Political Manifestations Research Articles

The role of economic and cultural changes in the rise of far‐right in Greece: A regional analysis

AbstractThe recent strengthening of right‐wing and far‐right populism is one of the greatest political manifestations of our times and a dominant feature of the current European political landscape. In Greece, its rise coincided with a period of a prolonged financial aid programme (“bailouts”) imposing harsh austerity measures and deep structural reforms. The objective of this study is to assess the extent to which the spatially differentiated gains of Golden Dawn, one of the most anti‐establishment, anti‐migrant and anti‐EU political parties in Europe, were due to (socio‐)economic or cultural changes (or both) that took place in the country in recent years. The findings provide evidence in favour of the combined role of (socio‐)economic and cultural grievances; however, the former seem to be more important than the latter.

Accounting for a riot: Religious identity, denying one's prejudice, and the tool of blasphemy

This paper presents an analysis of interviews of participants in a political manifestation in Indonesia about the reasons for the rally and the resulting riot. The rally was held in the middle of the Jakarta gubernatorial election, against a non-Muslim incumbent who was accused of having insulted the Quran. We argue that there is a deep relationship between social identities and religion, which has implications for societal togetherness and political freedom. Using a snowball technique, we interviewed 16 Muslims who had participated in this rally. The findings suggest that 1) even though the rally was held in the middle of an election, the demonstrators denied that the rally was politically motivated; 2) Those demonstrators who thought that intruders had infiltrated the rally, maintained that the intruders are to be held responsible for any violence, but not the ‘actual’ participants. 3) Interviewees claimed that their actions were not motivated by anti-Chinese prejudice, although traces of racist thinking can be found in their statements. The findings are discussed before the background of social representations, social identity, theories of collective action, and the black sheep effect.

Sound installation art and the intervention of urban public space in Latin America

This paper explores the relationship between sound installation art and the appropriation of urban public spaces in Latin America. Latin America is a continent full of contrasts, and in various places throughout the countries, space refl ects the history of each nation through its architecture. We fi nd pre-Hispanic pyramids coexisting with colonial churches and modern buildings. In the last two decades, these sites have been used for purposes other than those for which they were created. On the one hand, these spaces have been used to provide cultural experiences for people in areas that cannot access traditional venues such as concert halls. On the other hand, political manifestations have adopted such places as icons of social change, and sound has been used to provide a social/cultural meaning, using the space as a medium. These activities have changed the ways in which audiences and creators relate to sound and space. This research paper explores how sound art and technology have been used to re-formulate public space in cities. The study analyses the strategies of major works and installations (that have used space as a medium of creation over the last twenty years in Latin America) from social and spatial perspectives. This paper highlights the potential of sound installation art and intervention of space as a way to engage audiences in urban contexts.

The city as a playground: Skate parks, inclusion and new territory

There are two central topics in this study: the first topic relates to the physical space created by skateboarding, while the other relates to social capital derived from skateboard culture. The paper analyzes the case studies of three skate parks, in which the theme of social inclusion is the theoretical framework. Looking through the history of skateboarding and integration of skate parks as a part of the urban environment, the theme is concerned with bringing the openness that is part of the design of our public spaces to skateboarding culture, and in general, to the feeling of belonging as an essential part of building social capital. In the manner of shared space, public space has started to be used as a communication platform between community members looking for expression of their needs and desires. The benefits of the skateboarding settings have rarely been the subject of empirical research, so these case studies will deepen our knowledge on why social bonds connected to this sport make such a significant contribution in city landscapes. Individuality and its political manifestation have a structural role in this paper: from the appearance of the architectural figuration to the idea about a movement and a settlement, which for architecture, can be seen in the form of new territories.

