scholarly journals Changes of approach to urban context in international guidelines and experiences in Lithuanian urban environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 7-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Egle Navickiene ◽  
Edita Riaubiene

The focus of the research is the concept of context, guidelines for the approach to it, and the ways by which it was regarded in the development of urban environment. The paper defines how these approaches and practices changed during the last century. During the last century, an especially dynamic and turbulent one, Lithuanian state experienced divergent and controversial periods: independence (1918-1940), World War II (1939–1945), Soviet period (1944–1990) and independence restored (1990-present). The paper discusses the Western attitudes and the evolution of approach towards context while dealing with urban environment, and peculiarities of Lithuanian practice in conformity with these attitudes during last century. The theoretic investigation is grounded by the documents formulated and declared by international organisations like CIAM, UNESCO, ICOMOS and others, as accumulations of pioneering thought. Particularly, their statements that consider the surrounding context as basis, principle, or inspiration for the creating, transforming or reconstructing the urban environment are analysed. The term context is used as a generalising term, an umbrella one, which covers several terms used in the documents or literature to define closer or wider urban environment while dealing with it. The paper focuses mostly on historical urban situations, and wide range of activities in changing the environment from architect or landscape architect’s professional point of view. The theoretic analysis is followed by the critical review of certain experiences in Lithuanian practice at that time, in characteristic redevelopment of spaces in the main cities (state capitals). The identified evolution reveals the expansion of the concept of urban context and growing regard for it both in theory and in practice. The evolution of contextual approach in Lithuanian practice follows the guidelines stated in documents of international organisations in spite of its political situation, but the research discloses its certain peculiarities.

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 245-255
Author(s):  
Rostislav F. Turovsky

The article is devoted to the study of the party model of Russian parliamentarism in post-soviet period. The focus is on the issues of party representation and its correlation with the distribution of the managerial positions and introduction of collective legislation at State Duma. These issues are examined from the point of view of reaching cross-party consensus and implementation of fair parliament party representation principle. According to the author Russian parliamentarism model aims at reaching full-fledged party consensus that corresponds better to the principles of popular representation than strict parliament polarization along the line of “authority-opposition”. Understanding of those issues by the majority of the players was noted from the very start of the State Duma activities, in spite of the acute conflicts in the 1990-ies.The author draws the conclusion that the equation of party representation continues to grow at the level of managerial positions in the parliament that allows to improve cooperation of the parties and to reduce authority and opposition conflicts. Thereby the Russian parliamentarism model makes an important contribution to the stabilization of socio-political situation of the country.


2021 ◽  

Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to different issue areas in order to assess how global governance has changed and why. In most issue areas, hierarchical modes of governance, established after World War II, have given way to alternative forms of organization focused on market or network-based architectures. Each chapter explores whether these changes are likely to lead to more or less effective global governance across a wide range of issue areas. This provides a novel and coherent theoretical framework for analysing change in global governance.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-281
Author(s):  
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld

AbstractSince the turn of the millennium, major political figures around the world have been routinely compared to Adolf Hitler. These comparisons have increasingly been investigated by scholars, who have sought to explain their origins and assess their legitimacy. This article sheds light on this ongoing debate by examining an earlier, but strikingly similar, discussion that transpired during the Nazi era itself. Whereas commentators today argue about whether Hitler should be used as a historical analogy, observers in the 1930s and 1940s debated which historical analogies should be used to explain Hitler. During this period, Anglophone and German writers identified a diverse group of historical villains who, they believed, explained the Nazi threat. The figures spanned a wide range of tyrants, revolutionaries, and conquerors. But, by the end of World War II, the revelation of the Nazis' unprecedented crimes exposed these analogies as insufficient and led many commentators to flee from secular history to religious mythology. In the process, they identified Hitler as Western civilization's new archetype of evil and turned him into a hegemonic analogy for the postwar period. By explaining how earlier analogies struggled to make sense of Hitler, we can better understand whether Hitler analogies today are helping or hindering our effort to understand contemporary political challenges.


2020 ◽  
pp. 17-53
Author(s):  
Wanda Brister ◽  
Jay Rosenblatt

Dring’s musical education took place at the Royal College of Music, beginning in the Junior Department at the same time as her formal education in Roman Catholic grade schools. Her mentors included Percy Buck and Angela Bull, who together directed the Department. Dring also benefited from the encouragement of the directors of the RCM, Hugh Allen and George Dyson. Principal teachers included Betty Barne and Freda Dinn for violin, Jewel Evans and Lilian Gaskell for piano, and Stanley Wolff and Leslie Fly for composition. Important first performances of her music took place on the BBC radio broadcast of the “Children’s Hour” and at a concert at Lambeth County Hall. As an actor, Dring’s participation in the yearly Christmas play is documented, and as an example of her musical style, her Fantasy Sonata (In one movement) is examined in detail. The effect of the beginning of World War II is considered from Dring’s point of view, specifically in the way it affected a teenage girl at the Royal College of Music.


