Search results

1

Zerwana genealogia. Sprawczość działaczek społęcznych i politycznych w socjalistycznej Polsce i Gruzji a współczesne ruchy kobiece

100%

Grabowska M.

Lud

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2015

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vol. 99

185-207

EN

The objective of this article is to challenge and destabilise existing approaches to state socialism as a historical period during which women remained passive observers of social and political realities. Beginning with the afterthought about the possibility of utilising some of the concepts and categories of feminist methodologies within the post-socialist context, I present results of the research conducted, between 2010-2014, with women active in communist parties and women’s organisations before 1989, in Poland and in Georgia. Drawing from in-depth interviews and archival documents, including the United Polish Workers Party and Women International Democratic Federation archives, I then examine three aspects of the experience of women active socially and politically under state socialism. First, I present diverse motives behind the decision to become a party member. Second, I explore the amount of autonomy that, in their own words, women active in the communist party and women’s organisations had at their disposal. And third, I look at the ways in which socialist activists can be positioned within existing narratives on feminism and women’s movements in post-socialism.

2

Decommunization as a digital utopia: digitization of the communist state security archives in the Czech Republic

100%

Sommer V.

Střed. Časopis pro mezioborová studia Střední Evropy 19. a 20. století. / Centre. Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies of Central Europe in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

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2021

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vol. 13

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issue 1

82-109

EN

This article discusses the issue of the digitization of the archival materials of the Czechoslovak State Security (StB), the most important instrument of repressive policy during the communism (1948–1989). After 1989, a number of public disputes arose around the issue of the vast archive of the communist ministry of the interior. This situation reverberated in historiography, as well as in a broader public debate on what was called “coming to terms with the communist past”. With the arrival of digital technologies, digitization became a central point of this long and politicized debate. Seemingly a technical problem – digitization of archival materials that had been created by the State Security between 1948 and 1989 – became a battlefield of bitter disputes over who and how these materials should be stored, made accessible and interpreted.

3

Ethnological Research into Socialism in Post-Socialist (Czecho)Slovakia

100%

Beňušková Z.

Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)

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2021

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vol. 31

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issue 5

33 - 44

EN

The text presents an analytical overview of the results of ethnological research on the era of socialism conducted in Slovakia after 1989. It mainly describes the projects within which this research was carried out and the applied methodological approaches. It classifies the research results by thematic area and includes references to relevant academic publications. The text also mentions the academic discourse that resulted in several studies and themes. For the sake of comprehensiveness, basic projects, considerable museum activities, and audio-visual outcomes are mentioned, which provide knowledge about everyday life in socialism.

4

25 YEARS AFTER THE COMMUNISM IN EUROPE: PHENOMENA, PROBLEMS AND TEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS: Radical Urban Movements in Poland – the case of squatting

100%

Piotrowski G., Polanska D.

Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica

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2016

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vol. 17(1)

53-69

EN

Radical social movements are more and more often the subject of academic inquiry, wheretheir agenda, identity-building processes and repertoires of action are examined vis a visthe dominant discursive opportunity structures. The case study presented in this articleis the squatting movement in Poland. We interpret this movement, its actions and in particularalliance-building strategies, through the perspective of radical flanks of broaderurban social movements environment.

5

Między deifikacją a przemocą symboliczną. Rzecz o ambiwalentnych praktykach wykonywanych przez lamów na ciele rosyjskiego prezydenta

100%

Szmyt Z.

Rocznik Antropologii Historii

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2014

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issue 2(7), Historia i płeć

257–275

XX

In 2009, during the visit of President Dmitry Medvedev in Buryatia, Buddhist authorities proclaimed him an emanation of White Tara - female enlightened energy. Enthronement of the President of the tantric goddess was an attempt at restitution relationship ‘patron-teacher’ formed in the thirteenth century between the rulers of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and Tibetan lamas of the Sakya linage and sometimes used by Buryats in relation to the Russian tsars. Both the local community and the Russian public opinion received this event ambiguously. For some it was an act of total submission of the central government, the other sacrilegious bordering on the absurd. In my opinion, it was one of the episodes of the practice of taming the ruler by subaltern communities. This paper presents the interpretation that enters an event in a number of practices to tame and manipulate Russian hegemony. My argument is that the ambiguity of many social practices is not only a manifestation of cultural pluralism in Buryatia. Rather, it is a strategy of the weak, which allows keeping agency in a situation of enormous disproportion of forces.

