The Identity Question Regarding the Macedonian Nation and Minorities

This chapter intends to outline the place of Macedonia in the nation-building process that took place in South-East Europe with the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Macedonia became the place where national aspirations converged and came into conflict with each other. This gave it a special role in the national narratives of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece both internally and in foreign politics. The (federal) Macedonian state that emerged after WWII sought to carve out its own trajectory in a space that was already occupied physically and ideologically by its neighbours. This led to a conflict that lurked under the surface for most of the Cold War but came out in the open with the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The chapter seeks to clarify some of the central issues related to Macedonian nationality and minorities in the Balkan and European context.

An analytic interpretation on the importance of India's soft power in international cultural diplomacy over the centuries

India’s Soft Power which is part of Smart Diplomacy or cultural diplomacy in India. India’s soft power diplomacy can be traced back to the time when Swami Vivekananda visited Chicago Parliament of Religion and spoke about Hinduism and India, which attracted many Indians and Foreigners who visited India and learnt about the Indian culture and the Sanskrit, his book on Raja Yoga influenced Western countries to practice Yoga who came to India and visited asharams, India’s main soft powers include spiritualism, yoga, Ayurveda, the world is shifting towards organic method of treatment which has its trace in India. There is culture exchange of arts, music, dance. Indian Diaspora and Young youth are the weapons for the spread of Indian culture across the globe, People are interested in Indian culture and epics of Ramayana and Mahabharat and studying on Kautliya. India literature and craft have received international recognition, countries abroad have included Sanskrit as part of their educational curriculum. India has also emerged has an export of herbs medicine to many foreign countries like Middle East, Europe, Africa etc. and this soft power of India will help in creating a massive influence across the world but before that Indian should have ample knowledge about their own history and culture and languages.

Ensuring food security in Kazakhstan in modern economic conditions

Food security occupies a special place in the system of national security of Kazakhstan, since the availability of food serves as a basic indicator of human activity. The country’s maximum participation in the international division of labor in the agro­industrial complex depends on solving the problem of food security. The choice of directions is determined by economic opportunities of the country, its role in the world, conducting of domestic agro­food policy, determination of advanced development strategy of agroindustrial complex, its basic branch – agriculture. Kazakhstan is the largest exporter of grain and takes leading place in the world in flour export. Thanks to good harvests in recent years, Kazakhstan was able to strengthen its ability to stabilize prices in the markets of Central Asia, Russian Federation, the Middle East, Europe and the Caucasus and improve its own prospects in terms of food security in the adjacent regions. The agriculture of Kazakhstan is in urgent need of modernization of its material and technical base, more advanced technologies and more effective and targeted state support, without which its dynamic development observed in recent years will be at risk.

Racism and Nationalism

This article reviews the current scholarship around racism and nationalism, two of the mostly hotly debated issues in contemporary politics. Both racism and nationalism involve dividing humanity into groups and setting up some groups as innately superior to others. Until recently, racism and nationalism were both widely seen as unpleasant relics of times past, destined to disappear as the principles of equality and human rights become universally embraced. But both concepts have proved their resilience in recent years. Scholars have been devoting new attention to the “racialization” of ethnic and national identities in the former Soviet Union and East Europe, the regions that are the main focus of this journal. The article examines the prevailing approaches to understanding the terms “racism” and “nationalism,” which are distinct but overlapping categories of analysis and vehicles of political mobilization. Developments in genomics have complicated the relationship between perceptions of race as a purely social phenomenon. The essay explores the way racism and nationalism play out in two self-proclaimed “exceptional” political systems – the Soviet Union and the United States – which have played a prominent role in global debates about race and nation. It briefly discusses developments in other regions, such as the debate over multiculturalism in Europe.

Your Race Sounds Familiar?

Your Face Sounds Familiar, a celebrity talent television format developed by the Dutch production company Endemol and first broadcast in Spain in 2011, has entertained audiences in more than forty countries with the sight of well-known professional musicians impersonating foreign and domestic stars through cross-gender drag and, on many national editions, cross-racial drag, with results that would widely be regarded as offensive blackface where this has already been extensively challenged as racist in public. In central/south-east Europe, however, blackface is sometimes justified by arguing that it cannot be a racist practice because these countries have not had the UK and USA’s history of colonialism and racial oppression. Through a study of the Croatian edition Tvoje lice zvuči poznato (2014–), where until 2020 blackface had rarely been publicly challenged, this paper explores how far a critical race studies lens towards blackface can also be applied there.

