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Abstracts
AB,
CDEF, GHIJ,
KL, MNO, PQR,
ST, UVWXYZ
Kashina,
Elena
Kay, Rebec
Khlevniuk, Oleg
Khmelnitskaya, Marina
Klapuri, Tintti
Knox, Zoe
Komarnyckyj, Stephen
Kornyeyeva, Olena
Korosteleva, Elena
Kosmala,
Katarzyna
Kostlan, David
Krasovitsky, Alexander
Kravchenko, Elena
Kulmala, Meri
Kurella, Svitlana
Kusa, Zuzana
Law, Ian
Lerner, Julia
Levitsky, Daniel
Lupishko, Marina
|
Fitzwilliam
College, Cambridge, UK
27
– 29 March 2010
Abstracts
K-L
Kashina,
Elena
The Renaissance of Russian Medieval Culture in Late Nineteenth
– Early Twentieth Centuries
The last decades of the nineteenth – early twentieth centuries saw a spectacular
rise in public awareness of Russia’s mediaeval heritage. Neo-Russian became
one of the prevalent trends in artistic expression. This was all the more
remarkable that the cultural tradition of Old Rus was exiled out of polite
society following the reforms of Peter I in early eighteenth century.
Traditional religious expression and the infinitely manifold folk world
view reflected in the various arts and crafts and the decorative schemes
were banned from public view, to resurface with brilliant assuredness
in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Moscow. This paper shall
seek to demonstrate that the renaissance of the Russia’s historic cultural
expression was caused to a large extent by the activities, professional
and otherwise, of the newly powerful entrepreneurial elite. Its representatives,
for the first time in Russia’s history, were consistently addressing the
needs of the country’s enormous peasant population and those of the emerging
working class. Both the types of merchandise produced (household utensils,
fabrics and similar) and the ornamental designs triumphantly employed
traditional folk aesthetic. In addition, pre-Petrine devotional expression
was deliberately pursued in the ecclesiastical items produced both for
the mass market, and in fulfilment of Imperial commissions. It shall be
further argued that the motivation to exploit Russia’s traditional aesthetic,
as well as conscious orientating their operations at serving the popular
masses, stemmed from the background shared by the most prominent entrepreneurs
of the period.
Kay,
Rebecca
‘We Are the Light of Their Lives’ – Care-work, Gender and the Production
of Emotional Securities: A View From Rural Altai
This paper draws on the findings of an ethnographic research project on
Social security, welfare and care in Burla village, Altai Krai. The research
focuses on the activities of the local Centre for Social Assistance [CSA]
and the ways in which the forms of support and assistance provided through
this state structure intersect with other informal networks, practices
and strategies employed by local people to mitigate risk and produce securities
(social, economic, personal, cultural). The research seeks to understand
the importance of emotional as well as material forms of support and assistance
in these processes. This includes an exploration of the role of care,
as a distinct set of practices and relationships involving both practical,
physical activities and emotional engagements and dispositions, in the
production of securities. This paper focuses on a specific strand within
the work of the CSA: the provision of care assistance in the home to elderly
and infirm people. This poorly paid, low status, yet physically and emotionally
demanding work, is highly gendered, being performed exclusively by women,
most of whom also have multiple caring roles and obligations within their
families and informal networks. The relationship between care assistants
and their clients is often described in terms which replicate family relationships
and obligations, a framework which emphasises the significance of emotional
as well as practical aspects of the relationship, but also hints at underlying
tensions, mismatched expectations and disappointments and may help to
explain the marginalisation and undervaluation of this area of the CSA’s
activity.
Marsh, Cynthia,
Turbine, Vikki, Chmielewska, Ella, Kosmala, Katarzyna,
Kay, Rebecca, Stella, Francesca and Swain, Geoff
'Ideas that Never Meet': Navigating Interdisciplinary Knowledge
and Practice within Slavonic and East European Studies
Area studies have traditionally embodied a range of disciplinary and methodological
practices in order to explore the multiplicities of social, cultural and
historical phenomena characterising Slavonic and East European societies.