6

The Notion of Social Class in Czech Political Discourse

88%

Musílek K.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2015

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vol. 51

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issue 3

387-416

EN

The article studies the discourse on social class that emerged around the Czech parliamentary election of 2010. The authors look at Czech discourse from the perspective of the wider discussion about the role that the notion of class plays in post-communist societies. While some researchers argue that social class is absent as a category within post-communist political discourse, other researchers report the existence of derogatory discourse on the lower classes and even consistent symbolic boundaries between classes. This analysis contributes to the discussion by offering recent evidence of both the rejection and the use of class-based classification in the discourse. The authors argue that the rejection of the notion of class goes hand in hand with the symbolic division of society into class-like groups. They illustrate how these divisions are tied to the idea of a legitimate political subjectivity and conclude by noting similarities to contemporary ‘Western’ discourse on social class.

7

Narratives and Practices of Voluntary Simplicity in the Czech Post-Socialist Context

88%

Kala L., Galčanová L., Pelikán V.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2017

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vol. 53

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issue 6

833-855

EN

Voluntary simplicity is usually seen as an alternative social movement that is responding to the current social and environmental crisis within affluent societies. Many scholars draw on Inglehart’s concept of post-materialism and consider voluntary simplicity to be a way of limiting one’s consumption in order to free oneself and seek satisfaction in the non-material aspects of life. These scholars assume that the values associated with simplicity emerge out of over-saturation with consumption. This article discusses the results of research conducted among Czech households who voluntarily reduce consumption and who do so in a post-socialist context, without having first lived in affluence. Theoretically and methodologically, the article builds on the work of Hana Librová [1994, 2003; Librová et al. 2016] and is rooted in three main concepts: the concepts of post-materialism [Inglehart 1977], ‘new luxury’ [Enzensberger 1996], and the normative ethical theories of motivation [Pelikán and Librová 2015]. The findings of the study call into question Inglehart’s structural assumption that non-consumption lifestyles like voluntary simplicity only develop in affluent societies and suggest that the Czech socialist past created conditions suitable for the emergence of a non-ideological and primarily self-oriented version of voluntary simplicity. The roots of simple lifestyles may also lie in people’s dissatisfaction with the promise of modernity, a promise suggesting that it is possible to attain and lead the good life through material abundance. Prior experience with an affluent lifestyle did not play a role in the decision of participants in this study to live a nonconsumption lifestyle. This study in a post-socialist country therefore has the potential to provide a deeper understanding of the motivations for choosing voluntary simplicity.

8

„The Power of Protocol: Professional Identity Development and Governmentality in Post-socialist Health Care

88%

Bludau H.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2014

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vol. 50

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issue 6

875-896

EN

The Czech Republic is experiencing a growing trend of health-care worker emigration. Although some emigrate for long periods of time, many return after a few months or years abroad and re-enter the Czech health system. The nurses’ narratives in this study draw on experiences in Czech, British, and Saudi hospitals to explore the role standardised medical policies, procedures, and protocols play in the development and maintenance of a nurse’s professional identity in the post-socialist context. The author suggests that performance of protocols versus informality of practice in health-care settings provides a lens through which to view professional identity in post-socialism. In fields such as health care, standards operate as measures of security that create normative rules of governmentality, regulate behaviour, and prevent harm. The nurses in this study describe the majority of Czech hospitals as lacking standard protocols for patient care. Encountering strict rules of practice in foreign hospitals leads them to evaluate the professionalism and quality of Czech health care and their own selves as nurses. Their assessment is often based on their own ability to effectively perform within the standardised system. The author’s primary analysis for this presentation will concentrate on the ways that standardisation relates to ideas about professionalism and nursing autonomy and status.