Prodor nacionalsocijalizma - Nemci Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1941. godine

The German community of the Yugoslav Kingdom was, for the most part, concentrated in the territory of today's Vojvodina. Their centuries-long presence in this area indicates their readiness to live in a multinational environment, but also their ambition to live better than others, both in a cultural and economic sense. The attitude of this community towards the newly formed Yugoslav state was cautious, marked by concern and reserve, but it was not as negative as the one seen in the Hungarian community. The Germans intended to preserve their cultural identity through the organization of associations, and then to found a party. Their ambitions grew with the strengthening of the Third German Reich, when their political manifestation became more provocative and militant.

Metaphoric Conceptualization of Social Reality in the Language of News Media

Today, social reality can hardly be viewed as the one-state-one-nationone language ideological framework (Bauman and Briggs, 2003). The modern multilingual and multicultural communities are inclined to examine social reality in a multiple variety of socio-economic and political manifestations and forms. To understand how social reality can be explored through examining certain socio-political processes in a country, the present paper aims at analysing the role of conceptual metaphor in cases when political scandals, involving corruption charges of high-ranking officials in Latvia are considered. For this purpose, the present study has focused on the analysis of selected commentaries that deal with corruption charges which were revealed in December 2019 issues of the magazine IR. The Latvian-origin weekly magazine IR was selected deliberately because; on the one hand, it has an enormous influence on how social reality is constructed and perceived by Latvian citizens. On the other hand, it was important to reveal that the evidence-based theoretical premises on the relationship between metaphor and society in the English language are applicable and work cross-linguistically in Latvian. The research presents a case study type. With the focus on the conceptualization of corruption-related social problems, selected discursive practices that dealt with the corruption cases being revealed by the news medium IR were considered. The results demonstrated that the journalists of the commentaries tend to take a critical discourse perspective on the representation of corruption-related issues and political events, which can be represented at the levels of abstraction. Conceptual metaphors contributed to mental representations of political issues and communication of social reality by conveying additional negative evaluation of such an inherently derogatory concept as corruption. The metaphors CORRUPTION IS DIRT, CORRUPTION IS GARBAGE, CORRUPTION IS NUCLEAR DISASTER, CORRUPTION IS A DISEASE also fulfil a cognitive function, helping to understand the concept of corruption in terms of another more concrete concept. The use of metaphors in the commentaries may have causal effects such as bringing about changes in the readers’ knowledge, beliefs and attitudes.

“Who is a Fascist?” Jews, Nazis and Stalinist Anti-Fascism

The struggle against global fascism constituted a central thrust of Soviet and Comintern policy throughout the Stalin Revolution and the early 1930s. Yet even as Soviet leaders and policy makers railed against Nazi and Fascist enemies abroad, contemporaneous anti-fascist discourses produced within the Soviet Union revealed highly contradictory and ambivalent depictions of internal enemies who supposedly aligned themselves with the global fascist movement. This article focuses upon one of the most controversial manifestations of Soviet anti-fascist politics through an analysis of visual and rhetorical depictions of alleged Jewish fascists in Soviet Yiddish and Russian publications from Moscow and Minsk during the 1930s. It examines how depictions of alleged Jewish fascist collaborators, produced largely by Jewish actors in Yiddish public discourses during the 1930s, served to reinscribe “traditional” and non-Bolshevik Jewish groups – including religious Jews, Zionists, and capitalist class enemies – as intractable existential political enemies. As depictions of alleged Jewish fascist collaborators migrated to the Russian press during the Great Terror, they focused with increasing singularity on the alleged fascist collaboration of Jewish Bolsheviks and, above all, Trotskyists. Increasingly bestial and demonic in representation, such images not only highlighted the alleged political unreliability of Jews across the political spectrum, but also served to depict Jewish enemies as being intrinsically, inherently, and biologically outside of the acceptable Soviet body politic.

