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The aim of this paper is to reveal the role of official humor during the Soviet period through an analysis of how International Women’s Day, usually refered to as March 8 in the Soviet Union, was depicted in Lithuanian satirical press. This is done by analyzing Lithuanian and Russian satirical periodicals of the late Soviet period, namely, Šluota (Broom) and Krokodil (Crocodile), respectively. In addition, in order to analyze the holiday which was meant to glorify the Soviet woman, several propaganda documentaries of the late Soviet period, filmed for the occasion, are discussed. The focus is the imposed artificial holiday of March 8 and the boring humor used in the Soviet texts to criticize it. Thus the boredom of the Soviet period is examined in a separate section. An analysis of March 8 is also inextricable from a discussion of women’s roles and gender relationships during the late Soviet period, which are reflected in both the satirical and the regular press of the period. The humor of the Soviet period is often considered a form of protest and of real criticism, a way of talking about forbidden issues, but this paper looks at why the humor in the March 8 issues of the periodicals is boring, monotonous, and repetitive.
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Artykuł omawia genezę i przebieg współczesnych granic w Ameryce Środkowej. Skupia się na historycznym procesie kształtowania się granic po upadku imperium hiszpańskiego oraz na sporach i konfliktach granicznych wynikających z roszczeń terytorialnych wobec sąsiadów. Granice państw w Ameryce Centralnej kształtowały się od czasu uzyskania przez nie niepodległości w 1821 r. i powstania Stanów Zjednoczonych Ameryki Środkowej aż do XX w., kiedy w 1903 r., w wyniku oderwania się od Kolumbii, powstało niepodległe państwo Panama. Historia siedmiu państw regionu jest burzliwa i wypełniona licznymi konfliktami granicznymi i wojnami. Ich przyczyn należy szukać m.in. w sytuacji społecznej i politycznej regionu, a głównie w kwestii braku ziemi i rozszerzającym się problemom struktury własnościowej na wsi. Szczególnie wiele uwagi poświęca współczesnym stosunkom dwustronnym i konfliktom granicznym między Nikaraguą i Kostaryką.The article discusses the origins and the course of contemporary boundaries in Central America. It focuses on the historical process of shaping the borders after the fall of the Spanish Empire as well as border disputes and conflicts arising from territorial claims against neighbors. The boundaries of countries in Central America developed since gaining their independence in 1821, and the emergence of the United States of Central America until the twentieth century when, in 1903, as a result of detachment from Colombia, Panama emerged as an independent state. The history of the seven countries in the region is turbulent and filled with numerous border conflicts and wars. Their causes must be sought, among others, in the social and political situation in the region mainly in the lack of land and expanding the problems of the ownership structure in the country. Special attention is paid to bilateral relationships and the border contemporary conflicts between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
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International boundaries, their history, location, disputes concerning their exact delimitation, their strategically importance, and other facts led many scholars to deal with that important subject. International lawyers, geographers, historians, political scientists, researchers of international relations, cartographers, military people, all are concerned with the location of a boundary, its legal status, its history, its defensible ability and so on. However, the influence of the international boundaries upon the landscape where they run has not received the attention to its merits. This article will present some areas of this kind, where a political boundary brought changes to the landscape on both sides of it. The boundary between Israel and Egypt will be the case study, although some other areas will be presented.Granice międzynarodowe, ich historia, położenie, spory dotyczące ich dokładnego wytyczenia, ich strategiczne znaczenie i inne fakty są tematem zainteresowań wielu badaczy. Należą do nich prawnicy międzynarodowi, geografowie, historycy, politolodzy, badacze stosunków międzynarodowych, kartografowie, wojskowi. Zajmują się oni problemami granicy w różnych aspektach: jej położenia, statusu prawnego, historii, znaczenia w obronności kraju itd. Jednakże wpływ granic międzynarodowych na kształtowanie się krajobrazu nie znalazł większego zainteresowania wśród badaczy. W artykule przedstawiono kilka przykładów wyznaczenia granicy politycznej, które przyniosło zmiany krajobrazu po obu jej stronach. Jako studium przypadku omówiono granicę między Izraelem i Egiptem.
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System transformation is a long-lasting process which is reflected in the model of property relationships and the way inhabited environment is created. This paper discusses the Polish urban area as an example of a neoliberal model of space transformation characterized by: atrophy of the public sector, arbitrary spatial order, and deepening spatial segregation. The transformation of the urban area in a neoliberal model has affected the legal order, spatial planning, privatization of housing resources, and public infrastructure. The paper is based on source literature, official statistics, and an analysis of Polish legal acts.
