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This essay focuses on the discourse of insecurity that has gradually become salient in Latvian public sphere. The discourse of insecurity in Latvia is created by individuals with different experience and motifs; they use different conceptual sources to express ideas. A sense of insecurity is objectified with geopolitical, civilizational, and psychoanalytical categories. The European refugee crises and discussions on the so called Istanbul Convention has tempered this discourse over the past years by introducing more specific themes and by setting more particular basis for ideological positioning. Analytically, the essay reflects on the grammar or structural elements of insecurity discourse that define this discourse as a distinct phenomenon. Simultaneously, this analysis also intends to explain the origins of such discourse and to reveal its meaning in a broader context. Thus the essay has two parts. The first part examines the referents of Latvia’s insecurity discourse, i. e. what this discourse is attributed to and what it problematizes. The second part outlines various conceptual layers that might facilitate the understanding of the advent and persistence of insecurity discourse. In particular, the essay demonstrates why and how liberalism has become the centrepiece of the insecurity discourse. It also illuminates solutions that the actors of such discourse provide in order to avoid the societal atomization and disappearance of Latvia as a national state. The essay invites to look at the genealogy of the insecurity discourse from the ontological security perspective. In light of this perspective, the central argument is that the actors of Latvia’s insecurity discourse and their opponents are united within the framework of risk society. Namely, both proponents and opponents are mobilized through risk awareness with respect to existential threats. However, different types of risks are problematized in both discourses – the disintegration of collective identity vs. catastrophic risks – that lead to diverging opinion on what the ultimate basis of societal solidarity is.
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Homi Baba, American-Indian literary theorist and philosopher of cul- ture, is one of the key figures in postcolonial theory. His original contribution is in the introduction of the terms „hybridization“, „mimicry“, „cultural difference“,„ambivalence of colonial discourse“ and „third space“, which enriches the repertoire of postcolonial theories and problematizes these theories in the key of poststructur- alist philosophies, especially those of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Michel Foucault. As a postcolonial literary and cultural theorist, Baba opposes binary divi- sions of theories / policies in The Location of Culture (1994) to try to show the true meaning of postcolonial theories. Of course, in order to arrive at this new practice, it was necessary to discuss some aporia into which his thought often falls, especially to develop a complicated dialectic of the ambivalence of post/colonial discourse. In parallel with postcolonial thought, Baba develops philosophy of culture, which is thematized in the second part of the text. In the essay „DissemiNation“ (1990), as a poststructuralist-inspired thinker he does not derive a systematic transcultural theory, but only deconstructively points to the „splitting points“ of the unison-understood Culture as a monolithic and monopolistic Western narrative.
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When in the novel Migration by Miloš Crnjanski the idea of the Serbian choice is articulated in one unfinished, interrupted sentence – „You Serbs prefer to choose military work, so ...” (Crnjanski 2008: 25) – an example of this articulation ironically marks the historical role of the nation. it is not possible to make a choice within the socio-political system of the Austrian monarchy that would stabilize the position of the community in the empire, ensure it in an appropriate way. The incompleteness, the interruption of the sentence that formulates the perspective of the Serbian choice, indicates a strong narrative sense of the historical conditioning of identity. The political affirmation of the military identity of Serbs delegitimizes the heroic ethos that is the basis of the Serbian historical being. The ideological use of the Serbian warrior discourse indicates that a modern mechanism of identity regulation is active in the world of the novel Migration. The nation learns about the experience of ontological deprivation to be realized in the dimension of dying in war, which would provide it with historical and metaphysical meaning. Crnjanski’s novel reveals the fundamental difference between an ideologically constructed stereotype of identity and an ontological inversion of historical experience.
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Hasan Nametak was one of the most important leaders in the ield of collecting and describing Bosniak cultural and literary heritage from the end of the 19th century. He made a special contribution in the ield of folklore by collecting a collection of poems of Croatian folk songs and several legends, anecdotes and humorous stories that he published in the then Bosnian periodicals. As a narrator, but also a witness of the time, he wrote several autobiographical sketches and pictures about the events in Herzegovina after the arrival of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in Bosnia. He also made a signiicant contribution to the memory of prominent Bosniak scholars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He also wrote several texts about prominent Mostar’s vakufs (endowment) and their vakifs (founder).