As such, they provide a potentially stimulating intellectual context within
which to consider the ways in which different knowledges and understandings
might be exchanged, combined and transformed in order to generate innovative
approaches to understanding the region more deeply. In recognition of
this, the roundtable aims to further debate around two main themes:
(i)east/west ‘knowledge
exchange’ with a specific focus on the interpretation/use/reworking
of particular western concepts in the ‘eastern’ context as well as reflections
on comparable east-west movements and the ways/means of facilitating/assessing
such exchanges.
(ii)the nature and character of knowledge exchange and dissemination
in the Arts & Humanities and Social Sciences with a view to facilitating
innovation in these areas.
Khlevniuk,
Oleg
Professional Historiography and Mass Knowledge About Stalinism
in the Modern Russia
There is a remarkable gap between professional historiography and mass
knowledge about Stalinism in the modern Russia. There are different
reasons for this gap: political, social, scientific. In this paper the
reasons concerning professional historiography will be discussed. What
is professional historiography in Russia? How is it connected with public
sphere? How can we overcome this gap in future?
Khmelnitskaya,
Marina
Policy Process in Post-Soviet Russia: Paradigmatic Change
and Policy Revision on Example of Housing Policy Reform From 1991 to the
Present
This study focuses on the process of policymaking in post-Soviet Russia.
It uses the example of Russian housing reform since 1991 to the present
and analyses it through the prism of the framework of social learning
(Hall 1993; Oliver and Pemberton 2004). The analysis of the Russian housing
policy process supports a number of findings of comparative scholars about,
on one hand, the mode of ‘normal’ policy process and, on the other, about
the causes and the process of paradigmatic change. The Russian case, nevertheless,
reveals substantial differences in the character of policymaking and paradigmatic
change compared with similar processes taking place in democratic political
systems. I argue that in the observed case of housing policy in Russia,
heavy reliance on expert advice in the process of policy elaboration paired
with limited democratic discussion in the process of policy adoption led
to frequent instances of policy rejection by the public at the stage of
policy implementation. Such policy failures were then followed by reiterating
and protracted cycles of policy revision. This study has implications
for the understanding of the mode of policymaking specific to Russia and
the capacity of the Russian state to implement change. This analysis also
has value to comparative political science as it discusses the operation
of the process of social learning in an authoritarian polity.
Klapuri,
Tintti
Everyday and nostalgia in 'Three Sisters'
This paper aims at defining the ways in which experiences and manifestations
of time in Chekhov's Three Sisters (Tri sestry, 1901)
dialogize with the ongoing socio-historical change and contemporary intellectual
history. Starting from the assumption that there are two diverse chronotopes
at play in Three Sisters, the static everyday time-space of
the present and the virtual dimensions of the past and the future, I
will analyze the manifestations of the everyday, on one hand, and the
experiences of nostalgia, on the other, as socio-historically formed
chronotopic features of the play. In so doing, I hope to contextualize Three
Sisters not only into the larger scheme of socio-historical changes
involved in Russian modernization of the time but also explicate how
the play comments on the cultural experiences and everyday practices
of late-nineteenth-century Russian modernity at the microhistorical level.
Knox,
Zoe
Watch Tower Theology and Soviet Ideology: Jehovah’s Witnesses
in the USSR
This paper will examine the clash between the theology of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses and the ideology of Soviet communism. Jehovah’s Witnesses were
not only denied the right to legally exist as a religious organisation
in the USSR, but were persecuted particularly harshly by the regime, which
decried the faith as an exemplar of a dangerous religious cult. The level
of harassment and persecution was out of proportion to their numbers,
which were small even when compared with other evangelical communities
under ban. This confrontation was multi-faceted, and certainly more complex
than it initially appears. This paper will examine what the Soviet government’s
attitudes towards a small western sect tell us about the perceived threat
to communism posed by evangelical communities.
