East European Nations Research Articles

A Glimpse of Baltic States over the Russia-Ukraine War

This article examines the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict and its implications for the Baltic states. In the wake of July 11, 2023, the NATO summit was held in Lithuania with the participation of U.S. President Joe Biden. The summit occurred amid tensions between Russia and Ukraine and provided an opportunity for the East European nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to assert their positions on international platforms. Thus, the Baltic states serve as a transformed stage for the strategic alliance among the EU allies and NATO in opposition to Russia. Russia disclosed a list of unfriendly countries and territories, which includes the Baltic states. The war between Russia and Ukraine poses a security threat to the Baltic states, given their close geographical proximity and location as a junction between East and West. However, the Baltic states receive high-level military drills and special training for their nation-level armed forces as NATO member countries. Subsequently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has multiple implications for the Baltic states. Thus, the paper argues that the Russia-Ukraine military escalation has strong geopolitical, economic, socio-cultural, and security disruptions over the Baltic states.

Migration anxieties in Eastern Europe. Material grounds for an anti-migrant turn in a global-historical perspective?

ABSTRACTSeeking to understand how socio-historical factors shaped global emigration trends in the new globalization cycle and how Eastern Europe’s integration into these processes might be linked to the rising nationalism and anti-migrant attitudes of this region, we created macro-models on a worldwide sample of 77 countries and examined the impact of the socio-economic change of the early 90’s on later emigration trends. The key research question refers to the macro-historical processes, which facilitated the spread and the rise of anti-migrant nationalism in Eastern Europe. Based on log-linear regression results, we found evidences, which support Bibó’s idea on how the historically evolving “misery” and insecurity of East European nations triggered migration anxieties in the opening-up phase of globalisation. Even though somewhat different developmental trajectories and structural pathways characterize the countries of this region – in terms of the cumulative impacts of opening up to global capital markets, the increasing incomes or re-ruralisation – an ex-socialist Eastern Europe at the fringe of an unequal and open market block seems to be a prime example of how the above pathways could have shaped public mentalities.

Resilience and Vulnerabilities Related to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: The Emergence of a New Club of Nato and EU Members

Abstract Тhis article compares and contrasts macro- and micro-foundational explanations about disinformation and resilience in Europe as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine. It presents micro-level data about the shifting public opinion in Europe after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022 on the topics of NATO and EU support and favorability, sympathy for Ukraine and condemnation of Russia, including support for sanctions against Moscow (Pew Research Center 2021, 2022). The study compares and contrasts traditional macro-level analytical frameworks such as deterrence, institutionalization and adaptation. I argue that a combination of macro- (or institutional) and micro-level factors (associated with the idiosyncrasies of the domestic public opinion) best explain the shifting attitudes since the beginning of the War in Ukraine. Against the backdrop of NATO and the EU’s increased resilience, a new group or sub-club of “vulnerable” allies has emerged among some central and east European nations. The article evaluates different constraints and vulnerabilities and makes recommendations how to reduce misinformation and contestation in these states.

Representations of World War II in Lithuanian Cinema in the 2000s: Between National and European Narratives

After years of discussion, testimonies, judgements, and resolutions of international organisations, the Holocaust has become the cornerstone of WWII memory and European identity in Western Europe. For East European nations emerging from decades of communist rule, the cosmopolitan ethics of the Holocaust memory have remained in the background while attention has been focused on national suffering and resistance to the Soviets. Since regaining independence in 1991, and especially since accession to the European Union in 2004, Lithuania has sought to formulate its own mnemonic narratives of WWII asserting Lithuania’s role in the European framework. This article traces influential manifestations of this narrative in popular historical feature films released since 2004. These films have tended to reproduce, rather than transcend, the national ‘fighting and suffering’ paradigm of the early 1990s and have only just begun to tackle the more challenging aspects of the war such as the role of Lithuanian collaborators in the genocide of the Jews or the atrocities against the civil population committed by some Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisans.

The Postcolonial Nature of the Post-Soviet Space: a reading of the cultural condition of Albania

Postcolonialism has always concerned itself with the conditions in former colonies of European maritime empires. However, based on current frameworks defining imperialism and the post-colonial condition, the erstwhile Soviet Union could be classified as a colonial power. Its aggressive annexation of nations and paranoid control of information and education systems are reflective of colonial practices. Nevertheless, the Eurocentrism inherent in the culture of its former members prevents them from acknowledging their postcoloniality. Albania is one such nation. Not only was it a province of the Ottoman Empire for centuries but also a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Although Albania broke away from the USSR in the 1960s, it remained under the aegis of Soviet ideology as its nationalist dictator Enver Hoxha was a staunch Stalinist. This created unique cultural conditions which eminent Albanian writers like Ismail Kadare could not help but represent in their works. The post-Soviet space, including Albania, shows a number of symptoms of postcoloniality which are a direct consequence of Soviet imperialism. This paper will explore the postcoloniality of the post-Soviet space and analyse its symptoms in Stalinist Albania. In this context, it will also briefly examine the orientalist frameworks often employed by the West in its dealings with the ambiguous Europeanness of East and Central European nations.

Puithoonete ornament / Ornament of wooden buildings

In this translation of a chapter from monograph “Latvian’s Home” (“Latvieša māja”, 2014), the author provides an insight into the decorations of wooden houses in Latvia, including incisions and ornamental wall decorations and she also differentiates architectural details like the so-called ‘sun posts’ and decorated boards on sides of a triangular opening in the hip under the roof. At the beginning of the paper the author refers to the fact that the ancient geometrical ornament has been more typical of Latvians, which has been preserved also during the time when East-European nations gradually took over the ornaments depicting plants and animals. The author approaches ornamentation as one complete entity and draws attention to the perceived visual rhythm in ornamentation. The individual signs of the ornament are combined either in pairs (statically) or in odd numbers (dynamically). The more modern ornamentation is made up of geometrical ornament with plant ornaments. The author gives an overview of more widely-used signs – slanting crosses, triangles, octagons, and the chalk marking 20+K+B+m+14 widespread in Catholic regions, etc.
 Kursīte discusses one peculiar decorative element of the houses – the so-called ‘sun posts’, which in big rooms are just very practical (e.g. in houses of prayer), but which might have also carried some cosmic symbolism.
 In buildings (mainly dwelling houses and storehouses), the doors and window jambs, wider battens/boards, and the wooden window shutters were decorated. Ornamental decorations were also used on the top of the boards decorating the triangular opening in the hip under the roof, which were carved like a bird’s or a horse’s head, or shaped like a horn, sometimes even under the collar beams. The decorations were directed outwards so they would be visible. The other kind of ornament (mostly single signs) was cut on house tenons/mitre (i.e. inside). This was not visible, but the ornament had to protect the foundation of the house and the building from hazards coming from the outside (evil ghosts, evil people, natural elements, etc.).
 In conclusion it may be said that from a magical and a decorative point of view, ornamentation played an important role in the wooden architecture of Latvia.
 In the short preface the themes highlighted by Kursīte are compared with the wooden architecture of Estonia; it is stated that there are similarities but one has to work hard to find them.

Complacency Leading to Reduced Competitive Intensity in the Indian Information Technology Services Sector Resulting in Diminished Market Opportunity

Indian Information Technology (IT) services sector today commands a huge share of worldwide IT sourcing spend. India stays to be a driving force for worldwide sourcing growth despite rising de-globalization moves across Western economies, challenges posed by East European nations, Russia, China and East Asia. A pertinent question that comes up is how will India take on the rivalry, while the Indian IT services sector seems to be content and complacent. One can see that the hunger for growth which we saw in the late 1990s and the decade of 2000s is fast eroding. India’s incentive to the world market was its economies of scale and cost advantage; however, the disruption created by the extant outsourcing or offshoring business model is fast receding. The Indian IT Services players turned complacent while competing as disruption and differentiation gave them a unique advantage and value proposition. This article builds on various articles in this domain while analysing how complacency affects competitive intensity, in turn resulting in a reduced intensity in market growth opportunity. This article endeavours to evaluate whether Indian IT services sector is trapped in its self-projected image leading to Narcissus effect.

