(s): English / Issue: 3-4/2017

Keywords: Boris Uspenskij; semiotics of history; Historia sub specie semioticae; cultural-semiotic approach; the Tartu–Moscow School;

The article explores the reception of Boris Uspenskij’s writings and ideas outside of the Soviet Union, primarily in Western European and North American academic contexts. The present brief overview of Uspenskij’s academic reception covers the translations of his best-known scholarly works [first and foremost “Historia sub specie semioticae” and “Istoriya i semiotika (Vospriyatie vremeni kak semioticheskaya problema)”] into English, French, Spanish, German and other European languages, as well as various references to Uspenskij’s ideas on what nowadays would be categorized as ‘semiotics of history’, or thoughts at least in some way related to the ‘cultural-semiotic approach to history’ of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.

The west and the great steppe in the history of Rus and Russia

The west and the great steppe in the history of Rus and Russia

Author(s): Marek Wojnar / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2012

Keywords: Rus; Russia; dualism of civilisation; Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev; theory of ethnogenesis; passionarity; eternal enemy

Born to the famous poets Anna Akhmatova and Nikolay Gumilev, Lev Gumilev achieved fame in his own right, in the social sciences, as the creator of the innovative historiosophic concept called the theory of ethnogenesis. The original and controversial methodology adopted by him ensured that his entire scholarly output and legacy, both during his life and after his death, was subject to interpretation only on his own terms of reference.

East-West in Academic Fiction: An Unequal Exchange?

East-West in Academic Fiction: An Unequal Exchange?

Author(s): Merritt Moseley / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Keywords: Academic novel; multilingual; Eastern Europe; AngloAmerican; university; irreverence; East-West exchange; professors; academic life;

The East-West exchange in academic fiction is seriously unbalanced, with Anglo-American novels far more common and more widely read, even in Eastern Europe, than academic novels from cultures other than the US and the UK and languages other than English. Or so I will argue, with considerable evidence to support this claim. I will discuss this imbalance and offer some suggested reasons for it, including one obvious reason—disparity in multilingual readers—and some more speculative ones including posited differences between east and west in how seriously they take the university as a setting and subject for academic fiction. I argue that Anglo-American writers, by contrast with their Eastern European counterparts, paradoxically take the university more seriously—that is, seeing the university, professors, and academic life as entirely suitable for representation in fiction, despite dissenting voices—and less seriously—that is, showing a willingness to satirize and burlesque academic life that, at least to some observers, is not just irreverent but irresponsible. Examples to support these theses will be provided but, in a way that may demonstrate their truth, most of these will be from the AngloAmerican literary world, with a much smaller number of European examples.

Images of Russia and of the West in the representations of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova

Images of Russia and of the West in the representations of the citizens of the Republic of Moldova

Author(s): Natalia Caunova,Nina Ivanova / Language(s): English,Romanian,Russian / Issue: 2/2019

Keywords: image of Russia; image of the West; social representations; characteristics of the European space;

The primary purpose of the research was to study the image of Russia in the citizens of the Republic of Moldova. The qualitative analysis of the interview showed that the respondents, describing the image of Russia, according to a number of aspects, compared it with the image of Europe. This article describes the content of the image of Europe according to a series of categories highlighted in the empirical material (the interview): personal experience of stay in Europe: labor migration, vacation, NGOs, education; English as an international language, language of modernization; project of life and image of future development in the group of youth; role of the projects and NGOs, sponsored by the EU countries; higher and more homogenous living standard, low level of corruption, effective functioning of institutions; “prestige” of Western culture (westernization, modernization, and mass culture “simplification”); values of individualistic society (income, competition, personal property, interpersonal distance). The images of Russia and Europe are viewed as opposed against each other, and the elements of comparison are presented by the respondents in support of one or another vector. Unlike the more complicated and contradictory image of Russia the image of Europe is a pragmatically positive one, for it is defined by life strategies of Moldova’s citizens.

The Yugoslav Crisis and the West: Avoiding “Vietnam" and Blundering into “Abyssinia"

The Yugoslav Crisis and the West: Avoiding “Vietnam" and Blundering into “Abyssinia"

Author(s): Sabrina Petra Ramet / Language(s): English / Issue: 01/1994

Keywords: Yugoslav crisis; West; Western powers; Bosnia and Herzegovina; international interventions; breakup of Yugoslavia; outbreak of civil war; international community;

East Europeans have repeatedly looked to the West with expectations that proved to be unrealistic. In 1848, for example, the revolutionary government of the secessionist Republic of Hungary hoped to secure diplomatic recognition from the Western powers, beginning with England, but was immediately rebuffed by Whitehall. Fifteen years later, Polish insurgents in the so-called Congress Kingdom of the Russian Empire were buoyed up by hopes that the signatories of the Vienna treaty of 1815 would intervene on their behalf. Instead, France, Britain, and Austria registered some protests in March and April, backed off in embarrassment, and finally produced a six-point denarche in June 1863 which largely disappointed the Poles. After London and Vienna blocked a French effort to convene an international conference to discuss the Polish situation, the Powers essentially left Russia alone to deal with the Poles as it saw fit. [...]

