Modern Nation Research Articles

The Role of the Aesthetic in Decolonial Critique

Claudia Llosa’s film The Milk of Sorrow/La teta asustada (2009) figures in a polemic over magical realism and the colonial overdeterminations of spectatorship ranging from Jean Franco to Dolores Tierney and beyond. Denounced for its complicity in the Western gaze, magical realism plays into the reality that Latin American acclaim often follows favorable reception in the Global North. The debate has yet to reckon with the ensuing tensions. Indeed, Llosa’s film highlights the contradictions of its Berlinale poster, which sells the narrative of an Indigenous woman who overcomes trauma and becomes modern. Though peddling exoticism, the poster questions a transcultural reconciliation of indigeneity and modern nationhood by oscillating between Peru’s birthing and burying alive of Quechua protagonist Fausta. The film explores these incongruities. It shakes off the modernity–Andean village binary by construing Fausta as a decolonial aesthetic agent who creates her home in her informal settlement, her pueblo joven. Born into Indigenous traditions, she reads the world through them, reconceiving her cultural inheritance as she fulfills her responsibilities and learns. Upending aesthetically inflected racial and gender dynamics and magical realist and transcultural paradigms from the inside, the film self-reflexively investigates the status of aesthetic forms and images and the way we read them. Intricate aesthetic strategies shape its politics at the intersection of violence, religion, poverty, and artistic invention. Uncovering these overlooked aesthetic registers, this essay demonstrates the significance of the aesthetic to the controversy over magical realism and transculturation and to the project of decolonial cultural critique more broadly.

IMPROVING CYPRUS FIRE SERVICE PERFORMANCE THROUGH MODERN HR MANAGEMENT PRACTICES AND JOB SATISFACTION

Purpose and aim of the study: This study investigates the relationship between staff job satisfaction and the transformation of the Cyprus Fire Service into a modern and flexible National Security Force. The primary aim is to analyse organizational and human resource management theories and their application to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of fire operations.Design / Methodology / Approach: The research employs a quantitative approach, utilizing a survey conducted with 110 members of the Cyprus Fire Service. The survey assesses job satisfaction and its impact on service quality. The data were collected using a structured questionnaire and analysed using statistical methods, including descriptive, frequency, and correlation analyses.Main Findings: The findings reveal a strong positive correlation between employee satisfaction and service quality. Satisfaction influences service quality both directly and indirectly. The study highlights that job satisfaction encompasses various factors, including salary, promotions, and management practices.Originality: This research is original in its focus on transforming the Cyprus Fire Service by applying modern management principles. It provides insights into how job satisfaction can be leveraged to improve organizational performance in public safety services.Implications: The study suggests that enhancing job satisfaction can lead to improved service quality, which is crucial for the Fire Service's role in ensuring public safety. It proposes alternative strategies for personnel management by comparing successful systems from other EU Member Countries.

Nuevos palacios

Uruguay underwent a huge transformation process around 1900 that placed it as a modern, thriving and independent nation within the great world panorama. The architectural works produced in the country at that time were used as a demonstration of greatness, abundance and progress by advertising publications sent to Europe in order to attract potential visitors and settlers. This work addresses - through the look at the buildings portrayed in these publications - the role of architecture in the process of formation and consolidation of the republic. The analysis of the incorporation of these images is crossed by the conceptions of national identity, closely related to the modernization processes of the beginning of the 20th century. It is proposed to reflect on how the visuality of the architecture produced in that period - executed by the first professionals trained in the country - collaborated in the processes of national identification.

A Temporary Process of Carniolization

In the process of developing into a modern nation, the Slovenes were confronted with a problem that indeed plagued many European peoples: a dual designation for a single people and its language: the ethnonyms Slovenci and Kranjci (‘Slovenes’ and ‘Carniolans’) and the linguonyms slovenski and kranjski (‘Slovene’ and ‘Carniolan’). There are several indications that, as early as the sixteenth century, the term ‘Carniolan’ served not only as the designation for the inhabitants of Carniola but also an ethnonym. During the Protestant period, it already spread beyond the Carniolan provincial borders and came on a par with the ethnonym ‘Slovene’. The Slovenes in Carniola (thenceforth only) self-identified with the designation ‘Carniolans’, whereas outside its borders, they variably, from one province to another, identified themselves either as Slovenes or Carniolans, sometimes alternating between the two designations. Later on, the linguonym ‘Carniolan’ also established itself to replace the linguonym ‘Slovene’. The question whether the nominal Carniolization during the ethnogenesis of the Slovenes had a disintegrating effect, may be answered both affirmatively and negatively.