9

Constructing and Crossing Boundaries in a New (?) Europe

88%

Nagy E., Hungarian Academy of Sciences B. D.

European Spatial Research and Policy

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2009

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vol. 16

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issue 2

EN

During the last two decades, discourses over the transition process shifted toward a theoretical diversity and a deeper understanding of ‘how modernity was reworked in postsocialist context’. It was widely argued that changing social relations were shaped not only by norms and institutions of Neoliberal capitalism, but also by established networks, institutional and regulatory structures and actors that/who gave diverse responses to the profound and thorough transformation of the society. This paper aims at understanding how geopolitical discourses over the Balkan and its place in the ‘new Europe’ shaped social relations and produced daily practices nested into those webs, through the perception and interpretations of post-socialist transformation by Hungarian migrants who left the war-hit Yugoslavia.

10

Disaffected citizens in Croatia: Analysis of socio-demographic and media use influences on political participation

88%

Vozab D.

Central European Journal of Communication

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2014

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vol. 7

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issue 2(13)

225-240

EN

Political scientists have noted a rising popular indifference to politics which is indicated with declining voter turnout in advanced democracies. Similar trends emerged in the radically changing “high choice” media environments. Studies in political communication (Blekesaune et al., 2012; Prior, 2005; Strömbäck et al., 2012) have shown that audiences are “tuning out” of the news and current affairs programs and that the gap between the politically active and inactive is widening. The aim of this paper is to analyze those who abstain from political participation in Croatia in terms of socio-demographic characteristics and media use. National media systems are important factors in explaining differences in news consumption and political knowledge. This analysis will serve as a case study of how a changing media environment interacts with political participation in a post-socialist political culture. In the analysis binary logistic regression will be used on the data from the online survey on media audiences.

11

Deviating memories: Armando Lulaj’s seriously playful excursions into Albania’s history

88%

Grgic A.

Images. The International Journal of European Film, Performing Arts and Audiovisual Communication

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2018

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vol. 23

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issue 32

EN

This paper examines how certain contemporary audio-visual works from post-socialist countries in the Balkan region, employ archival footage from the communist period, to address and problematize the notion of remembering and suppressing national history through collective memory. I specifically focus on the work of the Albanian artist, Armando Lulaj and his videos Albanian Trilogy: A Series of Devious Stratagems (2011, 2012 and 2015) exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale. By re-using images and narratives produced during Enver Hoxha’s regime, and still ingrained in Albanian visual memory, these films provide alternative readings of Albanian history from the Cold War to the present day. What is more, some of this archival material is made public for the first time, while the rest has been dormant and purposely forgotten in archival vaults. Lulaj’s playful excursions, create connections between a problematic and suppressed past and the difficult and selective present, by juxtaposing evocative and politically charged visual records and contemporary footage of artist’s commissioned performances.

12

(Former) Informal Networks as a Reflection of Informal Institutions in East European Transitional Societies: Legacy or Opportunism?

88%

Banović R. Š.

Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy

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2015

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vol. 10

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issue 1

179-205

EN

Only recently has the influence of culture on economic development been increasingly discussed among theoretical economists. Besides observing culture through cultural traditions inherited from ancestors, current social interactions are also considered as an influential factor. Over a long period of time, the research on East European transitional societies has been focused on formal institutions. Throughout that period, informal networks, many of which originated from the previous socio-political system, have mostly strengthened their position in the society and gained power in the formal structures. They helped in building the new capitalist states and therewith had positive effects by speeding up the transition process. Yet, in medium and long term, their activities typically resulted in state capture. This paper explores the persistence of tight informal and mostly inefficient formal business-government-society relations in Eastern Europe. It emphasises the influence of informal networks in the interaction of formal and informal institutions, and questions the possibility of new generations to make a turnaround in the functioning of the networks. Newly emerging social interactions are contextualised in the cultural dimensions: Power Distance and Collectivism versus Individualism. This paper argues that even when informal communities solely serve their own opportunistic purposes, the prevailing collectivist culture in the society provides tacit support to their existence and therewith delays the transformation from relation-based to rule-based governance. The empirical findings confirm the oversocialised view of the society and networks suggested by economic sociologists. Additionally, the changes in transitional institutional environment are deemed to be in line with the claims of institutional economists on durability and impact of informal institutions.

