Literature and the Symbolic Engineering of the European Self

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Spiridon
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Capital City ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Centrifugal Forces ◽  
Top Down ◽  
European Modernism

My study draws on the construction of a pro-European identity in modern Romania, a process set in motion by two main engines: a political one (the export around 1848 of the Great French Revolution, in a ‘tamed’ version, to Eastern Europe) and a cultural one (the emergence of Paris as the capital-city of European modernism). Born at the periphery of the continent, the Romanian identity project puts on display a series of insightful dimensions: a logic of homogenization, a centripetal pull towards centralization, linguistic standardization and unity, against any centrifugal forces of cultural difference, a top-down dynamics and, finally, an imaginary self-colonizing drive. As illustrated by the Romanian case, the paradigm of European nationalism opened up new ways of linking nation-building to the needs of modern societies and the interests of professional elites.

Britain: Republicanism and the Establishment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Established Order ◽  
The French Revolution ◽  
At Home

This chapter focuses on England during the revolutionary decade. It argues that in Britain and Ireland, as in Eastern Europe, it was counter-revolution that prevailed. The net effect of the revolutionary decade was to demonstrate, or to consolidate, the strength of the established order. The very lengths to which the established order went, however, in dealing with disaffection (or what was called “sedition”) offer a measure of the magnitude of the discontents. The men who ruled England were not the sort to be frightened by witches. The British governing class was neither timid, foolish, intolerant, nor especially ruthless when unprovoked. That Englishmen of this class became fearful of unrest at home, intolerant of ideas or organizations suggesting those of the French Revolution, repressive in Britain, and deliberately terroristic in Ireland can be taken as evidence of the reality of something of which, from their own point of view, they had reason to be afraid. In England as elsewhere there was a contest between democrats and aristocrats.

“Forward to David the Builder!” Georgia's (re)turn to language-centered nationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 522-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christofer Berglund
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
The Past ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Rose ◽  
State Language

After the Rose Revolution, President Saakashvili tried to move away from the exclusionary nationalism of the past, which had poisoned relations between Georgians and their Armenian and Azerbaijani compatriots. His government instead sought to foster an inclusionary nationalism, wherein belonging was contingent upon speaking the state language and all Georgian speakers, irrespective of origin, were to be equals. This article examines this nation-building project from a top-down and bottom-up lens. I first argue that state officials took rigorous steps to signal that Georgian-speaking minorities were part of the national fabric, but failed to abolish religious and historical barriers to their inclusion. I next utilize a large-scale, matched-guise experiment (n= 792) to explore if adolescent Georgians ostracize Georgian-speaking minorities or embrace them as their peers. I find that the upcoming generation of Georgians harbor attitudes in line with Saakashvili's language-centered nationalism, and that current Georgian nationalism therefore is more inclusionary than previous research, or Georgia's tumultuous past, would lead us to believe.

Nation Building, Democratization and Globalization as Competing Priorities in Ukraine's Education System*

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Germen Janmaat
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Educational Reform ◽  
Education System ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Modern System ◽  
New States ◽  
Consumer Demands ◽  
Competing Priorities ◽  
Individual Talent

One of the greatest challenges currently facing the new states in Central and Eastern Europe is educational reform. After obtaining independence in the early 1990s, these states were confronted with the immense task of transforming an outdated centralized education system, which was aimed at delivering a loyal communist workforce, into a modern system that would be much more responsive to consumer demands and would recognize and further individual talent. The immensity of the undertaking lies in the fact that three discourses make simultaneous demands on the education system: nation building, democratization and globalization.

scholarly journals Turkic poetic heritage as symbol and spectacle of identity: observations on Turkmenistan's Year of Magtymguly celebrations

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-336
Author(s):  
Paul Michael Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Power Structure ◽  
Public Culture ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Cultural Activities ◽  
Cultural Sector

This paper presents one case study of state-sponsored cultural activities that occurred throughout 2014, Turkmenistan's Year of Magtymguly, the 290th anniversary of this Turkmen poet's birth. Such activities constitute examples of public culture; they can organize representations of a society's past and present to reaffirm for participants the values and power structure of their society and revalidate its philosophical underpinnings. After examining this Turkic poet's iconicity, this paper compiles 2014's celebratory events from disparate sources, complementing broader general literature on Central Asia's spectacles of public culture and their role in nation-building and identity-formation. Rather than merely resulting from any top-down decision specifying required activities nationwide, the year's events involved numerous synergies as artists, museum and theater administrators, composers, and other cultural-sector workers benefited by responding to the potential of aligning their work with a theme as broad, as widely appreciated, and as eligible for various forms of support as this one. In addition, Turkmenistan's strong central leadership benefited from this widely shared and highly visible celebration, especially emphasizing one element within Magtymguly's eighteenth-century vision, an end to his people's tribal conflicts within a unified Turkmenistan under one leader.

scholarly journals Back to the kitchen? Gender role attitudes in 13 East European countries

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Éva Fodor ◽  
Anikó Balogh
Keyword(s):  
Gender Role ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Gender Role Attitudes ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
East European ◽  
Material Conditions