Theory and Practice of Researching the History of Slovenian Collective Identity

The discussion addresses theoretical approaches to studying the history of Slovenian collective identity by critically assessing the “strictly modernist approach”, which a priori denies any connection between premodern ethnic communities and modern nations. Although opposing an arbitrary rejection of objective criteria for identifying ethnic affiliation, the article embraces the constructivist challenge of modernism and studies premodern self-determination with 1) the ethnonym ‘Slovenian’, 2) the Slovenian ethnic community, and 3) the Slovenian ethnic territory. The examples of self-identification discussed demonstrate that, apart from other collective identities, the inhabitants of Slovenian territory also felt an affiliation with the Slovenian ethnic community, which is thus rooted in the Middle Ages rather than the period of Protestantism or even nationalism.

Medieval Foundations for the Development of the Modern Slovenian Nation and National Identity

Although the Slovenian nation did not exist in the Middle Ages, it was this nearly thousand-year-long period that witnessed the gradual formation of certain foundations for its subsequent development. Among these was, first and foremost, the geographical area of the Slovenian linguistic community which was formed once the state border was settled between the Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary and once the systematic medieval colonization came to an end. These two processes were also closely linked to the genesis of the Slovenian language, which dates back to the High Middle Ages. However, still older roots pertain to Christianity, the adoption of which brought about profound religious and social changes, coupled with political and cultural affiliation of Slovenian territory to the European West. The article focuses on presenting the above-mentioned three foundations and their part in the formation of the modern Slovenian nation and national identity.

Folklore, Ethnology, Philology: National Sciences and Global Connections

Abstract Folklore and ethnology were from their beginnings closely associated with language. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz used languages to identify and categorise peoples, and he influenced the German-speaking scholars who coined the earliest ethnological terms, the first of which came in the 1740s. Largely through Johann Gottfried Herder’s writings, from the late 18th century the idea of the Volksgeist helped to valorise language and popular traditions as authentic markers of cultural distinctiveness. With the 19th-century development of the comparative historical study of languages, especially Indo-European and Uralic, the possibility appeared of positing much deeper historical origins for modern European nations, above all for those nations whose written histories began in relatively recent times. As it developed within the German university system in the course of the 19th century philology encompassed not just language and literature but mythology, folk traditions, law, medicine and history, all understood in relation to German culture as a whole. As folklore studies were professionalised and institutionalised, ‘national’ folklore studies tended to be largely defined by the extent of a distinct language, while dialect studies frequently drew on folk traditions to give representative examples of localised speech using storytellers as privileged informants – as we show in the case of Irish dialectology.

Transplanted Modernity and the Reconfiguration of Nation: Im Hwa’s Writings on Modern Korean Literary History and National Literature

Abstract: This article explores the evolution of Im Hwa’s literary criticism, focusing on the continuity between his history of New Literature during Korea’s late colonial period and his theory of national literature in the post-liberation era. It discusses how Im’s view on the Korean nation contributes to postcolonial dialogues about preserving positive legacies of nationalist thought under colonial rule to facilitate complete decolonization and support for marginalized groups. In his historiography of New Literature, Im distinguishes modern Korean literature from its pre-modern counterparts, describing modernity in Korea as transplanted from the West. This makes contemporary literature, which he considers indefinable until history reaches a conclusive point, unfold through elements that are alien to Korea. Despite this, Im insists on classifying this essentially non-Korean literature as Korean due to its use of the Korean script. This paradoxical stance implies that the formality of writing in Korean is sufficient to define the literature as Korean. The inclusive vision of the Korean nation, open to anyone who writes in the Korean script, continues in Im’s theory of national literature. He argues that the nation, composed of anonymous individuals who identify as Korean, serves as the foundation for all modern literature and holds potential for building a literary collective open to any marginalized groups under various forms of oppression.

