Bøker utgitt av ibidem-Verlag, Jessica Haunschild u Christian Schon

This monograph discloses the estate-based social structure of contemporary Russia by way of outlining the principles of the USSR''s peculiar estate system, and explaining the new social estates of post-Soviet Russia. Simon Kordonsky distinguishes and describes in particular the currently existing Russian service and support estates. He introduces the notions of a resource-based state and resource-based economy as the political and economic foundations for Russian society''s estate structure. His study demonstrates, moreover, how the method of inventing and institutionalizing threats plays a dominant role in the mode of distribution of scarce resources in such a social system. The book shows fundamental differences between resource- as well as threat-based economies, on the one side, and traditional risk-based economies, on the other, and discloses what this means for Russia''s future.

Womit identifizierten sich Bürger der Sowjetunion? Wie grenzten sie sich voneinander ab? Destabilisierten Massenaufläufe die sowjetische Ordnung? Wie entstanden informelle Gruppierungen in einer Gesellschaft uniformer Konformität? Welchen Einfluss nahmen neue Medien und mediale Vernetzung auf die Entwicklung der multinationalen sowjetischen Gesellschaft? Was blieb, als nach dem Zusammenbruch der sowjetische Rahmen fiel?Manfred Zeller schreibt am Beispiel der Fans sowjetischer Fußballmannschaften aus Moskau (Spartak, Dynamo, ZSKA) und Kiew (Dynamo) eine Geschichte von Gemeinschaft und Gegnerschaft im poststalinistischen Vielvölkerreich. Er untersucht, zu welchen Gruppen sich sowjetische Bürger zusammenschlossen und gegen wen sie sich wandten. Seine Monographie handelt von komplexen Loyalitäten in der multinationalen Sowjetunion - und von der Hassliebe zwischen Kiew und Moskau.Zeller leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur Erforschung der sowjetischen Populärkultur nach Stalins Tod sowie zur aktuellen Debatte um Antagonismen im postsowjetischen Raum. „Moskau gegen Kiew" war zu sowjetischer Zeit noch keine Frage von Krieg und Frieden, jedoch war es im Fußball damals schon eine Frage von Sieg und Niederlage sowie eines Gefühls von ""Wir gegen die"" im komplexen multinationalen Setting der Region.

In this timely book, the authors provide a detailed analysis of Russia''s national interests in the Arctic region. They assess Russia''s domestic discourse on the High North''s role in the system of national priorities as well as of Moscow''s bi- and multilateral relations with major regional players, energy, environmental, socio-cultural, and military policies in the Arctic. In contrast to the internationally wide-spread stereotype of Russia as a revisionist power in the High North, this book argues that Moscow tries to pursue a double-sided strategy in the region. On the one hand, Russia aims at defending her legitimate economic interests in the region. On the other hand, Moscow is open to co-operation with foreign partners that are willing to partake in exploiting the Arctic natural resources. The general conclusion is that in the foreseeable future Moscow''s strategy in the region will be predictable and pragmatic rather than aggressive or spontaneous. The authors argue that in order to consolidate the soft power pattern of Russia''s behavior a proper international environment in the Arctic should be created by common efforts. Other regional players should demonstrate their responsibility and willingness to solve existing and potential problems on the basis of international law.

Witchcraft is very much alive in today''s post-communist societies. Stemming from ancient rural traditions and influenced by modern New Age concepts, it has kept its function as a vibrant cultural code to combat the adversities of everyday life. Intricately linked to the Orthodox church and its rituals, the magic discourse serves as a recourse for those in distress, a mechanism to counter-balance misfortune and, sometimes, a powerful medium for acts of aggression.In this fascinating book, Alexandra Tataran skillfully re-contextualizes the vast and heterogenuous discourse on contemporary witchcraft. She shows how magic, divination, and religious rituals are adapted to the complex mechanisms of modern mentalities and urban living in the specific historical and social context of post-communist countries. Based on years of first-hand fieldwork, Tataran offers fascinating insights into the experience of individuals deeming themselves bewitched and argues that the practice can also teach us a lot about particular forms of adapting traditions and resorting to pre-existing cultural models.

The 12 contributions to this book amply demonstrate the richness, vitality, and complexity of the multifaceted literary and cultural traffic between Britain and India in the colonial period.

This volume addresses a problem of high controversy: Relating the Holocaust to poetic and aesthetic phenomena has often been seen as a taboo, as only authentic testimonies, documents, or at least ''unliterary'', prosaic approaches were considered appropriate for dealing with the topic. However, from the very beginning of Holocaust literature and culture, there were tendencies towards literarization, poetization, and ornamentalization. Nowadays, aesthetic approaches-also in provocative, taboo-breaking ways-are more and more regarded as important instruments to evoke the attention required for keeping the cataclysm in the collective memory.The contributions of the volume using examples predominantly from Polish, Czech, and German Holocaust literature and culture focus on selected aspects of this complex of problems, such as: poetry of concentration camp detainees; lyrical poetry about the Holocaust; poetical tendencies in narrative literature and drama; ''ornamental prose'' about the Holocaust; devices and functions of aestheticization in Holocaust literature and culture.

