We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.

4.50 €

Switching Antagonist Roles: Conflicting Identities and Majority/Minority Reactions. a Case Study on the Region of Szeklerland – Transylvania

Author(s): Marius Lazăr / Language(s): English

This paper is the result of a research study undertaken within the frame of the NEXUS international team project on “How To Think About the Balkans: Culture, Region, Identities”, one of the research branches of the Blue Bird policy project. The project was hosted by the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofi a and supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, the European Cultural Foundation and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. The interpretations included here draw upon interviews and data surveys carried out by the author in association with Irina Curie, Anca Covrig, Lorand Cziprian, Camil Postelnicu, Cristina Ra{ and Stefania Toma, sociologists and research assistants from Babe§-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, members of the scientifi c team of the Research Center for Interethnic Relations (CCRIT). For this presentation the author has used the results of the sociological survey of (CCRIT) carried out between June 25-July 5, 2000 in the counties of Szeklerland (Szekelyfold in Hungarian, Secuime in Romanian), as part of a project entitled “The Deconstruction and Reconstruction of an Image: the Population of Covasna and Harghita Counties”, fi nanced jointly by the Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center and the Open Society Foundation”. Data refer also to the Ethnobarometer. Interethnic Relations in Romania, May-June 2000, research fi nanced by the United States Agency for International Development. A shorter, earlier version of this study focused on identity perceptions and interethnic relations in Szekerland. Elements for a “deconstruction” and a “reconstruction”*, in Lucian Nastatsa, Levente Salat (ed.), Interethnic Relations in Post-Communist Romania, Cluj-Napoca, Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center, 2000.

More...

Central and East European Governments and Cooperation with the Hungarian Communities: Efforts, Accomplishments, Failures

Author(s): Livia Plaks / Language(s): English

This essay on the status of the ethnic Hungarian minorities in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Serbia, was inspired by a meeting on that subject that was organized on June 25-26, 2004 in Sinaia, Romania. The event was sponsored by the new Project on Ethnic Relations Regional Center for Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. The Center, with headquarters in Bucharest and with an additional office in Tirgu Mures, is a branch of the U.S.-based Project on Ethnic Relations (PER), which since 1991 has been the leading private-sector organization working on problems of interethnic relations in Romania and in the region. The meeting took place under the title Central and East European Governments and Cooperation with the Hungarian Communities: Efforts, Accomplishments, Failures. It brought together Hungarian and non-Hungarian leaders from the region to discuss the evolution of their relations since the end of the communist period and to consider how they might be further improved.

More...

New Majorities and Minorities in the Changing Balkans

Author(s): Livia Plaks / Language(s): English

During the last decade in the Balkans new interethnic dynamics have been created by various regional settlements. Many of these settlements not only changed the dynamics but created new ethnic ma-jorities and minorities. Overnight former ethnic minorities became majorities. This new set of circum-stances requires changes in the way these societies are governed. This is especially true for Kosovo, the status of which the international community is determined to resolve in 2007. These factors and the timing prompted the Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) to organize in cooperation with the Hungari-an Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with the support of the U.S. State Department through a USAID grant, in Budapest on December 2-3, 2006, a regional roundtable of political leaders from Southeastern Europe. This regional roundtable discussion, the eighth such endeavor organized by PER between 2000-2006 was titled New Majorities and Minorities in the Changing Balkans. The meeting brought to-gether political leaders, decision-makers and officials from the region, the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and OSCE to discuss the changing dynamics of interethnic rela-tions in the area as the international community prepares to resolve the issue of Kosovo’s status. One of the main purposes of the roundtable was to encourage the region’s policy makers to think construc-tively about the new reality that is being created in the region during the last decade by various Balkan settlements and about changes in policies that this new reality requires.

More...

