Entangled Interactions Between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe

Entangled Interactions Between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Yoko Aoshima
Publisher: Lithuanian Studies Without Bor
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2020
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781644693568

This book elucidates the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases in Central and Eastern Europe. Though those analyses, the authors show how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness. Starting with the pre-modern era in this region, the book examines the long-term transformation of religious, political, and social situations of the region. In addition, the book considers the impact of imperial powers, which tended to be linked with a universal religion. It finally sheds light on the multifaceted nature of nations in this region, which contributes to evoke a new vision of the historical transformation of the region that enriches the general theories of nationalism.

Entangled Interactions between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe

Entangled Interactions between Religion and National Consciousness in Central and Eastern Europe
Author: Yoko Aoshima
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1644693836

This book elucidates the complicated relationship between religion and national consciousness in the modern world, highlighting various cases within Central and Eastern Europe. Through these analyses, contributors demonstrate how religion, far from disappearing, strongly impacted the emerging national consciousness. Starting with the pre-modern era, essays examine the long-term transformation of religious, political, and social situations of the region. In addition, the book considers the impact of imperial powers, which tended to be linked with a universal religion. Light is also shed on the multifaceted nature of nations, which contribute to a new vision of the historical transformation of the region that enriches the general theories of nationalism.

The Tsar, The Empire, and The Nation

The Tsar, The Empire, and The Nation
Author: Darius Staliūnas
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2021-05-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9633863643

This collection of essays addresses the challenge of modern nationalism to the tsarist Russian Empire. First appearing on the empire’s western periphery this challenge, was most prevalent in twelve provinces extending from Ukrainian lands in the south to the Baltic provinces in the north, as well as to the Kingdom of Poland. At issue is whether the late Russian Empire entered World War I as a multiethnic state with many of its age-old mechanisms run by a multiethnic elite, or as a Russian state predominantly managed by ethnic Russians. The tsarist vision of prioritizing loyalty among all subjects over privileging ethnic Russians and discriminating against non-Russians faced a fundamental problem: as soon as the opportunity presented itself, non-Russians would increase their demands and become increasingly separatist. The authors found that although the imperial government did not really identify with popular Russian nationalism, it sometimes ended up implementing policies promoted by Russian nationalist proponents. Matters addressed include native language education, interconfessional rivalry, the “Jewish question,” the origins of mass tourism in the western provinces, as well as the emergence of Russian nationalist attitudes in the aftermath of the first Russian revolution.

The Shaken Lands

The Shaken Lands
Author: Tomas Balkelis
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2023-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN:

The volume focuses on violence during the breakdown of East Central European states brought by one of the most violent periods in modern European history: from the start of the Great War in 1914 until 1923 when Europe, finally, achieved peace after a series of civil conflicts and interstate wars. The contributors offer several case studies that cover the vast region stretching from the Baltic states to Hungary. They explore different types of violence against its civilian populations with a particular focus on communal violence committed by civilians onto their neighbors. They suggest that disintegration of state power brought by the Great War was a key condition that produced violence. Yet the process of post-WWI state building was equally or more violent as nascent East Central European states institutionalized the use of violence to achieve their political agendas.

Rethinking the Space for Religion

Rethinking the Space for Religion
Author: Krzysztof Stala
Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9187121859

What happens to people's sense of belonging when globalisation meets with proclaimed regional identities resting heavily on conceptions of religion and ethnicity? Who are the actors stressing cultural heritage and authenticity as tools for self-understanding? In this book the authors aim at a broad discussion on how history and religion are made part of the production of narratives about origin and belonging in contemporary Europe. The contributors offer localised studies where actors with strong agendas indicate the complex relations between history, religion, and identity. The case studies exemplify how public intellectuals and academics have taken active part in the construction of recent and traditional pasts. Instead of repeating the simplistic explanation as a "return of religion", the authors of this volume focus on public platforms and agents, and their use of religion as a political and cultural argument. The approach makes a nuanced and fresh survey for researchers and other initiated readers to engage in.

Europe

Europe
Author: Hans-Georg Ziebertz
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2008
Genre: Christian sociology
ISBN: 3825815781

Religion is back on the agenda. Western societies are searching for an adequate understanding of religion. Media move religion into focus as a resource of significance in modern societies, but also as a source of tension and conflict. Politics is testing how to manage religious pluralism. Education is developing concepts of interreligious dialogue in order to promote a better intercultural understanding. The book discusses if the concept post-secularity allows a suitable understanding of the public presence of religion.

