scholarly journals RE-CLOSED BORDER AS AN EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE. EXPLORATORY RESEARCH OF POLISH-GERMAN TWIN CITIES IN THE FIRST MONTHS OF A COVID-19 PANDEMIC

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 61-74
Author(s):  
MACIEJ FRĄCKOWIAK ◽  
JERZY KACZMAREK ◽  
ŁUKASZ ROGOWSKI

Borders’ closure during the COVID-19 pandemic had a particular impact on the everyday life of borderland residents. As part of the research on bordering processes carried out since a few years, during the closure of the state borders in 2020, qualitative interviews on everyday life in the COVID-19 pandemic have been conducted. In this paper, we present the results of the exploratory study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Polish-German border twin cities. We indicate at what levels borders’ closure affected the border landscape, border practices of the inhabitants of the researched territories, and their notion of the border. We also suggest how border relations were shaped due to differences in the management and perception of the pandemic situation in two countries. The results obtained indicate that the closure of borders has made life more difficult in an area under examination and has also affected the identity and specificity of the place. This issue is worth exploring further to establish the true extent of the impact of the pandemic in the borderlands.

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
Andrea Theocharis ◽  
Marcus Graetsch

We all study political science, but - what do we actually do here anyway? This essay expresses our thoughts about our subject. The everyday life in University doesn’t seem to give enough space for questioning what is this all about. Maybe a debate on that issue does not exist extensively because of fears of the loss of entitlement. The aim of this essay is to support the heightening of student’s awareness about the status quo of research and teaching in political science as we can judge it from our modest experiences. Trying to get to the basis of such a problem is not easy. The things here written are surely not the state of the art, but they could shine a better light on the problem what had been called the 'politics of political science' in an earlier Internet discussion on the IAPSS website. This paper should be understood as a start for a discussion, where we all can express our surely different experiences and ideas.


Author(s):  
Olha Zubko ◽  

This article informs about the impact of scientific and technological progress of the 1920s on everyday life of the Ukrainian emigration center in the interwar period of Czechoslovakia in 1918-1939. First of all, it is referred to technological novelties of the period in 1921-1929: cinematography, television, automobile manufacturing, fashion, medical industry, telegraph, and bank and post transfers. The proposed topic has not been submitted to the scientific audience yet, as far as the life of the Ukrainian emigration in the interwar of Czechoslovak Republic was considered mainly in the context of political and sociocultural work both emigrants themselves and the latest Ukrainian, Czech and Slovak historians. It is focused on two pointsin the proposed scientific intelligence: consideration of the everyday life of anti-Bolshevist emigration and of the lives of Ukrainian immigrants in Czechoslovakia which were arbitrarily distributed for four periods: 1918-1921, 1921-1925, 1925-1933, 1933-1939, all of which had its own specific features. Consideration of the Ukrainian everyday emigration life in the years 1921–1929 in the interwar of Czechoslovakia carried out with the help ofrecollection, memoirs, postal correspondence (letters) and archival documentation. Therefore, it implies the usage of general methods of the scientific research: analysis, analogy, historical and logical methods. The emigrational routine is a farsighted direction of the historical research, because it is the history of the small vivid worlds, peculiar alternative to the researches which are focused on global political and social processes and events.Everyday life is not minted in special decrees or laws;it is notrecorded in programs and speeches, as far as political and state history, and it is not honed by the financial gains in the economy, and by the cultural monuments, though it always exists like air, it goes unnoticed as time.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosaleen O'Brien ◽  
Sally Wyke ◽  
Graham G.C.M. Watt ◽  
Bruce Guthrie ◽  
Stewart W. Mercer