The Future of Multi-Ethnicity on Kosovo

Author(s): Livia Plaks / Language(s): English

An earthquake in the Balkans sent shockwaves through the entire world. The earthquake was the violence emanating from the 1999 conflict between Serbia and its southern province of Kosovo. Some say the violence was due to the multiyear discrimination and eventual efforts at ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbian government of Milosevic. Others have said that the violence started with the appearance and activities of the then shadow Kosovo Liberation Army. In any case, the international community eventually got involved and Serbia and Montenegro (as well as Serbia’s southern province of Kosovo) received more than a month of intensive bombing by NATO forces against military targets (with countless civilian casualties as well). A decade has passed since those events and the reality on the ground looks different. Kosovo has now been recognized by over 50 countries as a new state and is trying to enter the path of belonging to the Euro-Atlantic structures. However, there is still a serious international presence on the ground which is mostly meant to protect and encourage the Serbian community to be part of Kosovo’s life even if not recognizing its current status. Relations between Belgrade and Pristina are at best frozen if not downright hostile. The greatest challenge for all inside Kosovo as well as the international community is how to deal with the relations between Kosovo institutions and the Serbian community.

More...

Bilateral Agreements in Central and Eastern Europe: A New Inter-State Framework for Minority Protection?

Author(s): Kinga Gál / Language(s): English

The practice of bilateral agreements on good neighbourly relations was ‘reinvented’ by Germany after 1991 to guarantee the frontiers resulting from World War II and to protect the minorities of German origin in Central and Eastern Europe. A similar policy was pursued by Hungary with five of ist neighbours to deal with the problems of the Hungarian minorities. Parallel to this trend, the European Union has also promoted a policy aimed at guaranteeing stability in Central and Eastern Europe through bilateral agreements on good neighbourliness. The bilateral treaties follow each other in time, structure and content. They incorporate soft law provisions, especially with regard to their minority regulations, reflecting the strong influence of the political factor. They do not mention collective rights and fail to provide the national minorities concerned with any form of self-government. Furthermore, they were often negotiated in the absence of the minority communities they were designed to protect. As these treaties are politically highly motivated, the political aspects of the implementation mechanisms have received primacy over the legal possibilities. The treaties, and hence indirectly the provisions of international documents enshrined in them, have the same status as national legislation and could therefore be claimed before national courts. However, the joint intergovernmental committees monitoring implementation have the potential to become the most effective implementation mechanism. In conclusion, although these treaties have not significantly changed the existing practice of minority protection so far, their importance should not be diminished because they contribute to the construction of a new inter-state framework for minority protection.

More...

Influence of Ethnic Minorities on State’s Foreign Policy

Author(s): Veaceslav Berbeca / Language(s): English

The problem of Moldova’s geopolitical identity continues to be, after 20 years of independence, a topic still open for Moldovan society. This situation can be explained by the polarization of Moldovan society that often has been divided by geopolitical preferences of the citizens of this state. Polarization phenomenon was intentionally powered on different occasions by certain political parties invoking false threats to obtain political dividends from parliamentary elections. Attitude of ethnic minorities towards political issues and international institutions is an important element in influencing foreign policy of Moldova. In other words, in most cases, political parties articulate their policies and their implementation tools based on voters’ preferences.

More...

Nasilje i nesnošljivost prema Srbima u 2014.

Author(s): Tamara Opačić / Language(s): English,Croatian

As opposed to earlier years when cases of violence, intolerance and hate speech directed towards Serbs were mostly registered in the areas of refugees return, it is noticeable that from 2012 on, such cases have spread throughout Croatia. What significantly contributed to this trend, which is increasingly assuming revisi¬onist right-wing features, was the socio-political context which became increasingly radicalized since the coming to power of the coalition led by the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Croatia’s accession to the European Union.A new awakening of nationalist euphoria, as well as the mobili¬sation of a part of the veterans’ population, began with the cu¬rrent government’s decision to initiate full implementation of the Law on the use of languages and letters of national minorities in the Republic of Croatia, which stipulates the equal use of mi¬nority language in communities where minorities make up more than 33 percent of population. Placement of the first bilingual plaques on state institutions in Vukovar in early 2013, caused re¬sistance of the veterans’ association Headquarter for Defence of Croatian Vukovar. The Vukovar veterans’ protest, which turned into a protest against the rights of Serbs, eventually brought on an increased level of hate speech and of ethnic intolerance in public space.

