Rethinking Modern Polish Identities

Author : Agnieszka Pasieka,Paweł Rodak
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 2023-03-21
Category : National characteristics, Polish
ISBN : 9781648250583

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Rethinking Modern Polish Identities by Agnieszka Pasieka,Paweł Rodak Pdf

A critical examination of the category of "Polishness" - that is, the formation, redefinition, and performance of various kinds of Polish identities - from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. Inspired by new research in the humanities and social sciences as well as recent scholarship on national identities, this volume offers a rigorous examination of the idea of Polishness. Offering a diversity of case studies and methodological-theoretical approaches, it demonstrates a profound connection between national and transnational processes and places the Polish case in a broader context. This broader context stretches from a larger Eastern European one, a usual frame of comparison, to the overseas immigrant communities. The authors, renowned scholars from Europe and the United States, thus demonstrate that an understanding of modern Polish identity means crossing not only historical but also geographical boundaries. Consequently, the narrative on Polish identity that unfolds in the volume is a personalized and multivocal one that presents the perspectives of a wide range of subjects: peasants, workers, migrants, ethnic and sexual minorities-that is, all those actors who have been absent in grand national narratives. As such, the examination of Polishness sheds light on the identity question more broadly, emphasizing the interplay of pluralizing and homogenizing tendencies, and fostering a reflection on national identity as encompassing both sameness and difference.

Author : Catharina Raudvere,Krzysztof Stala,Trine Stauning Willert
Publisher : Nordic Academic Press
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 2015-02-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789187121951

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Rethinking the Space for Religion by Catharina Raudvere,Krzysztof Stala,Trine Stauning Willert Pdf

A broad discussion about how history and religion contribute to identity politics in contemporary Europe, this book provides case studies exemplifying how public intellectuals and academics have taken an active part in the construction of recent and traditional pasts. Instead of repeating the simplistic explanation as a return of religion, this volume focuses on public platforms and agents and their use of religion as a political and cultural argument. Filled with previously unpublished data gathered from texts, interviews, field observations, artifacts, and material culture, this record challenges stereotypical images of East and Southeast Europe.

Author : Tomek Grabowski
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 379 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2023
Category : Democratization
ISBN : 9781648250590

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Individualism and the Rise of Democracy in Poland by Tomek Grabowski Pdf

"This book investigates the long-term preconditions of lasting and successful democratization. It counters conventional wisdom that they are a matter of proper institutional design, or that the political culture of democracy is a by-product of modernizing economic change. Instead, it argues that achieving lasting democracy is difficult without a prior breakthrough to individualism: a system of beliefs centered on the belief in one's inner worth and in one's inner capacity for judgment. The rise of an individualist belief system that is widely proliferated in society requires social conditions that are in turn hard to meet, including a widespread breakdown of traditional culture, a frontier experience, and a process of civic nation building. The book's empirical focus, Poland, demonstrates the logic of the individuation process in a condensed form. Poland's road to individualism (and with it, to democracy) consisted of a catastrophic uprooting of broad segments of society in the aftermath of World War II, the rise of a frontier environment in the Western Territories acquired from Germany, and an unlikely emergence of the Catholic Church as a civic nation-builder in these Territories in the 1960s and the 1970s. However, the Polish case is not unique, and the book offers an analytical approach that could successfully be brought to bear on other cases of democratization, both past and present"--

Author : Masha Shpolberg,Lukas Brasiskis
Publisher : Berghahn Books
Page : 465 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2023-10-13
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781805393757

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Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe by Masha Shpolberg,Lukas Brasiskis Pdf

The annexation of Eastern Europe to the Soviet sphere after World War II dramatically reshaped popular understandings of the natural environment. With an eco-critical approach, Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe breaks new ground in documenting how filmmakers increasingly saw cinema as a tool to critique the social and environmental damage of large-scale projects from socialist regimes and newly forming capitalist presences. New and established scholars with backgrounds across Europe, the United States, and Australia come together to reflect on how the cultural sphere has, and can still, play a role in redefining our relationship to nature.

Author : Alexandra Wangler
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2012-04-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783531192260

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Rethinking History, Reframing Identity by Alexandra Wangler Pdf

This book contributes to the theoretical and methodological discussion about how the diverging experiences of generations and their historical memories play a role in the process of national identity formation. Drawing from narratives gathered within the Ukrainian minority in northern Poland and centered on the collective trauma of Action Vistula, where in 1947 about 140,000 Ukrainians were resettled from south-eastern Poland and relocated to the north-western areas, this study shows that three generations vary considerably with regard to their understandings of home, integration, history and religion. Thus, generational differences are an essential element in the analysis and understanding of social and political change. The findings of this study provide a contribution to debates about the process based nature of national identity, the role of trauma in creating generational consciousness and how generations should be conceptualized.