Background Multimorbidity is common in patients living in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation and is associated with poor quality of life, but the reasons behind this are not clear. Exploring the ‘everyday life work’ of patients may reveal important barriers to self-management and wellbeing. Objective To investigate the relationship between the management of multimorbidity and ‘everyday life work’ in patients living in areas of high socioeconomic deprivation in Scotland, as part of a programme of work on multimorbidity and deprivation. Design Qualitative study: individual semi-structured interviews of 14 patients (8 women and 6 men) living in deprived areas with multimorbidity, exploring how they manage. Analysis was continuous and iterative. We report the findings in relation to everyday life work. Results The in-depth analysis revealed four key themes: (i) the symbolic significance of everyday life work to evidence the work of being ‘normal’; (ii) the usefulness of everyday life work in managing symptoms; (iii) the impact that mental health problems had on everyday life work; and (iv) issues around accepting help for everyday life tasks. Overall, most struggled with the amount of work required to establish a sense of normalcy in their everyday lives, especially in those with mental–physical multimorbidity. Conclusions Everyday life work is an important component of self-management in patients with multimorbidity in deprived areas, and is commonly impaired, especially in those with mental health problems. Interventions to improve self-management support for patients living with multimorbidity may benefit from an understanding of the role of everyday life work.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 28-45
Author(s):  
Ya. V. Vishnyakov

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Eastern question and the search for ways to solve it occupied a central place in the politics of both Russia and European states. With his decision was closely linked the process of formation of the young Balkan countries. Serbia, whose formation of a new statehood typologically coincides with a change in the system of European international relations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, played an important role in the events of the Eastern question, while claiming to be the Yugoslav “Piemont”. However, it was the war by the beginning of the twentieth century. It became, both for Serbia and other countries of the region, not only a means of gaining state sovereignty, but also the main way to resolve its own interstate contradictions, which took place against the background of an external factor - the impact on the political processes of the Balkans of the Great Powers. These factors led to the natural militarization of the everyday life of Serbian society. The presence in the everyday consciousness of the people of the image of a hostile “other” became one of the main ways of internal consolidation of the country, when attitudes towards war, pushing the values of peaceful life to the background, created a special basic consensus in the state development of Serbia at the beginning of the 20th century, and the anthropological role of the military factor was essential influenced the underlying processes that took place in the country at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the conditions of a new stage of destruction of the Balkans along the ethno-political line, the factor of militarization of everyday life again becomes an important element of the historical policy of the Balkan countries and the construction of a “new past”. In this regard, the understanding of many problems and possible scenarios for the development of the current Balkan reality is linked to this phenomenon. Thus, the study of the impact on the political life of Serbia at the beginning of the twentieth century of special "extra-constitutional" institutions is important for a wide range of researchers, including for a systematic analysis of the crisis in the territory of the former SFRY.Author declares the absence of conflict of interests.


Author(s):  
N.A. Beliakova

This study aims at providing an overview of the everyday life of Russian nuns in Palestine after World War II. This research encompassed the following tasks: to analyze the range of ego-documents available today, characterizing the everyday life and internal motivation of women in choosing the church jurisdiction; to identify, on the basis of written sources, the most active supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate to examine the nuns’ activity as information agents of the Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet government; to characterize the actors influencing the everyday life of the Russian nuns in the context of the creation of the state of Israel and new borders dividing the Holy Land; to present the motives and instruments of influence employed by the representatives of both secu-lar and church diplomacies in respect to the women leading a monastic life; to describe consequences of including the nuns into the sphere of interest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR; to show the specific role of “Russian women” in the context of the struggle for securing positions of the USSR and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the region. The sources for the study were prodused by the state (correspondence between the state authorities, meeting notes) and from the religious actors (letters of nuns to the church authorities, reports of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, memoirs of the clergy). By combining the methods of micro-history and history of the everyday life with the political history of the Cold War, the study examines the agency of the nuns — a category of women traditionally unnoticeable in the political history. Due to the specificity of the sources, the study focuses exclusively on a group of the nuns of the Holy Land who came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patri-archate. The majority of the Russian-speaking population of Palestine in the mid-1940s were women in the status of monastic residents (nuns and novices) and pilgrims, and in the 1940s–1950s, they were drawn into the geopolitical combinations of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, staffed with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, becomes a key institution of influence in the region. This article shows how elderly nuns became an object of close attention and even funding by the Soviet state. The everyday life of the nuns became directly dependent on the activities of the Soviet agencies and Soviet-Israeli relations after the arri-val of the Soviet state representatives. At the same time, the nuns became key participants in the inter-jurisdictional conflicts and began to act as agents of influence in the region. The study analyzes numerous ego-documents created by the nuns themselves from the collection of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. The study shows how nuns positioned themselves as leading a monastic life in the written correspondence with the ROC authorities and staff of the Soviet MFA. The instances of influence of different secular authorities on the development of the female monasticism presented here point to promising research avenues for future reconstruction of the history of women in the Holy Land based on archival materials from state departments, alternative sources should also be found. The study focused on the life of elderly Russian nuns in the Holy Land and showed their activity in the context of the geopolitical transformations in the Near East in the 1940s–1950s.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (s4) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Kristine Ask ◽  
Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen ◽  
Stine Thordarson Moltubakk