Komarnyckyj,
Stephen
See No Evil- the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 as Genocide
The word Holodomor is a compound term derived from the Ukrainian words
for “hunger” and “plague”. It is important to recognise that other areas
of the Soviet Union were affected by famine in this period. However, the
Holodomor has a number of characteristics which distinguish it from these
superficially similar events. To begin with it is linked to a wave of
executions focused explicitly on Ukraine’s political, cultural, and spiritual
elites, which began in 1930 and has no equivalent in other regions of
the Soviet Union. The enforced confiscation of edible material from rural
Ukraine and rural Ukrainian regions of the Russian Republic and the sealing
in of these regions, linked to an ethnically specific areain early 1933
is a feature not repeated elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Finally the settlement,
from 1933 onwards, of people from other regions of the Soviet Union into
areas where much of the Ukrainian population had been exterminated can
be linked to statements by communist functionaries expressing a wish to
crush Ukrainian national feeling. These three features elevate the Holodomor
beyond the realms of agrarian policy and endow it with the characteristics
of genocide. This paper will examine how the main Western researchers
(Wheatcroft Ellman etc) do not consider the evidence summarised above.
Kornyeyeva,
Olena
East goes West: Distinctive Features of Integration of Ex-Soviet
Immigrants to Western Europe
The Soviet era left behind for millions of Eastern Europeans a legacy
in their meaning of the worldview and specific patterns of relationships.
As the research conducted at Jacobs University Bremen showed, the authoritarian
socialization experience plays a role in acculturation processes of young
immigrants from the former Soviet Union countries and predetermines (latent
or overt) conflicts between immigrants and a receiving society. Our research
found evidence that socio- psychological features of today’s post Soviet
cultures foster the Authoritarian Personality formation, and that the
authoritarian cultural background and its derivative – the Authoritarian
Personality – are significantly stronger among the Ex-Soviets than among
Westerners (German native citizens and immigrants or sojourners who live
in Germany). The problems, which this study deals, are evident in any
modern multicultural society, which on the one hand needs immigration
and on the other hand is marked by anti-immigrant sentiment. The study
explored the impact of authoritarian socialization (both within a family
and a wider culture as two main institutions of socialization) on individuality
formation, and examined their impact on acculturation patterns in a democratic
societal milieu with its values system, attitudes etc. Within this research
a conceptually new approach was tested and a few new theoretical concepts
were developed. Empirical data analysis’ results collected among immigrants/sojourners
from Ex-Soviet countries, Turkey and Western countries in Germany (N=1318),
are to be discussed in this presentation, as well as such concepts as
Intercultural Anxiety in a multicultural society and Acculturation Dysfunction.
Korosteleva,
Elena
Governance or Partnership? Assessing EU’s Engagement with
Eastern Europe
The paper examines the EU’s partnership-building approach with Eastern
Europe – Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in particular. First, it evaluates
the ENP/EaP ‘operational’ frameworks to suggest that the ‘external governance’
approach considerably outweighs the crucial ‘partnership’ element originally
envisaged in the EU modus operandi with European neighbours. Second, the
paper asserts that governance, conceptualised from the ‘boundary-politics
perspective’ (M.E.Smith), should not be solely predicated on accounting
for the EU’s boundaries alone, but is essentially a two-way process of
boundary-construction between the partner-states involved. The knowledge
and understanding of the ‘boundaries’ of ‘the other’ – especially those
of ‘geopolitics’ and ‘culture’ – is the key to the successful implementation
of the ENP/EaP in the region, and requires revisiting the ‘partnership-building’
approach in an effort to bring ‘partnership’ back into the equation. Finally,
the paper provides an overview of the principal findings addressing some
major difficulties - from the governance/partnership perspective - in
the process of EU’s engagement with Eastern Europe. The paper is the outcome
of a three-year ESRC-funded project ‘Eurpeanising or Securitising the
“outsiders”? Assessing the EU’s partnership-building approach with Eastern
Europe’ (RES-061-25-0001). Its conclusions are based on extensive research
including nation-wide surveys, focus-groups, expert interviews and school
essays conducted in Eastern Europe by our respective partners, and brought
together through rigorous data analysis and comparative examination.
