Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-Albania’s Meta Rejects Kosovo’s Passport Plea
Facing an intransigent parliament, Kosovo leader Thaci sought help from Tirana.
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Facing an intransigent parliament, Kosovo leader Thaci sought help from Tirana.
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Turkey's Erdogan and German Chancellor Merkel reportedly helped negotiate the end of Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz's ordeal.
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A former Bulgarian soccer star has been making headlines for getting up on his soapbox about Catalonia’s independence.
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While an official ban is not openly in place, the Polish Foreign Ministry has expressed strong objections to Richard Spencer’s visit.
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Lithuania; transgender; human rights; European Court of Human Rights;
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Julian action (program) as a legal and political phenomenon in Bosnia and Herzegovina at the turn of the XX century, which occurred in the areas inhabited by Hungarians living abroad. It mostly referred to the establishment of Hungarian schools, cultural societies, religious schools and state railways. There are two opposing opinions on its main goals: on the one hand Julian action was perceived as a measure of preserving the identity, culture and language of Hungarians abroad, and on the other it was recognized as the political Hungarisation of Slavs, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Hungarian government incorporated Julian action into the concept of the Hungarian state idea, aspiring to unite the Hungarian state from the Carpathian Mountains to the Adriatic Sea, with a single Hungarian national language. In that context Hungarians from Bosnia and Herzegovina were observed by other nations as imposed foreign bodies and conquerors, while for Hungary they were a “fortress” defending them from South Slavic nations who were uniting in their fight against the Monarchy, as well as a means of spreading the Hungarian influence and opposing Austrian aspirations. Julian action was short-lived due to the oncoming World War and failed to accomplish the long term goal in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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Myth represents the narrative based on the particular historical event, which consists of both objective facts and fictitious elements. Th is phenomenon has an important social and political role, and represents the constituent part of ethnic and national identity. One of the basic functions of myth is its role in the strengthening of bonds within one ethnic or national community, and, at the same time, the establishment of the borders between that and other communities. Th e social and political power that some historical myths have especially gains importance in the periods of security crisis, when these narratives become the important part of ethnic mobilizations. Historical events, embodied in myths, are one of the most powerful “weapons” used by elites to manipulate masses, as well as to generate and control the process of ethnic mobilization. Members of the political elites who can revive the myth can also mobilize people, exclude those who do not belong to the group, suppress certain memories, establish solidarity and strengthen the hierarchy of statuses and values.
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Mit predstavlja narativ nastao na određenom istorijskom događaju, koji se sastoji kako od objektivnih činjenica, tako i od fiktivnih elemenata. Ovaj fenomen ima značajnu društvenu i političku ulogu, i predstavlja konstitutivni deo etničkog i nacionalnog identiteta. Jedna od osnovnih funkcija mita jeste njegova uloga u jačanju veza unutar jedne etničke ili nacionalne zajednice, i, istovremeno, uspostavljanju granica između te i drugih zajednica. Društvena i politička moć koju poseduju pojedini istorijski mitovi posebno dolazi do izražaja u periodima bezbednosnih kriza, kada ovi narativi postaju značajan deo etničkih mobilizacija. Istorijski događaji, otelotvoreni u mitovima, su jedno od najmoćnijih „oružja“ koja se koriste od strane elita za manipulaciju emocijama masa, kao i za generisanje i kontrolu procesa etničke mobilizacije. Članovi političkih elita koji mogu da ožive mit mogu i da mobilišu ljude, isključe one koji ne pripadaju grupi, prikriju određena sećanja, uspostave solidarnost i učvrste hijerarhiju statusa i vrednosti.
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This paper is a review of the latest research work of two Lithuanian historians, Dangiras Mačiulis and Darius Staliūnas (Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius), entitled “Vilnius – The capital of Lithuania: A problem in the project of the national state (late 19th century – 1940)”. The authors in their work analyse the emergence, evolution and implementation of the idea of Vilnius as the capital of modern Lithuanian state at the turn of the 20th century until 1940. The monograph is based on valuable material from the archives, bibliographic sources and interesting iconography. With particular regard to the Lithuanian national project, describing and explaining the strategies of the symbolic appropriation of Vilnius and the question of Vilnius’ Lithuanisation, Mačiulis and Staliūnas first of all focus on the Lithuanian case in as much detail as possible. Here in the reviewed work we do not find such detailed analysis of Polish, Jewish, Belarusian or Russian attitudes towards the Vilnius question. Of course this does not detract from the importance of this inspiring book which is as a valuable academic publication and useful source for further research.