Author : Nadege Ragaru
Publisher : Boydell & Brewer
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2023-10-24
Category : History
ISBN : 9781648250705

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Bulgaria, the Jews, and the Holocaust by Nadege Ragaru Pdf

During World War II, even though Bulgaria was an ally of the Third Reich, it never deported its Jewish community. Until recently, this image of the country as an heroic exception has prevailed—despite the murder of almost all Jews living in Bulgarian-occupied territories. Nadège Ragaru presents a riveting archival investigation of the origins and perpetuation of Bulgaria's heroic narrative, restoring Jewish voices to the story. Translated from the original French edition. On publication this book is available as an Open Access eBook under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.

Author : Juraj Buzalka,Agnieszka Pasieka
Publisher : Open Book Publishers
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2022-10-31
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781800643659

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Anthropology of Transformation by Juraj Buzalka,Agnieszka Pasieka Pdf

This collection of essays is the result of the joint efforts of colleagues and students of the leading social anthropology and post-socialism theorist, Professor Chris Hann. With the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 2019 as their catalyst, the authors reflect upon Chris Hann’s lifelong fieldwork in the discipline, spanning regions as diverse as East Central Europe, Turkey, and the Chinese north-west. The collapse of the Berlin Wall naturally triggered a plethora of analysis and scholarly research. Sociocultural anthropology, with its focus on ethnographic study and on the gradual evolution of social relations, sharply contrasted with the emphasis on dramatic rupture brought about by the 1989 transition. Continuing in this tradition, this volume, through micro-level analysis of societal transformation from the post-war years to the present day, provides an alternative perspective to the neoliberalist views often encountered in the scholarship on political and economic modernisation. The more nuanced analysis of social transformations proposed here is a particularly useful tool in the investigation of contemporary issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee ‘crisis’, and the rise of right-wing populism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Anthropology of Transformation will be of interest to researchers in the fields of socio-cultural anthropology, religion and economics. Moreover, the book’s discussion of issues widely discussed beyond the field of academia such as neoliberalism and the welfare state, and populist and exclusionary politics, will appeal to non-specialist readers.

Author : Rūta Stanevičiūtė,Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz
Publisher : Academic Studies PRess
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2022-11-15
Category : Music
ISBN : 9781644698969

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Music and Change in the Eastern Baltics Before and After 1989 by Rūta Stanevičiūtė,Małgorzata Janicka-Słysz Pdf

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musical cultures in the Eastern Baltics—Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia—at the end of the Cold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and the diffusion of information, people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artistic outlook of several generations. The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offers a deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and political change.

Author : Barbara Lange,Dirk Hildebrandt,Agata Pietrasik
Publisher : Böhlau Köln
Page : 269 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2019-12-09
Category : Art
ISBN : 9783412514013

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Rethinking Postwar Europe by Barbara Lange,Dirk Hildebrandt,Agata Pietrasik Pdf

The book "Rethinking Postwar Europe" offers an in-depth insight into the largely unexplored topic of artistic practices in the 1940s and 1950s in Europe which until recently had been obscured by ideologies of the Cold War. Thanks to the authors' diverse methodological backgrounds, the volume presents – for the first time – a comprehensive multilayered narrative, focusing on the complexities and entanglements in the artistic field. Instead of assessing the postwar period in the traditional way as divided by the Iron Curtain, the contributions investigate processes of contact, interaction, dissemination, overlapping, and networking. Consequently, the analysis of a diversified European modernism in both its aesthetic and its socio-political dimension resonates with all the different case studies. In particular, the volume looks at how artists developed, designed and (re)negotiated identities and discourses, and sheds new light on the power of art – and creative powers in general – in a postwar setting of mutilations, losses, and devastations.

