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Charismatic Routinization and Problems of Post-Charisma Succession in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan
No full textUsing Weber’s concept of charismatic routinisation, this article analyses the dilemmas related to political succession and post-charismatic order in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. While the presidents of these three countries have drawn their authority from a combination of charismatic, legal-rational and traditional authority, they have relied most heavily on charisma in particular to sustain their rule. With the presidents of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan aging and facing the question of political succession, the article provides an analysis of the problems associated with potential for post-charismatic succession in these states. It does so by drawing on three of Weber’s mechanisms for charismatic routinisation: designation, hereditary charisma, and charisma in office. The analysis demonstrates that in these three cases, despite charisma only having two routes available to it, traditional and legal-rational, the mixture of legal-rational, traditional and charismatic domination undermines the process of charismatic routinisation. Consequently, the article argues that political succession in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan will most likely evolve into a reconstitution of charismatic leadership
Contextual Drivers of Environmental Values Cross-Culturally: Evidence from Europe Between 2004 and 2012
No full textEnvironmental issues continue to grow in international prominence, owing to the importance of environ- mental conditions to human wellbeing globally. This paper focuses on why people’s values toward care for nature and environmental protection change — one of the antecedents to pro-environmental norms and behaviour. We aimed to clarify how individual and country-level contextual factors affect environmental values in Europe. Our cross-national study used data on individual environmental values from the 2004 and 2012 rounds of the European Social Survey, in combination with macro-level data on socio-economic security, countries’ environmental performance and educational levels. Country-level results revealed that throughout the studied years, nature held more importance to people in countries with increased levels of unemployment and exacerbated income disparities, including in transitional, post-socialist economies. Care for environment is less prominent in countries already performing well in terms of socio-economic and environmental performance, i.e. in states that may have higher resilience capacity towards adverse environmental impacts. Besides a state’s science education, which functions as an effective socialiser of caring for nature, practical experiences with adverse environmental impacts (e.g. health impairment) could be used to predict an increase in the mean value of the natural environment in a country
Engaged and critical? The young generation’s political participation in EU countries
No full textWithin Europe, there is a clear difference in the strength of political activism between old and new member states. Taking Dalton’s differentiation between old and new types of participation, ‘duty’ and ‘engaged’ citizenship, as a point of departure, the article explores the major predictors for the new, network-based and horizontal political practices among young people. The article uses data from the 2006 and 2012 rounds of the European Social Survey to explore country and age group differences within the EU to seek out structural reasons for the trends in duty and engaged citizenship. The results show that duty citizenship is decreasing and engaged citizenship increasing, but the changes are small and not only among youth. Both types of political participation are related to strong evaluations of the performance of democracy. While there are significant differences in value orientations between adult engaged and duty citizens, these differences are less marked in the case of young people
Esimene maailmasõda eestlaste mälestustes [The First World War in Estonian Memoirs]
No full textEstonian participation in the Russian Army in the Great War remains virtually invisible in relation to the dominant narratives of the Western Front and Eastern Front. Perhaps this peripherality is sufficient reason to foreground it through personal narratives of common soldiers. „Memory sources“ require attention to the conditions of their textual production, the poetics of their composition, and their uses of rhetoric with respect to a (familial or more extensively public) readership. Though war diaries are often imparted a greater trustworthiness than memoirs, ostensibly because of their immediacy or simultaneity with events, retrospective personal accounts often artfully make use of diary conventions. This article examines the World War I diaries of Estonian soldiers from the archives, and those recently made available to the general public in a monumental publication, historian Tõnu Tannberg’s 2015 edited collection of heretofore unpublished Estonian World War I letters, memoirs, and diaries. First the article addresses the trope of the „simple soldier“ with limited schooling, and the paradox that such writers often show a remarkable capacity for observation and articulation. However „simple“ a remembered account may seem, its rhetorical dimension is social, thus historical, as are the narrative scaff olding and texture. As a counterpoint, this article also examines the literary memoirs of World War I written by popular author Oskar Luts, who participated in the war as a pharmacist, and asks the question of what textual resources make memoirs „literary“.Thirdly, the article considers interpretive templates for the contextual analysis of 196 Estonian memory texts from this period. Indeed, for Estonia, there was no „lost generation“ or „generation of 1914“, as Robert Wohl has defi ned it. The Russian Revolution of 1917, the German occupation of Estonia in 1918, the birth of the Estonian Republic in February 1918, and the War of Independence 1918–1920 were a chaotic cascade of events. In the following decades in the Estonian Republic assigned priority of memorability to the War of Independence, and to the World War I experience of those Estonian officers who went on to lay a foundation for the cadre of the armed forces of the Estonian Republic between the wars. This cumulation and acceleration of events obscured the previous layers, thus permanently sedimenting and occluding the cultural memory of World War I beneath these layers. Mapping the absence or occlusion of World War I remembrance through the use of autobiographical texts or textual remains is a topic of renewed research in the context of the hundred-year anniversary of World War I across Europe
Märkmeid Jaan Siirakust ja tema maalist „Verduni katedraal sõjapurustustes” [Notes on Jaan Siirak and his painting Verdun Cathedral after World War I]