13

Disorder and Civilization: The Future(s) of Ukrainian Medicine

88%

Bazylevych M.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2014

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vol. 50

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issue 6

821-838

EN

Post-socialist societies are full of uncertainty, fragmentation, and competing discourses on social justice [Steinberg and Wanner 2008; Zigon 2011]. This article focuses on how Ukrainian physicians envision the future, present, and past of the health-care system and make sense of social change in their professional lives and society more broadly. The Ukrainian healthcare system has remained largely untouched by post-socialist reforms, but it is nevertheless undergoing profound changes. These changes are occurring on the level of everyday practice and are shifting responsibility away from the state and onto the individual. The author traces how physicians navigate the persisting structures of the old system, and what hopes they carry for the present and the future. Post-socialist health care is bursting with competing interests, commitments, and notions of how health-care providers should relate to each other, their patients, administrations, and the state in general. This article therefore draws on physicians’ narratives of the disorder in health care through the interpretive prism of ‘ruination … as a process that weighs on the future and shapes the present’ and that represents a ‘vital reconfi guration’ [Stoler 2008: 194] or crafting of ‘hope’ [Lindquist 2006].

14

Beyond Viagra: Sex Therapy in Poland

88%

Kościańska A.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2014

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vol. 50

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issue 6

919-938

EN

In the 1970s and 1980s, Poland, like most other countries in the region, provided not only unlimited access to abortion and contraceptives, but also a liberal sex education. This period moreover constituted a golden age in sexology in the country. Sexual science developed as a holistic discipline, embracing achievements in medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and religious studies, providing recourses for sex education and therapy. Sexuality was perceived as multidimensional and embedded in relationships, culture, economy, and society at large. This approach was fundamentally different from the biomedical model, which started to develop rapidly in the United States after Masters and Johnson’s publication of Human Sexual Response in 1966. Contemporary feminist critics like Leonore Tiefer point out that Masters and Johnson’s approach initiated the process of biomedicalisation and commodification of sexuality and led to the domination of pharmaceutical industries in sex therapy. Meanwhile, owing to the given political and economic context, socialist sexual science was not tied to the market and remained holistic until the advent of capitalism in the 1990s. Along with the invention of Viagra, the free market significantly reshaped the field of sex therapy, giving priority to pharmacotherapy, promoting new sexual dysfunctions, and marginalising other forms of treatment. Nevertheless, Polish sexology was not fully transformed. It proved surprisingly resilient to the influence of pharmaceutical industries and the holistic approach to sex therapy remains highly valued and often practised; pharmacotherapy is perceived as insufficient and sexual dysfunctions, including erectile dysfunctions, are frequently treated using psychotherapy, which takes into account not only psychological but also social, economic and cultural issues. This article is based on the author’s ethnographic and archival research on the development of Polish sexology since the 1970s. She focuses on the relationship between sexuality, socialism, and capitalism and shows that an analysis of socialist sexology sheds light on the nature of the contemporary hegemonic understating of sexuality and sex therapy.

15

Aging Adults about Online Dating: “I am back on the relationship market!”

88%

Erjavec K., ŽILIČ FIŠER S.