Kostlan,
David and Nekorjak, Michal
Roma Pupils in Czech and Slovak Schools: A Comparative Analysis
In the Czech Republic and Slovakia Roma are the largest ethnic group that
faces multiplied deprivation and long-term social exclusion. Exclusionary
mechanisms have also been observed within the framework of school systems
of both the countries. In general, Roma do not only face the discrimination
on labour market, but as a rule they leave school system very early and
their low level of education does not allow them to take other than marginal
and fragile jobs. In spite of their recent reforms the school systems
of both the countries apparently do not stimulate Roma to higher education
and do not promote their education aspirations on more massive scale.
In both countries, geographical exclusion has been increasingly overlapping
with social and economic exclusion. As parents are free to choose schools
for their children in both the countries, so called white flight from
the poorer school districts with higher proportion of Roma population
has been massive. Poorer communities, Roma including are concentrated
in schools that are ignored by majority population. As a result, children
from majority and minority groups have been growing up in mutual isolation.
Separation
of Roma in school systems of these countries also has institutional, social
and cultural causes. Some of them are shared by both the countries, however,
in spite of long common history of Czechoslovakia (1918 – 1992) there
have been also differences in the character of Roma communities in both
countries, For that reason, despite certain similarities the situation
in both countries varies. In our paper, we will introduce the survey phase
of the international project EDUMIGROM (http://www.edumigrom.eu/)
that enables mutual comparison of collected data. We will show in which
areas the situation of Roma pupils in Czech Republic and Slovakia resembles
and varies. Preliminary, we will briefly introduce the school systems
of both countries and the specifics of local communities, in which our
data has been collected. Then we will compare social background of our
respondents, their school results, attitudes towards school, relations
to their teachers, difficulties and conflicts they have been facing, individual
aspirations and future plans. This comparison will also comprise majority
pupils of both the countries. The focus of the comparison is to show which
structural conditions worsen the situation of Roma pupils or, on the contrary,
can help overcome their social handicaps.
Kusa, Zuzana
and Kostlan, David
Migrations Plans of Slovak Pupils in the Contexts of Current
Migration Trends
Significant labour migration from the territory of Slovakia has been documented
by the first population censuses. Till the WW2 destination of labour migration
(both temporary and permanent) had been mainly North America but also
western Europe. Under the communist regime, labour migration was headed
to Czech lands and this trend has also continued after the fall of the
iron curtain and the division of Czechoslovakia into two independent states.
Since the EU accession of the Slovak Republic (2004) migration of labour
force has intensified. In 2007, according to the Labour Force Surveys,
almost 8 percent of employed population worked abroad. The majority of
them come from Eastern Slovakia regions (Košice and Prešov regions) that
have been permanently faced with jobs shortage. The main labour migration
countries have been Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Ireland. There
are a number of surveys available on migration tendencies among adult
population. The EDUMIGROM project survey that has been held in two Slovak
middle-sized towns in April – May 2009 and covered their almost complete
15-years pupil population offers unique opportunity to study migration
tendencies among the younger age cohorts and among different ethnic groups
within them. The paper will start with the brief outline of labour migration
history of Slovakia and with the description of trends of labour migration
since the EU access of Slovakia up till now. After the description of
territorial, education and qualification structure of typical migrating
groups we will turn to the data from the EDUMIGROM survey that has found
that more than one quarter of 15-years olds wish to leave Slovakia in
their adulthood. After short description and comparison of the socio-economic
situation in the towns/districts where the survey has been held we will
present socio-economic and ethnic background, school performance, educational
ambitions, desired work and other characteristics of pupils that differ
by intent to leave Slovakia in their adulthood. We will show that contrarily
to the common expectations that mainly young people with poor socio-economic
background, possibly Roma, tend to migrate to “western” European countries
, it is the girls from well-off families and with excellent school results
who have the strongest inclination to leave Slovakia. We will attempt
to give plausible explanation for this finding and show that EDUMIGROM
findings better illuminate one trend of labour migration, that is, the
brain-drain.
