Escaping the “Balkanizing” Gaze? Perceptions of Global and Internal Developmental Hierarchies in Romania

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamás Kiss

The article presents the perceptions of global and internal developmental hierarchies in Romania. According to our empirical results, the Western-centred developmental paradigm has deeply penetrated the worldviews of ordinary people in Romania. As a consequence, national self-perceptions, respectively, constructions of internal regional and ethnic differences in Romania, are powerfully shaped by the idea of East–West developmental hierarchies. Melegh introduced the concept of an “East–West slope” to denote a discursive construction used since the eighteenth century. This construction suggests that there is a gradual decline of development (or “civilization”) as one moves from the West (North West) toward the East (South East). The author argues that this framework not only defines how Romanians position themselves in the global developmental hierarchy but also how they define their internal (regional and ethnic) hierarchies. The article also discusses Todorova’s concept of Balkanism. This interpretive framework not only defines the perceptions of external observers but (following a process of cultural penetration) may also shape the self-perceptions of those involved. This article argues that Romanians have succeeded in avoiding—at least partially—the most severe consequence of the “Balkanizing gaze,” which is a constant sense of inferiority. It is also important, however, that this Balkanizing gaze can be reproduced at a national/local level and (in interrelation with other types of developmental discourses) can organize internal hierarchies.

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (0) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Katharina Herlofson ◽  
Svein Olav Daatland ◽  
Marijke Veenstra

The article addresses the strength and character of family responsibility norms in Eastern and Western Europe. The strength is measured by the level of support for filial and parental responsibilities (i.e., adult children’s obligations towards older parents and vice-versa) and the character is indicated by the priority given to the older or the younger generation. For the analyses, we employ data from thirteen Eastern and Western European countries participating in the Generations and Gender Survey. In general, family norms are stronger in the East than in the West, but it is difficult to establish where to draw a dividing line. The contrast between the two extremes, Norway and Sweden in the north-west and Georgia in the south-east, is striking. The remaining countries line up quite close along the geographical diagonal (from Scandinavia to Georgia). The character of the norms is less clearly distributed – whereas almost all countries in Eastern Europe give priority to the older generation, the picture in the West is more mixed. The results partly confirm earlier conclusions about east-west differences in family responsibility norms, but adding more countries to the analyses has revealed a more complex and ambiguous picture than presented in previous studies.


1959 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 292-294
Author(s):  
R. Hope Simpson

The site to be described lies on a low hill a little to the north of the small village or suburb of Nemesis, about 150 metres to the west of the main road from Patisia to Koukouvaounes, and 1 kilometre to east-south-east of the Mycenaean tholos tomb at Λυκὸτρυπα, which was excavated by the German Institute in 1879, and is usually called the Menidi Tomb. The site at Nemesis is visible from the tholos tomb, and is separated from it by a gentle valley through which run, in a southerly direction, two streams with steep banks. The eastern stream is the river Kephissos, whose name goes back at least as far as the classical period.The hill of Nemesis stands about 15 to 20 metres above the level of the surrounding land, and measures about 160 m. north-west to south-east × 120 m. north-east to south-west. The hill is an isolated outcrop of conglomerate rock, thinly covered with stony brown earth. It has been eroded over an area about 250 m. north-south × 50 m. east-west, so that its original size was considerably larger than at present, in all about 30,000 square metres. Mycenaean sherds were found over the whole of this area, though mainly in the eroded part, among the lumps of fallen earth and rock. Remains of rubble walling together with several Mycenaean sherds were found here, and also in the steep cliffs formed by the erosion on the west and south sides (this part of the hill has been undermined by recent excavation of the beds of grey clay, which here lie at between 2 and 3 metres below the original ground level). The ancient remains are particularly noticeable in the south-west angle of the cliffs (roughly in the centre of the part of the hill shown on Plate 71a), where there is a greater depth of earth above the rock than is visible elsewhere on the hill.


Author(s):  
Cynthia Robin

This chapter explores the possibility that east-west symbolism is an enduring aspect of Maya culture that was initially developed in farmers' community centers and homes and later appropriated by society's nobility and encoded in hieroglyphic texts and images and enshrined in the monuments of major civic-centers. This chapter explores these ideas through the analysis of the central religious complex at the ancient Maya farming community of Chan in Belize. Chan’s central religious complex follows a construction sequence reminiscent of other E Groups, particularly the Cenote-style E Group, across the Maya area. It begins initially as a linear bedrock outcrop upon which architecture construction begins in the Late Preclassic (350 BCE-CE 0). The distance between the east and west structures of Chan’s central religious complex was always maintained throughout its architectural reconstruction history. If one of the functions of the west structure was viewing sunrise over the tripartite east structure, then maintaining a relative distance between the two structures could have been integral in maintaining lines of sight. Chan’s central religious complex was also a location for the burial of venerated ancestors, and those individuals from the community selected for veneration included men, women, and children.