More...

Nasilje i nesnošljivost prema Srbima u 2013.

Author(s): Milena Jurišić,Ljubomir Mikić / Language(s): English,Croatian

The analysis that follows certainly calls into question the soundness of a generalized assessment made by the Croatian authorities of the years 2011 and 2012, specifi cally that “[ ... ] in the Re public of Croatia there is no increased threat to members of national minorities” and that “[ ... ] there were no identifi ed elements which would indicate that there is organized violence against members of ethnic minorities, but in all cases individual incidents were recorded, which do not indicate a threat to national minorities in a certain area or during a certain time period.” Specifi cally, during 2012 the caucus of the Independent Democratic Serb Party (SDSS ) in the Croatian Parliament and the Serb National Council (SNV) received information about an increased number of cases of ethnically motivated violence and intolerance towards members of the Serb community and their institutions.

More...

Neostvarena prava i promašene politike: Zastupljenost nacionalnih manjina u državnoj upravi, pravosuđu i policiji

Author(s): Slađana Božić,Ljubomir Mikić / Language(s): English,Croatian

The Croatian Constitutional Act on the Rights of National Minorities, adopted in 2002 with a two-thirds majority of all MPs, stipulates special rights and freedoms of persons belonging to national minorities in order to enable their active and effective participation in public affairs and public life at all levels. Minorities in Croatia are thus guaranteed the right to proportional representation in the state administration, police and judicial bodies. This right is to be exercised using population fi gures from offi cial census results. According to the latest 2011 census, minorities comprise 7.67%, and Serbs 4.36%, of the total population of Croatia.

More...

0.00 €

AHMETI’s VILLAGE. The Political Economy of Interethnic Relations in Macedonia

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

This report explores the political economy of ethnic relations in Macedonia – the “other conflict” of diminishing resources and collapsing lifestyles which so often goes unnoticed. … It looks at a region of 52,000 people in Western Macedonia, inhabited by 50 percent ethnic Albanians and 40 percent ethnic Macedonians. Like much of Macedonia, Kicevo (Albanian: Kercova) has a deeply rooted tradition of ethnic coexistence. There has been no communal violence in this region for decades, and it remained peaceful even at the height of last year’s fighting. Yet it exhibits a diversity of economic and social patterns among its communities which seems programmed to generate inter-ethnic suspicion and fear.

More...

0.00 €

DPC POLICY NOTE 04: Legal Misunderstandings, False normative Hopes and the Ignorance of Political Reality. A Commentary on the recent ESI Report “Lost in the Bosnian Labyrinth”

Author(s): Soeren Keil / Language(s): English

The European Stability Initiative recently published a troubling report on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) called “Lost in the Bosnian Labyrinth - Why the Sejdić-Finci case should not block an EU application.”1 ESI argues that “non-implementation of the Sejdić-Finci decision cannot justify blocking Bosnia and Herzegovina’s application for EU membership,” noting that the reforms the EU expects from Bosnia have not been required of other EU applicants, much less its own member states.2 ESI argues that a ground-breaking legal ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)3 should not impede Bosnia’s integration into the EU, but instead the EU should quickly give BiH candidate status and expect the constitutional revisions demanded by the ECHR to take place while BiH negotiates with the EU about membership. The paper justifies this with the claim that other countries (including EU member states) include de facto discriminatory provisions in their constitutions and are not sanctioned by the EU or the Council of Europe. // As will be shown in this text, that argument is not only highly flawed, but also demonstrates a troublingly lack of understanding of the fundamentals of BiH politics, as well as constitutional power-sharing arrangements in the member states of the EU. As such, the paper appears to be an effort to provide an ideological framework for the EU to move beyond its continuing failures in BiH that have enabled local politicians to undo many of the highly-touted reforms put in place prior to 2006, when the EU assumed policy leadership. If Brussels uses the ESI paper as ideological justification for dropping conditionality, it would enable the Brussels bureaucracy to move ahead with its “one size fits all” cookie-cutter enlargement policy and pretend that “progress” is occurring, when at best a standstill can be observed, and at worst, previous achievements are slowly being reversed by local party elites.