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Borna Zgurić - Petar Popović, Kriza međunarodnog poretka 21. stoljeća, Nacionalna zajednica Crnogoraca Hrvatske i Disput, Zagreb, 2014., 220 str.; Hanan Nanić - Mirjana Kasapović (ur.), Bliski istok: politika i povijest, Fakultet političkih znanosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, Zagreb, 2016., 412 str.; Mirela Radonjić - Hrvoje Špehar (ur.), Europski sekularni identiteti: zbornik radova Jean Monnet modula Sekularna Europa: europski sekularni identiteti, Fakultet političkih znanosti, Zagreb, 2015., 159 str.;
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This paper sheds light on processes of place leadership that are enacted through visibility practices. While this strategy to “lead places on the map” has had some intended effects, such as increased tourism and lobby opportunities, this external orientation led to other consequences as well. First of all, it has led leadership to include a wider array of actors than the “traditional” place leaders that are bounded to a certain territory. Secondly, it points to the limitation of leadership in places that are in-between networks or “off the map”, thirdly, to the tension between a homogeneous outward image and the inherent heterogeneous nature of all places. Overall, this paper goes beyond a functionalistic understanding of place leadership and provides a more political understanding of how places are led. This contribution is based on fieldwork conducted on the Estonian island of Kihnu and the Estonian town of Järva-Jaani.
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Since the introduction of black economic empowerment (BEE) in South Africa by the African National Congress (ANC) in 2003, the impact of the legislation and its accompanying policies on the six major “PESTIS” (political, economic, social, technological, institutional and structural-physical) macro-environments in which businesses in the private sector and government in the public sector operate, has largely gone unnoticed or has been ignored. In an exploratory study using the “5 Star” research methodology, and with the aid of specially developed qualitative research adjudication matrix (QRAM), the impact of the ANC’s BEE policies on these macro-environments was investigated. Unfortunately, it appears that these policies have negatively affected South Africa’s political, economic, social/cultural and institutional macro-environments. Allegations of state capture and nefarious influences on government and ministerial appointments, poor economic performance and possible further credit downgrade to “junk” status by the international ratings agencies, increased prevalence of racism, hate speech and discrimination, and violation of the Constitution of South Africa and inter¬national treaties by the ANC government, paint a dismal picture. In addition, the country is facing unseen high levels of corruption, graft, fraud, looting, bribery, nepotism and self-enrichment in government, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and businesses. BEE can be regarded as the ANC’s “Achilles heel” in South Africa, and the political party should rather abandon this policy in order to stop the rot, and further deterioration, distrust and decay in the country’s most important macro-environments.
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Many authors have announced the death of theory or the end of criticism, while others tried in recent years to reinvigorate Critical Theory or Marxism, in an effort to adapt them to the realities of the XXI-st century. There are several lines of questioning here, the first is if the analytical principles developed during the XIX-th century are still practical. While a ‘second generation’ of critical theorists provided innovative reflections in the contemporary theoretical inquiry and advanced multiple solutions and conceptual renewals of the field, the most problematic issues about theory remain unsolved. This is visible in the intellectual conflict between the proponents of post-theory and the followers of Grand Theory. Using the framework of film studies, this paper raises some of the most difficult questions when it comes to ideological, social and political critique, and more importantly, the problem is its methodological validity. Also, have the social sciences exhausted all the resources of critical thinking, is this a moment of utmost exhaustion the dialectical criticism? This study opens as an overview of the most important debates about Critical Theory and critical thinking today, and offers a final and personal response for how the critical method can still be practiced. By proposing a new dialectical approach for interpreting recent cinematic productions the author advances the concept of fluid dialectics. Recovering the mechanisms of dialectical approaches from Hegel to Marx and Lacan this paper is making a modest suggestion, that of the return to powers of the dialectical method and the magic of the negation of negation. To the announced“death of theory” the answer here is the revival of the debateabout the force of dialectics.
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The United States became an Arctic country by virtue of purchasing Alaska from Russia in 1867. For a variety of reasons, discussed in this work, the Arctic used to be a focal point for the US during the Cold War, but later on this country paid much less attention to the region, including somewhat dubious awareness of America actually being an Arctic state. The aim of this article is to present some opportunities and challenges posed by governing the Arctic, and in particular a brief outline of the U.S. approach towards the region through its track record in the span of about last two decades, until the year 2015. It also attempts to present the expectations connected with American chairmanship of the Arctic Council, as well as the reasons for the country’s inability to ratify one of the fundamental international instruments, i.e. the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, UNCLOS.
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Revitalisation, which is defined as a planned process of restoring deprived areas, entails the difficult challenge of achieving long-lasting spatial, economic and social effects. In Poland, the accompanying inflow of European Union funds not only fosters a wide range of activities for entities involved in urban renewal, but also raises a question about the potential dysfunction of investments in deprived areas. Based on the experiences of Kraków, the paper presents some undesirable effects of projects implemented under the Local Revitalisation Programmes (LRP) in the years 2007-2013. The goal of the LRP projects was to promote the rehabilitation of deprived housing areas. The initial results, however, indicate that these projects are characterised by specific pitfalls, which include touristification, uniformisation, gentrification and social polarisation.