Author : Dariusz Skórczewski,Agnieszka Polakowska
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 354 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : Group identity
ISBN : 9781580469784

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Polish Literature and National Identity by Dariusz Skórczewski,Agnieszka Polakowska Pdf

"Although for half a century East-Central Europe was part of the Soviet empire and was subject to its "civilizing" mission, its colonial status escaped the attention of most postcolonial critics. It still remains a blank spot in global studies of postcolonialism. In Polish Literature and Identity: A Postcolonial Landscape Dariusz Skórczewski argues for the advantages of applying postcolonial thought to Polish realities; at the same time, he modifes the theoretical framework worked out by other postcolonialists. The book seeks to reveal how Poland's two lines of experience-one of foreign hegemony since the late 1700s through 1989 (excluding a short period of sovereignty between the two world wars); and the other of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as itself a pre-modern empire-have shaped the culture of contemporary Polish society. The book focuses on identity transformations as reflected in Polish literature and critical discourses. It opens up the question of the identity of a postcolonial nation in contemporary East-Central Europe where globalization and cosmopolitanism clash with growing national sentiments, making predictions about a speedy advent of a post-national era premature. The first few chapters are devoted to the postcolonial theorizing of Poland in the East Central European context. This part of the book seeks relevant language(s) and registers for the analysis of the cultural condition of East Central Europe as a part of the world which slipped most postcolonial critics' attention. The second part of the book (Chapters 7-11) deal with the effects of the colonial encounter on Poles' self-perception and perception of Others, as reflected in Romantic and modern Polish literature. The book closes with a Postscript titled "Three Warnings," outlining a critique of postcolonial theory and criticism"--

Author : Andrea Reiter,Lucille Cairns
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2017-10-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781317330882

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Jewish Identities in Contemporary Europe by Andrea Reiter,Lucille Cairns Pdf

Providing an assessment of Jewish identity, this volume presents critical engagements with a number of Jewish writers and filmmakers from a variety of European countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Poland, and the UK. The novels and films discussed explore the meaning of being Jewish in Europe today, and investigate the extent to which this experience is shaped by factors that lie outside the national context, notably by the relationship to Israel. As the recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo, and the targeting of a Jewish supermarket in Paris, demonstrate, these questions are more pressing than ever, and will challenge Jews, as well as Jewish writers and intellectuals, as they explore the answers. This book was originally published as a special issue of Jewish Culture and History.

Author : Maria Diemling,Larry Ray
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 47,8 Mb
Release : 2015-09-07
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781317662983

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Boundaries, Identity and belonging in Modern Judaism by Maria Diemling,Larry Ray Pdf

The drawing of boundaries has always been a key part of the Jewish tradition and has served to maintain a distinctive Jewish identity. At the same time, these boundaries have consistently been subject to negotiation, transgression and contestation. The increasing fragmentation of Judaism into competing claims to membership, from Orthodox adherence to secular identities, has brought striking new dimensions to this complex interplay of boundaries and modes of identity and belonging in contemporary Judaism. Boundaries, Identity and Belonging in Modern Judaism addresses these new dimensions, bringing together experts in the field to explore the various and fluid modes of expressing and defining Jewish identity in the modern world. Its interdisciplinary scholarship opens new perspectives on the prominent questions challenging scholars in Jewish Studies. Beyond simply being born Jewish, observance of Judaism has become a lifestyle choice and active assertion. Addressing the demographic changes brought by population mobility and ‘marrying out,’ as well as the complex relationships between Israel and the Diaspora, this book reveals how these shifting boundaries play out in a global context, where Orthodoxy meets innovative ways of defining and acquiring Jewish identity. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of Jewish Studies, as well as general Religious Studies and those interested in the sociology of belonging and identities.

Author : Christopher Garbowski
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014-01-27
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780786475896

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Religious Life in Poland by Christopher Garbowski Pdf

This book provides a concise historical outline of religion in Poland up until its entry into the European Union in 2004, together with a longer presentation of contemporary religious issues. Albeit largely mono-ethnic and overwhelmingly Catholic after the loss of its large Jewish population to the Holocaust, and subsequent post-World War II border shifts, traces of an historic diversity remain in Poland to date, playing a greater role than mere numbers would suggest. Poland's fairly robust religious life is affected by the country's continuing modernization and its various institutions, and this is discussed within a broad context. One of the unfortunate legacies of decades of communism is a stunted civil society; while at different levels there are conflicts involving religion, at the grassroots it is one of the few forces building much needed trust in present-day Polish society.

Author : Marisa Caicholo,Jarosław J. Łasiński,Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2018
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 8365892200

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Polish Identity by Marisa Caicholo,Jarosław J. Łasiński,Jan Wiktor Sienkiewicz Pdf

Author : Agnieszka Bielewska
Publisher : Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2012
Category : Immigrants
ISBN : 3034307403

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Changing Polish Identities by Agnieszka Bielewska Pdf

This book discusses the way globalization transforms national identity, through detailed analysis of two very different groups of Polish migrants in Manchester: those who settled there after the Second World War and those who arrived after Poland joined the European Union in 2004.