Book
Lithuanian and Belarusian National Identity in the Context of European Integration
This monograph was developed as part of a larger research project entitled Peculiarities of National Identity of Lithuania and Belarus in the Context of European Integration, the aim of which was to conduct a comparative analysis of national identity in these two proximate but very different nation-states. The work was carried out by researchers at Belarusian State University (Minsk, Belarus), Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania) and the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota, USA). The research was conducted in accordance with an agreement between the Government of the Republic of Belarus and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania on matters regarding cooperation in science and technology as determined by the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Republic of Belarus and the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania.
The ambiguous term identity essentially refers to the capacity of individuals and social groups to retain their specificities and qualitative characters, despite historic, territorial and political changes and transformations. It was not until the 20th century that this term became widely used in academic language. In the last decades of the 20th century, this concept became one of the most important categories within the social sciences. The phenomenon of identity is the main factor that describes and differentiates contemporary societies (Dziubka 2008, 286-289). This explains the increased attention paid by researchers to the problems of identity formation and meaning.
This chapter examines the nature of national identity found in Belarusian and Lithuanian youth through a micro-level analysis of survey data – a departure from the primarily macro-level analyses in a number of the preceding chapters. With the use of this survey instrument, we hope to determine the level of saliency of given identity markers, both ethnolinguistic and civic, apparent in the individuals surveyed.
This article uses the example of Arkhangel’sk province in North Russia to examine how the two main parties in the Russian Civil War—the Bolsheviks and the White armies—used elements of nationalism and xenophobia to delegitimise their enemies. It reveals the evolution of patriotic rhetoric, first used by the Whites to discredit the Bolsheviks as German agents, and then by the Reds to delegitimise the Whites as agents of the Entente. In the 1920s anti-Allied sentiments became the main trope in the memory of the civil war both among émigrés and in the Soviet North.
“Empire Speaks Out” is a result of the collaborative international research project whose participants aim to reconstruct the origin, development, and changing modes of self-description and representation of the heterogeneous political, social, and cultural space of the Russian Empire. The collection offers an alternative to the study of empire as an essentialized historical phenomenon, i.e. to those studies that construe empire retrospectively by projecting the categories of modern nation-centered social sciences onto the imperial past. It stresses dynamic transformations, adaptation, and reproduction of imperial patterns of sociability and governance. Chapters of the collection show how languages of rationalization derived from modern public politics, scientific discourses of applied knowledge (law, sociology, political economy, geography, ethnography, physical anthropology) and social self-organization influenced processes of transformation of the imperial space.
The diverse and contested nature of the contemporary skinhead scene makes it impossible to identify a single common body regime, or set of gender norms, characteristic of the skinhead (sub)culture. This chapter explores one example of how these fraternal bonds and spaces are constituted. It pays particular attention to practices of the body (individual and collective) within the group and how these practices were enacted to confirm its skinhead identity while shaping a particular regime of closeness and intimacy. It considers, firstly, the group as a particular form of fraternity based on homosocial bonds of friendship, closeness and (dis)trust. Secondly, the aesthetics and the ethics of intimacy within the group are discussed. In particular practices of displaying the – naked and bare – body of the skinhead are considered as well as tests of, and conflicts over, the meaning of the intimacies that these practices forge. Finally, the chapter explores these practices in the context of the wider and competing masculinities through which they are enacted.
Russia’s Skinheads: exploring and rethinking subcultural lives provides a through examination of the phenomenon of skinheads, explaining its nature and its significance, and assessing how far Russian skinhead subculture is at the “lumpen” end of the extreme nationalist ideological spectrum. There are large numbers of skinheads in Russia, responsible for a significant number of xenophobic attacks, including 97 deaths in 2008 alone, making this book relevant to Russian specialists as well as to sociologists of youth subculture. It provides a practical example of how to investigate youth subculture in depth over an extended period – in this case through empirical research following a specific group over six years – and goes on to argue that Russian skinhead subculture is not a direct import from the West, and that youth cultural practices should not be reduced to expressions of consumer choice. It presents an understanding of the Russian skinheads as a product of individuals` whole, and evolving, lives, and thereby compels sociologists to rethink how they conceive the nature of subcultures.
Most contemporary sociologists’ aversion towards nationalism contrasts with the alleged nationalist views of one of the key classics of sociology, Max Weber. The considerable accumulated scholarship on the issue presents a unified belief that Weber was indeed a nationalist yet varies considerably in the significance attributed to the issue. Most authors entrench Weber’s nationalism within biographical studies of Weber’s political views as an individual beyond Weberian sociological theorizing. A different approach suggests that the notions of nationality in Weber’s works do have certain theoretical value as potentially capable of enriching the current understanding of the nation. The present article aims to bring together the notions of nationality dispersed within Weber’s various writings with the Weberian methodological individualism. The main argument of the article is that individualism and nationalism in Weber’s thought are not a contradiction despite the collectivism associated with the essentialist view of the nation. Instead, they represent a reflection of the fundamental shift from an earlier view of society as a meganthropos towards the pluralist problematization of the micromacro link definitive for the modern social theory. Analyzing the internal logic of this change provides new insights into the currently debated issue of retraditionalization, especially in relation to the ongoing renaissance of nationalism.
The issue of consolidation of Russian society is extremely relevant today. There is a discussion about national idea, attempts to invent traditions. The article considers a comparison of development of national policies towards ethnic and civic nationalism. The analysis of legal framework and media is taken place and its impact on broadcast image of the state identification within the value-normative model of sociogenesis. This study was conducted over 3 years. Data helped to confirm the hypothesis about the necessity to develop the civic nationalism in Russia. The work is interdisciplinary, it It is written at the junction of political science and marketing.
This review explores the book French Populism and Discourses on Secularism written by Per-Erik Nilsson and published in 2018. The book deals with the phenomenon of populism from a unique perspective: by placing populist discourses on French secularism – la laïcité – at the centre of the analysis. Nilsson’s study lies at the intersection of three major strands of empirical research focusing on French secularism, radical nationalism and populism, and anti-Muslim activism but offers an in-depth analysis combining simultaneously all the three above-mentioned perspectives.
In 2006, Russia amended its competition law and added the concepts of ‘collective dominance’ and its abuse. This was seen as an attempt to address the common problem of ‘conscious parallelism’ among firms in concentrated industries. Critics feared that the enforcement of this provision would become tantamount to government regulation of prices. In this paper we examine the enforcement experience to date, looking especially closely at sanctions imposed on firms in the oil industry. Some difficulties and complications experienced in enforcement are analysed, and some alternative strategies for addressing anticompetitive behaviour in concentrated industries discussed.
This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.