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Article deals with some of the issues concerning national identity and ongoing integration processes in Europe. The conceptions of both the nation and the nation-state are examined from the point of their historical contexts and contemporary events and changes. It is being argued that the nation states in Europe are far from being mere myths or redundant structures since they successfully face the integration challenges and still fulfil many important functions. Author enlists all main currents of European integration (political field, economic co-operation, regional co-operation and civic contacts). Greater attention is paid to the idea of the Europe of regions. As the data from sociological researches indicate, the European public is not much in favour of further strengthening of regions’ influence and further divisions of nation states. As the important (if not the most important) stream of integration is considered to be the across border civic co-operation, i.e. establishment and maintenance of informal civic relationships. Aspects that might positively or negatively influence these relationships are demonstrated on an example of the across border co-operation on Czech-German border. The core of the across border co-operation and the creation of the across border community is made by approximately only 5% of local inhabitants, who maintain relationships on the “personal level”. The rest of the inhabitants have only occasional and incidental contacts with their foreign neighbours. Article points at some ambivalent tendencies and contradictory phenomena in the processes of European integration.
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Social Pathology. The period between 1989 and 1999 in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic and Slovakia)witnessed the changing trends in the development of criminality. Articles contain the basic information about the development of criminality as well as the trends for its prevention. Authors stress the need to understand the social pathology as the branch of sociology. Ondrejkovič, Peter: Social Pathology; Lubelcová, Gabriela: Primal Trends and Risks in the Development of Criminality in Slovakia Between 1989 and 1999; Scheinost, Miroslav: Primal Trends and Risks in the Development of Criminality in the Czech Republic Between 1989 and 1999; Večerka, Kazimír: Contemporary Trends in the Prevention of Criminality in the Czech Republic.
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Construction of Communist Power and Powerlessness. This paper turns attention to the period of state socialism. Its aim is to suggest and illustrate a theoretical and analytical framework for making the communists' power problematic from sociological point of view. We would like to promote such a perspective in which the power of communists is not taken - explicitly or implicitly - as something that explains the logic of life under the communist regime; rather, on the contrary, we present it as something that needs to be explained. As such, our approach is inspired by contemporary sociology of science, especially by Bruno Latour and John Law whose effort is in many respects similar to ours. After a theoretical outline of the approach, we perform its modest practical illustration. We use short extracts from two biographical narratives for an analysis of one particular situation in which the communist power played an important role: the political screenings that followed the military invasion into Czechoslovakia at the end of so called Prague Spring. The screenings are interpreted, in this analytical sketch, as "trials of strength" as well as "real transformations" both of the communist regime itself and all its actors. Above all, we focus on the moments when somebody or something was transformed into a fulcrum, an indisputable and stable entity, or, on the other hand, into a questionable, not-quite-real, because negotiable and reversible network of relations. These moments help us to show the heterogeneous and often surprisingly subtle sources of the political power that constituted state socialism and made it durable.
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Experience of the Czech Population with the Labour Market. As a result of social change the labour market has emerged in the Czech republic. The process of its establishing is accompanied with the growing unemployment rate now. Some social categories, which were lifted on the primary labour market up through the redistribution of sources by socialist state before. Nowadays they are moving down on the secondary labour market again. Their members have already became aware that their downward in the secondary labour market does not represent only a transitional costs necessary for their future life in affluence. Their perception of the decline of their own social position as a definitive one weakens legitimacy of the market for them. Anomie is growing up among them. A lot of people say today: ”average men are getting worse now - compared it with the situation before 1989”. The most of people judge: ”The social change has enlarged our civil right, it has not touched our political right but it limited our social right.”
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Homage à Różewicz is the newest production by Piotr Lachmann and Videoteatr Poza (premiere: 30.03.2012). The main subject of the performance is the work of Tadeusz Różewicz (currently through the use of recordings), presented in the context of the earlier productions by Videoteatr and fragments of Stars by Helmut Kajzar. A key role is played by the actors Jolanta Lothe and Jarosław Boberek, who act out a poem of birth and death, eroticism and filth. According to Aneta Mancewicz: “Prompting extremely diverse associations and constructing the script of Homage… like a collage, Lachmann opens up this production to many possible interpretations.”
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Anna R. Burzyńska reviews Monika Pasiecznik’s book The Ritual of the Superformula: Stockhausen Licht published by Krytyka Polityczna (Warsaw 2011). The publication is an ambitious monograph on Karlheinz Stockhausen that focuses on the composer’s opus magnum: the opera Licht. Die sieben Tage der Woche. Burzyńska notes that his works could be a very interesting source of inspiration for theatrologists, as they hold examples of performative thinking about music, profound literary inspiration and operatic verve. Pasiecznik’s book is a brilliant introduction to the subject and an invitation to further discussion.
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The title of the play, Au moins j’aurais laissé un beau cadavre (premiere: Festival in Avignon, July 2011) is a verbatim quote from a Quentin Tarantino film. In his modernised production of Hamlet, director Vincent Macaigne acknowledges pop-culture readings of Shakespeare. The “process of constructing the play itself and the ostentatious deconstruction of its many sources and narratives” is more important than the interpretation of the drama. The artists consciously use threadbare and overused strategies – deconstruction, collage, installations, happenings – to build their “recycled Hamlet.”
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The Watergate Affair, the quality of meals in a cafeteria near Poznań, Amy Winehouse’s suicide – these are the main topics discussed during therapy at the City Social Help Centre, where the action is located in Strzępka and Demirski’s newest production, Oh Goodness (Dramatyczny Theatre in Wałbrzych, premiere: 27.04.2012). It takes place in the year 2016, after an egalitarian revolution and the overthrow of capitalism. The artists dedicate this play to “people of good will” who are interested in the situation in Polish art theatre, and the repercussions of the activities of decision-makers and the media in public life.
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In his review of the play Polonia March, directed by Jack Głomb (Teatr Powszechny in Łódź, premiere: 21.01.2012), Olkusz analyses the show within the context of the Polish Comedy Centre created in the Powszechny Theatre, and of Jack Głomb’s counter-revolutionary manifesto and the Legnica theatre company. He remarks that “Polonia March […] is –deliberately or not – an answer to a question that has been posed at the Łódź Powszechny Theatre for a long time: How to revive Polish comedy.”
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akubowa follows the artistic path of Árpád Schilling, who has stretched the boundaries of documentary theatre. He creates it not out of material or living evidence, but as a result of creative co-operation with other artists. Thus, he has formed a kind of reality based on shared experience. He uses the idea of Dramapädagogik in his work with children, teaching them through theatre. In all of his performances he seeks sincerity amongst the spectators, and it is perhaps from here that the rather simple form originates. He tries to grasp reality changing through the influence of theatre.
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In her review of Orestes, directed by Maja Kleczewska (Narodowy Theatre and Wielki Theatre – Opera Narodowa in Warsaw, premiere: 14.04.2012), Guderian-Czaplińska states that Kleczewska uses Aeschylus’s text to explore the topic of the modern family, “whose members […] have transgressed every possible kind of conventional and socially desired family behaviour.” This extreme topic results in an excess of devices, from which no one clear message emerges. Guderian-Czaplińska wonders whether this lack of cohesion was intentional. Then, analysing further layers and scenes in the performance (for example, the function of the Greek chorus), she tries to discover why this form was chosen.
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