Fornäs, Johan Europe Faces Europe: Narratives from Its Eastern Half (review)

SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 594 from here’; ‘Wałłbrzych is simply extermination’ (p. 102). Rakowski reads complaints about danger as being important for the expression of grief, rather than their carrying the hope that any kind of dialogue will ensue. The desire to engage in open aggressive action he interprets as a public demonstration of the diggers’ and scrap collectors’ externalized sense of shame. Protest is futile — ‘The social world is deaf to all their complaints and dismay’ (p. 107, original emphasis). The diggers, the scrap collectors, the gatherers, Rakowski concludes, ‘all indirectly speak of their attempts to understand a world that cannot be understood’ (p. 111). Finally, Rakowski presents an analysis of change in a deprived area in the environs of Bełchatów Brown Coal Mine. When brown coal reserves were discovered under Bełchatów in the 1970s, the area underwent rapid development, adversely affecting surrounding villages. The members of the households in Szamów, the settlement at the centre of the study in this area, collect scrap, post-industrial bits and pieces; they also forage in the forests and poach the game that lives on the local spoil heap. The home thus seems to Rakowski ‘to move outwards’, overlapping with the world outside (p. 215), which he compares with the pre-Neolithic hunter/gatherer reality of being in the environment, whereas here, the hunter/gatherer’s skill is transferred to managing post-industrial, ready-made resources. Rakowski presents his anthropological study as ‘an attempt to describe’. He tries to see a world beneath the surface to which Merleau-Ponty refers as the ‘practically imperceptible’. This is a study of social powerlessness, in which the sense of ‘what is real’ has been lost. It is, as Rokowski demonstrates, a critical moment when people are asking questions, when it is unclear to them what they should make of themselves. Nevertheless, Rakowski does not see his respondents as reduced by their circumstances, but discerns an internal dynamic, an ‘inner courage’. This is what it has taken for his subjects to make the huge effort required to hold their lives together and adapt in the face of catastrophe. Rakowski’s study does these people justice, and represents a significant intellectual achievement. Homerton College Peggy Watson University of Cambridge Fornäs, Johan (ed.). Europe Faces Europe: Narratives from Its Eastern Half. Intellect, Bristol and Chicago, IL, 2017. vii + 252 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliographies. Index. $52.00: £39.00 (paperback). The narratives of collective identity with which members of Central and East European nations construct their own national identities in relation to REVIEWS 595 ‘Europe’ are, in Slavonic and East European studies, an old question which always has the potential to produce new answers. Indeed, if one agrees with Johan Fornäs and the five other contributors to this volume that narratives do not just reflect but constitute identity, they are perhaps the very question which has given the discipline a reason to exist: the study of ‘Eastern Europe’, and its cognate regions has so often been preoccupied with asking how its borders have been delimited and how it relates to the other understandings of the ‘Europe’ it sits within or alongside, especially since the postcolonial turn of the early 1990s. The ‘East European narratives of Europe’ (p. 13) that Fornäs and his team set out to research in 2012–14 predominantly come from the Baltic States, Poland and Ukraine. The question of how East European voices have narrated their desired and perceived relationships to ‘Europe’, conscious of the peripheral status that voices at the structural ‘centre’ of Europe have ascribed them, has been tackled before; but the fast-changing geopolitics of the region nevertheless allow this volume to make a fresh contribution, both in ways the authors would have anticipated and also in ways they could not. The ‘Europe’ that Fornäs and his contributors would have expected to observe being narrated at the beginning of their research was firstly a Europe that had supposedly been symbolically enlarged over the past decade, with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland all among the post-socialist states that joined the European Union in 2004; it was also a ‘Europe’ where many of...

Female babies and risk-aversion: Causal evidence from hospital wards

Using ultrasound scan data from paediatric hospitals, and the exogenous ‘shock’ of learning the gender of an unborn baby, the paper documents the first causal evidence that offspring gender affects adult risk-aversion. On a standard Holt-Laury criterion, parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, become almost twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The study demonstrates this in longitudinal and cross-sectional data, for fathers and mothers, for babies in the womb and new-born children, and in a West European nation and East European nation. These findings may eventually aid our understanding of risky health behaviors and gender inequalities.