More...

0.00 €

Situata e sigurisë në Mitrovicë/Mitrovica gjatë periudhës dhjetor 2008 - janar 2009 Raport i FDH — Kosovë)

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): Albanian,English,Serbian

Following the increase in the number of incidents in North Mitrovica/Mitrovicë which occurred at the end of December 2008, and throughout January 2009, HLC-Kosovo conducted research to systematically monitor the implementation of minority rights in practice, in particular the extent of the implementation of point 31 of article 58 (state responsibilities) of chapter III of the Kosovo constitution and points 3.2 and 3.52 of article 3 of the Law on the Protection and Promotion of the rights of Communities and their Members in Kosovo. The research also sought to identify the level of security in North Mitrovica/Mitrovicë, as well as the causes, consequences and impact that the incidents have had on the overall security situation and everyday life of citizens living in this region. For this purpose, HLC-Kosovo conducted 40 interviews with representatives of local municipal authorities, the judiciary, police, civil society and citizens of all ethnic backgrounds.

More...

0.00 €

Lepa norma

Author(s): Vesna Rakić Vodinelić / Language(s): Serbian

Početkom ove nedelje bio je veliki dan. Veliki dan za crnu studentkinju Medicinskog fakulteta u Novom Sadu. Velika bela doktorka nije joj zasela kolenom za vrat. Nije je čak ni šutnula. Samo je pokušala da otera iz lifta Medicinskog fakulteta crnu studentkinju, psujući je i rekavši joj da je crna krava.

More...

0.00 €

Scientific Accounts on the Memory of Communism for Minority Hungarians in Romania

Author(s): Zsuzsa Plainer / Language(s): English

The aim of this paper is to present and categorize the scholarly publications on the Hungarian remembering of the communist past in Romania. By stock-taking and categorizing the existing publication I intend to find out possible similarities and differences of such works in comparison with their Romanian „counterparts”. In doing so, the following paradigms are presented. The first category contains approaches coined by ethnographers, and anthropologists (including the memory of places, oral history accounts and anthropology of communism). The second paradigm covers those historical approaches which reached a greater public and had a visibility outside the minority Hungarian scientific community. Similar to the Romanian studies and books, minority approaches stress on discourses of the victims. Both accounts have in their core a common denomination, namely that that communism was an unpleasant detour in the Romanian history, something to get rid of, something to be condemned. Thus, communism in this perspective relates drama and sufferings of victims: those „true” or „clean” people, who were not involved and corrupted by the system. Sometimes (unlike Romanians’) the Hungarians’ memories overethnicize communism, which makes possible to create the perception of staying apart from it. But a new generation of historians and social scientists seriously questions this statement, and pleads for a more nuanced framework, claiming to show, the ethnic Hungarians were “part of this system”, too.

More...

0.00 €

Migraţia şi problemele ei: perspectiva transnaţională ca o nouă modalitate de analiză a etnicităţii şi schimbării sociale în România

Author(s): Remus Gabriel Anghel / Language(s): Romanian

The transnational perspective has been asserted in recent years especially in the study of international migration. The current dynamics of globalization and international migration call for new theoretical and methodological perspectives to analyze social contamination processes. This study presents a case study of transnationalism for migrants from Borşa (Maramureş) to Milan. At the end of the article, there are some ways in which transnationalism, as a theory and research perspective, can be used in ethnic analysis in Eastern Europe.

More...