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-272
Author(s):  
Jörg Doll ◽  
Michael Dick

The studies reported here focus on similarities and dissimilarities between the terminal value hierarchies ( Rokeach, 1973 ) ascribed to different groups ( Schwartz & Struch, 1990 ). In Study 1, n = 65 East Germans and n = 110 West Germans mutually assess the respective ingroup and outgroup. In this intra-German comparison the West Germans, with a mean intraindividual correlation of rho = 0.609, perceive a significantly greater East-West similarity between the group-related value hierarchies than the East Germans, with a mean rho = 0.400. Study 2 gives East German subjects either a Swiss (n = 58) or Polish (n = 59) frame of reference in the comparison between the categories German and East German. Whereas the Swiss frame of reference should arouse a need for uniqueness, the Polish frame of reference should arouse a need for similarity. In accordance with expectations, the Swiss frame of reference significantly reduces the correlative similarity between German and East German from a mean rho = 0.703 in a control group (n = 59) to a mean rho = 0.518 in the experimental group. Contrary to expectations, the Polish frame of reference does not lead to an increase in perceived similarity (mean rho = 0.712).


1964 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8

Early in 1963 much of the land occupied by the Roman building at Fishbourne was purchased by Mr. I. D. Margary, M.A., F.S.A., and was given to the Sussex Archaeological Trust. The Fishbourne Committee of the trust was set up to administer the future of the site. The third season's excavation, carried out at the desire of this committee, was again organized by the Chichester Civic Society.1 About fifty volunteers a day were employed from 24th July to 3rd September. Excavation concentrated upon three main areas; the orchard south of the east wing excavated in 1962, the west end of the north wing, and the west wing. In addition, trial trenches were dug at the north-east and north-west extremities of the building and in the area to the north of the north wing. The work of supervision was carried out by Miss F. Pierce, M.A., Mr. B. Morley, Mr. A. B. Norton, B.A., and Mr. J. P. Wild, B.A. Photography was organized by Mr. D. B. Baker and Mrs. F. A. Cunliffe took charge of the pottery and finds.


2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 484-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn K. Shay ◽  
Jorge Martinez-Pedraja ◽  
Thomas M. Cook ◽  
Brian K. Haus ◽  
Robert H. Weisberg

Abstract A dual-station high-frequency Wellen Radar (WERA), transmitting at 16.045 MHz, was deployed along the west Florida shelf in phased array mode during the summer of 2003. A 33-day, continuous time series of radial and vector surface current fields was acquired starting on 23 August ending 25 September 2003. Over a 30-min sample interval, WERA mapped coastal ocean currents over an ≈40 km × 80 km footprint with a 1.2-km horizontal resolution. A total of 1628 snapshots of the vector surface currents was acquired, with only 70 samples (4.3%) missing from the vector time series. Comparisons to subsurface measurements from two moored acoustic Doppler current profilers revealed RMS differences of 1 to 5 cm s−1 for both radial and Cartesian current components. Regression analyses indicated slopes close to unity with small biases between surface and subsurface measurements at 4-m depth in the east–west (u) and north–south (υ) components, respectively. Vector correlation coefficients were 0.9 with complex phases of −3° and 5° at EC4 (20-m isobath) and NA2 (25-m isobath) moorings, respectively. Complex surface circulation patterns were observed that included tidal and wind-driven currents over the west Florida shelf. Tidal current amplitudes were 4 to 5 cm s−1 for the diurnal and semidiurnal constituents. Vertical structure of these tidal currents indicated that the semidiurnal components were predominantly barotropic whereas diurnal tidal currents had more of a baroclinic component. Tidal currents were removed from the observed current time series and were compared to the 10-m adjusted winds at a surface mooring. Based on these time series comparisons, regression slopes were 0.02 to 0.03 in the east–west and north–south directions, respectively. During Tropical Storm Henri’s passage on 5 September 2003, cyclonically rotating surface winds forced surface velocities of more than 35 cm s−1 as Henri made landfall north of Tampa Bay, Florida. These results suggest that the WERA measured the surface velocity well under weak to tropical storm wind conditions.


