Suchergebnisse

Population of Vojvodina is showing the characteristics of late demographic transition. The main characteristics of that phase are low mortality rate, slow decrease of fertility rate, increased number of older people etc. This phase is connected to fourth development phase of migrations with significant migrations from one city to another and inside the city area. The purpose of this paper is to define the basic characteristics of potential internal migrations in the region of Vojvodina between cities, most of all towards Novi Sad as economic, political and cultural center. The sample of 2.000 respondents was formed and survey was conducted in the 15 largest cities in the region. The data were analyzed with methods of descriptive and multivariate statistical analysis (rank correlation and MDS analysis). Basic conclusions are that theory of transitional migration is confirmed in Vojvodina, the size of the city is not the only factor for potential migration movements and Novi Sad is by far the most desired destination for significant portion of population in the region, especially of population aged between 20 and 40 years because around 40% of that cohort wish to move to Novi Sad. That will cause significant urban, economic and social problems, not only in the city of Novi Sad but also in the cities where immigrants are coming from. .

Interdisciplinarity has proved to be one of the enduring tenets of British urban history. As Fiona Kisby points out in her contribution to this special issue of Urban History, its centrality is enunciated in the agenda set by Jim Dyos in the 1960s, as the subject emerged as a self-conscious subdiscipline of British history, and in the editorials that launched this publication as a Yearbook and subsequently as a journal. The appeal of an interdisciplinary approach is that it allows those involved to transcend the straitjacket of traditional research and explore a given issue or subject from a multiplicity of angles. However, prioritizing such a methodology, though it might allow the intellectual high ground to be occupied temporarily, provides a real hostage to fortune, raising expectations that it often proves impossible to fulfil. Interdisciplinarity simply cuts against the dominant grain of academe. Where British urban historians have crossed the disciplinary barricades, they have tended to head in the direction of the social sciences (such as sociology, economics, geography and anthropology). A rapprochement with the arts (painting, film, literature, architecture, music, and the like) is less easy to discern. Yet with the growing interest in the last decade or so in cultural history the time is ripe to redress the balance. This music issue of Urban History, like that of August 1995 on 'Art and the City', can be seen as an attempt to do this. Its appearance coincides with the publication of a pioneering volume of essays, edited by Fiona Kisby, on Music and Musicians in Renaissance Cities and Towns, whose avowed aim is to 'bring musicology within the sphere of urban history'. Though that collection is predominantly focused on western Europe (with six of the essays on the British Isles, six on the Continent, and one on South America) and on the years 1400 to 1650, it provides a model for how the agendas of musicologists and urban historians might be productively merged.

'The critics awarded us the prize for the "Best play of the year" … but the main thing was that that year in the shanty town enabled us to attract an audience among trade-unionists and slum dwellers, who later followed us into the playhouses …' Though many Chilean intellectuals and writers were forced into exile by the repression which followed the 1973 coup, others stayed to fight the restrictions and harassment as best they could from inside the country. One notable example of this is the playwright Juan Radrigán. To survive, writers have developed a kind of self-censorship which means that their message is there to be understood if the public knows what to look for, but is never overtly expressed. The author situates his work not on the level of everyday reality, but couches it in the most general terms possible. It is left to the audience to work back from this universal level to a discovery of the relevance of the work to the reality surrounding them. Many of those writing poetry and for the theatre in Chile since 1973 have adopted religious themes and language since these lent themselves best to this kind of approach, and also because the Catholic Church was the only source of criticism which could not be suppressed by the authorities. Radrigán, however, has remained outside this current, perhaps unable to accept the message of hope which underpins the Christian tradition. He came to writing plays late in life, after working in a textile factory and elsewhere, and since 1979 has been one of the most significant voices in Chilean theatre. His characters are drawn from the poorest groups in Chilean society, but are projected on to the level of universal archetypes. In the main, they have abandoned hope about their own situation, and are worn out, old, defeated, or mentally disturbed. They are the end result of a brutal process which has left them at the bottom of the social scale stripped of all hope. In Radrigán's best-known work Unalterable Facts, death is the only exit. This message of despair in Radrigán's work has been criticised both inside Chile and abroad by opponents of the military regime as not emphasising enough the possibilities for social and political change, but his plays do give a convincing psychological portrait of how more than a decade of repression can work on the minds and expectations of a people. Juan Radrigán was interviewed recently by the Chilean writer Tito Valenzuela.