The article discusses some aspects of continuity and change in Croatian society. The first part, entitled "A Synoptic View of the Croatian Society Today", gives a bird's-eye-view of the Croatian society -- its social structure, dominant values, main repetitive processes: cooperation, competition, conflict, and main processes of social change: modernization and re-traditionalization. It shows the simultaneous effect of forces of continuity and tendencies to change. The second part, entitled "Dominant Values of Croatian Society", presents dominant values on three levels of centeredness: individual (individualism and utilitarianism), national (the "heroic codex") and societal (radical egalitarianism, authoritarianism and solidarity). The war has not introduced significant changes into the value system, apart from a more prominent and generalized "heroic codex" and solidarity. Adapted from the source document.
The article discusses some aspects of continuity and change in Croatian society. The first part, entitled "A Synoptic View of the Croatian Society Today", gives a bird's-eye-view of the Croatian society -- its social structure, dominant values, main repetitive processes: cooperation, competition, conflict, and main processes of social change: modernization and re-traditionalization. It shows the simultaneous effect of forces of continuity and tendencies to change. The second part, entitled "Dominant Values of Croatian Society", presents dominant values on three levels of centeredness: individual (individualism and utilitarianism), national (the "heroic codex") and societal (radical egalitarianism, authoritarianism and solidarity). The war has not introduced significant changes into the value system, apart from a more prominent and generalized "heroic codex" and solidarity. Adapted from the source document.
The geopolitical evolution represents a permanent process. It is mostly influenced by the geopolitical condition, in which the geopolitical relations and processes are evolving. The understanding of geopolitical evolution is impossible without the critical review and even rejection of the dominant geopolitical visions. There are various theoretical perspectives that reject the dominant geopolitical visions and discourses as well as geopolitical practices of the political elites. Those theoretical perspectives are known as: critical geopolitics, anti-geopolitics, subaltern geopolitics, feminist geopolitics, radical geopolitics. There are also various comprehensions of relationship between these theoretical perspectives, although it is clear that each of them is overlapped with others, and all of them are overlapped with critical geopolitics, differing in the focus of study and the identification of new moments, and at the same time being similar by their deflection from the dominant geopolitical vision and practices, to which they react in different ways: by criticizing, by putting resistance or offering alternatives. In this paper, the research focus is mostly on anti-geopolitics, a radical geopolitical vision that puts into question the relations of exploitation and dominance. Anti-geopolitics also represents a theoretical perspective that poses the most serious challenge to the dominant ways of representing the World. The proponents of anti-geopolitics focus their research on the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, as well as on the social movements and networks that offer a resistance to globalization and geo-economic logic that are advocated and practiced by the political-economic elites of states and multinational corporations and intergovernmental institutions, especially the financial ones. The paper also brings a brief review of the key aspects of other theoretical perspectives that represent a more or less radical deflection from the dominant geopolitical visions. Adapted from the source document.
How is law as both a set of standards of conduct and a way of reasoning related to politics, economy and culture? The approach to the problem taken in the paper is practical and instrumental rather than theoretical for its own sake. The aim is to appraise the subject-matter with a view of facilitating its change towards the basic values of the inquiry. Since the values are postulated by a stipulative definition of law, which implies relations of law to politics, economy and even culture, it may appear that the approach unduly trivializes rather than solves the problem. The approach may nonetheless be valid, if the stipulated definition of law is sufficiently integral, that is, inclusive. To that end the paper attempts to integrate into the stipulated definition of law three major philosophical traditions, which are still building blocks of -- and hence the keys to -- contemporary doctrines and cultures. In the classical (ontological) key (which is analysed in the first part of the paper) law is conceived of as a constituting and correcting aspect of the whole consisting of politics, economy, law and religion qua centerpiece of culture. In the modem (epistemological) key (analysed in the second part of the paper) ideas of law range from the conceptions that law is the constituent of modem social systems and hence an indispensable means of identifying modem social phenomena to the theories that law, as well as politics, economy and culture, is a phenomenon reducible to its natural causes. In the contemporary (linguistic) key (also in the second part) law, which is the constituent even of religion, can be understood only from within of the culture -- including politics and economy -- into which it is woven. The three traditions differ most markedly in their views of the contact between reason and action. In contrast to the classical tradition, which recognizes that reason can be action-guiding, reason and action are in the epistemological key separated by a logical gap, whereas in the linguistic key they are hardly distinguishable. The triple solution of the problem of inquiry increases both heuristic and practical potentials of the stipulated definition of law. By integrating diverse philosophical traditions, the definition is serviceable to the integrity of a pluralistic legal order, that is, to achieving the postulated basic values within the limits of the law. However, the approach taken in the paper, while more inclusive than more partisan approaches, is still merely an approach which is in the final analysis also partisan. Moreover, when seen from a culture that has not been integrated by the definition, the approach may be parochial or even inimical. Adapted from the source document.
The cognitive worth of the concept of totalitarianism is constantly refuted. In this text, the author begins by confronting his perception of totalitarianism as a new social formation, which he advocated in many of his works, with four scientific arguments raised by historians against totalitarianism as a political category or in favour of a limited use thereof. The first is that communism and fascism are fundamentally different, that the ideologies which characterize them are radically opposed to one another. This argument overlooks the fact that in such regimes ideology is not merely the prevalent discourse -- it has a new function and efficiency, it establishes a totalitarian "regime" of language and thought in which the power of discourse and the discourse of power are made equal. The second argument is that totalitarianism is evident, in Germany and Russia, only during limited periods. To this the author replies that it is a "realistic" illusion to assume that the totalitarian project was ever fully realized in history. According to the third objection, the concept of totalitarianism is of no cognitive worth to the historian, and totalitarian regimes belong to the order of contingency, and not of historical necessity. On the other hand, the author stresses the historical novelty of totalitarianism, which does spring and can spring only from the modern "democratic revolution" (in Tocqueville's sense) as a radical refutation thereof. The final objection of a methodologically aware historian (F. Furet) is that the concept of totalitarianism can be analytically fruitful only if used as an "ideal type", as a common trait of regimes established in atomized societies through total domination by way of ideology and terror. To this the author replies that we cannot be satisfied with the use of the concept "ideal type", although it is true that it liberates the historian from the naivety of positivistic descriptive historiography. The making of an ideal type thus makes it possible to avoid the choice between philosophy and descriptive history, but only inasmuch as the historian is transformed into a cognizant subject which is external with regard to history. In the second part of the text, the author provides a critical evaluation of the theory of totalitarianism by H. Arendt, particularly her central thesis that totalitarian society comes into being in modern atomized society. Namely, totalitarianism is characterized, on the one hand, by an artificialist project of organization, and, on the other, by a substantialist ideal of incorporation: both are realized in the Party, which is not only devised as an organization, but is also a "mystical person" in which all its members are brought together. As such, it incorporates the people. The figure of the indivisible people is put forward in the Party; the figure of the indivisible party is put forward in the figure of the people. In the first, organizational aspect the Party contains the project of an organisable whole, while in the other, substantialist aspect it contains the project of an incorporable whole. Adapted from the source document.