Krasovitsky,
Alexander
The Rise of Neutralization in a North Russian dialect
The paper addresses the rise of vowel neutralization in a North Russian
dialect. There has been a general consensus that the discrimination of
/a/ and /o/ in unstressed syllables after non-palatalized consonants,
a phenomenon known as okan’e, is a distinctive property of the North
Russian dialects (Avanesov & Bromlej 1986). Recent field data recorded
in the Archangel region reveal radical deviation from this archaic model
leading to a complete decay in the speech of the middle and of the younger
generations. With respect to the spread of the neutralization the recorded
idiolects fall into three clearly contrasted types: conservative with
no systematically applied /o/-/a/ neutralization (A); idiolects representing
a transitional system where the neutralization pattern is applied inconsistently
(B); and finally, innovative with obligatory neutralization of /o/ and
/a/ in unstressed syllables (C). The distribution of the three types
across the age groups is as follows: types A (lack of neutralization)
and B (inconsistent neutralization) are found in the speech of the older
generation, Type C (obligatory neutralization) is characteristic of the
idiolects spoken by middle and younger generations. The analysis reveals
the leading role of the specific wave-like North Russian word prosody
(Kasatkina 1996: 219-220) in the development of neutralization pattern.
Thus, stronger reduction (to [?]) is more frequent in the first pretonic,
while second pretonic syllables favour moderate reduction (to [?]). The
new pattern differs radically from those attested in Standard Russian
and in other regional varieties where degree of reduction increases in
direct proportion to the distance to stress (Švedova 1980: 25-27; Crosswhite
2001: 57-71).
Kravchenko,
Elena
Aesthetization of Being: Re-Writing of Soviet History in Sasha
Sokolov’s Ďŕëčńŕíäđč˙ (Astrophobia)
Stalin’s death, and the period which followed, known in the West as ‘de-Stalinization’,
triggered a very different artistic response from what was expected. Instead
of the anticipated return to the preceding avant-garde aesthetics, Socialist
realism yielded to a traditional realism, whose most emblematic representative
is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A utopian project to construct ‘a new world’
was replaced by a focus on the ‘eternal values’ embodied in the Russian
people. In 1970s it became clear that the Russian national revival is
another version of the old endeavour to organize the world, and all the
attempts to overcome Stalin’s project resulted in its reproduction. The
ensuing deconstruction of the socialist myth materialized in an artistic
movement called ‘sots-art’, a term coined in 1972 by its key-figures Vitalii
Komar and Aleksandr Melamid. Viewing the Socialist project as an aesthetic
phenomenon, sots-art works in the soviet sign system, disrupting it from
within. Rather than a simple parody of Socialist realism, sots-art represents
its ironical inversion, its self-transgression. Sasha Sokolov’s Ďŕëčńŕíäđč˙
(Astrophobia), 1985, is a textual embodiment of the sots-art aesthetics.
It is an ‘imaginative re-writing’ of the Soviet history, presented as
an agglomeration of risqué anecdotes, scabrous scenes, trivialized and
absurd events and kitsch images, rendered in grand bombastic style of
the eighteenth-century Russian classicism (favoured by Socialist realism).
Approaching the Socialist project aesthetically – through a prism of an
exaggeratedly unreliable graphomaniac ‘chronicler’- Sokolov establishes
it as a construct, revealing its mechanics which become an object of semiotic
play.
Kulmala,
Meri
Karelian Women’s Network – A Movement of Social Motherhood?