CONCEPTUAL BASIS OF POLITICAL MODERNIZATION AS AN IMPORTANT FACTOR OF SOCIAL AND SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

In this article, the conceptual basis of political modernization is emphasized, which is an important factor in social-spiritual development, the creation of conditions for sociocultural growth in a new stage of state development, Strengthening democracy and economic competitiveness, ensuring prosperity and national foundations that are the basis of spiritual growth, transition to national modernization in accordance with the principle of «human dignity» based on legal norms. Theoretical foundations are shown.

In the Footsteps of Krste P. Misirkov: Tracing the Roots of Macedonian Sociological Discourse

ABSTRACTMisirkov is one of the most eminent figures in Macedonian national history. He made significant contributions as a Slavist, historian, folklorist, and ethnographer. In his seminal work, “On Macedonian Matters” (1903), Misirkov presented his theoretical and scientific views on the Macedonian question. He made a groundbreaking attempt to standardize the Macedonian language, offering both a linguistic and sociological exploration of its role in establishing political legitimacy for the Macedonian ethnocultural entity. His comprehensive treatment of other critical aspects, including the cultural identity, sense of common belonging, and the need for a separate political unit, aligns with the foundational principles of modern nations. Introducing novel ideas and frameworks, Misirkov significantly contributed to understanding Macedonian ethnocultural distinctiveness, crucial for the nation‐building process. This paper emphasizes Misirkov's overlooked role as the founder of Macedonian sociological discourse, drawing parallels with modernist theories about nation and nationalism and analyzing his method through the concept of sociological imagination. Despite the enduring impact of his work, this pioneering aspect remains unexplored in academic research, addressing a significant gap in understanding Misirkov's contributions to Macedonian sociological thought.

Towards Modern Nationhood: Wales and Slovenia in Comparison, c.1750–1918, by Robin Okey

<i>Towards Modern Nationhood: Wales and Slovenia in Comparison, c.1750–1918</i>, by Robin Okey

From Panthers to Political Dalits: Revisiting the Legacy of Dalit Panthers in India

The Panthers had created a rupture from the earlier pattern that Ambedkar has strategized to integrate the Dalits as one of the important political subjects of the modern nation state. The Panthers deviated and invested in two radical ideological traits; the Civil Right Movement in the US (including the Black Panthers’ Party) and radical Marxism (Indian Naxalite movement) to transform Ambedkar’s social theory into an aggressive brand of transformative politics. The Panthers showed open discomfort with the given liberal model of democratic politics and attempted to shift the traditional Dalit political ideology into a revolutionary force. Though the Panthers’ innovations have impressed the urban Dalit youths and intelligentsia, it failed miserably in forming a concrete political alternative at the regional or the national level. I have concluded that, with the rise of Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Dalits were introduced to an improvised liberal political agenda, different from the earlier variants of Ambedkar’s participatory politics and the Panthers’ militant rhetoric. It shows that the Dalits are more convinced and engaged with the liberal-democratic model and consciously refute the militant and radical methods for political actions.

Settler militarism: Affective colonial pursuits and the militarized atmosphere of war commemoration

This article examines settler militarism and how it is mobilized through affective practices that ultimately bolster the settler colonial project. With this intent, it develops the concept of ‘militarized atmosphere’ defined as a staged environment where war is positioned outside politics and critical scrutiny through a series of affective manoeuvres and aesthetics. A militarized atmosphere operates through military aesthetics to attune people’s bodies to a position of uncritical validation of a given discourse of war. This article argues that a militarized atmosphere crucially sustains the settler colonial project by removing or reducing contestation around the theme of war, which is a pillar of settler colonialism. In settler societies, numerous Indigenous individuals perceive themselves as embattled and seek acknowledgement of the history and legacy of colonial violence and warfare. In contrast, settler governments have a vested interest in concealing this history and its enduring legacy, and they do so by exalting military warfare as the foundation of the modern nation and creating affective attachments to the military. The article uses the case of Australia to elucidate the argument. It examines how the aesthetics of war commemoration at the Dawn Service, Australia’s major commemorative event, contributes to producing a militarized atmosphere that sustains the Australian settler colonial project. It proposes a framework that links the feminist concept of affective militarism to settler colonialism and contributes to the emerging literature on settler colonialism and militarism.