Current Political Manifestations of Regionalism in the Context of the Power Crisis in Ukraine

This article analyzes the manifestations of regionalism in the context of a deep socio-political crisis in Ukraine. With the development of the political crisis that followed the coup d'etat in February 2014 in Ukraine, there was a noticeable actualization of issues and problems related to regionalism, society as a whole demonstrated a request for the redistribution of powers between the power center and the regions. This is reflected in numerous initiatives of regional authorities and public organizations aimed at expanding the financial base, functions and rights of local authorities and self-government, as well as in policy documents of political forces. At the same time, in some cases, the idea of establishing a contractual relationship between the Central government and the regions was put forward, which is typical for the Federal model of government. In response to this request, the Executive branch made another attempt to implement local government reform under the slogan of decentralizing the country's state structure. Since 2014, Ukraine has developed two multidirectional trends – centrifugal and centripetal, the ratio of which will determine the dynamics and severity of political manifestations of regionalism. Despite numerous autonomist statements, Ukrainian regionalism remains within the "rigid" model formed in the post-Soviet period. The conflict in the South-East of the country and the deep involvement of the leading powers – Russia, the United States and the European Union-are the determining factor that predetermined the "freezing" of regionalization processes in Ukraine after 2014. After the signing of the Minsk agreements, the implementation of which means for Ukraine to introduce elements of Federal relations into the system of state structure, the reform of the state structure and territorial administration has become inextricably linked with Kiev's strategy towards the self-proclaimed republics of Donbass. Manifestations of regionalism were perceived by Kiev to a large extent in the context of threats to the territorial integrity of the country, which significantly limited the possibility of implementing the policy of decentralization. In addition, Russia and the United States have demonstrated in practice different approaches to the interpretation and implementation of the Minsk agreements, which has had a negative impact on the regionalization processes in Ukraine. The nature of the processes of regionalization in Ukraine allows to draw Parallels with the situation in Transnistria and around him, and to talk about common Moldovan and Ukrainian models hard regionalism, the hallmark of which is the transformation of the regionalization processes in a tool to achieve political goals of Russia and the West in conflict with the nature of their interaction on post-Soviet space.

Falra hányt betűk: késő gótikus falikrónikák a középkori Magyarországon

During the 15th and 16th centuries, a number of long inscriptions were painted on the walls of parish churches in the territory of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom. The first known example is in the St Elisabeth’s of Kassa (Kaschau, Košice, Slovakia). The earlier inscription in the north-east chapel describes the events between 1387 and 1439 while it is continued in the south transept with a political manifestation on the side of the new-born King Ladislas V, opposed by Wladislas I. Another wall-chronicle is readable in the entrance hall of the St James’ in Lőcse (Leutschau, Levoča, Slovakia). Here the inscription, dated to ca 1500, commemorates events between 1431 and 1494, including local fires and diseases, the coronation of Ladisla V and Wladislas II and the royal meeting of John Albert of Poland and Wladislas II of Hungary held at the city in 1494. On the other side of the entrance hall, a detailed Last Judgement was painted, as the final act of world history. The inscriptions of Lőcse are usually interpreted as a manifestation of the local identity of the Saxons in the Szepes (Zips, Spiš, Slovakia) region, enjoying special privileges. This is probably also true for the second group of wall-chronicles, to be found in Transylvania in the important Saxon towns. The only surviving example is in Szeben (Hermannstadt, Sibiu, Romania), in the gallery of the western hall (Ferula). Beside some national events (coronation of King Matthias, death of Louis II) it is dealing with Transylvanian affairs between 1409 and 1566. A similar chronicle has been documented in Brassó (Kronstadt, Braşov, Romania), which started the narrative with the immigration of the Saxons and ended with 1571, with a special attention to the Ottoman wars. Unfortunately the inscriptions have been covered after the fire of 1689. Other wall-chronicles are documented by secondary sources in Segesvár (Säsßburg, Sighișoara), Medgyes (Mediasch, Mediaș), Beszterce (Bistritz, Bistrița), Muzsna (Meschen, Moșna), Baráthely (Pretai, Brateiu) and Ecel (Hetzeldorf, Ațel, all in Romania). While all these were written in Latin, a Hungarian inscription has been preserved in the Calvinist church of Berekeresztúr (Bâra, Romania) in the Szeklerland from the early 17th century. Although a misunderstanding of the sources led some scholars to suppose an inscription or an images cycle with secular content in Buda, these passages refer in reality to the Franciscan friary at Chambery. In international comparison, the Gothic wall-chronicles seem to be a rarity; the best example is known from the cathedral of Genoa, where the rebuilding of the cathedral in the early 14th century is connected to the legendary origin of the city, counterbalancing the civil war between the citizens.Decorating the walls of churches with letters instead of images is certainly aniconic, but not necessarily un-pretentious. Letters always play a decorative function whenever written on the walls. The letters, especially for the illiterate people, was a special type of ornament. Nevertheless, inscriptions, as far as their letters are readable and languages are understandable, tend to be informative. Interpreting their content depends on different levels of literacy. But they work for all as visual symbols. The longish Latin wall chronicles of Late Gothic parish churches were probably understood by the rich patricians; but the large surfaces close to the entrances might have been meaningful for all others who recognized their significance in local identity-building. The illiterate local people of the Protestant villages were unable to decipher the exact meaning of the inscriptions, even if they were in their native Hungarian language. However, these letters were necessarily eloquent for the entire community: the fact itself that there are letters decorating the walls instead of images was meaningful, reflecting the transformation of Christian culture. The letters themselves, legible or not, had a symbolic value which can be decoded taking into consideration their location, forms and context.