Scholars of Russian civil society are rather unanimous that Russian women's
organizations do not engage either with political institutions nor with
the majority of ordinary women. Furthermore, it is often argued that Russian
civil society organizations do not act collectively. However, in my paper,
I indicate that women’s organizations in Russian Karelia are tightly networked
with each other and, further, make political claims. Building on social
movement theory, using a cat-net approach, I examine, whether Karelian
women's organizations form a women's movement: I investigate whether they
have a common identity, i.e. a common category (cat), and whether they
form a network (net). I also ask, when the common category occurs, on
which ideas it is based? Besides the analysis of the category and network,
I examine where these organizations stand in relation to power structures
and, thus, their ability to have a policy impact. Drawing on ethnographic
data, collected in Russian Karelia, I show that Karelian women's organizations
are networked; they constitute an active women's network. The members
of this network have a strong identification with womanhood, strongly
connected to motherhood. Moreover, this network has numerous connections
with power structures, and they make policy initiatives, mainly in the
sphere of social policy, i.e. in the ‘feminine’ field of politics. Most
of the activists deny the Western type of feminism. However, if using
feminism as an analytical tool, the network of the Karelian women activists
represents a sort of maternal feminism, grounded in an ideology of difference,
in female specificity from men.
Kurella,
Svitlana
Comparative Linguistic Resources for Teaching Cognate Slavonic Languages
With the growing demand for multilingualism, language students as well
as translators feel the need to master more than one foreign language
for their professional career. This goal is more realistic if the first
and second foreign languages are cognate; that is, they belong to the
same language family and have similar lexicon and grammar. In order to
teach cognate languages more efficiently new linguistic resources, which
highlight contrastive features in both languages and allow discovery learning
of regular differences and similarities between them, need to be developed.
Many Slavonic languages, which can be taught as cognate, still lack such
comparative linguistic resources, especially at the discourse level. Textual
connectors have become a focus of interest for Russian linguists in recent
decades. Although within current research in Russian text linguistics
attention has been directed towards some aspects of this issue, such as
analysing the discourse structure of academic texts or determining the
category of textual ties, an analysis of this type of cohesion is still
lacking for East Slavonic languages, including Ukrainian. The aim of the
project is to develop a set of learner-oriented comparative linguistic
resources and tools for acquiring reading abilities in Ukrainian and Polish
through Russian (or vice-versa). The tool will comprise comparable corpora
in 3 Languages (+English) in the domain of Internet News. The texts will
be aligned by “topical” rubrics (e.g. “Economics”, “International politics”)
and text types using devises of textual cohesion.
Kusa,
Zuzana and Rusnáková, Jurina
Why Early School Leavers Like School Most in Slovakia?
Early school leavers represent serious problem for many EU countries.
Though their percentage in Central European countries such As Czech Republic,
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia has been smaller than the EU average and
statistical picture looks favourable, unemployment among 15-24 youth and
especially among young Roma has been enormously high with few prospects
for improvement. In spite of the fact that several studies of Roma school
performance and hindrances to their educational advance have been run
in Slovakia, until EDUMIGROM project there has not been any research in
Slovakia that could also have given “voice” to Roma pupils themselves
in order to share their experiences and feeling connected with school.
The comprehensive methodology of the EDUMIGROM project enables us to grasp
the Roma experiences with schools and test the hypothesis about the lack
of recognition as one of the reason of Roma resistance to school in several
ways: by survey data (the survey has been held in the two Slovak middle-towns
in April – May 2009 and covered their almost full population of their
15-years pupils that Roma pupils), by in-depth face-to face interviews
of Roma pupils and their parents, by class observations and focus group
debates. In this paper we will attempt to explain rather surprising finding
of the EDUMIGROM survey that in general, Roma pupils seem to find themselves
more satisfied with school and show much higher self-regard than Slovak
pupils. As we wish to be faithful to “giving the voice ethics” of the
project, possible explanations of this findings has been debated with
the survey and interviews participants and thus went trough “participant
validation” (Lincoln 1994).
Our paper has the following structure: in the first part we delineate
the problem of early school leaving in Slovakia in comparative perspective
and with regard to youth unemployment in the country and ethnic differences
in (youth) unemployment. Then we introduce the hypothesis about relation
between early school leaving and lack of recognition of Roma pupils in
school. Then we proceed with description of the survey data concerning
various sorts of school experiences and level of self-regards and with
comparisons of students along the ethnic and gender lines. After introducing
quite surprising findings from the survey that rather contradict our main
hypothesis we offer several tentative explanations that would also include
the hypothesis that the survey questionnaire still represent the disciplining
tool that does not give Roma pupils space for communication of their authentic
feelings. However, finally we will present the explanation that has been
later validated by the Rome pupils – survey participants survey themselves.