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The Jewish cultural tradition, which within the framework of the Bosnian habitus went through stages - from assimilation, concretization, activation, and even fusion - represents a paradigm of intracultural processes in the complex Bosnian society. These processes take place through various interactions, which have not been bypassed by local literature, and are representative of one part of the literary oeuvre of Isak Samokovlija. Based on the theoretical starting points of intercultural interpretation and psychoanalysis, the work questions Samokovlija's short stories in which the characters act through the suppressed own versus the foreign. This is especially expressed in the stories “Od proljeća do proljeća” (From Spring to Spring) and “Plava Jevrejka” (The Blue Jewess).
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The article considers some modes of artistic performance as a reaction against the present technological determinism. This creative resistance has a kind of game-based, competitive element – “to outwit the system” – which is a form of play. This line emerges as a kind of sociological and aesthetic strategy in some new art movements, an artistic reflex in defense of the "right to remain invisible". Briefly: the article will trace how the observed person (homo vigilatus), playing (homo ludens), consolidates with a new discourse his role as a creator (homo creator).
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Life? or Theatre? is a visual-theatrical, textual, and auto-biographical play of Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish talented artist, executed at a very young age in the Auschwitz concentration camp. In this paper, I consider Salomon’s work a document of life, and a testimony of her personal intra-familial, and personal experience of “the before—Auschwitz” (Jenn-Gastal 228) depicting, among others, historical and socio-political facts articulated and expressed through narrative and painting. Since in Sociology life stories or autobiographical narratives constitute a valuable tool, I will employ Salomon’s drawings, captions and texts as a “synergetic fusing of social sciences and the arts” (Bagley 34), in order to shed ample light on her reconstructed lived experience. This research aims at examining Salomon's autobiographical work from a sociological and philosophical perspective, referring to the views of great theorists, such as Hannah Arendt, Zygmunt Bauman, and the founders of the Frankfurt School, who tried to explain the origins of totalitarianism, power relations and the causes of the Holocaust.
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Focusing on two theoretical concepts, sociability, driven from Maurice Agulhonʼs theory, and social networked as developed in Georg Simmelʼs formal sociology, the present article aims to discuss the Romanian socialist circles from the 19th century in a twofold manner. On the one hand, it explores the social imaginary and the transferable social forms due to the existence of the “weak ties” (Mark Granovetter), such as clandestinity, the anti-bourgeois attitude, the idealism, and the generic portrait of the socialist. On the other hand, the article analyses the forms of life that are specific and dependent on the material spaces, shaping the particularities of different socialist groups. Such elements of shared life are, for example, the exaltation in Neculai Beldiceanuʼs cenacle from Iași, the anti-intimacy in Nădejdeʼs house on Sărărie, the farce at „Adevărul” magazine, but also the experience of drinking tea, common to the majority of the socializing groups, and the relationship between men and women, considered as the myth of the 19th century socialist movement.
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Cultural tourism as an object of cognition presumes interdisciplinarity. Of key importance become the problems of preservation and tourist interpretation of the world and the national natural and cultural heritage, the organization and using of the recreational territories, environmental friendliness of the types and forms of cultural tourism and their sustainable development and planning. An attempt has been made to be substantiated the fact that the projects, connected with cultural tourism, are a combination of purposeful activities (merged around the solving of particular tasks of problematic or unknown character or the fulfillment of particular aim; with real practical character and projection of the end product; require complicated, complex activities, which bring high degree of motivation and give opportunity for development) with strongly expressed integrative character of the scientific and social cognition.
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United Nations and Council of Europe documents recognize human life as a universal value. However, there are differences in the application of this principle in practice, since exceptions are allowed by the laws of different countries allowing medical abortion, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and the death penalty. In addition, citizens are not unanimous on the question of when the ending of one’s own life or that of another is justified. The aim of the article is to find out the relationship between the religious identity of the Latvian population and attitudes towards four morally controversial phenomena such as abortion, euthanasia, suicide, and the use of the death penalty, using data from the European/World Values Studies of 1996 and 2021. The article uses cluster analysis and linear regression. This study finds that in 2021, society has demonstrated less justifiability of abortion, euthanasia and suicide compared to 1996. Statistically significant differences between religious and non-religious populations are observed in attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia, while differences in attitudes towards suicide and the death penalty are less pronounced.
