Suchergebnisse

This paper examines transnational relations between the Yugoslav successor states from the point of view of popular music, and demonstrates how transnational musical figures (such as Djordje Balascaronevicacute, Momccaronilo Bajagicacute-Bajaga and Ceca Razcaronnatovicacute) are interpreted as symbolic reference points in national ethnopolitical discourse in the process of identity construction. Another symbolic function is served by Serbian turbofolk artists, who in Croatia serve as a cultural resource to distance oneself from a musical genre associated by many urban Croats with the ruralization (and Herzegovinization) of Croatian city space. In addition, value judgements associated with both Serbian and Croatian newly composed folk music provide an insight into the transnational negotiation of conflicting identities in the ex-Yugoslav context. Ultimately the paper shows how the ethnonational boundaries established by nationalizing ideologies created separate cultural spaces which themselves have been transnationalized after Yugoslavia's disintegration.

The article deals with problems connected with recent lexical shifts in Russian. Focus is on the penetration of lower-class social and profes- sional slang into standard spoken Russian. Changes in the language re- flect changes in the cultural status of new Russian elites, and the process of "democratization" of the language. The author argues that the lower cultural level of the new generation of employees in mass media has an influence on the language of the whole population and is accelerating the disintegration of the literary norms of standard Russian. These arguments are illustrated with quotations from the literary works of younger writers and from scholarly discussions. One of the main points is that discussion of language is integral to the search for a new national identity, and thus language has a great impact on society.

AbstractWhen the new building of the Burgtheater on the Viennese Ringstrasse was inaugurated in 1888, the Austrian art historian Albert Ilg wrote a series of newspaper articles in which he praised the arrangement of the interior and its creator Carl Hasenauer, but devoted only a few critical words to the façade without even mentioning the name of the architect, Gottfried Semper. These articles are, with others, typical of Ilg's negative assessment of the architecture of the Ringstrasse, but for a full understanding of Ilg's stance it is necessary to relate it to his general positions on the history of art and politics. This article reveals that Ilg's position was not primarily motivated by aesthetic principles, but by identity politics, especially by his belief that the Baroque style was the only appropriate, supranational architectural style for the Habsburg monarchy.

Contrary to traditional societies, modern society is characterized by a competitive allocation of goods & resources, positions & privileges as well as social esteem. Since competition is the dominant principle for the organization of its central social spheres, modern society is a competitive society even more than it is a market-society. The essay seeks to analyze the consequences of this mode of allocation for the patterns of social interaction, for the realization of collective goals & for the individual forms of subjectivity & identity. By developing the argument, it claims that contemporary western societies have reached a critical turning-point, beyond which the struggle for the enhancement of our individual as well as collective competitive capacity is transformed into an all-consuming, overriding & self-destructive end in itself. Adapted from the source document.

Books reviewed in this article:Labour: Professionalism and Internal Democracy
JAMES E. CRONIN Building New Labour: The Politics of Party Organisation, by Meg Russell Cuba: Miserable Happiness? Cuba: A New History, by Richard Gott
Maurice Walsh Yeh but no but


Robert Colls The Politics of Identity. Liberal Political Theory and the Dilemmas of Difference, by Michael Kenny Does economic growth help the poor?
Norman Flynn The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime, by Jeffrey Sachs, with a Foreword by Bono Jews for dialogue


Ann Jungmann A Tale of Love and Happiness, by Amos Oz. Vintage A modest proposal


James Cornford Magnificent Vision: The Right to Work, by Alan Whitford Churchill's righting history


John Rams den In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War, by David Reynolds

The intention of this paper is two-fold. First, it makes explicit a little known and poorly understood area of human experience: transgender. Second, it explores curriculum possibilities opened up by recent legitimating of transgender people through the Gender Recognition Act (2004). The Act foregrounds the necessity for a forum in schools to debate, reflect and understand the full implications of changes to legislation. This paper proposes that, rather than approaching transgender issues through biological science or through the levelling gaze of citizenship, issues of gender identity can be understood without censure through the visual arts. Moreover, the visual arts offer a 'safe place' to discuss issues around the body because they allow distance and, in offering visual representations rather than text-based work, make visually concrete what science ethically cannot.

Racism touches many of the relationships created by the international development industry, but has been largely ignored by policy and academic studies. Like its historical precursors, it is in conversation with other forms of inequality based on class, gender, ethnicity and caste. Generalized representations of 'racial'groups are pervasive and can be trivial in impact. But when combined with exclusionary social networks and rituals, and used to justify white-dominated power structures, the result can be systematic discrimination against people based on their racial identity. With examples from encounters between staff working in development in international agencies, networks, governments and national organizations in Latin America, Africa and Asia, we illustrate how racism is played out. We suggest that such observations emphasize the need to decentralize power to the South and that the subject deserves more thorough investigation.

This article describes the political practices of a part of the Italian women's movement that, as of the 1980s, gave way to the sexual difference thought. Through a political analysis of their own experience, which removed any humanist identity assumptions, the women's movement generated new practices and discourses. With these, women were able to exert self-criticism, and simultaneously to produce new subjectivities articulated around the sexual difference concept. The difference thought helped highlight the limits of institutional policy, renewing the premises of political analysis and redefining the borders of what was deemed to be 'political'. Intended to foster dialogue with other feminist proposals, the article underlines the situated nature of this political experience and focuses on the method, the political praxis and the process rather than the outcome, the conclusions or the theory.

In its ongoing search for a global identity, the city of Sydney, Australia, has looked to other cities for inspiration and direction. Like many of these cities, Sydney's Central Business District, and the former industrial areas that surround it, are being transformed through 'apartment' (condominium) development. Many are marketed as 'New York–style lofts' via a flurry of promotions that suggest a distinctly generic and global form of cosmopolitan urbanism. The essay details how this recent spate of Manhattanization rests not only on a cache of historically embedded Manhattan imaginaries, but on localized socio–cultural moments that are part of Sydney's particular experience of SoHo Syndrome. Tracing the pathways to Sydney's version of the global phenomenon of loft living has enabled a deeper understanding of the city's evolving built and cultural landscapes.

Recent studies question the definition of a literary canon as an immutable corpus of texts sharing certain assured value and properties and distinguished by the possession of intrinsic worth; they argue that like all other human artifacts, canons are not given but are the product of a specific history, and are thus historically contingent. In the Indian context there are few studies that have taken up the question of canon formation. This article seeks to redress this lacuna and explores how the Tamil literary canon came be redefined in colonial India. The conjuncture of print, the 'discovery' of new texts, Orientalist scholarship and identity politics shaped the modern literary canon. While the pre-modern Tamil literary canon consisted predominantly of religious, mythological and didactic texts, the new canon was a largely secular one where the religious texts were marginalised.