No full textJaan Siirak (Laatre, 1897–1959, Tallinn) was born in Sangaste parish, Estonia, and studied at the Penza Art School in central Russia. There he made friends with Estonians and Latvians, future constructivist artists, and appears to have joined the art group “Polar Bear”. The studies in Penza (1914–1918) were interrupted by the war and the Bolshevik coup d’etat. While in St Petersburg, trying to continue his work and education, Siirak is said to have led a Nordic artists’ community. After the collapse of the Russian Empire and the birth of the Estonian Republic, Siirak worked as a teacher of both art and the history of art in Tartu. From 1924 to 1932 he lived in Paris, working on civil construction and studying at the École des Arts et Métiers. From 1925 on, the artist took part in the foundation and activities of L’Association estonienne de Paris. The members organized exhibitions, meetings, conferences, lectures and publications introducing Estonian culture; related books were stored in cafés in Montparnasse. From 1924 to 1932, Siirak yearly participated in the exhibitions of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, receiving excellent reviews for his oil paintings and sculptures; his style was characterized as “Mouvementalism”. A single painting from that time has reached Estonia so far. It was found in poor condition in a shed and conserved at the Art Museum of Estonia. The work (1924), beginning in the 1980s, was displayed in permanent or temporary exhibitions as View of a town or Paris. Recently, the theme of the painting was discovered thanks to a photo postcard (1933), which was found in Riga. A view of an applied art exhibition can be seen in the postcard, with Siirak’s painting on a wall. In his note on the other side of the card, the artist characterizes the image as the ruins of the basilica in Verdun. So the title was changed to Verdun Cathedral after World War I. The old/new title evokes many associations. A cathedral was once a symbol of Divine Order, a religious and community centre, and a model of the (ideal) world. Verdun Cathedral was destroyed during one of the longest and most terrible batt les of World War I, in 1916. In Siirak’s painting, his impressions of diff erent ruined buildings are generalized, and diff erent tendencies in art are combined: Constructivism with a bit of Post-Expressionist dynamism, almost Piranesian fantasy, and the decorative smooth surfaces and small fi gures of elegant citizens of hedonistic Art Deco. Through the damage caused by the war, light penetrates: “God is light” (1 John 1:5), bringing hope. New (social) life emerges from the ruins of the past. Everything is monitored by a photographer in the foreground of the painting. Siirak’s talent mainly blossomed during the years we now call the inter-war period. He was hard-working and inventive, and had outstanding organizational skills. The legacy of Jaan Siirak, a sculptor, a painter, a book decorator, and an interior and furniture designer, deserves more thorough study and appreciation
Citizenship, National Identity and Political Education: Some Disputable Questions
No full textThe article seeks to elucidate some controversial problems of the formation of both civic and national selfconsciousness through analysing the politics of identity and citizenship, which has assumed increasing importance in Western and Eastern European countries. Citizenship is considered as a dynamic construct that should be viewed as a ‘process’ through which specific rights and obligations are exercised. The central task, therefore, is to analyse the evolution of various conceptions of citizenship in the light of historical experience, continuity and change, as well as the process of transformation of the model of political education that has emerged within the framework of the liberal political culture of the 19th century and has continued to exert a great impact on the development of political discourse in the modern world. Special attention is given to the comparative analysis of the models of civic and national identity in the USA, Western and Eastern Europe, including post-communist Russia. The author argues that the conception of identity as well, as the criteria for its defi nition, have become crucial in the discussion of problems of citizenship and political education. The issue remains whether an effective model of political education alone, i.e. without active citizens’ involvement and support, can have the potential not only to transform a political culture, but also influence the whole system of both secondary and university education. The final aim of the article is to prove the idea that a new conception of citizenship and political education could, in conditions of a deepening crisis, become the most important link binding civil society and the new content of the political making its way through corporative interests
A Sociology for the 21st Century? An Enquiry into Public Sociology Reading Zygmunt Bauman
No full textMichael Burawoy´s ´public sociology´ presents a vision of engaged and political sociology as one of its legitimate branches. The article will consider public sociology in light of Zygmunt Bauman\u27s social thought; one of the most acclaimed sociologists whose writings transcend academic readership. It will identify similarities and differences concerning their understanding of contemporary society and sociology\u27s tasks, and its shortcomings, which will sediment public sociology´s cause. The article will discuss the identity of a public sociologist through Bauman\u27s concept of a postmodern ´interpreter´, which will be seen as illuminating for both political and sociological reasons. The main aim of the essay is to interpret public sociology from the point of view of Bauman\u27s writings on post/liquid modernity social formation, and thereby increase its awareness of the ways in which contemporary societies call for sociological engagement. It will be argued that greater concern with ethics will make public sociology more coherent
The Development of the Constitutional Basis ofCorruption Counteraction in Russia: Reflections on the ModernRussian Procurement System
No full textThe problem of corruption counteraction in Russia in the past few years, according to the degree of its significance, without doubt may be ranked among the most important national objectives. The efforts of public authorities at all levels, which were exercised both in the normative regulations in this sphere and in the actual execution of anti-corruption programmes, should be noted in this regard. Thus, during the previous eight years in Russia a vast array of critically significant regulatory and policy acts, which are designed to form a climate of social intolerance against corruption, has been adopted, starting with the special ‘Corruption Counteraction Act’, which has codified the legal basics of corruption counteraction, ending with the National Anti-Corruption Plan, which was approved by the President of Russia.
Между Прустом и Джойсом: Вехи на пути к Aбсолюту [Between Proust and Joyce: Markers on the way to the Absolute]
No full textIn this article Olga Demidova provides a detailed analysis of the critical reception of Marcel Proust and James Joyce in Russian émigré literature of the Interwar years. She suggests that responses of émigrés to Proust and Joyce were essentially self-descriptive: when writers compared a peer to Proust or Joyce, they were primarily expressing their own aesthetic and ethical framework