O campo universitário como espaço de expectativa autoritária

A proposta do presente estudo é analisar a relação entre duas modalidades de adquirir e professar a cultura que concorrem no universo intelectual argentino durante as primeiras décadas do século XX, a saber, a esfera privada de produção cultural e a universidade oficial, ligada ao Estado. Trata-se de compreender de que forma a ampla rede de revistas literárias que caracteriza a Buenos Aires desse contexto se desenvolveu em relação de tensão com a profissionalização da Universidade que se acentuou a partir da Reforma de Córdoba, em 1918. Ao fim, este artigo pretende lançar luz sobre a possibilidade de abordar o campo intelectual a partir da inspiração de Carl Schorske, em Viena Fim de Século, considerando que os fenômenos intelectuais e culturais não se sucedem ou se enfrentam apenas em si mesmos, como unidades temáticas consistentes (diacrônicas) mas, sim, que eles estão relacionados, também, de modo sincrônico, às demais manifestações culturais e políticas de seu tempo.

Hindutva’s Blood

In this article we examine blood as a medium and metaphor for Hindutva’s political transactions. Specifically, we identify three ways in which blood operates in Hindutva thought and practice. First, it serves to create a spatial geographic whole – an original Hindu nation whose inhabitants share the same blood. Second, blood serves to mediate between the violent and non-violent aspects of Hindu nationalism, authorizing and reconciling present acts of violence with a supposed Hindu capacity for heroic restraint. And third, blood serves to establish a temporal continuum between a Hindutva past, present and future, writing Hindu nationalist thought and action backwards into Indian history, and forwards to threaten future bloodshed against non-adherents. In these three ways, Hindutva imaginations and extractions of blood work through each other. In present-day India, these three political manifestations of blood – as a marker of exclusion, as mediating non-violence, and as premonitory threat – have all appeared in the Citizenship Amendment Act controversy and around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As blood overflows through time and space, it threatens to erase difference and legitimize violence while further extending the ideology’s reach.

WATER SECURITY IN ECOLOGICAL POLITICS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC ERA

The major challenges related to water security today are efforts to reduce flood risk; and efforts to increase water supply for communities, industry and agriculture. The ecohydrological approach is present as a solution to these two challenges. On the other hand, the ecological problem with the issue of water security in it has developed over time and awaits real action by the government. In a political framework, ecological issues have been considered marginal and lacking in priority instead of being dominated by other fields, such as economy, law, and infrastructure. In fact, the government is to be committed to promoting eco-friendly development. In the current COVID-19 pandemic, leadership that cares about the environment as a manifestation of ecological politics is a necessity, and is expected to be present both substantially and factually. With the spirit of ecological leadership, strengthening the environmental sector will be on par with other sectors. 
 Keywords: water security, eco-friendly development, ecological politics, ecological leadership. 
 

