SAD i Indija: novi najbolji prijatelji?
George V. Bush went to India and concluded an agreement considered by many analysts as a historical and geographical turning point of the world system.
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George V. Bush went to India and concluded an agreement considered by many analysts as a historical and geographical turning point of the world system.
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In recent decades, Protestant population has grown rapidly in most Latin American countries, including Mexico. The growth has been particularly fast in rural and indigenous areas, where Protestantism is often claimed to trigger profound socio-cultural changes. This article discusses the impact of Protestant growth on customs, collective practices and local identities using the example of indigenous Zapotec communities of the Sierra Juárez in northern Oaxaca. Drawing on the author’s intermittent fieldwork in the region since 1998, most recently in 2012, the article first scrutinises some of the recurring local perceptions of Protestant growth in the Sierra Juárez and their impact on communal life. Particular attention will be paid to converts’ break with various customary practices pertaining to what locally is referred to as usos y costumbres. The article will then critically revise the claims about the culturally destructive influence of Protestantism, suggesting that the socio-cultural changes in contemporary indigenous communities of Oaxaca may actually be caused by more general modernising and globalising forces, and that the transformative role of Protestantism is often exaggerated.
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This article is an attempt to understand what role spiritual matters play in the ideas and everyday life of a public figure quite famous in Western Siberia, the Forest Nenets writer, reindeer herder and activist Yuri Vella, and how the so-called religious practice is articulated in his life. In our reflection, we do not rely on any ad-hoc discourse, on issue-centred interviews, but on our fieldwork observation of speech and practice, a big part of which has been recorded on video with the aim of using it in the making of ethnographic films.
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This collection of papers is inspired by the idea of examining the concept of identity at various levels of dialogue between collective and individual agents, in different regional and social environments. At the same time, a collective collaborative and interdisciplinary approach and methodological examination has been initiated. In a way, it is an initial step in specific scholarly cooperation in the framework of the CECT. Although particular topics and conceptual frames of these articles differ a lot, in a certain way a step towards somehow shared theoretical ground has been made.
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The Komi people in northern Russia tend to consider the Russian Orthodox faith as a natural part of their lives and self-image. During recent decades different Protestant churches have spread intensively over the Republic of Komi. Although the Protestants constitute a small minority of the local population, they play a major role in initiating discussion concerning ethnic traditions, identity and the freedom to select a faith. The local population’s predominant approach to religious issues is blurred, although they tend to prefer the Russian Orthodox faith, albeit without frequenting church ceremonies. This pro-Orthodox stand is grounded on loyalty to ancestors and ethnic traditions. We take the process of religious change among the Komis as a starting point from which to discuss issues of individual and collective identity, and the variability and stability of people’s self-understanding as well as understanding of the Other.
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Boor review: Entäs tytöt. Johdatus tyttötutkimukseen. Edited by Karoliina Ojanen & Heta Mulari & Sanna Aaltonen. Nuorisotutkimusverkosto/ Nuorisotutkimusseura, Julkaisuja 113. Osuuskunta Vastapaino, Tampere 2011. 320 pp. In Finnish.
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This article looks at the emergent policies and legal constraints shaping identity constructions within and for minority groups in Estonia and in northwest Russia, in order to investigate the processes of ‘minority-building’ and emergent state policies through cultural entanglements. The case studies discussed comprise legal regulations and measures for the promotion of minority identities in Estonia with special focus on Estonian Russians, the country’s biggest and most diverse minority; the Seto, their cultural heritage construction and the question of intangible rights in the border zone between Estonia and Russia; and the Votians and the process of claiming a minority status in Russia in the context of recent socio-economic developments. These three studies enable us to explore the reverberations of Soviet nationality policy as well as new hybrid policies, strategies and self-conceptions emerging in a particular region. This collaborative article proposes a supplement to the study of identity constructions in the post-Soviet setting of minority-buildings that are inherently interdependent and complementary for understanding the possible developments in this sphere.