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This article presented mechanism and instruments of contemporary psychologicalwarfare. Phenomenon of propaganda will be discussed and also the role of its maincarrier: mass media. In the further part of the work cyberspace will be presented as otherlarge area of contest for influence on societies. Manipulation of social consciousness,which is conducted by state regimes and other participators of international relations, ispermanent element of contemporary international environment. That is the reason whyit is so important to know mechanism of it.
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The United States of America is militarily and diplomatically disengaging from the Middle East. Concurrently, Iran as a Regional Power is on the perceived ascent. This article rationalizes the effects of America’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring, and the Nuclear settlement with the P5+ group of nations on the distribution of power in the region. By utilizing Balance of Power Theory with reference to the distribution of power in the region, an examination of Iran interests in the region after 2017 and strategy for approaching these aims will be sort after.
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John Locke’s political philosophy is to this day an important inspiration for the discourse oscillating around the issues of civil rights, the role and scope of political power and the relationship between property and ethics. However, this discourse is dominated by the one-sided and strongly impoverishing perception of the English philosopher’s thought whose sources lie in Leo Strauss’s interpretation. This article is a polemic with Strauss’s interpretive standpoint, based on a comprehensive reading of Locke’s philosophy. The aim of the text is both to demystify the secular nature of his thought, and to point out its unique coherence and conceptual precision which make it impossible, against Strauss and his followers’ standpoint, to reduce Locke’s philosophy to only a more radical, at the same time less coherent, version of Thomas Hobbes’s political thought.
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One of the most dramatic changes in the international arena in the post cold war era counted for China’s rising and attractive growth, which led the community described it as a “cause célèbre” and also witnessed the most strategic regional transformation in the history of humanity within only three decades since its opening to the world. China has dramatically increased its global presence, which requested China to take further steps to wield soft power more responsibly. In this paper, I will seek to explain the China’s Mekong River diplomacy and how the evolution of China’s foreign policy towards the Mekong river sub-region since 2008 from a media perspective.
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This paper examines Japan's present and future international security role in the light of changes affecting the Asia-Pacific Region. Japan always had a major impact on this region despite of its post-World War II uncomfortable geopolitical position. In this paper the author concludes that Japan is now more favorably disposed to play a “comprehensive international role” in the field of regional security. Tokyo seems to be eager to go on with security co-operation with Washington D.C., however at the same time gradually increasing selfresponsibility for its defense and the security of its surrounding environment. Although Japan with no doubt has its strategic interests in Asia-Pacific, nowadays it is likely to play more than only a supportive role in this region. From the political point of view, the author tries to prove, that Japan is well prepared to play a role of regional stabilizer, but to do this Japan requires to choose carefully its independent path without undermining strategic relations with the United States
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The article presents the evolution of the demographic situation of the RussianFederation in the context of general demographic patterns and geopolitical processes thataffect all spheres of social life. The author shows that the demographic catastrophe thathas occurred in Russia in recent decades is a process that has not been fully elucidated sofar. Despite its distinctness, the demographic situation in Russia now has manyanalogies with that which takes place in Western European countries - this isparticularly about the rapid aging of the population and its extinction, and the massinflux of immigrants, in particular from Muslim countries. In the most vivid way it isvisible in the Russian Far East, from where the Russian population emigrates, and in itsplace, the Chinese quickly appear. In the conclusions, the author points out the need tochange the policy of the Russian authorities, which should prevent the effects ofdemographic decline and seek to increase demographic dynamics and, on the other hand,lead to the control of the spontaneous flow of culturally alien migrants that threatensthe security of the state. The development of demographic forecasts is not supported bymutually contradictory statistics, which are most likely to be manipulated andunreliable.
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The aim of the article is to indicate the geopolitical factors affecting the internal polic of the Russian Federation towards the Kaliningrad District. Its subsequent parts ar devoted to the following issues: 1) the specificity of the geographical location; 2) the attitude of the authorities of the Russian Federation towards the Kaliningrad District and relations between the authorities of both entities; 3). analysis of relations between the Russian Federation and the Kaliningrad District in the geo-economic dimension; 4) possibilities of separatist tendencies in the territory of Kaliningrad region; 5) military function of the District; 6) the role of the Kaliningrad District as an instrument of pressure and blocking international initiatives by the Russian Federation, and 7). conditions of participation of the Kaliningrad District in aid programs and integration initiatives in the Baltic Sea region.
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The article presents the doctrine of "Responsibility to protect", formulated in 2001 andadopted by the United Nations. It is the duty of states to protect their citizens againstwar crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansings. If the state doesnot want to or can not do it, according to the R2P doctrine, this responsibility must betaken over by the international community. This doctrine is a limitation in respect forthe principle of sovereignty, but its use requires meeting conditions such as the actualthreat of war crimes, the need to involve many states in the event of a decision tointervene armed, earlier use of non-military means of conflict resolution, and acceptanceby the UN Security Council. The authors explained how the Russian Federationmanaged to effectively circumvent the norms of international law, justifying itsaggressive policy towards Georgia and Ukraine.
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