Hizbullah’s Post-Islamist Trends in the Performing Arts

This article outlines Hizbullah’s shift to post-Islamism and its various cultural activities in Lebanese society that underpin this shift. The Party’s involvement in these activities is integrated in current research on post-Islamism and its various social, political, and cultural manifestations. In its Islamist stage, Hizbullah anathematized the Lebanese political system and state institutions. In its post-Islamist phase, Hizbullah became pragmatic by embarking on a policy of opening-up (infitah) in politics along with cultural and social practices. This article studies Hizbullah’s popular culture and lifestyles by focusing on its purposeful art or ‘resistance art’, which is a cultural resistance against oppression, domestic deprivation, disenfranchisement, and repression, as well as foreign aggression, invasion, occupation, and subjugation. Hizbullah exploits the concepts of cultural citizenship and cultural politics to encourage, in mixed gender spaces, purposeful performing arts: music, dancing, singing, revolutionary theater, and satire. Hizbullah appears to equate modernity with European art forms rather than indigenous forms. In its ideology and politics, Hizbullah fluctuated between Islamism and post-Islamism. While in its performing arts, Hizbullah conveyed a post-Islamist face legitimized by the principle of maslaha (public interest).

Analysis of President Xi’s Speech at the Extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit in light of Systemic Functional Grammar

Politics is a genre of language, and language is the manifestation of politics (Mazrui, 2008). Political discourse not only plays an important role in the process of national external communication but also conveys certain ideology and political intentions. Based on interpersonal function in Systemic Functional Grammar and using President Xi’s speech at the Extraordinary G20 Leaders’ Summit as the original data, this paper analyzes and explores how this speech can achieve discourse function through personal pronouns, mood, and modality. In addition, this paper reveals how various linguistic resources are used to realize interpersonal meaning in political discourse.

Präventionspolitik – Nicht nur ein Themenfeld für das Gesundheitsressort

Zusammenfassung Effektive Gesundheitsförderungs- und Präventionsmaßnahmen adressieren übergeordnete, strukturelle Risikofaktoren übertragbarer wie nichtübertragbarer Krankheiten. Diese sind zumeist außerhalb des Gesundheitssektors verortet und erfordern einen Health in All Policies (HiAP) Ansatz. Die weltweite Ausbreitung des SARS-CoV-2-Virus verdeutlicht die Notwendigkeit einer ressortübergreifenden Präventionspolitik mit klarer HiAP-Perspektive und politisch institutioneller Verankerung.

Matar’s Representation of Cultural and Political Manifestations of Libya

Writings by Libyans in Western countries remained dormant until recently. Autobiography has been a most favorite genre for the Libyan writers, through which prominent figures on the Libyan scene started communicating their experiences and sufferings under Qaddafi’s regime. They found in literature the means to resist “silence and misrepresentation” (Swindells 7). Ibrahim al-Koni, Ahmed Fagih, and Hisham Matar are some of the Libyan novelists who are familiar with history, landscape and cultural practices of the Libyans. Hisham Matar paints a clear picture of complex and intertwined political events that may have led to the fall of Muammar Qaddafi himself.In almost all of his writings, Matar is profoundly concerned with the Libyan political and cultural affairs. He might have chosen exotic settings and peculiar forms for his novels, but deep inside, and at the core of all he writes, there is that feeling that his target is the Libyan locale and the Libyan citizen, politically and culturally. Underneath the tragedy of the loss of his father, the author devoted a large part of his novels to the atrocities of the Qaddafi regime in a clear token of protest against it yet in the form of cultural rather than violent resistance.Hisham Matar resorts to the cultural and political manifestations of Libya to shape the consciousness of his readers, making them much more aware of the dilemma of Libyan people in the postmodern age. He succeeded to attract the attention of Western society to his father's case, and also he shows the potential of utilizing the English language in expressing the nature and stories of the Libyan community