West Balkan satellite states of the soft empire of the EU

West Balkan satellite states of the soft empire of the EU

Author(s): Csaba Máté Sarnyai,Tibor Pap,Péter Bózsó / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2017

We elaborate on the relationship of Beck’s ‘soft empire’ and peripheral states, considering the EU as a non-homogeneous and non-hegemonic empire. We also work on the socio-theoretical “critique” of the so-called ‘methodological nationalism’. The starting point of a new approach is that the main problem is not any nation-building program. In our view, the reasons for the recurring, persistent problems with the issues of a nation its state and neighbours are the majority-principled decision-making and regional segmentation, and the fixed nature of borders. The emerging Balkan phenomenon of “association with a delayed or cancelled accession process” requires a new approach.

AGGRAVATING UNCERTAINTY ͵ RUSSIAN INFORMATION WARFARE IN THE WEST

AGGRAVATING UNCERTAINTY ͵ RUSSIAN INFORMATION WARFARE IN THE WEST

Author(s): Ireneusz Ciosek / Language(s): English / Issue: 13/2020

Keywords: Russian foreign policy; soft power; information operations; The West; NATO; EU

According to vast evidence material, Russia actively tries to influence the situation in Western societies by creating and aggravating uncertainty with the usage of weaponized information. It can be treated as an important part of Russian application of sharp power in the West. The purpose of the article is to explore the selected exemplifications of Russian activities and create a map of disruptive operations against the Western “hearts and minds”. The main scientific methods used in the study are desk research and content analysis. The employment of these methods is crucial to conduct the study of official Russian documents and identified cases of anti-Western information operations.

Tell el-Retaba (West) Season 2019

Tell el-Retaba (West) Season 2019

Author(s): Jozef Hudec,Veronika Dubcová,Lucia Hulková,Anna Wodzińska / Language(s): English / Issue: XXIX/2020

Keywords: Retaba; Second/Third Intermediate Period; New Kingdom; settlement; fortress; moat; cemetery;

Excavations in 2019 in Area 4 at the western edge of the site of Tell el-Retaba confirmed that the settlement activity, albeit different in nature, continued here from the Second Intermediate Period well into the Twentieth Dynasty of the late New Kingdom. This part of the site, which was a settlement in the beginning of the Second Intermediate Period (Phase G in the site chronology), was turned into a cemetery after it had been deserted, and used throughout phases G2 and G1 and into Phase F5, that is, into the early Eighteenth Dynasty. Despite this long period of use, only two cases of supraposition of tombs were recorded, both of them in 2019. In the Eighteenth Dynasty (Phases F4–F2), the excavated area was again a settlement of mud-brick houses. A rich assemblage of small finds and a battery of ovens bear testimony to a lively industrial activity or craftsmanship of its inhabitants and their long-distance contacts. The discovery of a walkway, dated to Phase D4, is an intriguing detail of Twentieth-Dynasty military architecture. Isolated finds from the Third Intermediate Period (Phase C) demonstrate the spread of the settlement, known from previous excavations, further east on the tell.

Poetics of Migration Trauma in Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West"

Poetics of Migration Trauma in Mohsin Hamid's "Exit West"

Author(s): Qurratulaen Liaqat / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2022

Keywords: Trauma; Migration; Door; Poetics; Drone; Exit West; Mohsin Hamid;

Migration has emerged as one of the most pertinent issues in the contemporary milieu. Currently, more than ever, people from many countries are being forced to migrate because of religious, social, cultural, national, racial and economic issues. This increasing trend of shifting from one place to another is causing an epistemological shift in the current milieu of human history. Exit West (2017) by Hamid is one of those novels that develops a discursive discourse of the ongoing migrant crisis, and highlights the ugly realities related to the phenomenon of relocation. It chronicles the story of two lovers, Nadia and Saeed, who migrate from their conflict-ridden country to save their lives. This paper configures the poetics of migration trauma in the contemporary literature by analyzing the symbols, metaphors and narrative technique used in Hamid's text with the aim of tracing a discursive aesthetic trajectory of the migration trauma discourse.