It is a hard psychological fact that the desire for pleasure is the ultimate factor in most of human decision-making. But as dominant as the pleasure principle has been in the cultural development of mankind, its impact has so far never been fully acknowledged. In the hands of a powerful minority that controls global capital flows, pleasure has been turned into the most profitable item for sale, preying on the consumerist desires it helped to create.Re-evaluating the very notion of ''pleasure'' and assessing its often sinister influence on the course of our civilization, The Pursuit of Pleasure unveils how the determinants of human behavior are now in the hands of global marketers whose sole aim is the maximization of profit, not the personal development of their customers. This powerful book shows how the overcoming of the pleasure principle through the management of pleasure can be the foundation of a new humanist culture in which people are conscious and aware of their choices.

That we live in a world ruled and confused by cultural diversities has become common sense. It was the social sciences that gave birth to a new theoretical paradigm, the creation of cultural theories. Since then, social science theorizing applies to any social phenomenon across the world exploring cultural diversities in any social practice-except in regard to the social sciences and how they practice the creation of knowledge. How academics in the social sciences across the world create knowledge is no topic for cultural theories. Social science theorizing seemingly assumes that creating knowledge does not know such diversities. Kazumi Okamoto presents the development of an analytical instrument that helps study ''academic culture'', analyze ''academic practices'' of how social sciences create and distribute knowledge, and the influence the ''academic environment'' has on their knowledge productions. Applying this theoretical tool to the academe in Japan, she further presents a case study about how social scientists in Japan interpret academic practices and how they are affected by their academic environment. Studying the academic culture in the case of Japan, she reveals that not only the academic practices and the academic environment of the academe in Japan show much less diversities than cultural theories tend to presuppose, but that the assumption that creating social science knowledge does not know cultural diversities is an error as well.

In the past, the European social sciences labelled and discredited knowledge that did not follow the definition for scientific knowledge as applied by the European social sciences as an alternative concept of knowledge, as "indigenous" knowledge. Perception has changed with time: Not only has indigenous knowledge become an entrance ticket to the European social science world, but the indigenization of European theories is seen by some as the contribution of "peripheral" social sciences to join the theories of the "centers".This book offers contributions to the discourses about alternative concepts of knowledge, inviting the reader to decide if they are alternative, indigenous, or European types of knowledge. However, in order to make this decision, the reader must know what the nature of the European concepts of science and of scientific knowledge is; this might be a motivation to read a book that presents thoughts claiming to be alternative concepts of knowledge, alternative to the European concept of science.

The European social sciences tend to absorb criticism that has been passed on the European approach and re-label it as a part of what the critique opposes; criticism of European social sciences by "subaltern" social sciences, their "talking back", has become a frequent line of reflection in European social sciences. The re-labelling of the critique of the European approach to social sciences towards a critique from "Southern" social sciences of "Western" social sciences has somehow turned "Southern" as well as "Western" social sciences into competing contributors to the same "globalizing" social sciences. Both are no longer arguing about the European approach to social sciences but about which social thought from which part of the globe prevails.If the critique becomes a part of what it opposes, one might conclude that the European social sciences are very adaptable and capable of learning. One might, however, also raise the question whether there is anything wrong with the criticism of the European social sciences; or, for that matter, whether there is anything wrong with the European social sciences themselves. The contributions in this book discuss these questions from different angles: They revisit the mainstream critique of the European social sciences, and they suggest new arguments criticizing social science theories that may be found as often in the "Western" as in the "Southern" discourse.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the social sciences discover an epochal "turn" making it necessary to revolutionize their theory-building: As a response to what they call the globalization of the social, they find the need to globalize their theorizing as well.It is odd to discover after two centuries of colonialism and imperialism, after two world wars and several economic world crises that there is a world beyond the national socials; it is even more strange that the social sciences globalize their theorizing by comparing theories about nationally confined socials and by creating all sorts of, preferably, "local theories", just as if any national social was a secluded social biotope. Discussing how to globalize the social sciences, they argue that globalizing social science theorizing means finding a way of theorizing that must, above all, be liberated from "scientism" in order to allow a "provincialization" of thinking. Not surprisingly, the globalizing social sciences also rediscover mythological and moral thinking as a means for a "true scientific universalism".Michael Kuhn''s new book presents many thought-provoking arguments on the oddities of the globalizing social sciences and on how these oddities are not accidents, but a consequence of the nature of how the social sciences theorize about the social.

As Germany and the Soviet Union engaged in colossal battles during World War II, a much smaller but vicious struggle broke out in the borderlands of south-eastern Poland, resurrecting longstanding ethnic and territorial conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians. During the war, both sides organised large partisan armies and sought to establish control over territory each deemed integral to their post-war national visions. The violence reached a fever pitch only in the years immediately following the war. This comprehensive study provides a unique overview to Polish-Ukrainian relations dating back to the tenth century. Examining the development of this long-standing feud as part of a longer historical process that has occurred between the Polish and Ukrainian ethnic groups in Europe, Rapawy takes into consideration centuries of ethnic strife, population shifts that resulted from ethnic conquests, and the formation of national states after the First World War on multi-ethnic territories as a pre-condition for the events that occurred on the years following World War II.