Sarajevo, 1941–1945

Sarajevo, 1941–1945
Author: Emily Greble
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2011-02-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801461219

On April 15, 1941, Sarajevo fell to Germany's 16th Motorized Infantry Division. The city, along with the rest of Bosnia, was incorporated into the Independent State of Croatia, one of the most brutal of Nazi satellite states run by the ultranationalist Croat Ustasha regime. The occupation posed an extraordinary set of challenges to Sarajevo's famously cosmopolitan culture and its civic consciousness; these challenges included humanitarian and political crises and tensions of national identity. As detailed for the first time in Emily Greble's book, the city’s complex mosaic of confessions (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish) and ethnicities (Croat, Serb, Jew, Bosnian Muslim, Roma, and various other national minorities) began to fracture under the Ustasha regime’s violent assault on "Serbs, Jews, and Roma"—contested categories of identity in this multiconfessional space—tearing at the city’s most basic traditions. Nor was there unanimity within the various ethnic and confessional groups: some Catholic Croats detested the Ustasha regime while others rode to power within it; Muslims quarreled about how best to position themselves for the postwar world, and some cast their lot with Hitler and joined the ill-fated Muslim Waffen SS. In time, these centripetal forces were complicated by the Yugoslav civil war, a multisided civil conflict fought among Communist Partisans, Chetniks (Serb nationalists), Ustashas, and a host of other smaller groups. The absence of military conflict in Sarajevo allows Greble to explore the different sides of civil conflict, shedding light on the ways that humanitarian crises contributed to civil tensions and the ways that marginalized groups sought political power within the shifting political system. There is much drama in these pages: In the late days of the war, the Ustasha leaders, realizing that their game was up, turned the city into a slaughterhouse before fleeing abroad. The arrival of the Communist Partisans in April 1945 ushered in a new revolutionary era, one met with caution by the townspeople. Greble tells this complex story with remarkable clarity. Throughout, she emphasizes the measures that the city’s leaders took to preserve against staggering odds the cultural and religious pluralism that had long enabled the city’s diverse populations to thrive together.

Beyond Balkanism

Beyond Balkanism
Author: Diana Mishkova
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1351236369

In recent years, western discourse about the Balkans, or “balkanism,” has risen in prominence. Characteristically, this strand of research sidelines the academic input in the production of western representations and Balkan self-understanding. Looking at the Balkans from the vantage point of “balkanism” has therefore contributed to its further marginalization as an object of research and the evisceration of its agency. This book reverses the perspective and looks at the Balkans primarily inside-out, from within the Balkans towards its “self” and the outside world, where the west is important but not the sole referent. The book unravels attempts at regional identity-building and construction of regional discourses across various generations and academic subcultures, with the aim of reconstructing the conceptualizations of the Balkans that have emerged from academically embedded discursive practices and political usages. It thus seeks to reinstate the subjectivity of “the Balkans” and the responsibility of the Balkan intellectual elites for the concept and the images it conveys. The book then looks beyond the Balkans, inviting us to rethink the relationship between national and transnational (self-)representation and the communication between local and exogenous – Western, Central and Eastern European – concepts and definitions more generally. It thus contributes to the ongoing debates related to the creation of space and historical regions, which feed into rethinking the premises of the “new area studies.” Beyond Balkanism: The Scholarly Politics of Region Making will interest researchers and students of transnationalism, politics, historical geography, border and area studies.

On the East-west Slope

On the East-west Slope
Author: Attila Melegh
Publisher: Central European University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2006-01-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789637326240

Melegh's work offers a powerful analysis of the sociological and symbolic meanings of East-West in Europe after the end of the Cold War. While the fundamental poles of East and West remain, both their meaning and their relationship to one another have shifted profoundly since the late 1970s. Melegh exposes the underbelly of liberal characterizations of East-West, highlighting the polarizing effect of extreme nationalism and ethnic racism. The theoretical underpinnings of this work involve the ideas of preeminent theorists such as Karl Mannheim, Michel Foucault and more recently Maria Todorova and Iver Neumann. This work casts into fine relief how the "East-West Slope" oriented negatively from West to East has emerged from liberal characterizations of this project. The book analyzes the historical change in East-West discourses from a modernizationist type to a new/old civilizational one. In addition, this is one of the first attempts to link post-colonial analysis to developments in Eastern Europe.

Entangled

Entangled
Author: Ian Hodder
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-05-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0470672129

A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory