TOL STORE BY TOPIC "social issues"

Set somewhere in the Czech countryside during the 1980s, the film focuses around the village simpleton Otik and the portly farm collective truck driver who has to work with him. Along the way, viewers meet all of the often odd denizens of the village. Menzel is a masterful director as his film is both funny and endearing. The actors also do a fantastic job. What makes this film so outstanding is that it is an almost perfect reflection of rural life in this part of Europe, which anyone who has spent even a little time in the villages of e.g. the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, etc. can attest to.

Original in its range and analysis, Women in Russia, 1700-2000 fills an enormous gap in the field. It is the first book to provide a lively and compelling chronological narrative of women's experiences from the seventeenth century to the present. Synthesizing recent scholarship with her own work in primary and archival sources, Barbara Alpern Engel skillfully evokes the voices of individuals to enliven the account. The book captures the diversity of women's lives, detailing how women of various social strata were affected by and shaped historical change. Adopting the perspective of women provides fresh interpretations of Russia's past and important insights into the impact of gender on the ways that Russians defined themselves and others, and imagined political change. Designed for a scholarly as well as undergraduate readership, the book integrates women's experience into broader developments in Russia's social, economic, cultural, and political history.

The Politics of Duplicity: Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu's Romania

The political hypocrisy and personal horrors of one of the most repressive anti-abortion regimes in history came to the world's attention soon after the fall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Photographs of orphans with vacant eyes, sad faces, and wasted bodies circled the globe, as did alarming maternal mortality statistics and heart-breaking details of a devastating infant AIDS epidemic. Gail Kligman's chilling ethnographyof the state and of the politics of reproductionis the first in-depth examination of this extreme case of political intervention into the most intimate aspects of everyday life. Ceausescu's reproductive policies, among which the banning of abortion was central, affected the physical and emotional well-being not only of individual men, women, children, and families but also of society as a whole. Sexuality, intimacy, and fertility control were fraught with fear, which permeated daily life and took a heavy moral toll as lying and dissimulation transformed both individuals and the state. This powerful study is based on moving interviews with women and physicians as well as on documentary and archival material. In addition to discussing the social implications and human costs of restrictive reproductive legislation, Kligman explores the means by which reproductive issues become embedded in national and international agendas. She concludes with a review of the lessons the rest of the world can learn from Romania's tragic experience.

One of the central characteristics of socialist states and societies has been the absence of trust--between the state and the citizens, and then among citizens themselves. The process of developing trust is thus a major issue facing post-Socialist countries, and this book brings together a group of leading scholars to examine barriers to and bulwarks of trust in theoretical, cross-national, and topical perspectives. From the distinctive paradox of illegal organizations--such as the Mafiya--relying on trust within but undermining it without, to the effects of transparency, the authors examine the bases of trust and the effects of its presence or absence. Throughout the analysis is grounded in the interaction of individuals and their social, political, and economic environments.

Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic: The Environmental Movement in the Transition Process

Since a handful of environmental activists helped to bring down the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, the arena of environmental politics has offered a valuable lens on the transition process, providing a unique insight into the contradictory and highly contingent relationship between democratization and neo-liberalism.
Environment and Democracy in the Czech Republic offers a radical perspective on the democratization process, revealing the extent to which the consolidation of a politically efficacious and diverse civil society is far more complex than the earlier generation of commentators acknowledged. The environmental movement has not flourished under political democracy; its radical activists have been marginalized and targeted by the state, their ideologies and strategies compromised and their critical voice silenced. Yet the book concludes that while the mainstream environmental movement has become institutionalized and appears incapable of representing community interests, the environmental issue retains the capacity to mobilize, this time against the neo-liberal agenda of the democratic government.

This definitive account of the evolution of the Czech environmental movement since 1990 offers a radical evaluation of the institutions and practice of political democracy, and challenges some of the certainties of social movement theory. Although focused on the Czech Republic, the book will undoubtedly contribute to a better understanding of the role of environmental movements within contemporary politics throughout the world. It will be welcomed by political and social scientists with an interest in Central and Eastern Europe, and academics and students with an interest in environmental politics.

Not by Bread Alone : Social Support in the New Russia

What Muscovites get in a soup kitchen run by the Christian Church of Moscow is something far more subtle and complex--if no less necessary and nourishing--than the food that feeds their hunger. In Not by Bread Alone, the first full-length ethnographic study of poverty and social welfare in the postsocialist world, Melissa L. Caldwell focuses on the everyday operations and civil transactions at CCM soup kitchens to reveal the new realities, the enduring features, and the intriguing subtext of social support in Russia today.
In an international food aid community, Caldwell explores how Muscovites employ a number of improvisational tactics to satisfy their material needs. She shows how the relationships that develop among members of this community--elderly Muscovite recipients, Russian aid workers, African student volunteers, and North American and European donors and volunteers--provide forms of social support that are highly valued and ultimately far more important than material resources. In Not by Bread Alone we see how the soup kitchens become sites of social stability and refuge for all who interact there--not just those with limited financial means--and how Muscovites articulate definitions of hunger and poverty that depend far more on the extent of one's social contacts than on material factors.

By rethinking the ways in which relationships between social and economic practices are theorized--by identifying social relations and social status as Russia's true economic currency--this book challenges prevailing ideas about the role of the state, the nature of poverty and welfare, the feasibility of Western-style reforms, and the primacy of social connections in the daily lives of ordinary people in post-Soviet Russia.

The best known prose work by the winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature examines the moral and intellectual conflicts faced by men and women living under totalitarianism of the left or right.

Modernism in Serbia : The Elusive Margins of Belgrade Architecture, 1919-1941

Modernism in Serbia is the first comprehensive account of an almost forgotten body of work that once defined regional modernism at its best. The book reconstructs the story of Serbian modernism as a local history within a major movement and views the buildings designed in Belgrade in the 1920s and 1930s as part of a larger cultural phenomenon. Because so many of the buildings discussed are disintegrating or have been destroyed or altered beyond recognition, the book serves not only as a documentary and critical study but also as a preservation resource. Most of the photographs and plans have never been published outside of Serbia, if at all.

A man stands at the entrance to a narrow 'sniper's corridor', struck by a shaft of light, deliberating whether or not to dash across; a couple embrace lovingly on a terrace overlooking Sarajevo; in a tavern a young man, intoxicated by wine, breaks into song while another looks on ironically; turbaned Muslims pray facing Mecca in a Bosnian meadow; a human skull is matched to a photograph of its former face.

The presence of death is felt in Paul Lowe's photographs: war and its terrors are evoked in images notable for their stillness, reminding us that exploding buildings and screaming faces are only the most obvious ways of showing devastation. But here is life too, for the Bosnians have survived, mourned and moved forward. Lovers, harvesters, old men, rambunctious children and fashionable boulevardiers populate this book, as do images of snowy fields, rebuilt bridges, and parties.

The accompanying text includes commentary by veteran BBC correspondent Allan Little, as well as a number of acute observations from various Balkan writers and newsmakers (along with anonymous graffiti), and deftly supplements the visual power of this work by a still-young photojournalist at the height of his powers.

The protagonists of The Second Book, are connected vertically and horizontally by their struggles. Nietzsche, on the edge of madness, spends a number of mornings contemplating his sweeping ideas and the tiny details of life through hazes left by "the gluey fingers of sleep." In "The Hot Sun's Golden Circle," the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, discoverer of monotheism, embarks on a search for the only true god of Egypt. Bazdulj's charming and funny "The Story of Two Brothers" examines the lives of William and Henry James from the shadows of the Old Testament and the age-old archetype of conflict between an eldest brother and the "maladjusted impracticality" of the younger.

Muharem Bazdulj has broken from the pack of new Eastern European writers influenced by innovators such as Danilo Kiš, Milan Kundera, and Jorge Luis Borges. Employing a light touch, a daring anti-nationalist tone, and the kind of ambition that inspires nothing less than a rewriting of Bosnian and Yugoslavian history, Bazdulj weaves the imagined realities of history into fiction and fiction into history. To quote one critic, for Bazdulj history "is the sum of interpretations while imagination is the sum of facts."

This book is devoted to the study and analysis of the prospects for democracy among the Muslim ethnicities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), both those that have acquired full independence and those remaining within the Russian Federation. The nineteen Western academics and scholars from the Muslim countries and regions of the CIS who contribute to this volume view the establishment of democratic institutions in this region in the context of a wide and complex range of influences, above all the Russian/Soviet political legacy; native ethnic political culture and tradition; the Islamic faith; and the growing polarity between Western civilization and the Muslim world.

