Political Demarcation Research Articles

Imperial Rhetoric in the Publicism of the Palatinate before the Bohemian Coronation of Elector Frederick V

At the turn of the 16th — 17th centuries, the imperial discourse was changing, the new German princes were determined to protect the “true faith”, and they were not against revising the agreements reached by their predecessors. Confessional and imperial propaganda was on the increase in Germany. Did the publicism of the beginning of the 17th century reflect the religious social and political demarcation between the Catholic and Evangelical estate? In the Palatinate funeral sermons and speeches of professors of the University of Heidelberg, which were distributed among the subjects of the Palatinate and fellow Calvinists, the apology of the “true faith” came to the fore, and the place of the “imperial estate” was occupied by the Evangelical and Catholic estates, which were opposed to each other. However, in the writings that had spread throughout Germany, imperial rhetoric did not recede into the background, but was transformed along with the image of the Empire itself. This was evidenced by an anonymous text of 1618 of Palatinate origin on the reasons for the destruction by the troops of the Evangelical Union of the fortress of Udenheim, erected by the bishop of Speyer, a member of the Catholic League. In the 1570s — 1580s the Empire was presented as a common home for Protestants and Catholics, an assembly of estates headed by the emperor, and before the Thirty Years’ War the rhetoric of the texts of the Palatinate was increasingly moving towards understanding the Empire only as an elite community without a clear leader. This source allows us to speak about two motives of the Elector of the Palatinate Frederick V’s decision to demolish the Udenheim fortifications: the protection of the Empire and the protection of hereditary possessions, and both of these motives are indissoluble linked — the security of hereditary lands and subjects could only be ensured in the absence of threats to the Empire. Frederick V is shown in the text as one of the main persons responsible for the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation on the banks of the Rhine. The defense of the Empire for him meant the defense of his own corner of the imperial home — territories that had traditionally, since the 14th century, been under the influence of the Rhine palatine counts.

A Study on the Historical Development of Hydro Diplomacy in South Asia

The South Asian region comprising countries namely India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Maldives, holds a significant geo-political and economic position. These countries share a complex history of colonialism which led to a political demarcation of boundaries resulting in various problems in sharing common sources/water bodies in the region. This paper focuses on the historical development of hydro diplomacy in South Asia, with an emphasis on the Indus River Basin, Kabul River Basin & GangaBrahmaputra-Meghna River Basin in an attempt to scrutinize water politics in South Asia. A substantial number of bilateral agreements and treaties have been signed amid different countries of the region to ensure the maximum utilization of its vast river systems. However, challenges remain in managing water resources at a regional level effectively and addressing the needs of all stakeholders. Understanding the historical development of hydro diplomacy provides insights into the complexities faced in managing transboundary water resources in South Asia. This paper highlights the importance of cooperation, negotiation, and updated agreements to ensure sustainable and equitable use of water in the region in the backdrop of legal and customary International law on transboundary river water sharing.

The Rights of Royal Patronage and the Legitimacy of anti-Clericalism after the Independence of Mexico

The Church-State statutory institutional relationship is particularly significant apropos the debate of cultural tolerance. Here, I review the mechanisms by which this relation circumscribes to an ethno-centric pattern in the reading of Mexican history, and examine the discursive atmosphere the Church and the State institutional struggle to master the symbols of nationhood, and account for the ethnic images ratified by institutional narratives with liberal pragmatic postulates. In particular, I focus on the complex netting of political demarcations between religious and civil institutions, and its distinctive tone they acquired under Hispanic Patronage; all of which set the background upon which the Church’s antagonism to official lay discourses on Mexican identity appears futile.