Female Babies and Risk-Aversion

Being told the sex of your unborn child is a major exogenous 'shock'. In the first study of its kind, we collect before-and-after data from hospital wards. We test for the causal effects of learning child gender upon people's degree of risk-aversion. Using a standard Holt-Laury criterion, the parents of daughters, whether unborn or recently born, are shown to be almost twice as risk-averse as parents of sons. The study demonstrates this in longitudinal ('switching') data and cross-sectional data. The study finds it for fathers and mothers, babies in the womb and recently born children, and for a West European nation and an East European nation.

Prisons of the past: Penal nationalism and the politics of punishment in Central Europe

This article explores the politics of punishment in contemporary Central Europe. Based on an analysis of penal policies and discourses in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, it examines how penal politics have taken shape in a region with direct experience with the abuses of penal confinement. On the one hand, it reveals how Central European politicians and state actors used tough, law and order rhetoric to reimagine the postsocialist community and to redraw the lines of social inclusion and exclusion, thus developing a uniquely East European penal nationalism that equates punitiveness with national sovereignty and protection. At the same time, the article argues that this penal nationalism emerged largely as a response to the dilemmas of democratization in the region—to the political challenges of forging new solidarities amid changing social boundaries and of state and political actors’ ongoing legitimacy crises. In this way, the article uncovers the layers of complexity that characterize the postsocialist world of punishment as well as the intersecting influences of past and present, of global and local, and of ideology and practice on those politics.

Professors and Their Politics ed. by Neil Gross and Solon Simon

Reviewed by: Professors and Their Politics ed. by Neil Gross and Solon Simon Demetri L. Morgan, Ph.D. Neil Gross and Solon Simon (Editors). Professors and Their Politics. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2014. 376 pp. Paperback: $49.95. ISBN: 9781421413341 Over the years, numerous scholars have conducted studies on the effect that the intersection of higher education and the political culture of the U.S. has had on faculty, students, staff, and society (for recent examples see: Maranto, Redding, & Hess, 2009; Rothman, Kelly-Woessner, & Woessner, 2011). However, there are few recent attempts to reveal or explain the changing higher education landscape and the concurrent political trends solely through the vantage point of professors. This intellectual oversight and the field’s inability to reconcile all the divergent yet related strands that sit at the intersection of politics and higher education is the primary rationale behind Neil Gross and Solon Simmons’ (2014) edited book, Professors and their Politics. Different from other efforts that have focused on students, politics, and higher education (e.g., Binder & Wood, 2013; Colby, Beaumont, Ehrlich, & Corngold, 2010), this edited volume seeks to illuminate and explain trends in higher education and politics from the perspective of faculty through a decidedly multidisciplinary approach. The core aim of the book that the editors put forth is that the topic area of higher education and politics is in need of renewal, and through rigorous empirical investigations contained in the book, scholars and policy makers might come to understand in “social science terms what is happening in the institution and to discover what these developments imply for state and society” (Gross & Simmons, 2014, p. 312). In order to execute this goal, the book is organized into five major themes that build on one another to illuminate the interplay of politics and higher education from the faculty perspective. Part I, written by Gross and Simmons, attempts to lay the foundation for the volume by describing the findings of a study they conducted about the political views of contemporary professors. The findings from their study add nuance to the widely held belief that faculty are almost uniformly liberal. Their study found that many faculty hold “center-left” positions on numerous issues and may not be as “radically” liberal as portrayed in other venues. Furthermore, younger faculty (those entering the profession after September 11, 2001) in their study also held more moderate positions than their older colleagues, a point that the authors suggest may not have been captured in previous studies conducted about faculty who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s. Accordingly, their major claim is that previous studies fail to capture the “heterogeneity of political opinion” that exists among faculty (p. 48). They go on to argue that while the professoriate could be fairly characterized as a liberal occupational field, they caution from the outset that faculty should not be viewed or treated as a monolith. Paradoxically, Part 2 (Chapters 2–4) seeks to explain professorial liberalism, although the first chapter concludes that the reader should not see all faculty as uniformly liberal. Despite this, Chapter 2, written by Ethan Fosse, Jeremy Freese, and Gross, seeks to link professorial liberalism to graduate school attendance. They show, using survey data, that students who identify as liberal during college are most likely to attend graduate school and seek to become professors, yet attending graduate school [End Page 148] only accounts for “modest shifts farther to the left” (p. 78). Thus, they conclude that a person possessing liberal political views serves a self-selection function, disrupting the commonly held belief that graduate school is the root of many professors’ liberal leanings. Chapter 3, authored by Clem Brooks, continues the examination of professorial liberalism by conducting a cross-national investigation between professors based in the U.S. and professors from other nations. Brooks categorizes the comparative nations as either social democracies, Christian democracies, liberal democracies, or East European nations. The major finding is that there is a considerable amount of heterogeneity and complexity in professor’s attitudes across regime type and institutional setting. This finding echoes that of the first chapter but builds on it by beginning to show how professional, gender, and public norms...