Research on Mixed Ownership Reform of State-Owned Enterprises from the Perspective of Marxist Political Economy

Under China’s socialist system, state-owned enterprises are key forces driving the economic trajectory and providing strong momentum. These enterprises not only bear the crucial responsibility of advancing the process of national modernization but also serve as the core of the national economic lifeline through their irreplaceable status and function amidst changing times. In the new era, with the advent of the technological revolution and the wave of globalization, state-owned enterprises face unprecedented opportunities and challenges. As a significant aspect of state-owned enterprise reform, the mixed ownership reform is not only a transformation in the structure of enterprise ownership but also a reflection of China’s broader, comprehensive reform efforts. By deeply advancing this reform, it will help optimize the allocation of state-owned assets and significantly boost technological and management innovation within state-owned enterprises, ensuring their competitiveness in the intense market environment. Therefore, this paper will conduct an in-depth analysis of the mixed ownership reform of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of Marxist political economy.

Ethno-Imagined Communities: Rethinking Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith’s Theories of Nations through Bernard Stiegler’s Theory of Epiphylogenesis

Abstract This article explores Bernard Stiegler’s concept of Epiphylogenesis as an alternative framework for understanding modern nations while aspiring to resolve major gaps in the classic theories of Benedict Anderson and Anthony Smith. Epiphylogenesis offers a fresh perspective and broader scope for the study of nations, with a view to critically enlarging the dynamic interaction between modern mass media and cultural traditions, particularly as conceptualized by Anderson and Smith. Stiegler classifies modern nations as chapters in the broader narrative of technical evolution. In epiphylogenesis, cultural traditions and technical artefacts function as a working partnership; modern nations are seen as the outcome of this co-constitutive process, wherein mass media technical systems (that is, print capitalism) exteriorize cultural traditions (ethnié), dressing them up in distinctive, open, pervasive, and standardized forms. This discussion concludes by exploring the relevance of epiphylogenesis for assessing the impact of networked communications on contemporary national identities.

Preservation of Cultural Heritage Buildings in Central Plains via Novel Detection Approach

Modern nations recognize cultural heritage as an expression of culture and variety. Conserving and repurposing historic buildings has only been more popular in the last decades. Nonetheless, a considerable portion of cultural legacy is afflicted by structural concerns that endanger the safety of buildings and people. Challenges include a scarcity of resources, whether financial, human, or material. This initiative aims to employ deep learning (DL) approaches to preserve cultural heritage buildings, particularly in poor nations where these buildings are still being maintained. To overcome these issues this study proposed a novel Flower Pollination improved Resnet (FP-IResNet) to detect preservation of cultural heritage buildings. The image data were collected from China's cultural heritage buildings. The data is preprocessed using normalization. Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) using extract the features for preprocessed data. The proposed method is implemented using Python software. The findings reveal that the suggested obtained greater performance in the detection of cultural heritage buildings than other traditional algorithms. The suggested concept enables the computerized preservation of cultural heritage buildings, leading to improved accuracy and reduced individual fault. Performance measures show that the model is successful in correctly categorizing and detecting heritage buildings that require preservation, with high accuracy (96.82%), precision (97.21%), recall (97.58%), and an F1 score (93.58%). The research emphasizes how computerized techniques could enhance the precision and effectiveness of CH conservation initiatives

Influence of Technology and Metaverse on Traditional Absolute Sovereignty Control of Modern National States Territories

The metaverse can extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies, allowing users to seamlessly interact within virtual and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. This investigation strives to analyze the relationship between technology and the metaverse on traditional absolute sovereignty control of modern national states’ territories to understand better the potential impact of emerging virtual environments on the established structures and systems of physical governance. As technology continues to evolve and the metaverse grows in size and complexity, examining how it may challenge traditional notions of territorial sovereignty and governance is essential. It can occur in several ways, such as borderless access, jurisdictional disputes, decentralization of power, and cyber security concerns. Based on secondary data, the study showed different ways technology and the metaverse intersect with traditional state control. It can identify potential conflict areas and develop strategies to adapt to this rapidly evolving landscape. Therefore, it is to gain a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between technology, the metaverse, and the traditional structures of governance that have shaped our world. The ultimate goal is to structure the metaverse in morally acceptable ways and collectively the most democratically beneficial for society.