ИСТОРИЯ ПОЛИТИКО-ДИПЛОМАТИЧЕСКОЙ БОРЬБЫ СССР И ЯПОНИИ ПО ПОВОДУ ПРИНАДЛЕЖНОСТИ ЮЖНЫХ КУРИЛ В ХХ СТОЛЕТИИ

The purpose of the article is to analyze the problem of territorial and political demarcation between Russia and Japan, as well as to consider the chronology of the diplomatic struggle over the ownership of the Southern Kuriles during the second half of the 20th century. Much attention is given to the reasons and prerequisites for the evolution of the positions taken by the parties on the implementation of various options for resolving the issue of sovereignty over the Kuril Islands. General scientific and special research methods such as historical, systemic and comparative legal analysis are used. As a result, the author draws conclusions that Japanese demands for transfering the southern part of the Kuril Islands should be recognized as one of the first attempts to revise the results of the Second World War in the 20th century.

Церковный раскол в Республике Северная Македония: внешнеполитическое измерение

The unexpected reconciliation of the Serbian Orthodox Church with the Macedonian ‘schismatics’, which took place in May 2022, determines the relevance of the retrospective analysis given in the article of this church conflict that has lasted more than half a century in the Republic of North Macedonia. Using the historical-genetic method, the underlying reason is revealed and the dynamics of the conflict that unfolded between the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid – is traced. With the use of the realistic approach to international relations and the hypothesis of maintaining a close connection between the church and state in the Balkans, the author identifies the key parties to the conflict, which, in addition to Serbia and the Republic of North Macedonia, include Bulgaria, Greece, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and describes the evolution of the strategies chosen by these parties to conduct. At the same time, the focus of the study is not the theological dimension of the subject in question, but its foreign policy implications. The history of the church schism is considered in the broader context of the political elites of the Republic of North Macedonia finding the solution to the task of integration into Euro-Atlantic structures, the possibilities of using the church factor in the reaching of geostrategic goals are shown. It is stated that the reasons that pushed the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church to reach agreements with the Macedonian ‘schismatics’ lie in the dimension of foreign policy, and the discussion of the status of the Ohrid Archdiocese was one of the elements of the struggle for influence in the Balkans, both regional and non-regional players. By its decision to support the autocephaly of the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid, the Serbian Orthodox Church has demonstrated the recognition of a specific Slavic-Macedonian national identity, which is questioned in the official historical narratives of Greece and Bulgaria, and, at least on the Balkan track, the papist aspirations of the Patriarchate of Constantinople were limited. Ultimately, the pragmatic position of the Serbian Orthodox Church did not allow the Macedonian Orthodox Church – Archdiocese of Ohrid to be turned into an instrument for realizing the interests of the Phanar supported by Western countries and took away the conflict potential from the topic that could contribute to the political demarcation of Serbia and the Republic of North Macedonia. Nevertheless, in the prognostic part of the conclusion, a high probability of ‘church wars’ resuming is stated, but with a new, not united by Orthodoxy, list of participants, namely containing representatives of the Albanian and Macedonian communities.

Shock and shove: the embodied politics of force in India

ABSTRACT This essay examines the phenomenological and political dimensions of force in north India. Manifest as embodied experience, and as power and domination, force encompasses felt emotion and collective clout. Yet unlike other categories traversing the political and experiential, force has been comparatively understudied. This paper surveys ethnographic and historical examples where force is prevalent. We see it in urban life, as an idiom of moral states, as embedded in community narratives and social hierarchies, and as enacting political demarcations. A focus is on the 1992 nationalist destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, when force was invoked and expressed. Through this study, certain tensions and paradoxes are raised. Force is seen as indispensable to state authority and legal sanction. Simultaneously, it is a field of potentials irreducible to human intentions. While force is a recurring locus of impetus and influence, it is also volatile and delinquent. It gives us insight into moments of concatenation without presuming contained interest or enduring stability. Force, affective and effective, is also slippery and insurrectionary, illuminating processes of mutability and contingency, in India as elsewhere.