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The values of an individual, as well as of a larger or smaller community, exist and are revealed within the framework of a certain culture. Being ethnically, historically, religiously, politically, and otherwise determined, culture is the custodian and creator of universal human values – it ensures the unity of humanity, and understanding of individuals and nations, despite ethnic, religious, etc. differences. In Latvian policy documents, culture is considered the most important value, which forms the core of the nation’s identity and has unlimited potential for the state’s economic development. Moreover, in educational documents, culture is mentioned as an important value, an understanding of which should be formed in schoolchildren during the educational process. The school’s objective, which is defined in curricula and education policy documents, is to develop a comprehensive understanding among children and young people of such values as life, human dignity, freedom, family, marriage, work, nature, culture, the Latvian language and the Latvian state, developing an appreciative attitude and responsibility for themselves and their actions. The results of the conducted study on the understanding of cultural values among 14-18-year-olds provide not only for better understanding of the value system of young people and the reasons and motivations for their activities but also describe how young people understand the similarities and differences of different cultures (European, national, ethnic, regional, local), how they feel in the conditions of coexistence of different cultures and how they define their cultural belonging on the basis of values that are important to them. Using the broader understanding of culture as a basis, it can be concluded that local, regional and national cultural values are important for young people. Young people, on the other hand, have a rather abstract understanding of European cultural values. They also cite communication skills, tolerance, and participation as important values of universal human culture.
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An important trend in Tischner’s philosophical output was the observation of the phenomena that would occur in the current social life of Poles. The trend gained particular significance at the turn of the 1970s and the 1980s, when the processes that finally led to the systemic transformation began. During this period, Tischner made a successful attempt to reconstruct the Polish social ethos. It turned out that its integral element is the presence of utopian projects to rebuild the social order in the country. Tischner stated in his analyses that these utopias play a constructive role in the social life because they motivate people to engage in the political struggle for deep system reforms. The article presents the content of Tischner’s reconstruction of Polish utopias from the 1970s and the 1980s and the correlation between social ethics, ideological discussions, and political practice of the declining period of the Polish People’s Republic.
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The object of research presented in the article is the transition from a totalitarian to a democratic society in Bulgaria from the 1990s and the 2000s, and its subject is the contribution of the subcultural communities formed in this period, to the implementation of various social changes. The main research hypothesis is that at the end of the totalitarian regime and in the beginning of the transition in the political, economic and cultural life in Bulgaria, there were formed several main subcultures with various degrees of critical influence over the development of social processes in the country. A main mechanism of influence which transforms the subcultures in active agents of the historical change are the so-called ‘culturemes’. So far, the study identified several significant subcultures of which two political playing the leading role in the transition. They are based on ideological structures consisting of limited number of simple ideologemes (the culturemes of the political conscience). The research is based on a sociocultural analysis of documents, surveys and interviews. It combines the perspectives of social history with those of political science and social anthropology.