Kusa, Zuzana
and Kostlan, David
Migrations Plans of Slovak Pupils in the Contexts of Current
Migration Trends
Significant labour migration from the territory of Slovakia has been documented
by the first population censuses. Till the WW2 destination of labour migration
(both temporary and permanent) had been mainly North America but also
western Europe. Under the communist regime, labour migration was headed
to Czech lands and this trend has also continued after the fall of the
iron curtain and the division of Czechoslovakia into two independent states.
Since the EU accession of the Slovak Republic (2004) migration of labour
force has intensified. In 2007, according to the Labour Force Surveys,
almost 8 percent of employed population worked abroad. The majority of
them come from Eastern Slovakia regions (Košice and Prešov regions) that
have been permanently faced with jobs shortage. The main labour migration
countries have been Czech Republic, United Kingdom and Ireland. There
are a number of surveys available on migration tendencies among adult
population. The EDUMIGROM project survey that has been held in two Slovak
middle-sized towns in April – May 2009 and covered their almost complete
15-years pupil population offers unique opportunity to study migration
tendencies among the younger age cohorts and among different ethnic groups
within them. The paper will start with the brief outline of labour migration
history of Slovakia and with the description of trends of labour migration
since the EU access of Slovakia up till now. After the description of
territorial, education and qualification structure of typical migrating
groups we will turn to the data from the EDUMIGROM survey that has found
that more than one quarter of 15-years olds wish to leave Slovakia in
their adulthood. After short description and comparison of the socio-economic
situation in the towns/districts where the survey has been held we will
present socio-economic and ethnic background, school performance, educational
ambitions, desired work and other characteristics of pupils that differ
by intent to leave Slovakia in their adulthood. We will show that contrarily
to the common expectations that mainly young people with poor socio-economic
background, possibly Roma, tend to migrate to “western” European countries
, it is the girls from well-off families and with excellent school results
who have the strongest inclination to leave Slovakia. We will attempt
to give plausible explanation for this finding and show that EDUMIGROM
findings better illuminate one trend of labour migration, that is, the
brain-drain.
Law,
Ian and Swann, Sarah
Missing Out: Gypsy/Roma/Traveller Children and Education,
Some Evidence from Fieldwork in a Northern City in the UK
This paper presents new information on the experiences of Gypsy/Roma/Traveller
children and education in Britain, providing both an assessment of current
patterns of social and educational exclusion, and evidence from fieldwork
with schools, parents and community groups in a Northern City. Welfare
outcomes are particularly poor for this group, for example they have higher
levels of infant mortality and lower life expectancy due to difficulties
in accessing health services than most other groups, life expectancy for
men and women is 10 years lower than the national average and Gypsy and
Irish Traveller mothers are 20 times more likely than mothers in the rest
of the population to have experienced the death of a child. In education,
as well as some of the lowest levels of educational attainment, some schools
are refusing to admit children from this group, imposing discriminatory
conditions on admission or delaying registration. Also, of those that
do get access to education, at least half of gypsy and traveller children
in England and Wales drop out of school between the ages of 8 and 16.
Furthermore, there is increasing evidence of almost total failure of access
to higher education for this group. This paper will assess how these patterns
of exclusion play out in contemporary British society, and consider the
relational and comparative implications of UK evidence for the position
of Roma in Central and Eastern Europe.