DEEP FUTURES: FANTASTICAL BORDERLANDS OF IRELAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND, 2200

The long-term effects of climate change will supersede the implications of political demarcations and divisions. Within this context, “Fantastical Borderlands” proposes a rewilded territory, a landscape of slowness, for the Irish Northwest that encapsulates the northern borderlands between Ireland and Northern Ireland. This landscape emerges as a result of the significant reduction of grazing and the anticipated flooding of low-lying lands between Lough Foyle and Lough Swilly. The narrative process considers how flood risk might be managed in conjunction with the initiation of an ambitious rewilding scheme, while remaining sensitive to landscapes of deep cultural connection. By the “reverse time capsule” with performance and exhibition, “Fantastical Borderlands” is narrated from 2200 via a series of vignettes that reflect actions taken during the two centuries prior; the years surrounding Brexit serve as a catalyst for landscape change for the border landscape. The project is liberated from its constraints to near-term planning propositions, instead enabling a focus on landscape impacts that are revealed only at extended timeframes. Ultimately, the project asks: What is the role of storytelling and mythmaking in illuminating current realities and distant futures?

Review

Review

Irony as a Political Demarcation Tool of the New Russian Nationalists

The article discusses how and why the new nationalists, who call for political self-determination of Russians but share some ideological concepts with liberals, use stiob - a form of ironic parody based on overidentification and decontextualisation, resulting in destruction of the authoritative discourse. Their entertaining, or educational-cum-entertaining projects, located in the gray area between politics and counterculture, strive to undermine domineering political discourses (liberal, neo-Soviet, leftist, official patriotic, and old nationalist) and to go beyond the left-right dichotomy. The author concludes that the main function of stiob and other forms of irony for the new nationalists is negative identification. Ambivalence of the language of stiob simultaneously attracts the target audience of nationalists (“those in the know”) and does not prevent solidarizing with any political platform when needed. The article is based on qualitative analysis of narratives produced by nationalist social media influencers, including fiction, essays, talks, lectures, interviews, live broadcasts, posts in blogs, social networks and messengers.

D. Trump as a Factor in the Political Demarcation in Europe

The article analyzes the role of the American leader as an indicator of internal political contradictions in European society. The subject of the research is the socio-political differences in Europe in the context of attitudes towards the political course and personality of US President D. Trump. The purpose of the study is to identify the main political forces that approve and share D. Trump's policies in the EU countries, the reasons for support, and efforts to advance their positions. The US initiatives to change the European political landscape are disclosed. The reasons for the growth of support for the US President and the transformation of attitudes towards him in European countries are revealed. The author reveals the conflict potential of socio-political challenges and the sharpness of disagreements regarding the policy of the White House. Conclusions are drawn about the similarity of the socio-political delimitation in European countries and the United States, a high level of D. Trump's influence on the internal political processes in the EU is noted. The author came to the conclusion about the strengthening of support for the American president, the growing popularity of the conservative parties of the «political alternative» and the deepening of the internal political division, both in Europe and in the United States.

The Economy of the GDR and the Problem of Forming of the East German Identity

The study of the GDR in modern historical science is predominantly based on the assertion of the artificial nature of the “SED dictatorship” imposed by the Soviet government on the population of East Germany solely for political reasons, as well as the subordination of the policy of the East European countries as a whole to the political line of the USSR. The national policy of the SED, in particular the concept of a “socialist state of the German nation,” put forward in the second half of the 1960s by the SED leadership and affirmed in the first article of the Constitution of the GDR on April 8, 1968, was also subjected to unconditional criticism as an ideological instrument of political demarcation from the FRG. However, the study of previously unpublished materials from the Russian archives casts doubt on such statement and makes it possible to hypothesize that the demarcation of the German nation in the post-war period, despite the obvious political conditionality, was based on the objective public demand of the GDR citizens, exhausted with the war and the Nazi dictatorship, for social justice, the strengthening and expansion of humanistic principles in culture, social democratic traditions in government. Despite the predominance of communist ideology in its essence, the national policy pursued by the GDR government led to the formation of a special East German identity, which was also largely facilitated by fundamental differences in the socio-economic structure of the two German states and the foreign policy factor. The contradiction between these concepts raises a number of problematic research questions, the solution of which is of exceptional scientific importance for understanding the mechanisms of formation of national identity. Thus, the key scientific problem (addressed on the material of the GDR history), is whether changes in national self-consciousness can be artificial in nature or the stability of the ideologemes introduced into public consciousness is fundamentally impossible without socio-economic changes corresponding to the public demand.

The paradox and continuum of digital disengagement: denaturalising digital sociality and technological connectivity

This theoretical intervention puts forward a concept of ‘digital disengagement’ to discuss new socio-cultural, economic and political demarcations and implications surrounding the relationship between digital media, culture and society. At present, despite a proliferation of calls to reduce both the range of digital devices and communication platforms, and the time spent using them, and despite a growing body of academic work on disconnection or opt-out, disengagement from the digital is still conceptualised by media research as a spatiotemporal or an ideological aberration. To challenge this framework, we propose a paradigmatic shift. We invite digital media scholarship to denaturalise the digital by centring digital disengagement both as a complex phenomenon currently unfolding and as a conceptual entry point into thinking about sociality, agency, rights and everyday life more broadly. Mobilising digital disengagement as a theoretical lens, our piece provides the following: first, we critically assess the prevalent conflation of digitality with social networking, which leads to a limited understanding of disengagement as being only about disconnecting from social media platforms. Second, we challenge the normalisation of the technological in practices of disconnection, arguing instead that disengagement might be structured, but should not be determined, by the technological. Third, we demonstrate that digital disengagement is not a single phenomenon but a complex continuum of practices, motivations and effects. Understood as such, it has the potential to open new ways of imagining relations between technologies and freedoms, engagement and digitality and sociality and refusal.

Being international in times of war: Arthur Sweetser and the shifting of the League of Nations to the United Nations

Transnational actors are increasingly surfacing when it comes to understanding the global dimensions of the modern nation-state. Thinking of the modern state from the diversity of its personnel and its many intersections with private and semi-private actors or institutions with a transnational reach, the new diplomatic history acknowledges the embeddedness of states in border-crossing agencies. What has been conceptualized as ‘network diplomacy’ grasps both the role of transnational epistemic communities for the making of particular policy fields and the perception of diplomats as an integral part of transnational initiatives. Taking the League of Nations as a case study, this article analyses how its personnel attempted to spell out ideas of network diplomacy and to make their exposed position at the intersection of transnational civil society, state politics and international institutions work to effect political change. We focus on the transnational career of Arthur Sweetser (1888–1968) who, as a journalist, a long-term member of the League secretariat, the UN staff and the US administration, was at the forefront of developing new techniques of diplomatic practices beyond institutional mandates. Sweetser’s trajectory allows us to illuminate the mechanisms of network diplomacy by probing into multi-layered negotiation processes that engaged state practices, international institutions and the border-crossing agency of individuals. Characterizing him as transnational enables one to interlink his mobile trajectory with a particular scope of action that unfolded beyond the political demarcation of the nation-state and its instituted logics of rule and diplomacy. We further carve out the main features of a diplomatic practice that was formally non-existent yet crucial to the transfer of League principles, practices and personnel to the new United Nations.

Революция и реформа: соотношение понятий в первые годы Великих реформ

The article examines the place of the concepts revolution and reform in the political discourse in the first years of the Great reforms in Russia. Revolution was considered as a worst case scenario, so the menace of it was an effective argument against one or another decision or policy from the moment the concept had appeared in 1790s. The paper shows that the situation changed to some extent at the beginning of Alexander II’s reign. Menace of revolution was used at that time in order to justify reforms. Those who spoke on behalf of the government referred to the possible revolutions; their opponents spoke about revolutions, intending to exert pressure on the statesmen and to promote their own ideas and plans. It was acknowledged that revolution and reform had common goals. Although the concepts were opposites in many ways, revolution and reform, they were starting to drift together. Conception of revolution from above developed by the leftist journalists such as A. I. Herzen or N. P. Ogarev was a vivid manifestation of this trend. It meant that transformations carried out by authorities had to be fundamental, meet the people’s interests and require its participation. Yet, these tendencies were not sustainable. The article concludes that semantic experiments and convergence at the beginning of the Great Reforms were connected with the ambiguity of the government’s status in emerging circumstances and also with the unsettled character of the public sphere. An opposition between revolution and reform became more and more apparent during the 1860s. Conception of revolution from above was abandoned by the leftist authors. Revolution and reform became tools for political demarcation between the revolutionary movement and liberal supporters of the government. Revolution lost its previous role, but found a new legitimate place in public discussion, although usually as only a negative and threating scenario.

Demarcación regional, modificación territorial y acomodación de las divided societies

ResumenEl artículo examina los medios mediante que se consigue la cohabitación de comunidades altamente diferenciadas por lengua, confesión religiosa, cultura en sistema federales. La cohabitación – que se realiza, entre otras formas, a través de entes territoriales – corresponde al concepto de geografía jurídica (legal geography), verdadero principio de organización de estados federales multi- o bi-nacionales. Pues, el artículo explora los conceptos de mayor transcendencia y que se encuentran conectados al de geografía jurídica: la delimitación de las circunscripciones territoriales de los entes sub-estatales (regional demarcation) y los mecanismos para su modificación (territorial alteration). La comparación en ámbito jurídicos revalida la idea de que el gobierno y la gestión de sociedades altamente diferenciadas pueda ser conseguido con ambos instrumentos (territorial demarcation y alteration). Sin embargo, la delimitación del territorio sub-estatal fundamentada bajo la adopción de criterios étnicos se encuentra afectada por parte de elementos y factores económicos, que reducen cada día más el relieve de aquellos étnicos, lingüísticos y religiosos. La encrucijada de varios criterios y factores – sean los tradicionales, sean los de índole socio-económica – representa el desafío de las ethnic-construed territorial identity, y implica una renovada valoración y evaluación de los mismo criterios que rigen las formas de demarcación territorial.Abstract This article examines the accommodation of divided societies through constituent units, and concentrates on “legal geography” as a principle of organization in multi- or bi-ethnic federal states. It then considers the key concepts related thereto: regional demarcation and territorial alteration. Comparative legal studies show that divided societies can be governed through territorial demarcation and alteration. However, ethnic-based demarcation is currently under strain. Indeed, economic factors reduce the relevance of ethnic, linguistic and religious factors. The intersection of traditional and socioeconomic factors represents a challenge to ethnic-construed territorial identity, and implies a reassessment of the criteria presiding over political demarcation.

A Conceptual Shift in Studies of Belonging and the Politics of Belonging

The study of belonging, its underlying notions, and the politics of belonging shows that social, political, and territorial demarcations are still based on essentialist conceptions of the collective. These are often applied and reproduced in the social sciences as a result of methodological nationalism. Space-sensitive studies of migration and globalization and a return to the material have recently challenged social constructivist lines of argumentation and have provoked a conceptual shift from analytical categories with inherent spatiality, territoriality, and boundary marking to concepts based on movement and flow. In this paper the analysis of belonging and the related politics of belonging in migration studies incorporates space as an analytical category that cross-cuts established categorizations such as race, class, gender, and stage in the life cycle, and integrates a material semiotic perspective more systematically into the study of social relations at the intersection of the social categories mentioned. A new concept of belonging is defined which reflects the complex relations that individuals have with other people, circulating objects, artefacts, and changing social, political, and cultural landscapes, thus mirroring both the material conditions and the underlying power relations. Such an understanding of belonging proceeds from social naturalizations and fixations to the multiplicity and situatedness of individual attachments, which entangle social, imagined, and sensual-material relations that are constantly re-articulated and re-negotiated by actors in their day-to-day practices. In such a reading, belonging comes into being as a result of individual life stories, versatile contexts, and situated experiences and acts. In times of constant exchange through travel, mass media, and communication technologies, the conceptualization of belonging questions established sociocultural and political demarcations, indicates the compatibility of ascribed socio-cultural difference and stresses the permeability of borderlines. A space-sensitive theorization of social relations and belonging opens up new perspectives on the question of how social collectives are naturalized and by whom, and under which conditions they open up to new forms of belonging; it thus brings forth new findings about collectivization, social mobilization, and change.