This paper explores the determinants of gender role opinions in 13 post-communist Eastern European societies using survey data from the project EUREQUAL. Our main findings consist of two parts. First, contrary to the expectations of scholars who emphasize the lack of gender/feminist consciousness in Eastern Europe, we argue that gender indeed is an important determinant of gender role opinions in post-communist societies: as elsewhere women express more liberal attitudes than men. Second, we argue that the interaction of other determinants of gender role opinions with gender also follows patterns described in the literature for more developed capitalist countries. In this respect, therefore, East European countries seem to fit the general trends of gender role opinion formation. As explanation we point to a connection between women’s material conditions and their gender role attitudes, not denying the importance of cultural difference – if primarily as exception – to this process. Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht, auf Basis von Umfragedaten des EUREQUAL-Projektes, die Determinanten von Einstellungen zu Geschlechterrollen in 13 postkommunistischen osteuropäischen Gesellschaften. Unsere Hauptergebnisse bestehen aus zwei Teilen. Erstens: Wir legen dar, dass – entgegen den Erwartungen von Wissenschaftler(inne)n, die das Fehlen eines Gender- oder feministischen Bewusstseins betonen – dass Gender in postkommunistischen Gesellschaften tatsächlich eine wichtige Determinante der Meinungen über die Geschlechterrollen ist: Wie auch anderswo bringen Frauen liberalere Einstellungen als Männer zum Ausdruck. Zweitens: Wir argumentieren, dass die Interaktion anderer Determinanten der Meinungen zu den Geschlechterrollen mit Gender gleichfalls den Mustern folgt, die in der Literatur im Bezug auf weiter entwickelte kapitalistische Gesellschaften beschrieben werden. In dieser Hinsicht scheinen die osteuropäischen Gesellschaften sich den allgemeinen Trends der Herausbildung von Meinungen zu den Geschlechterrollen anzugleichen. Zur Erklärung verweisen wir auf den Zusammenhang zwischen den materiellen Lebensbedingungen von Frauen und ihren Einstellungen zu den Geschlechterrollen, ohne jedoch die Bedeutsamkeit kultureller Unterschiede – wenn sie auch eher Ausnahmen sind – abzustreiten.

Dilemma of Simultaneity

2019 ◽  
pp. 471-479
Author(s):  
Ilyas Saliba ◽  
Wolfgang Merkel
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Transformation Processes

The theory of the dilemma of simultaneity is empirically based on the transformations of post-socialist states in Central and Eastern Europe. The transformations after the collapse of the socialist bloc were without precedent with regards to breadth and depth. The dilemma of simultaneity consists of three parallel transition processes on three dimensions. The first part of this chapter explores the three dimensions of the transitions: nation building, political transformation, and economic transformation. The second part discusses the three levels of transformation: (1) ethno-national identity and territory, (2) polity, and (3) socio-economic distribution. The third part highlights the complexity and challenges of multidimensional simultaneous transformation processes. The fourth and fifth parts discuss the role of international actors and socio-economic structures on the transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter concludes with an account of Elster’s and Offe’s critics and their response.

The end of the Global South and the cultures of the South

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikos Papastergiadis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Global South ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Alternative Route ◽  
The South ◽  
Top Down ◽  
A Site ◽  
Cultural Homogenization

As the Global South is increasingly interpenetrated by neoliberal and authoritarian regimes, the idea of the South as a site of emancipatory resistance and exotic cultural difference has ended. This article offers an alternative route into the cultures of the South. It focuses on the shifting forms of the South in contemporary visual art and outlines the possibilities of the non-coercive forms of cultural exchange and the cartographies of a cosmopolitanism from below. This perspective on the South is most evident in in the stories of embodied solidarity that stand in contrast to the top-down visions of socio-economic development and cultural homogenization.

Criminal networks, unfortunate circumstances, or migratory projects? Researching sex trafficking from Eastern Europe

2013 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darja Davydova
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
European Identity ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Eastern Border ◽  
Methodological Approaches

Eastern Europe constitutes a peripheral space of the European Union, in which political and symbolic belonging of the nations is constantly questioned. As the migration of Eastern Europeans challenges and redefines geographical and symbolic borders, sex trafficking emerges as a politicized issue related to the construction of the European identity and the surveillance of the borders. The research on sex trafficking is frequently employed by policy-makers in order to justify the increasing control of migration over the Eastern border. In this article, I explore the diversity of methodological approaches in recent research on migration for sex work from Eastern Europe and discuss its implications for maintaining physical and symbolic Eastern border of the European Union. I distinguish between different perspectives undertaken by researchers and demonstrate the relation between conceptualization of the problem of sex trafficking, methodological approaches, and the way Eastern Europe is described in research projects.

The production of a new Eurasian capital on the Kazakh steppe: Architecture, urban design, and identity in Astana

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 590-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Köppen
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
The South ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Contemporary Architecture ◽  
The City

In December 1997, the Republic of Kazakhstan officially proclaimed that the city of Astana would be its new capital. The decision to transfer the seat of government from the city of Almaty in the south to the more centrally located Astana was connected to the process of nation building in a multi-ethnic society where the titular nation represents little more than half of the population. Efforts to transform the rather remote regional center, Akmola (later renamed Astana) into a modern capital city have been underway since the late 1990s. One important component of this transformation is the idea of building a “metabolic” and sustainable “Eurasian” city. As the symbolic center of the whole country, this new capital would function as a showpiece of Kazakh culture and identity. The city would also become a symbol of economic prosperity and the regime's geopolitical vision. While the government's intensions are expressed rather openly, it remains unclear to what extent these politically verbalized leitmotivs are actually being realized through contemporary architecture and structure. This article offers a critical assessment of what has been achieved to date and argues that the production of the new Kazakhstani capital has often failed to translate rhetoric into reality.

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