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

Arms reduction and alternate Cold War histories

Alvin Saperstein recently reviewed Craig Nelson’s book The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era (Physics Today, September 2014, page 45). In that review, he asserted that “Ronald Reagan’s expensive drive for a high-tech defense against intercontinental ballistic missiles … considerably delayed the start of actual nuclear disarmament.” That assertion echoes Frank von Hippel’s idea of an alternative Cold War scenario with earlier US–Soviet arms-reduction agreements, which he spelled out in “Gorbachev’s unofficial arms-control advisers” (Physics Today, September 2013, page 41).I question how much confidence should be placed in historical analysis that is based on the possibility of changing a single input to a complex system—the timing of arms-reduction agreements—and expecting a corresponding change in output timing with no other major differences. The hypothetical policy alternative should instead be judged by its potential for having achieved a better outcome—if one can be envisioned—and should be weighed against the possibility of having produced a less favorable outcome. Those considerations were not addressed in von Hippel’s detailed discussion nor by Reagan policy critics whose writings appeared in earlier issues of Physics Today (see, for example, “The strategic offense initiative? The Soviets and Star Wars” by Peter Westwick, Physics Today, June 2008, page 43 and the item in Washington Reports, Physics Today, July 1988, page 47).For the Cold War, an extended struggle between two conflicting political-economic systems, the result of primary importance is the asymmetric outcome. That outcome, the collapse of the Soviet Union, brought immense benefits to one side: The US and its allies were intact, no longer threatened, and relieved of a huge and costly burden, and East European nations were freed from Soviet control and able to reestablish traditional ties with the West. Concerning arms reduction, the impending and actual Soviet collapse brought larger and more permanent reductions than any considered in prior negotiations.Likewise, negotiated arms reduction constituted only one facet of the multifaceted Cold War interactions. Those interactions included conflict and competition in political ideology, economic development, military power, science and technology, sports, culture, and global influence. They also included open and clandestine worldwide political action, along with covert human and technological penetration for espionage, sabotage, policy manipulation, and deception.I question the realism of assigning an exclusive and decisive role to arms-reduction agreements without considering the context created by the unceasing and contentious interactions that combined to produce the actual Cold War outcome and its long-lasting effects. Each suggested variant history constitutes an untested hypothesis. If the hypothesis is false, the variant outcome might have been comparably asymmetric in the reverse direction with a Soviet victory, or it might have been perfectly symmetric, in the form of mutual destruction.© 2015 American Institute of Physics.

The Role of the Courts in the Social Construction of Religious Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe

This article takes a social-constructionist view of the role played by judicial systems in selected Central and East European nations, formerly dominated by the Soviet Union, in defining the meaning of religious freedom. The focus is on the role of national courts, including constitutional courts, and especially the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in this process, with particular attention being paid to the interaction of these separate court systems in defining religious freedom in the various nations. The function of possible ‘pilot judgments’ of the ECtHR in this process is examined. An overall assessment of the role of judicial systems offers a mixed, but somewhat optimistic, view of the role being played by the court systems in the region which seems to support the idea that the ‘judicialization of politics’—addressed by scholars in other branches of law—is also occurring in the area of religious freedom.