Ordenamiento y demarcacion territorial como instrumento de planificacion para el desarrollo sostenible de la region Ancash

El departamento de Ancash al igual que otros departamentos del país, históricamente ha sido ocupado con fines de poblamiento y aprovechamiento de sus distintos recursos naturales en forma espontánea y obedeciendo a coyunturas políticas, sociales y económicas nacionales e internacionales; que ha generado como consecuencia desequilibrios territoriales a favor de la franja costanera y del Callejón de Huaylas, en detrimento del área andina y del valle del Marañón. Lo anterior sirve como marco de referencia para hacer un diagnóstico geográficopolítico- administrativo-socioeconómico-poblacional, que confirma que la demarcación política de los distintos distritos y provincias de este departamento se encuentran indefinidos e imprecisos en algunos casos, lo que condiciona y dificulta una buena gestión, generando problemas territoriales; en donde el ordenamiento territorial como instrumento de planificación ayuda a corregir estos desequilibrios y fomenta la integración en base a las condiciones geográficas, histórico-socioeconómico-culturales de los pueblos.

Modernity with a Cold War face: reimagining the nation in Chinese literature across the 1949 divide

The year 1949 witnessed China divided into multiple political and cultural entities. How did this momentous shift affect Chinese literary topography? Modernity with a Cold War Face examines the competing, converging, and conflicting modes of envisioning a modern nation in mid-twentieth century Chinese literature. Bridging the 1949 divide in both literary historical periodization and political demarcation, Xiaojue Wang proposes a new framework to consider Chinese literature beyond national boundaries, as something arising out of the larger global geopolitical and cultural conflict of the Cold War.Examining a body of heretofore understudied literary and cultural production in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas during a crucial period after World War II, Wang traces how Chinese writers collected artistic fragments, blended feminist and socialist agendas, constructed ambivalent stances toward colonial modernity and an imaginary homeland, translated foreign literature to shape a new Chinese subjectivity, and revisited the classics for a new time. Reflecting historical reality in fictional terms, their work forged a path toward multiple modernities as they created alternative ways of connection, communication, and articulation to uncover and undermine Cold War dichotomous antagonism.

Moving in and Out of Borders: Othello, Caliban, and Conrad in Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North

Borders can be lines on a map, marked with flags, fences, or barbed wire, or they can be boundaries and limit conditions, as much a part of mental baggage as to do with zones of geographical and political demarcation. In postcolonial experience, a border is a cultural barrier more often breached than respected. This paper examines the kind of breaking through boundaries represented in the novel Season of Migration to the North (1966) by the Sudanese novelist Tayib Salih. In his narrative, the protagonist is characterized in a manner that hovers and moves to-andfro across boundaries such as that between realism and allegory, between autobiography and intertexuality, and between literal and figurative acts of translation. The protagonist crosses the literal border from his colonized South to the North where the colonizer lives. He also breaks down the barriers that separate civility and being civilized from rapacity and barbarism. Salih`s novel crosses over into the mode of a fable, which negotiates a crossing between a tale set in England and the Sudan and a fable in which a North African assumes and inverts the typologies and stereotypes associated with Shakespeare`s Othello and Caliban. Salih`s fiction provides a fascinating reflection on a singular aspect of the postcolonial condition which the paper attempts to explicate: the compulsion to create psychic borders, and the equally strong compulsion to break through such borders and boundaries.

Toward an Ethics of Embodiment

This article explores the ethical commitments of Grossman’s novel that derive from its attunement to living beings at the most fundamental level of life. The novel’s absorption in the textures and rhythms of ordinary experience supports an ethic of animate being that takes in the human and the animal, as well as the animal vitality of dirt and ground, hillside and desert. Thus Grossman honors the quixotic quest of his characters to resist the political demarcation of territorial claims, whether to bodies or to land.