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The concept of the Polak-Katolik emerged in the form we know it today only at the very end of the 19th century. While there were many earlier ways to express the complicated relationship between Polish national belonging and Roman Catholicism, the distinctive pairing of two hyphenated nouns signified a new stage in the history of this entanglement.
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In an article published in the St. Petersburg-based Ukrainian language journal Osnova (Foundation) in 1862, Włodzimierz Antonowicz, formally the descendant of a Polish family from the landed gentry in Ukraine, declared that from then on he would consider himself a Ukrainian. In the present essay, I analyze the polemics around what can be called Antonovych’s conversion from Polishness to Ukrainianness. Antonovych as well as his adversaries brought into play various concepts of nationality and national identity, switching quite freely between various frames of references (political thought of the Enlightenment and the Romantic era, contemporary historical fiction, and historiography).
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The paper will examine the model for the creation of a ‘Greater Croatia’ designed by the Croatian noblemen, publicist and historian Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713). Many historians have viewed Vitezović’s political thought and his developed ideological framework of a united south Slavic state as part of a wider pan-Slavic world. According to the prevailing notion, Vitezović was a precursor of the idea of ‘yugoslavism’ (a united southern Slav nation state) and even ‘Pan-Slavism’, a pan-Slavic cultural and political reciprocity. Yet a closer look at Vitezović and his contemporaries’ writings suggests an alternative model for outlining the borders of modern ethnic states among the southern slavs. Vitezović argued for the creation of a Croat national state, based on the integration of the Croat ‘ethnic territories’ and their consolidation along ethno-linguistic lines. The analysis of Vitezović’s understanding of nationhood explains how the borders of an envisioned early modern Croat ethnic state had been perceived as including vast territories from the Adriatic sea to Moscow and from the Baltic sea to the Black sea. In this respect Vitezović’s views on the Lithuanians and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth will show that the argument used to substantiate his claims for a Croatian nation state was based on an ethno-linguistic kinship.
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This text is a review of Alla Karnaukh’s book. The review contains a brief overview of eight chapters of the book. The reviewer notes that this book fills a gap in the study of national and ethnic minorities in Berdiansk and the outskirts of Primorsk (Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine). From the Polish point of view it is a very useful book. According to the author of the review, despite a few mistakes and editorial faults, Alla Karnaukh’s book is important especially for researchers of Polish-Ukrainian and Polish-Russian relations.
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The paper will examine the model for the creation of a ‘Greater Croatia’ designed by the Croatian noblemen, publicist and historian Pavao Ritter Vitezović (1652–1713). Many historians have viewed Vitezović’s political thought and his developed ideological framework of a united South Slavic state as part of a wider pan-Slavic world. According to the prevailing notion, Vitezović was a precursor of the idea of ‘Yugoslavism’ (a united Southern Slav nation state) and even ‘Pan-Slavism’, a pan-Slavic cultural and political reciprocity. Yet a closer look at Vitezović and his contemporaries’ writings suggests an alternative model for outlining the borders of modern ethnic states among the Southern Slavs. Vitezović argued for the creation of a Croat national state, based on the integration of the Croat ‘ethnic territories’ and their consolidation along ethno-linguistic lines. The analysis of Vitezović’s understanding of nationhood explains how the borders of an envisioned early modern Croat ethnic state had been perceived as including vast territories from the Adriatic Sea to Moscow and from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. In this respect Vitezović’s views on the Lithuanians and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth will show that the argument used to substantiate his claims for a Croatian nation state was based on an ethno-linguistic kinship.