0.00 €

Elemzések a romániai magyarok kétnyelvűségéről

Author(s): István Horváth / Language(s): Hungarian

Bilingualism is a widespread characteristic of Hungarians from Romania. The study analyses the linguistic context of this community through an empirically grounded description of bilingualism. Building on data provided by the censuses from 1992 and 2002, the article starts with the study of mother tongue as statistical category. In the second part the author discusses three dimensions of bilingualism: bilingual linguistic competence, language use, and the normative context of bilingualism. The typology of bilingualism described in the article reflects the principle of complementarity of the two languages as well as the criteria of success and efficiency in communication. The typology classifies language proficiency, monolingualism and bilingualism according to the relative position of the two languages in the communication repertories.

More...

0.00 €

Palatele ţigăneşti. Arhitectură şi cultură

Author(s): Rudolf Gräf / Language(s): Romanian

“The gypsy palace”, as a certain type of architectural object in Romania is called, has developed over the last 15 years and has gained more and more interest due to its peculiar style, which is different from other architectural style in Romania. It is identified with an ethnic group that only recently has embraced sedentary life. In a first stage forms and colors turn the attention to the phenomenon, but, as one starts to go deeply into it, the aspects of cultural identity become more important. It becomes clear that only an interdisciplinary analysis can offer reasoning beyond the prejudices born out of a supposed cultural superiority, which in the 15 year of transition has been hardly proven.

More...

0.00 €

Bibliografie selectiva privind rromii (1990-2009)

Author(s): Gheorghe Sarau / Language(s): Romanian

Din pacate, oamenii, în general, nu prefera rigoarea, metoda, iubesc mai degraba o „poveste”,o „spunere” despre ceva. Este si neplacut sa aduni firicel lânga firicel, ca sa-ti iasa, în final, o cununa!Respingerea instrumentelor de lucru ne îndeparteaza însa de „miezul” cercetarilor, de adevar. De aceea,orice încercare de a produce un instrument de lucru - o bibliografie, un dictionar, o enciclopedie etc. – artebuie sa se bucure de mare respect, pentru ca ne scuteste pe toti ceilalti de efortul de a cauta inutil. Pentru domeniul rrom, am fost mereu ispitit sa-mi întocmesc, mai întâi pentru uzul propriu, apoi sipentru altii, tot felul de bibliografi „de lucru”. Asa am strâns fise pentru o cartoteca de mari dimensiunidespre rromii lumii, pe care le-am excerptat, cu grija si pasiune tinereasca, în perioada 1983 – 1990, din putinele lucrari ce puteau fi gasite în biblioteci, din si mai putinele reviste straine ce se puteau consultadoar într-o singura sau doua biblioteci din tara. În perioada respectiva, de pilda, revista pariziana „ÈtudesTsiganes” – ce aparea înca din anul 1995 – nu se gasea spre consultare decât la Biblioteca de Stat (actuala Biblioteca Nationala) si la Institutul de Studii Sud –Est Europene, ambele în Bucuresti.

More...

0.00 €

Minorităţi din România: dinamici demografice şi identitare

Author(s): Tamás Kiss,Ilka Veress / Language(s): Romanian

The study proposes to draw out the etno-demographic portray of national minorities from Romania. The analysis has as a start point the statistic dates given by the National Institute of Statistics with wich ISPMN concluded a unitive protocol. The dates used for the elaboration of this study can be grouped in two categories: 1. Census dates and 2. dates which come from the population dynamics. As concerning the analysed minorities, it started from the structure of parliamentary representation of the minorities from Romania.

More...

0.00 €

Strategiile de reproducere culturală ale minorităţii armene din România

Author(s): Ilka Veress / Language(s): Romanian

The general objective of the present study has been to identify the internal structure of the ethnic group of Armenians which, in spite of their unitary ethnic status, are constituted by two compact blocks and by several subgroups. These subgroups create an internal field where the actors fight for the right to the legitimate representation of the minority, which coincides also with having the resources necessary for the community's cultural reproduction. The main objective has been to identify these actors and describe the discourse of legimitacy by presenting its the main topics as well.

More...