Abstract Gaming is a frequent source of conflict for families. Research on parents and gaming has identified a lack of gaming-related expertise, a general devaluation or fear of play, and authoritative and restrictive parenting styles as key sources of conflict. What happens when these deficits are addressed? What does mediation look like when parents are expert gamers, enjoy play, and encourage play for their children? Based on qualitative interviews with 29 parents who identify as gamers, we explore how gamer parents domesticate games. To explore the work of stabilising gaming as a wholesome and valued pastime, we combine domestication theory with overflows to address the struggles involved. The analysis investigates how gamer parents mediate play, with an emphasis on how games are interpreted, the family's player practices, and the role of gaming-related expertise in accordance with the three dimensions (symbolic, practice, cognitive) of domestication theory.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 84-91
Author(s):  
S.A. Rabazanov ◽  

The process of introducing digital technologies into the everyday life of social communities is considered and the changes taking place, both positive and negative in nature, are highlighted. The need for participation of both the state and society in this process for its final completion is noted. Ways and methods of solving the problematic issues that arise in this course are analyzed.


Anthropology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Hoag

The term "bureaucracy" refers broadly to administration and official procedure in states, corporations, and other complex organizations. However, the term has a much more complicated set of connotations related to delays and overwrought procedural protocols, emanating from critiques of socialism, the state, and modernity. The figure of the bureaucrat stands at the center of discourse about bureaucracy: at once listless and nefarious, the bureaucrat embodies the inscrutability and absurdity of modern institutional power: impersonal, ubiquitous, and charged with executing law and regulation dispassionately. Bureaucracy represents an ideal of state-enforced equality before the law that is in endless deferral. Anthropologists are well placed to sort through these contradictions and how they manifest in the everyday life of clients, bureaucrats, and others who engage with bureaucracy. The study of bureaucracy has a shallow scholarly history in the discipline of anthropology relative to sociology and political science. For much of the 20th century, bureaucracy was seen as strictly a “Western” phenomenon and therefore outside the purview of anthropologists, who tended to focus on “non-Western” phenomena in other parts of the world. This disciplinary territoriality began to shift in the mid-1990s, and anthropologists increasingly turned an eye toward the everyday life of organizations, including the documents, protocols, and forms of sociality that configure it. This shift was a result of several intellectual currents, notably anthropologists’ interest in understanding how the lives of the subaltern peoples they study are shaped by political institutions and projects. These include the state—a crucial site for the development of the anthropology of bureaucracy—but also humanitarian aid organizations and environmental conservation programs. As anthropologists began asking questions about bureaucrats as ethnographic subjects rather than merely executors of official policy, a greater sensibility for the signs and affective qualities of bureaucratic life opened up new insights into the diversity of positions within bureaucratic institutions, as well as the many kinds of bureaucratic work subsumed under the category of “bureaucracy.” Anthropologists of bureaucracy today train their focus on research funding committees, meetings in corporate board rooms, the aesthetic form of paperwork stamped by civil servants at municipal planning offices, the protocols of environmental impact assessments, interactions between asylum applicants and immigration officials, and beyond.


2018 ◽  
Vol 92 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vicky Lamb ◽  
Emma Tarpey

Police officers are first responders in a role which not only encompasses crime, but also increasing welfare issues. Issues have been highlighted with officers ‘detaining’ those with mental health difficulties and the impact that this process can have upon all involved. However, there appears to be a shift towards a police-health nexus. An exploratory study interviewed ten UK police officers with a view to understanding officers’ experiences of working with people with mental health difficulties and the availability of training for this role. With increasing demands to support people with mental health concerns, alongside a reduction in officer numbers, thematic analysis highlighted three themes: Support, Impact on the Officer and Understanding Mental Health. Increasing demands, a lack of training and limited multi-agency working were experienced by officers. However, officer-to-officer support was strong. Recommendations are made to increase collaborative multi-agency working and review the role of police officers as first responders in mental health crises.


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