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This article explores some of the ways in which memories of the Soviet past shape the identities and creative work of six Estonian intellectuals born in the 1970s. Based on analysis of the four cultural texts they have produced (an exhibition, a feature film, a novel and a documentary) and biographical interviews with them, it is argued that the authors’ birth frame has had an impact on how they interpret the late Soviet period. They share discursive practices about this period: mutual interpretative principles, which validate their common experience in discourses. Their experience of living in the Soviet system is limited to their childhood years only. Sharing a kind of reflexive nostalgia about the era, they depict the late Soviet period somewhat ironically, with a touch of cynicism (in their cultural texts as well as in the interviews). Even though they do not oppose the official public discourse of the rupture of Soviet Estonia, they tend to accentuate and value everyday experience, thus contributing to ‘normalisation’ discourse of the Soviet period in Estonian memory landscapes. Childhood experiences of the late Soviet period constitute an integral part of these intellectuals’ identities. By reproducing their identity in their cultural texts, they have a potential to deepen the memory templates already existing in public memory discourse, and also to contribute to the addition of new discourses and influencing the identity of others in society.
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One of the effects and results of tourism is that it marks our sense of time, differentiating the extraordinary and ‘heightened’ time and the time of the mundane. An important role in this is played by the hosts – in the case of rural tourism by the farm owners and tour guides. The tourism farmers and tour guides act as mediators of the temporal experience, therefore creating and providing various timescapes for their guests. An altered perception of time, a distinctive temporal experience of place is offered to guests as a specific and special characteristic and a counterbalance to the rush of everyday life in the local identity of two rural border regions. Some meaningful and meaning-forming, interconnected and sometimes opposite notions of temporality are analysed as narrated by tourism farmers and tour guides in two very popular tourism regions in Estonia: Hiiumaa Island and Võru County. The ways in which these hosts (re)construct and perceive temporality are identified and presented and some distinctive elements of those rural timescapes are considered.
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Book review: Wolfgang Mieder. Proverbs. A Handbook. Westport & Connecticut & London: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004 (reprinted 2011). 304 pp.
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In this paper we explore the current process of the smoke sauna’s transformation from a tradition into heritage in the context of rural tourism in Võru County, southeast Estonia. We examine the multiple meanings and values that the smoke carries from the tourism entrepreneur’s perspective and the possible connections between the smoke sauna and personally interpreted cultural identity. Our theoretical approach handles heritage production as a selective process conducted by tourism entrepreneurs, in which personal memories, stories and material settings are displayed or performed in order to make them experienceable for the public. The results of the analysis of the fieldwork material indicate that three major directorial attitudes towards local tradition and heritage exist, expressed in the materiality of sauna settings, whereas entrepreneurs’ interpretations of the intangible dimensions of the smoke sauna are more varied as they are based on emotional and personally significant meanings rather than shared cultural values.
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Tandori Dezső–Szilasi László: Két bírálat egy könyvről (Jakus Ildikó– Hévizi Ottó: Ottlik-veduta) Two Critics on a Book (Ildikó Jakus – Ottó Hévizi, Ottlik Veduta) Bodor Béla: A Laphroaig-perszonalitás (Békés Pál: A bűntárs) The Laphroaig Personality (Pál Békés, The Accessory) Györke Ágnes: Sátáni (kon)textus (Salman Rushdie: Sátáni versek) Satanic (Con)text (Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses) Gréczi Emőke: Élet vagy életmű? (Székely András: Szántó Piroska) Life or Life-work? (András Székely, Szántó Piroska) Dolinszky Miklós: Zene – a zenék tükrében (Carl Dahlhaus: Az abszolút zene eszméje) Music – in the Mirror of Musics (Carl Dahlhaus, The Idea of Absolute Music) Veres Bálint: „...senki ne keresse a regényt” (Grabócz Márta: Zene és narrativitás) „…Don’t Seek for a Novel in These Letters” (Márta Grabócz, Music and Narrativity) Laki Péter: Zseni, közelről (Otto Friedrich: Glenn Gould. Változatok egy életre; Glenn Gould: Tiltsuk be a tapsot!) A Genius from a Short Distance (Otto Friedrich, Glenn Gould. A Life and Variations; Glenn Gould, Let’s Ban Applause) Pataky Ildikó: Séták Bábel körül (Kocziszky Éva: Hamanns Kritik der Moderne) Walking around Babel (Éva Kocziszky, Hamanns Kritik der Moderne) Kicsi Sándor András: Moro úr, a svéd szamizdat hőse (Moro úr sikeres lefagyasztása. Összeállította: Roy Anderson, Kalle Boman, Borbás István) Mr. Moro, the Hero of the Swedish Samizdat (Succesful Freezing of Mr Moro) (Compiled by Roy Anderson, Kalle Boman, István Borbás)
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