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Alzheimer’s is a disease that poses a challenge to the established ways of thinking about the relation between memory, identity and narrative. In this article, I offer a reading of Lisa Genova’s Still Alice (2007), Stefan Merrill Block’s The Story of Forgetting (2008), and Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves (2014) to examine the ways in which the increasingly popular literature of Alzheimer’s represents, and possibly reconfigures, the prevalent notions of identity and memory, as well as the relation between literature and science. A number of critics have noted a shift in contemporary literature demonstrated by the growing focus on neurological conditions. Accordingly, the analysis of Alzheimer’s novels refers to selected critical descriptions of this shift, including the discussions of syndrome literature and the neuronovel.
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This paper discusses the complex nuances of power in the postcolony. By focusing on the poetry of two Anglophone Cameroon poets: Emmanuel Fru Doh, Wading the Tide (2009), Not Yet Damascus (2007), Bill F Ndi’s Bleeding Red: Cameroon in Black and White (2010) and K’cracy, Trees in the Storm and Other Poems (2008), the paper examines how political power manifests itself in ways that the post colonial scholar, Achille Mbembe has described as “banal.” That way, the paper situates itself within the context of postcolonial studies of state repression and resistance.
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In this article we observe the range of contemporary theories of autonomy, which is widely discussed in the English-speaking community, but almost not represented in Ukrainian and Russian-speaking ones. These theories are based on the content-neutral procedural approach, which gives them the postmodern accent. At the same time some scientists propose to limit it by substantial additions. We try to look at the problem of after-postmodern identity reconstruction on the background of this discussion.
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In the 1960s, national consolidation of society became one of the most important directions in the internal policy of socialist Yugoslavia. And at that time the project of eliminating national differences and turning all the peoples of Yugoslavia into a single «Yugoslav nation» for national peace and equality began to be implemented. Josip Broz Tito himself propagated a new identity in official speeches. However, in the 1980s this project failed because of the activities of the Serbian national intellectual opposition and because of the long struggle of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia and the Union of Communists of Serbia with «Great Serbian nationalism and chauvinism». Against the backdrop of the systemic crisis that hit the SFRY in the 1980s, in the Republic of Serbia (as in other republics) the movement towards national self-determination prevailed. The failure of the project of create a Yugoslav nation became one of the most important causes of wars in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s
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Intergroup contact reduces prejudice and improves outgroup attitudes, while a salient social identity might have the opposite effects. Recent research has shown that exposure to positive information about the outgroup could influence such effects of the contact and social identity on the outgroup attitudes. Here we investigate the effects of the contact and social identity on the outgroup attitudes, and forgiveness toward the outgroup of Bosniak Muslims among Serbs (N = 400) by randomly al-locating them into control and experimental groups. In the experimental condition, the students were presented with brief biographies of three eminent Bosniak Muslims, in the positive context, after which they com-pleted a survey. In the control group, students were only presented with the survey without the biographies. Subsequent independent samples t-tests showed that the mean values for ingroup identification and inter-group trust were significantly different in the two groups. Specifically, participants who were in the experimental condition, being exposed to the positive information about Bosniak Muslims, reported a higher level of intergroup trust and a lower level of ingroup identification as Serbian. We then performed a multi-group structural equation modeling through which we tested a predictive role of the past contact and in-the group identification on trust and collective guilt in both control and experimen-tal conditions. Across both groups, past contact positively and ingroup identification negatively predicted both intergroup attitudes and forgive-ness via trust and collective guilt. Exposure to the positive information about the outgroup moderated the indirect effects of the ingroup identi-fication on the intergroup attitudes via collective guilt.
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Not many studies have dealt with how Serbs from Serbia see Croats and Bosniaks in the light of the wars from 1990s. In our study, we used a quasi-experimental approach to assess the type of stereotypes provoked in Serbs, and their relationship to social distance and the national identity. The sample consisted of 66 participants of Serbian ethnicity, born between 1991 and 1995, who are residing in Serbia. The instruments included Social Distance Scale, National Identity Scale, socio-demographic ques-tionnaire and a set of collective memory stimuli followed by a set of questions. As stimuli, we used shortened versions of collective memories as described by Ruiz Jiménez (2013), in order to set a context which referred to the 1990s wars. The results have shown that the described stimuli have impactneither on stereotypes nor on the social distance and the national identity of participants. However, the social distance is lower than in previous studies in the region, and Croats are consistently seen in more negative terms than Bosniaks and Serbs.
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