Suchergebnisse

The article contains an analysis of the academic and popular political discourses concerning the Ukrainian nation. Its aim is to point out atypical phenomena which could constitute little-known factors destabilizing or integrating national self-representation in Ukraine. The inconsistency of these concepts occurs above all at the level of macro-social discourses. What is involved is the presence in politics of content associated with the radical right and its primordial understanding of the nation, accompanied by low support for any sort of national or civil idea among the inhabitants of Ukraine. In the academic discourse the dominant western European theories of nation clash with a specific understanding of the terminology used in Russian scholarship. On the other hand, in local discourses at the meso-social level, there are phenomena that could be integrating factors for the image of the Ukrainian nation. There, language, popular culture, and various ideas about the past intermingle. In southern Ukraine, concepts can be found in which the nation is a political category quite aside from ethnic differences or the language of communication. Soviet times introduced the state factor, which is independent of ethnicity and which was later given content (rather worse than better) by the Ukrainian state. In these cases, Ukrainianness appears as a superior principle in regards to ethnic differentiation. The political situation of Ukraine since 2014, however, does not favor the development of this model of the Ukrainian nation.

AbstractThe paper analyses practices and representations connected with the state borders by applying categories of resilience resources and the potentials of borderland communities. The analysis focus on three borderlands between Poland and Ukraine, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, located in the former Austrian Galicia, which are divided by different types of state borders. The analysis shows that significant similarities exist between two sides of the borderland independently from the duration of the border presence in the settlement structure. The main feature of the state border which differentiates the resilience capital is the duration of borderline existence. Local communities existing in the vicinity of the new border use their past to build their tradition over the border through informal co‐operation. In the case of the old and internal EU border, between Poland and Slovakia, such co‐operation is more formal and based on the external resources. The common feature of the studied borderlands is the use of cultural resilience capital instead of the cultural capital that these territories lack.

This article comprises a sketch of the most important perspectives on local government. Among other things, it also aims to present the unique nature of government at the mezzo-social level. Here the concepts of political governing are considered as a social relationship and social resource; proposed, too, is the application of the category of the social field in the analysis of local government. Such social fields are characterized by both relations and resources associated with power when viewed from the standpoint of actions and structures. A separate aspect making itself known in the field of political power is its manifestations and influences.