Polish Sociological Review

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2016

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vol. 195

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issue 3

361-372

EN

The incidence of increasing aging populations and the popularity of online dating point to the importance of examining aging adults’ involvement in online dating. The study uses semi-structured in-depth interviews with 38 individuals from Slovenia aged 63 to 74. The analysis reveals than the majority of the participants claimed that they had access to a large market of potential partners by use of online dating. They used economic metaphors and related them with extremely positive expressions of recovery: we are alive again because we are back on the relationship market. Their decision to seek a partner through online dating meant that they were once again active in a socially important space, which stimulated a sense of revitalization. Even though the participants lived the majority of their lives under socialism, they have internalized the principles of the market economy and perceive their re-entry into the relationship market as their revival.

16

Genderové nerovnosti ve společném podnikání partnerů v České a Slovenské republice:

88%

Pospíšilová M., Jurik N., Křížková A., Cavender G.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

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2020

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vol. 56

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issue 5

571-598

EN

Research on women’s entrepreneurship often fails to uncover the gendered way in which women’s roles and responsibilities are portrayed and it neglects the connections between ideas about what roles women play in business and in the family and the social context in which these ideas are embedded. This article focuses on the gender inequalities that are reflected in the construction of men’s and women’s roles and responsibilities in copreneurships (romantic couples in business together) and how those constructions are embedded in societal and the family context. By drawing on qualitative in-depth interviews with copreneurs in Czechia and Slovakia and interviewing each partner separately we are able to analyse how roles are constructed and the justifications given for them as well as identifying how the partners’ constructions of these roles clash. We show how gender inequalities are created and presented as logical and self-evident. By studying copreneurial couples we can examine both their professional and private lives and reveal reveal whether they interact in conflicting or complementary ways. The main contribution of the research is that it provides insight into the seemingly genderneutral constructions of copreneurial roles, and it employs a methodological approach that has the capacity to identify differences and similarities in copreneurs’ viewpoints. The article highlights the ways in which copreneur constructions reflect the unique contexts of Czechia and Slovakia, a region that to now has been largely unexplored.

17

Zvyknúť si na Petržalku : Každodenný život, bežná spotreba a vzťah k socialistickému sídlisku

75%

Ferenčuhová S., Jayne M.

Český lid: etnologický časopis (Český lid: Ethnological journal)

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2013

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vol. 100

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issue 3

303-318

EN

The paper interconnects studies of everyday life and everyday consumption and research on socialist housing estates. It is based on an ethnographic stydy of Petržalka, the biggest housing estate in Bratislava, located at the south band of the river Danube.

18

Doing Neoliberalism on Campus : The Vulnerability of Gender Equality Mechanisms in Estonian Academia

75%

Aavik K.

Gender a výzkum / Gender and Research

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2017

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vol. 18

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issue 1

130-153

EN

This paper explores the construction of a gendered neoliberal rationality in post-socialist academic settings. Drawing on interviews conducted with key stakeholders in four major Estonian universities, I trace how three key gender equality policy measures are conceptualised – quotas, workplace flexibility, and the involvement of men in efforts towards gender equality. The findings suggest that Estonian academic stakeholders fill these key gender equality policy ideas with meanings that distort the original purpose of these solutions, and thereby render these policy ideas counter-productive as mechanisms designed to bring about change in gender relations. Instead, these conceptualisations serve the interests of the neoliberal university, enabling and reinforcing the atomisation and exploitation of academic labourers, particularly women. Collectively, these articulations constitute, along with other practices, the ‘doing of neoliberalism’ in post-socialist university settings. Academic stakeholders do not (just) reflect an already established totalising neoliberal framework, but in fact discursively (and materially) create and reproduce what we have come to understand and refer to as ‘neoliberalism’ in academia. This has implications for devising and implementing gender equality policies in higher education in the post-socialist region, as the solutions applied elsewhere in Europe may not work in the same way in Central-Eastern Europe.

19

Czechoslovak Pop Music in Young People’s Lifestyle Magazines in the “Anti-Decade”, 1985–1995

75%

Kavka T.