Information and Communication Technology Development and Foreign Trade in the Region of South-East Europe

This paper provides an analysis of the influence of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, usage and skills on the export and import of goods and services in the region of South-East Europe (SEE) by applying gravity models to bilateral trade flows through the panel data analysis. The results show that GDP per capita and Internet usage have a significant positive impact on import, and in addition, the digital infrastructure and digital skills have a positive, but small impact on export. Distance has a negative impact on trade. These countries faced relatively poor development and usage of the ICT sector, which indicates unexplored potential which could be used to improve international trade if exploited by businesses, government and households.

The Significance of SDGs for the Raw Materials Sector: A Stakeholders’ Approach in Three ESEE Countries

The Raw Materials (RM) sector is linked to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), impacting their implementation throughout the whole RM value chain (e.g., mining, processing, metallurgy, recycling, etc.). This study aims to identify and rank the most significant SDGs for this sector, from the perspective of key stakeholders, academics, university students, professionals, and industry representatives, in three East and South-East Europe (ESEE) countries: Poland, Greece, and Slovakia. Within this framework, 423 stakeholders from the above groups provided their views in a survey with structured questionnaires. The results were analysed, based on the stakeholders’ groups and the role of the sector in the countries examined. Overall, the SDGs 9-Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure-, 8-Decent Work and Economic Growth-, and 7-Affordable and Clean Energy- were highly ranked by the stakeholders, indicating a strong link between these SDGs and the RM sector.

Resilience of Raw-Earth Technology in the Climate of Middle Europe Based on Analysis of Experimental Building in Pasłęk in Poland

The article concerns the experimental building in raw-earth technologies situated in Ecological Park in Pasłęk, in the northeast part of Poland with rather severe climate characteristics for middle and east Europe. The purpose of the designing and realization of the building was to demonstrate the methods of construction in traditional raw-earth technologies with current modifications and then to create the possibility for long-term research and observations at the site visits during the buildings’ exploitation. The building was designed as energy efficient with a passive solar system, green roof, and space arrangement. Construction effects of exploitation were checked. Also, physical aspects were analyzed and thermal-humidity environmental parameters were measured with specialized equipment. Examples of such measurements with appropriate conclusion are presented. Based on the analyses, the authors evaluate the resilience of the applied technology under the given climate conditions, as one of the possible sustainability technologies that can be used in Poland under given restrictions.

THE TEMPORALITIES OF POLICY TRANSLATION IN THE SEMI-PERIPHERY: REVISITING THE EUROPEANISATION OF WELFARE REFORMS IN CENTRAL AND SOUTH EAST EUROPE

This article seeks to conceptualise time and temporality in the context of semi-peripheral social relations, with a particular focus on the transnational dimensions of policy translation. In particular, we show how, albeit within the co-existence of multiple temporalities, ‘policy time’ and ‘time in policy’ tends to enable and privilege particular kinds of policy processes over others. Revisiting a number of themes from our ethnographic work on social policy reform drawn, mainly, from the post-Yugoslav and Hungarian context and relating, mainly, to so-called ‘Europeanisation’ processes, allows us to foreground the spatio-temporal dimensions of policy processes. The text explores some key challenges in terms of how to treat time within critical policy studies.

An analysis on the role played by the economy sector in upgrading in the farming sector

India is an agricultural country with majority of the people working in farming sector, with demand for ayurvedic medicine and indoor farming, today in the urban India majority of the people have started home farming which is helping to alleviate the problem of food security.If farming is practiced in every house in a small manner, imports will reduce in India and export will amplify. Smart farming and smart technology has helped urban India to adopt farming. Hydroponics and aquaponics is taking grounds in India.Demand of herbal products is rising where India herbal plants have reached to North America, Middle East, Europe and Africa thus contributing to the GDP. India being a leading export of agriculture, it place an outstanding role in the economic growth. If we promote agri tourism followed by proper land reforms and educate the farmers on the use of technology, followed by at schools if children are taught how to grow plants the amount of food production will rise in no time, with growing population, the demand also needs to be fulfilled, at old age home, tribal areas people are adopt horticulture, permaculture where each citizen have access to good amount of food, with the use of new technologies so that we don’t have food wastage and the import reduce and export rises, contributing to the economy where poverty will be limited.