2021 ◽  
pp. 58-88
Author(s):  
Marion Grau

This chapter outlines the author’s approach to research and method, as well as the scope and timeline of participant observation. The redevelopment of the Norwegian pilgrimage network comes on the heels of the post–World War II European efforts to build transregional and transnational peace. Historic pilgrimage routes become part of this network but are slow to begin in Protestant contexts. In contemporary pilgrimage, embodiment and relations to other pilgrims are central ingredients. It is through physical relations to landscape and people that sacred, transforming encounters are sought. Ritual creativity features strongly in how such encounters are facilitated by pilgrim priests, hosts, government, local officials, artists, and scores of volunteers. Religious meaning-making and secular nation-building are closely intertwined in these efforts to lift up and preserve, if not stage, local heritage. A consistent ambivalence is the overlap between pilgrims and tourists, and questions of spirituality and consumption. As Norway’s population has become more diverse religiously and ethnically, actors continually adjust the pilgrimage network to the needs of a changing population and a wide range of social issues.


Author(s):  
Janet Allen ◽  
Christine Landaker

When encouraging readers of history, we have several broad goals for our students as readers and as learners. We want them to leave their reading with some knowledge of content and to be able to discriminate among ideas for significance, bias, point of view, and perspective. We would like them to think about what they learned and how they learned it, acknowledging the value of talk and others’ opinions and ideas when they are forming their own opinions. We would also hope the study we’ve done would prompt them to ask new questions that lead them to further reading and study. At this stage in their lives, these readers have assumed the reader role of “Text Critic” as they analyze, synthesize, apply, and extend their learning into independent learning and historical expertise. Many of us have enjoyed students who see themselves as historical experts. On Christine’s first day as a social studies teacher, before the bell had rung to allow students to enter class, she encountered her first expert in her new students, Stephen:… “So, you’re going to be my U.S. History teacher. What do you know about Patton?” “Do you mean George Patton from World War II?” “Yes. If you’re going to expect me to learn from you, you better know your World War II stuff. And, you’re going to have to have seen the movie. Have you seen it?” “Well, no. But if you have it . . . “I have it right here with me. Watch it tonight and we can talk about it tomorrow.”… Christine had found her first expert—and her first ally. This is the kind of student we hope we foster as we are planning curriculum and instruction throughout the year. In Ways That Work: Putting Social Studies Standards into Practice, Tarry Lindquist expects these outcomes and plans for them at the beginning of the unit. “Whenever I plan a unit, I first brainstorm ways my students can acquire knowledge, manipulate data, practice skills, and apply their understanding through group activities” (1997, 101). As a result of the time Christine and her students spend working on questioning, thoughtful and careful reading, exposure to multiple texts, and sharing ideas with others, the satisfaction of those goals is evident in her classroom.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136-160
Author(s):  
Roger Mac Ginty

This chapter examines informal truces and acts of humanity and reciprocity during violent conflict. It is interested in the ‘hard cases’ of all-out warfare and draws on World War I and World War II personal diaries and memoirs. The chapter demonstrates that in some circumstances, everyday peace—or at least everyday tolerance and civility—has been possible during warfare. It contains multiple examples of ‘ordinary’ combatants showing humanity, compassion, and generosity to their supposed opponents. These cases are particularly interesting from the point of view of this book as they often occurred ‘under the radar’ or outside the surveillance of the state and others. Indeed, in many cases, they were expressly forbidden by military organisations and were contrary to the prevailing national mood of antagonism towards the enemy. They show individual and group initiative, as well as resistance to a national or wider group.


Slavic Review ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 825-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum

During World War II, images of mothers constituted one of the most striking—and lasting—additions to Soviet propaganda. The appearance of “Mother Russia” has been understood as a manifestation of the Soviet state's wartime renunciation of appeals to Marxism-Leninism and its embrace of nationalism. Yet “Mother Russia” (rodina-mat', more literally, the “motherland mother“) was an ambiguous national figure. The word rodina, from the verb rodit', to give birth, can mean birthplace both in the narrow sense of hometown and in the broad sense of “motherland,” and it suggests the centrality of the private and the local in wartime conceptions of public duty. Mothers functioned in Soviet propaganda both as national symbols and as the constantly reworked and reimagined nexus between home and nation, between love for the family and devotion to the state. From this point of view, the new prominence of mothers in wartime propaganda can be understood as part of what Jeffrey Brooks has identified as the “counter-narrative” of individual initiative and private motives, as opposed to party discipline, that dominated the centrally controlled press's coverage of the first years of the war.


1989 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunday Babalola Ajulo

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) was established by the Treaty signed in Lagos on 25 May 1975 by the Heads of State and Government (or their representatives) from Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. They were joined a few months later by Cape Verde, thereby increasing the number of member-states to 16. Following the post-World War II convention whereby international organisations formally insert in their constitutive instruments a declaratory statement concerning their status, it is not surprising that Article 60(1) stipulated that the Community ‘shall enjoy legal personality’. Although such organisations may be similar they are never identical, and this is why the nature and scope of the legal personality of each needs to be ascertained and discussed.


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