GAMBÁS: ARTES MUSICAIS, IDENTIDADES E RESISTÊNCIAS NA DIÁSPORA NEGRA NO AMAZONAS (SÉCULOS XVII AO XX)

This text seeks to recover historical evidence of the presence of the Opossum as part of cultural, political and knowledge manifestations in the context of a hierarchical and unequal society, crossed by colonial and Eurocentric structures. In this direction, we seek to understand the musical manifestation as a political component of the African agency - enslaved or free - building spaces of autonomy and freedom, affirming knowledge and cultures of African origins. To do so, we used news from newspapers from the 19th century, reports from foreign travelers and notes from scholars in ethnography who passed through the region. Indeed, it is intended to contribute to bringing to the center of the debate about the black presence in Amazonas the importance of recovering the trajectory of musical arts of African origin and understanding them as part of the strategies of struggle and resistance.

Judith Butler: um formidável “erro” de tradução

O presente artigo aborda um acontecimento recente ao redor de um problema babélico e, por conseguinte, literário, com o intuito de esclarecer os limites e os poderes da tradução. Não apenas é sabido que a responsabilidade de um tradutor está ligada a critérios empregados em escolhas atinentes às palavras, respeitando ou não a plurívoca matiz de seus significados e, detrás (ou diante) disso, seu sentido, mas, também, o tradutor escolhe, ao traduzir, aquilo que não deve ser traduzido, aquilo que, em determinados contextos, só é dito mantendo-se à distância.

PUBLIC SPHERE OF POLITICS AND DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY: DEMARCATION CRITERIA

The prospects of development of modern political theory in the context of filling the new semantic values of concepts of political discourse, political communication and public political representation are considered. The network of newly established democratic institutions, which required firm defenition, practicing public political debate and not distorted political communication defined. With the help of the comparative method, the common and different conceptual views of political debate in interpreting deliberative democracy and the public sphere of politics studied. The content of the concept of the public sphere of politics as a factor of coverage of the transition of democratic public institutions of transformational countries from the state of declarative to a state of sustainable democracy is discussed. Public sphere of politics as mainly unifying concept that determines the possibility of various aspects of joint interpretation of political realities and possibilities of the political participants’ appearance for any topic studied. The subject areas of the concepts of deliberative politics and the public sphere of politics regarding the ways of personal and institutional self-presentation are determined. The specifics of the reflection of political conflict and political decisions within the limits of the values of the public sphere of politics and deliberative democracy are revealed. The features of common approaches to the interpretation of political pluralism and political competition in the semantic structures of the public sphere of politics and deliberative democracy are explored. It emphasizes the flexibility of the concept of the public sphere of politics as a concept that encompasses a large number of events and phenomena of political communication. The possibility of a non-idealist approach to public political presentations on the Internet is substantiated. The political meaning dimensions of political deliberation and political manifestation which differ in explanations background of individual behavior, based on the ancient principle of political pragmatism and defending of selfish interests considered.The explanatory potential of a deliberative policy and the public sphere of politics is singled out. The peculiarities of crossing the subject areas of the public sphere of politics and deliberative democracy in the context of the functioning of modern civil society are established.

Crisis and extremism. How does an extreme far right emerge in a modern democracy? Evidence from Greece’s Golden Dawn

ABSTRACT We trace the rise of Golden Dawn, one of the most extreme and violent European far-right parties, from the fringe to a prominent position in Greek politics. We use regression analysis to show that its rise is associated with changes in voting behavior caused by the deep socioeconomic crisis the country went through after 2008. We show that the demand factors affecting the GD vote were triggered by structural changes in the supply side and the implosion of the two-party system that followed the signing of the bail-out agreement (Memorandum) with the country’s creditors. Our results have implications about the political manifestation of socioeconomic grievances and their effect on the far-right vote: whereas socioeconomic grievances usually contribute towards a latent dissatisfaction by the electorate, this might need a sudden supply-side trigger in order to manifest itself, giving little warning signs in advance.