Transnationality and stylistic ideology in semi-cubist Finnish art between 1914 and 1923

The article focuses on the changes in Finnish modern art and artistic discourse caused by World War I and Finnish Independence in 1917–1918. World War I changed artistic networks radically, because travel to France was no more possible, and Independence of Finland changed the art world with the ideas of national modernism. These changes centred in Finland around the role of cubism – seen as a logical continuation of Paul Cézanne’s art – and were expressed in both formal language and artistic discourse. Questions of “primitive” in art and its connection to cubism and to what is national in art were also essential in defining Finnish modernism and avant-garde in around 1917–1920. There was small exhibition of French cubism in Helsinki in 1915, but otherwise knowledge of cubism came via second-hand sources, such as lectures, art magazines and Der Sturm Gallery’s exhibitions. Norwegian art historian Jens Thiis had a strong impact on notions of cubism in Finland. It is in my interest to show that there were transnational connections between Scandinavia, Russia and Finland, and also more or less between Finland and oth- er “new states”, which were born after Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires collapsed. These connections can be seen in formal elements and iconography of kind of cubo-expressionism, which was a kind of fusion of cubist structuralism and expressionist emotion. This “semi-cubism” seemed to serve as stylistic ideology or ideological tool for those who had thoughts of national modernism in countries like Poland (formists), Latvia (artists like Jēkabs Kazaks), Estonia (artists like Jaan Vahtra and Märt Laarman) and Finland (art of the so called November Group). It is obvious that artists in Finland were not conscious of what happened on the southern side of the Baltic Sea, but there are so many parallels which were born by shared general views of the role of new art, that it is possible to see not only France, Norway or Russia, but also Poland, Latvia and Estonia as artistically close to Finland, when one tries to map the topography of Finnish semi-cubism in late 1910s and early 1920s.

The illusion of home and belongingness: a representation and (dis)location of home in Tabish Khair’s novels

ABSTRACT This paper foregrounds Khair’s two novels, The Bus Stopped and Filming: A Love Story, examining the concepts of home, representation, (dis)locations and its non-belongingness, focusing on the discourses of Indian nationalism and national identity. There is a massive gap between the living styles of rural and urban people in India. How people live in a country is vital to a modern nation and its nationalism. Khair says, ‘houses do not make homes’ because the concept of home varies according to the socio-economic conditions. Many poor people in India do not have a permanent home and constantly migrate from one place to another. They mostly make a temporary one-night stand for home, but unfortunately, their journey becomes a permanent home. That makes their existence neither inside nor outside society, creating a different kind of third space, but far more precarious than Bhabha’s notion of a third space. In Khair’s novels, the concept of third space is far less empowering than Bhabha’s notion of third space in postcolonial studies. Khair also shows that home is an illusion, not a permanent place that constantly changes like a dream and never gets concretised.

Presence – Donation – Event

The Helikon Publishing House has published (2006–2018) Sándor Márai’s (1900–1989) diaries in eighteen volumes of eight thousand pages under the title The Complete Diary. After Márai left the country for good in 1948 and went into exile, the communist regime eliminated him from the history of Hungarian literature, and generations grew up without reading his books or hearing about him in their literary studies. The diary is a testament to the existential vulnerability of the writer in exile. This major piece of work has four layers: the first is made up of notes on regular readings, the second is about recent Hungarian history, the third is personal memory, and the fourth is the material for the absorption of the host country’s culture. The Complete Diary changes our view of Márai, whose vision of Hungarian history is disturbing. He sees Hungary as a failed attempt to create a modern bourgeois nation. What is unique about Márai’s diary is the way it fuses memories of the personal past with reflections on the present. The recording of daily events goes beyond the genre of the diary: on the one hand towards the essay, on the other towards the novel.