The trend of democratization is not always linear. Nor can democracy be judged by the same standards in all societies. The new Muslim states of the CIS and the Muslim peoples of the Russian Federation are intent on constructing their societies on the basis of their own traditional culture and customs. The issues involved in seeking democratic models which can be adapted to societies which are Islamic and have significant, even dominant ethnic groups and strong authoritarian legacies are certainly relevant to other regions of the world and have implications for the challenges being faced today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The essays included in this volume demonstrate that, despite the short-term obstacles on the path of democracy and pluralism and on the establishment of a true market economy and an effective civil society, there are forces at work which might make it possible to forge ahead.

Learning to Change: The Experience of Transforming Education in South-East Europe

A collection of first-person narratives by specialists in the field of education in South East Europe. The contributors are recognized leaders in civil society, government, academia and schools. Their works chronicle the profound effect armed conflict, political transition, and the increasing openness the region has experienced on education. It is a significant achievement as it is the work of individuals who are involved in the field and have a first hand perspective on issues of education in the region. The essays shed light on the reality of the educational reforms: they are far from beeing linear progressive processes, on the contrary, they are very often paradoxical and even controversial. Terrice Bassler has accumulated vast experience as overseer of education programs throughout South East Europe for the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network.

Theft of a Nation: Romania Since Communism

'Romania had the chance of a fresh start politically after the collapse of the brutal and macabre dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Instead bad governance has persisted within an incomplete democratic system with disastrous results for many millions of people. Tom Gallagher explores why continuity rather than change has been the dominant feature of political life after 1989. He provides an inspiring portrait of the post-communist leadership centred around Ion Iliescu, Adrian Nastase and their clients and allies, showing how defence of private or group interests has usually been their primary concern. He shows how they promoted bogus nationalist movements in order to cover up systematic misuse of state resources. The failure of the non-communist democratic alternative, centred around Emil Constantinescu, Romania's President from 1996 to 2000, to break this pattern of misrule, is closely examined. The author warns that NATO and EU membership are unlikely to provide the impetus for national recovery unless convincing local partners are found, prepared at all times to defend Romania's national interests. (…) Incisive portraits of the political elite, the security services and the new economic oligarchy are provided in this study. Tom Gallagher is convinced that Romania can break free from the communist past and enjoy close and fruitful links with the West only if strong reformist movements emerge from increasingly self-aware sections of society that reject the political practices of the past.'

TOM GALLAGHER BA PhD Manc holds the Chair of Ethnic Conflict and Peace at Bradford University in the UK. Much of his teaching and research focuses on the evolution of post-communist states of South Eastern Europe.

Tom Gallagher has written two books ‘Outcast Europe: The Balkans From The Ottomans To Milosevic: 1789-1989’, (Routledge 2001) and ‘The Balkans Since The Cold War: From Tyranny to Tragedy’, (Routledge in 2003) which examine the long-term mishandling of the problems of the region by the great powers and the failure of timely conflict prevention measures to avert the tragedy of Bosnia and build a durable peace.

Tom Gallagher is a regular analyst for well-known consultancy groups and he is a frequent visitor to the region. Romania, Macedonia, and Kosovo were among the countries he visited in 2003-4. He is one of the few specialists who has expert knowledge of both the former Yugoslavia and those parts of the post-communist Balkans that remained at peace in the 1990s and beyond. Romania is a country about which he can claim particular expertise. ‘Romania After Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance’ was published by Edinburgh University Press in 1995.

East to West Migration: Russian Migrants in Western Europe

In an ethnographic account of Russians in London and Amsterdam, Kopnina (Haarlem College and Amsterdam Fashion Institute) addresses some traditional anthropological topics such as community, culture, and ethnicity. She argues that the Russians do not identity as a community because they are highly diverse socially and in adaptation strategies, and are divided by mutual antagonisms. The concept of subcommunities is more appropriate, she says, because the groups are based on social, ethnic, class, interest, and other distinctions.

Between Exile and Asylum: An Eastern Epistolary

A collection of letters, written by a most extraordinary and yet typical representative of the East European intelligentsia, sent from Moscow, Mostar, and more recently Paris and Rome, where the author has lived since leaving war-torn Bosnia.

The writer Matvejevic, vice president of the International PEN Club, was born in Yugoslavia, the son of a Russian émigré. He first went to the USSR in 1972, as a guest of the Writers' Union, and described to his father the land that Matvejevic senior had not seen since leaving Odessa in 1921 (and that he would never see again in his lifetime). The past and the present, as well as his hopes and fears for the future of Russia fill the rest of his letters, which are addressed to members of the intellectual elite of Europe.