Political Complexities of Ethnochoreological Research: The Facets of Scholarly Work on Dance in the Countries of Former Yugoslavia

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Selena Rakočević

As independent scholarly discipline grounded in folkloristics, ethnochoreology was predominantly founded within the state institutions of the socialist regime of former Yugoslavia after World War II and was consequently molded theoretically and methodologically in accordance with the prevailing ideology of the ruling socialist political system. In post-socialist regimes established in former Yugoslavian republics after the 1990s, which led to emerging market economies and caused huge modifications in the official social and educational policies of each country, ethnochoreology continued to be linked with state institutions. At the same time, however, it has been subject to extensive remodeling which included changes within the discipline itself along with its repositioning in the academic and educational system. This article examines political facets of ethnochoreological research in former Yugoslavian republics, comparing the experiences of many individual dance scholars. Based on interviews with colleagues from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro, the study will explore the general position of ethnochoreologists as well as their attitudes toward the relationships between dance research and the concrete political situations in each of their countries. Questions discussed encompass standpoints about how the political realities we are living in influence the remodeling of ethnochoreology in epistemological and methodological terms, but also its position in academic, educational and research contexts.

Author(s):  
Jacqueline Castledine

This chapter discusses how Americans debated regarding women's right to vote, even before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. By the presidential election of 1936, most agreed that women had failed to organize in numbers large enough to provide them with an effective voice in the political system. However, World War II would create opportunities for women's political activism. As men joined the service, women replaced them not only in the industrial workplace but also in political organizing. Americans concerned with dramatic shifts in gender roles then engaged in a concerted effort to remasculinize U.S. culture after the war. In need of strategies to lessen their apparent threat to American masculinity, Progressive women, led by Women for Wallace chair Elinor Gimbel, introduced various tactics to calm fears about the supposed dangers of leftist women.


Author(s):  
Klaudia Łodejska

Migration processes have accompanied man since the dawn of time. In the case of migration currents to South Africa after World War II, there are several factors influencing the decisions to migrate. There were several waves of migration, depending on the changing in the second half of the Twentieth century South Africa’s economic and political situation. To properly present the issue of migration to South Africa, both from Poland and other countries of the world, it is first necessary to focus on the events that enabled the development of a policy of racial segregation. Then focus on economic development during this period that determined the successive waves of migrants. The last, crucial element is focusing on emigrants and the reasons for their emigration. In the case of the Polish diaspora in South Africa, many people decided to leave Poland due to the political system that was in the communist period; they wanted to give their children a better start in life or simply wanted to develop professionally, which was not possible at that time in the country. The aim of this article is to present the political, economic, demographic and social factors that influenced migration to South Africa.


2021 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 167-184
Author(s):  
Jacek Pietrzak

Polish citizens and people of Polish descent played a considerably significant role in the Spanish Civil War. They fought on both sides of the conflict, however, most of them in the Republican Army (4,500-5,000 among ca. 35,000 soldiers of the International Brigades). Approximately 75% of them comprised of immigrants, mainly from France, who were predominantly either activists or supporters of the French Communist Party. Only 600-800, or according to some sources 1200 individuals, the majority of whom were communists (80% or more), were believed to come directly from Poland. The highest number of volunteers fought within the ranks of 13th Brigade “Jarosław Dąbrowski”, which took part in the major key operations and suffered huge losses amounting to 30-40%. A few dozens of Poles fought in the Gen. F. Franco’s National Army.  Most of them were professional soldiers of the Spanish Foreign Legion, who had joined it before the war broke out, so their participation in the war was not dictated by ideological reasons. The author adopts synthesizing approach to portray the Polish soldiers fighting for each side of the conflict, including their background and involvement in the most important military operations. The article pays an attention to the fates of Polish veterans of the International Brigades referred to as “Dąbrowszczacy” during the World War II and, following this, an attempt to demonstrate the specific role and changes “Dąbrowszczacy” were undergoing within the political system of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL).


Politics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-294
Author(s):  
Miia Huttunen

In 1959, UNESCO published a catalogue of Eastern films suitable for Western audiences, titled ‘Orient. A Survey of Films Produced in Countries of Arab and Asian Culture’. The aim of the catalogue was to familiarise Western audiences with Eastern cultures through cinema. The catalogue lists seven general characteristics of Eastern cinema to distinguish it from its Western counterpart and to provide ready-made interpretations of the essential characteristics of the Eastern world. Of the 139 feature films listed in the catalogue, five were directed by Kurosawa Akira – the biggest number of films by a single director. This article provides an analysis of the five Kurosawa films within the frame provided by the characterisations in the catalogue in the political framework of World War II and its aftermath. Reading the cultural differences listed in the catalogue as a means of constructing the East in Western eyes, the article suggests UNESCO’s world was defined neither in terms of the contemporaneous geopolitical polarisation of the Cold War nor the ongoing decolonisation process. Instead, the catalogue served the purpose of proposing a cultural intervention in geopolitics, providing a reimagining of political realities constructed on a cultural basis and given a concrete form through cinema.