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Pansori (판소리), one of the important products of Korean Culture, is the exhibition of a story accompanied by song and music in public places. There are three elements in Pansori performance as singer/narrator, drummer and audience. The singer/narrator is central to the Pansori performance with his narration and body language, while the drummer plays a complementary role in the performance by providing rhythm and singing encouraging words to add excitement to the performance. What makes the Pansori interesting is that the audience also takes part in this performance. During the performance of the artists, the audience occasionally cheers to express their support and appreciation for the artists. Pansori, one of the cultural elements of Korea, is included in the Intangible Cultural Heritage list of UNESCO under the title of “Oral Traditions and Expressions”. Pansori was registered as Korean intangible cultural heritage number five in 1964 and was designated as world cultural heritage by UNESCO in November 2003. Although twelve of classical Pansori works are mentioned in Korean Culture, only five of them have reached today. It is possible to examine Pansori in the fields of music, theater and literature when we consider the elements such as music, fiction/story, audience and the audience accompanying the performers in the content of Pansori. Pansori started anonymously and continued by professional artists. In this study, besides looking at the place of Pansori, the Cultural Heritage of Korea, in Korean culture, its emergence, development and current situation are briefly mentioned. The aim of the study is to introduce an important Korea’s cultural heritage in Turkey, to reveal its importance in Korean culture and set the basis for future comparative studies. Keywords: pansori, sorikkun, Korean cultural heritage, Korean literature, Korean theather Pansori (판소리), one of the important products of Korean Culture, is the exhibition of a story accompanied by song and music in public places. There are three elements in Pansori performance as singer/narrator, drummer and audience. The singer/narrator is central to the Pansori performance with his narration and body language, while the drummer plays a complementary role in the performance by providing rhythm and singing encouraging words to add excitement to the performance. What makes the Pansori interesting is that the audience also takes part in this performance. During the performance of the artists, the audience occasionally cheers to express their support and appreciation for the artists. Pansori, one of the cultural elements of Korea, is included in the Intangible Cultural Heritage list of UNESCO under the title of “Oral Traditions and Expressions”. Pansori was registered as Korean intangible cultural heritage number five in 1964 and was designated as world cultural heritage by UNESCO in November 2003. Although twelve of classical Pansori works are mentioned in Korean Culture, only five of them have reached today. It is possible to examine Pansori in the fields of music, theater and literature when we consider the elements such as music, fiction/story, audience and the audience accompanying the performers in the content of Pansori. Pansori started anonymously and continued by professional artists. In this study, besides looking at the place of Pansori, the Cultural Heritage of Korea, in Korean culture, its emergence, development and current situation are briefly mentioned. The aim of the study is to introduce an important Korea’s cultural heritage in Turkey, to reveal its importance in Korean culture and set the basis for future comparative studies.
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The text presents some references to the Kurds. In the first chapter are presented characteristics of the Kurds as they were caught by the travelers of the centuries XIX and XX. The second chapter presents, in short, the history of the provisions concerning the Kurds in the Treaties of Sevres and Lausanne. Chapter three presents some important aspects of the Kurdish struggle for national identity, including in the form of asymmetric violence. Chapter four presents some conclusions of the research.
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Surges of populist nationalism in Europe and the United States over the last decade made it a central subject in comparative sociology. Most explanations center on changing societal conditions that undergird these surges and focus on populist takeovers in Western societies. The causal significance of populist-nationalist demagogy and manipulation of publics by leaders tends to be downplayed. Taking a leader-centered approach and focusing on the „established” populist leaders in CEE, this article emphasizes the „autogenic” aspect of populist-nationalist leaders – their independent proclivity, especially when holding government executive power, to shape national identity and deliberately enflame discontents and divisions that fueled their rise. Society-centered explanations of populist nationalism are not wrong but need to be supplemented by analyses of these self-entrenching leaders’ actions. Consistent with how Max Weber and early elite theorists treated populist nationalism around the time of World War I, this article defines it as a distinctive leadership style that threatens democratic stability.
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The purpose of the article is to generalise and clarify the sources of the musical texts of irmoses’ canons of the Baptism of Jesus and the Epiphany of Church Prostopinije by Bokshay-Malynych in 1906 through the prism of close relation with the manuscript and printed irmologions of the XVII-XIX centuries. The research methodology is based on a complex system approach combining a critical understanding of literature, source studies, music-analytical, comparative methods in the analysis of musical texts. In the comparative analysis of irmoses of different lists, we use the scientific provisions by O. Tsalai-Yakymenko regarding the formative principles of time dimensional metric in sacral monody. The scientific novelty of the research consists in clarifying the sources of the musical texts of irmoses’ canons of the Baptism of Jesus and the Epiphany of Church Prostopinije by Bokshay-Malynych in 1906, structuring of the musical material, features of changes in the formation of condensed forms of singing liturgical texts. Conclusions. The analysis of irmoses’ musical texts of the Baptism of Jesus and the Epiphany of Prostopinije shows a direct connection with the manuscript and printed irmologions. The main differences in Prostopinije's irmoses are caused due to the orientation of church singers to concise and simplified forms of singing liturgical texts, the use of several typical chants, as a result of which the new intonation formations have taken place. Comparisons of musical texts from various sources demonstrate the peculiarities of the pattern formations, the preservation and renewal of ancient forms of sacral monody in regional church singing practice at the beginning of the 20th century.
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