Lerner,
Julia
The Managed Soul? Adapting the Therapeutic Culture to Post-Soviet
Self
This talk addresses the ways of constituting the Self in contemporary
Russia. Until lately, "Russian literature" and "Communist
ideology" served as major sites of production and articulation of
the subject. Today, "Therapy" introduces itself as a competitive
authoritative and effective site of self-constitution. The Western "therapeutic
self" is proclaimed almost as a universal "package-deal"
of capitalism and the modern cultural program that is promoting rationality,
cultivating individual autonomy and alleviating human suffering on the
way to emotional happiness. Although, it seems that coping with the same
modernist program during the XVIII-XX centuries, Russian and later Soviet
culture found another route of constituting the self and his/her emotional
life. This was true until recently. The new therapeutic Russian self is
being produced within the emerging field of the therapeutic discourses,
models and technologies in post Soviet Russia. The manifestations of the
newly introduced therapeutic model of subjectivity are evident today in
the arenas of online dating, pop-psychology style TV shows and cinema
productions, self-help literature and the popular self-empowerment workshops.
The absence of the basic elements of the emotional capitalist culture
and the presence of alternative Russian-Soviet modes of subjectivity make
the investigation of the meaning and practice of the post-soviet self
especially intriguing. While tracing the ways of the domestication and
contesting of this model in post-Soviet popular culture, I shall outline
the analytical topography of its discursive and institutional sites and
means of its articulation (literature, ideology, therapy).
Levitsky,
Daniel
Soviet history in ‘Thaw’ Cinema: The Making of New Myths and Truths
This paper will examine the treatment of Soviet history in the cinema
of the ‘Thaw’. This theme was a key manifestation of the Soviet regime’s
attempts after 1953 to return to a sense of pre-Stalin ideological purity
and energy. Just as many Stalinist historical myths were either openly
attacked or subtly dismissed and discontinued, the new Soviet leadership
created replacements, which often consisted of adaptations of aspects
of the Stalinist historical canon mixed with deliberate attempts to challenge
it. By means of evoking, and rendering mythical, the heroism, freshness,
and enthusiasm of the earlier decades of Soviet power, many ‘Thaw’ history
films served as a means both to celebrate core Soviet values, and to transmit
those values forward from the formative Leninist years to Khrushchev’s
Soviet present, injecting it with the spiritual and practical strength
needed for post-Stalin recovery and revival. Through a close analysis
of several films released during the late 1950s to celebrate the revolution’s
fortieth anniversary, this paper intends to identify key characteristics
of the new cinematic myths of the Soviet Union’s formative years. Epic
scenes of revolutionary struggle began to mix the monumentalism of the
post-war Stalinist films with a personal lyricism reminiscent of the romantic
pathos of the 1920s, with its emphasis on ‘ordinary’ heroes and provincial
settings as being emblematic of the true reach and meaning of the revolution
in the lives of Soviet citizens.
Lupishko,
Marina
Stravinsky's Bayka (1915-16): Prose or Poetry?
Stravinsky proclaims in Expositions and Developments: "The music
of Renard begins in the verse." (Stravinsky 1962: 120). The statement
raises the question as to whether Stravinsky really considered the lengthy
Afanasiev’s folk fairytales to be poems. There are at least three arguments
in favour of a positive answer. First, some of Bayka’s text sources belong
to the epoch, when prose and poetry were not yet clearly divided. Second,
in his statement Stravinsky is emphasizing certain specifically poetic
traits of these fairytales. Such attributes of a poetic language as sound
repetitions (Brik 1917) and syntactic parallelisms (Brik 1927) could have
suggested certain melodic-rhythmic patterns to the composer. Third, it
is the metric quality of the texts that attracted the composer's attention
in the first place: the first sketches for Bayka are found among various
pribaoutki settings of 1914 and are very close to them in both text source
and genre. The libretto of Bayka pro lisu, petukha, kota i barana evidences
that Stravinsky cut up Afanasiev’s folk fairytales according precisely
to these parameters: out of the eleven scenes only one can be appropriately
called prose, the rest are poems in lesser or greater degrees of proximity.
Regular (trochaic) and irregular (tonic or accentual) verses (the division
is proposed by Jakobson 1966, Taranovsky 1953, Bailey 1993) are closely
intertwined in Bayka to the point of being sometimes inseparable. However,
my analysis shows that the musical points of departure are often provided
by those verses that show at least some isosyllabism and metric regularity.
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