1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 1242-1257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Kornberg ◽  
Hal H. Winsborough

Systematic empirical research into the process of political leadership recruitment has made substantial progress since World War II with emphasis given to those who occupy formal positions of authority within the political system, specifically, legislators and party activists. Generally such studies have been concerned with delineating (a) who the leaders are, (b) how and why they are where they are, and (c) the variables affecting (a) and (b).The most ambitious recent studies, in the sense that they try to deal systematically with all three aspects of recruitment, are those by Samuel J. Eldersveld, Austin Ranney, and Henry Valen. Their research, and the examples cited of other scholarship, have yielded a substantial number of propositions. Three which lend themselves to testing with data we have gathered on the recruitment of candidates for the Canadian House of Commons, 1945–65, are:1) The status of individuals recruited by a party in part is a function of the party's competitive positions. (Key, Snowiss).2) The status of individuals recruited by a party varies with the party's position on an ideological continuum (Eldersveld, Ranney, Marvick and Nixon, Valen).3) Relative urbanism and the degree of industrialization of communities affect recruitment patterns (Rokkan and Valen, Valen, Snowiss). In the present instance there should be a positive relationship between urbanism and the mean status of candidates.In testing these propositions we will compare, whenever such comparisons appear appropriate, the data for Canadian parliamentary candidates with findings from some of the previously cited studies and also indicate how, in Canada, multi-partyism is related to the status of recruited candidates.


Author(s):  
Flemming Mikkelsen

Based on a dataset of more than 5,000 contentious collective actions from 1700-2000, this paper examines the relation between popular protest and democratization of the Danish political system. The first wave of protests began in the 1830s and culminated in 1848 with the fall of absolutism and the transition to constitutional monarchy. The next protest wave from 1885 to 1887 arose from the so-called ‘constitutional struggle’ and mobilized hundreds of thousands of ordinary Danes, and contributed to the parliamentarization and nationalization of the political system. The third wave unfolded around the end of World War II, while the hitherto last wave of popular struggle erupted in 1968 with the youth rebellion. The analysis show that ‘democracy’ was the central issue of contention in all four of these protest waves, and support the main thesis that periods of intense interaction between popular protest and the state have had a decisive formative influence on the genesis and further development of Danish democracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-231
Author(s):  
Rafał Kania

Between ideology and praxis. Socialist organization in the Polish People’s Republic 1956–1981The end of World War II coincided with the beginning of the process of establishing the Polish new order whose references were the political, social and economic solutions of the USRR, while its ideological basis was Marxism interpreted by Lenin and Stalin. The establishment of the new political system in accordance with official ideology required transposing its ideas to the practical ground with practical sciences acting as a bridge between abstract thinking and reality. The subject of the following article is an analysis of the assumptions of the Polish socialist organizational studies and its connection with Marxism-Leninism in the years 1956–1981.


Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler

The experience of World War II and the precedent of the Japanese American internment dramatically altered the political and legal landscape surrounding habeas corpus and suspension. This chapter discusses Congress’s enactment of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 along with its repeal in 1971. It further explores how in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, questions over the scope of executive authority to detain prisoners in wartime arose anew. Specifically, this chapter explores the Supreme Court’s sanctioning of the concept of the “citizen-enemy combatant” in its 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and evaluates Hamdi against historical precedents. Finally, the chapter explores how Hamdi established the basis for an expansion of the reach of the Suspension Clause in other respects—specifically, to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.


1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.


2019 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Edyta Kahl

The problems discussed in the article concern the educational policy in Poland in the first years after World War II (1944-1948). The article presents the educational concepts and postulates of different political fractions and teachers’ circles, which already before the end of the War had formulated their own educational programmes. The discussions about the shape of the post-war educational system, particularly the organization of schools, the school structure, the ideological foundations, the syllabus, school handbooks and teachers’ training, were carried out, among others, between the representatives of the National Democrats, Christian-national groups, political parties, teachers’ organizations and school administration. Their attitudes to many problems varied considerably, and thus, the situation required social debate and confrontation of opinions. The quality of those discussions, the style in which the educational problems were solved as well as the direction of the structural and ideological transformations in the post-war educational system, were significantly influenced by the geopolitical post-war conditions and a strong position of the Left, consolidated by the Soviets, in the policy of the Polish state. In the expansive struggle for the political leadership in Poland, the Left used different forms of pressure and terror in order to eliminate the opposition. To achieve social legitimization for its pseudo-democratic activities, the Left undertook attempts to encourage other groups to co-operate. Particularly, the communists tried to attract cultural elites, including teachers, who they wanted to use to start the process of rebuilding social consciousness according to the rules of the ideology of Marxism and Leninism. These monopolistic ambitions, in the first years after World War II, were reflected in the destruction of the underground state and the development of administrative structures of the totalitarian system. As far as the educational system is concerned, the policy of the Left was manifested in more and more apparent actions taken to subordinate school to the communists’ interests, thus including education into the process of the transformation of the political system. All those activities, were part of the phenomenon of structural Sovietization, formed the foundations for the ideological offensive, planned by the communists and conducted on a massive scale after the formation, in 1948, of the monopolistic Stalinian party - PZPR (Polish United Workers’ Party).


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