Prague Papers on the History of International Relations

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2020

|

issue 1

29-43

EN

This article analyses the coverage of pop music in two magazines for older children and young adults during the transition from late socialism to post-socialism in Czechoslovakia or what has been called the “anti-decade” of 1985–1995. By revisiting Pionýr, a magazine for adolescents aged 12 to 15 and Mladý svět, a magazine for young adults aged 15 to 30, I uncover the gradual transformation of Czechoslovak pop music from a genre for Mladý svět’s broad young audience to one aimed specifically at teenagers after 1989. These teens were the target readers of Pionýr and its post-socialist successors, Filip and Filip pro-náctileté (Filip for Teenagers). Pop music was connected with social capital and incorporated into the lifestyles of Mladý svět’s readers. However, it gradually disappeared from the pages of the magazine and became increasingly visible in Pionýr and its post-socialist counterparts. This study argues that this connection of pop music with teen lifestyles and values had profound social impacts between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s.

20

“Did somebody say ‘transition’?” A critical Intervention into the use of a notion

75%

Lukić A., Maslov G.

Praktyka Teoretyczna

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2014

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vol. 13

|

issue 3

203-223

PL

From the time of its introduction, the concept of ‘transition’ has effected a tectonic shift in our understanding of post-socialism. In the process which has taken place during the last couple of decades after the collapse of East European socialist regimes, it has become transformed from one of the signifiers of the political and social change which occurred into a cornerstone for thinking, analyzing and predicting the future of post-socialism. Furthermore, in this article it is posited that all the political and social processes occurring in the ex-socialist countries are defined in relation to transition as an all-encompassing form of post-socialist experience. Relying on the discursive theory of Ernesto Laclau, this article attempts to consider together the usually separated questions of epistemology and ontology, and to ask what is the connection between scientific origins of the concept of transition and its political legitimacy. We claim that transition is a “sutured“ structure composed of various social experiences and political strategies, which naturalizes and universalizes the contingent power struggles that are taking place and will take place in the future of post-socialist countries. Therefore, severing the existing bonds between transition and the actually existing post-socialism is a necessary precondition for creating a more complex and productive understanding of the societies of East and South East Europe.

Refine search results

Zerwana genealogia. Sprawczość działaczek społęcznych i politycznych w socjalistycznej Polsce i Gruzji a współczesne ruchy kobiece

Decommunization as a digital utopia: digitization of the communist state security archives in the Czech Republic

Ethnological Research into Socialism in Post-Socialist (Czecho)Slovakia

25 YEARS AFTER THE COMMUNISM IN EUROPE: PHENOMENA, PROBLEMS AND TEORETICAL EXPLANATIONS: Radical Urban Movements in Poland – the case of squatting

Między deifikacją a przemocą symboliczną. Rzecz o ambiwalentnych praktykach wykonywanych przez lamów na ciele rosyjskiego prezydenta

The Notion of Social Class in Czech Political Discourse

Narratives and Practices of Voluntary Simplicity in the Czech Post-Socialist Context

„The Power of Protocol: Professional Identity Development and Governmentality in Post-socialist Health Care

Constructing and Crossing Boundaries in a New (?) Europe

Disaffected citizens in Croatia: Analysis of socio-demographic and media use influences on political participation

Deviating memories: Armando Lulaj’s seriously playful excursions into Albania’s history

(Former) Informal Networks as a Reflection of Informal Institutions in East European Transitional Societies: Legacy or Opportunism?

Disorder and Civilization: The Future(s) of Ukrainian Medicine

Beyond Viagra: Sex Therapy in Poland

Aging Adults about Online Dating: “I am back on the relationship market!”

Genderové nerovnosti ve společném podnikání partnerů v České a Slovenské republice:

Zvyknúť si na Petržalku : Každodenný život, bežná spotreba a vzťah k socialistickému sídlisku

Doing Neoliberalism on Campus : The Vulnerability of Gender Equality Mechanisms in Estonian Academia

Czechoslovak Pop Music in Young People’s Lifestyle Magazines in the “Anti-Decade”, 1985–1995

“Did somebody say ‘transition’?” A critical Intervention into the use of a notion