1951 ◽  
Vol 31 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 132-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. M. Richardson ◽  
Alison Young

In 1946 a visit to the barrow, which lies on the edge of the western scarp of Chinnor Common, and a cursory examination of the adjoining area, cultivated during the war, resulted in finds of pottery and other objects indicating Iron Age occupation. The site lies on the saddleback of a Chiltern headland, at a height of about 800 ft. O.D. Two hollow ways traverse the western scarp, giving access to the area from the Upper Icknield Way, which contours the foot of the hill, then drops to cross the valley, passing some 600 yards to the north of the Iron Age site of Lodge Hill, Bledlow, and rising again continues northwards under Pulpit Hill camp and the Ellesborough Iron Age pits below Coombe Hill. The outlook across the Oxford plain to the west is extensive, embracing the hill-fort of Sinodun, clearly visible some fourteen miles distant on the farther bank of the Thames. The hollow way at the north-west end of the site leads down to a group of ‘rises’ hard by the remains of a Roman villa, and these springs are, at the present day, the nearest water-supply to the site.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (271) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Alexandra Grey ◽  
Loy Lising ◽  
Jinhyun Cho

Abstract That English has spread in Asia is well-known, but this critical reflection, and the five contributions and book review that we hereby introduce, contribute to rectifying the relative absence in the sociology of language literature of studies approaching language ideologies and practices in specific Asian contexts from local perspectives. We are not alone; our inspections of journal archives show that scholars are increasingly responding to this relative absence in recent years. What this special issue offers is further diversity of both authors and cases, and moreover this special issue draws attention to the immutable, binary structure underlying the various globally-circulating discourses of the East and the West as part of investigating how socially constructed East-West binaries interact with language ideologies about English and other languages. It shifts the attention from fixity – East versus West – to diversity, extending East to Easts and West to Wests as our contributors identify and examine multiple, endogenous “imaginative geograph[ies]” (from Arif Dirlik’s [1996] “Chinese history and the question of Orientalism”, History and Theory 35(4): 97) constructed through various Orientalist ideologies. It founds this approach on a combination of the theory of recursive language ideologies and critical Orientalism scholarship. This is generative of new and useful sociolinguistic analyses. Having laid out this theoretical extension, this editorial then provides an overview of the issue’s contributions, which examine how socially constructed East-West binaries are interacting with language ideologies about English and other languages on sub-national scales in various Asian contexts including in Korea, China, Japan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Springer

This study is dedicated to the regional history of the East-West conflict on the basis of the relationship between the Germany military and the Belgian armed forces stationed in Germany. The central question it addresses is which factors were largely responsible for the interdependence between actors and institutions of both armies. In addition to analysing the limited time of the peak phase of Belgian military deployment in the Federal Republic 1946–1990, the book concentrates regionally on the military training areas of Vogelsang in the Eifel and the Wahner Heide near Cologne as military contact zones. For this purpose, the author evaluates unpublished archival sources at the local level for the first time.


2021 ◽  
pp. jgs2020-156
Author(s):  
Andy Gale

The effects of structural inversion, generated by the Pyrenean Orogeny on the southerly bounding faults of the Hampshire Basin (Needles and Sandown Faults) on Eocene sedimentation in the adjacent regions were studied in outcrops by sedimentary logging, dip records and the identification of lithoclasts reworked from the crests of anticlines generated during inversion. The duration and precise age of hiatuses associated with inversion was identified using bio- and magnetostratigraphy, in comparison with the Geologic Time Scale 2020. The succession on the northern limb of the Sandown Anticline (Whitecliff Bay) includes five hiatuses of varying durations which together formed a progressive unconformity developed during the Lutetian to Priabonian interval (35-47Ma). Syn-inversion deposits thicken southwards towards the southern margin of the Hampshire Basin and are erosionally truncated by unconformities. The effects of each pulse of inversion are recorded by successively shallower dips and the age and nature of clasts reworked from the crest of the Sandown Anticline. Most individual hiatuses are interpreted as minor unconformities developed subsequent to inversion, rather than eustatically-generated sequence boundaries:transgressive surfaces. In contrast, the succession north of the Needles Fault (Alum Bay) does not contain hiatuses of magnitude or internal unconformities. In the north-west of the island, subsidiary anticlinal and synclinal structures developed in response to Eocene inversion events by the reactivation of minor basement faults. The new dates of the Eocene inversion events correspond closely with radiometric ages derived from fracture vein-fill calcites in Dorset, to the west (36-48Ma).


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