E.U. migrant criminal activity: Exploring spatial diversity and volume of criminal activity attributed to inter EU migrants in England

European Union expansion over the last decade has generated many studies, surpassed in number only by governmental comment and media headlines following this general theme. Issues and knowledge explored and expressed have been many, one being a hard to evidence crime-migration nexus leading to constructive empirical studies focussing on the accession to the EU of predominantly East European nations and ensuing migratory patterns. Appertaining to this study is geographic focus on crime committed by inter-EU migrants in England, resulting from holistic research of a contemporary EU statute concerning inter-state sharing of bio-informatics, seeking contextual knowledge to the benefit of policy makers. The geography of inter-EU crime in England identifies spatial dispersion and regional areas of activity on a meso scale. The activity of individual nationalities is examined in a spatial manner displaying distinct differences in movements on a regional (meso) scale. Results improve on current knowledge of the criminality of inter-EU migrants but also identify and call for further research in a conceptual development as localised criminal activity draws an international investigatory perspective.

Latvia – 20 years of independence: a trade-off between economic and political sovereignty?

This article seeks to examine the standing of Latvia in the new European constellation. The following lines objectively question, partially using the results of a smallscale, but representative, survey of 130 people in Latvia, how the well-being of this east European nation has changed in the twenty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and in the course of the country’s integration into the EU. The author also turns her attention to whether a small country like Latvia can actually preserve both its political and economic sovereignty. The findings suggest that well-being in the Latvian SSR was better than it is today, but the author concludes that Latvia has been compelled to sacrifice economic sovereignty in order to preserve its political independence. Ultimately, and given the cut-throat trends sparked off by international competition and unrestricted monetary flows, is any other choice conceivable for a small and resource-challenged country like Latvia in the era of globalisation, either now or in the future?

Palestine and Genocide: An International Historical Perspective Revisited

This commentary reviews the responses to an earlier article, ‘Palestine in an International Historical Perspective on Genocide’ (Holy Land Studies, 9:1, 1–25), arguing that they illustrate both the possibilities and the limitations of serious debate about these issues. The responses mostly neglected the analytical core of the argument relating to 1948, which is therefore restated, emphasising Palestine's unique combination of elements that were parts of three general patterns implicated in genocide production (settler colonialism, East European nationalism, conflicts of decolonisation). The paper also gives further attention to the implications of the perspective for understanding the ‘genocide’ question in the subsequent history of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Barack Obama and Security In the East Baltic Sea Region

This paper addresses a number of fears that prevail in the East Baltic Sea Region about Washington’s commitment to their security under the administration of Barack Obama. While indicating that the Obama White House may have been cavalier about such concerns, they are unjustified. For example, the new anti-ballistic system that the U.S. intends to deploy in Europe is superior to the one favoured by the Bush Administration. Obama’s campaign to reset relations with Russia is good for Europe. And Obama has demonstrated that while he seeks to enhance the image of the U.S. in the world through a display of soft power, he has been resolute in applying hard power in Afghanistan where Russia has been a helpful partner. In conclusion, the Central and East European nations should join the U.S. in its quest to reset relations with Russia although there is no guarantee that it will be a success. Russia in turn must reconcile its differences with the countries in the East Baltic Sea region if it hopes to achieve fruitful relations with the West. At the same time, the EU must develop an energy security program that meets both the needs of the energy producing and energy consuming nations. As yet, this has not happened. Hopefully, it will as the EU takes the measures necessary to respond to the various economic and political challenges that threaten the European Project. The CEE states can rely upon the support of the U.S. but to deny any hostile foreign power the opportunity to compromise their security, they must address problems of corruption within their societies and reconcile points of discord with their neighbours.

Love to Hate

This essay examines the love–hate relationship—overt hatred and secret love—that surrounds reality shows about Roma and other racialized celebrities in postsocialist New European nations. Taking the case study of the wildly popular yet universally despised Hungarian Gyõzike show and its national reception, it argues that the aversion to the cultural quality represented by reality TV and the aversion to the ethnoracial quality represented by the Roma and other minorities are thoroughly intertwined. Reality television has disclosed the unspoken role assigned to racial minorities to mark the whiteness of East European nations, a crucial but hardly discussed aspect of belonging to Europe. This study also demonstrates that understanding the role played by reality TV under the particular conditions of postsocialist nationalisms and media globalization requires expanding the focus of reality TV scholarship on post-welfare neoliberalism.