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The Disaster of European Refugee Policy
This volume addresses the mass arrival of migrants and refugees in Europe in 2015 and 2016, and the crisis of response that unfolded across the continent. The chapters critically discuss this crisis and help the reader to understand why the refugees and migrants fled, what kind of response they faced and what was wrong with the reactions of the states. Despite the fact that all the authors are based in Slovenia, the volume transcends this particular state and covers theoretical and practical aspects of the crisis which are not geographically limited to only one country or region. It addresses a variety of audiences, such as students, researchers, sociologists, political scientists, lawyers, geographers and philosophers, and will appeal to those who seek to understand forced migration and refugee protection, states’ responses to migration and asylum seekers, and the rise of hate speech, racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism in Europe.
Uncertain Path
In this case study of the politics of transition in Eastern Europe, Rudolf Martin Rizman provides a careful, detailed sociological explanation and narrative on the emergence of independent statehood and democracy in Slovenia, a small state whose experience is of interest to policy makers, scholars, and serious students of Eastern Europe. In his focus on the transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime, Rizman analyzes social processes and political issues in the context of the Third Wave of democratization, identifying “zones of certainty and uncertainty.” Challenging many generally accepted ideas about small states and their transitions to democracy, this book places Slovenia...
Peripheral Europe
This book looks at the financial (2007-2008) and the refugee (2015-present) crises and post-crisis development in the EU. The key argument here is that the (mis)management of these crises has been in part conditioned by the specific course of the Europeanisation which occurred during the integration of the post-socialist East. The enlargement processes ran on the premises of a shared European identity, in effect turning the social contract of the new Europe into a cultural contract. This has resulted in betraying the commitment to core values of democratic development, both East and West. The book specifically studies the impact of the “cultural turn” through the discourse of the transition in the Balkan periphery of the ex-Yugoslavian region. Based on rich theoretical and regionally specific empirical research, it will be of interest to scholars in the fields of EU integration, Eastern European studies, cultural studies, studies of post-socialism, and border studies.
Regime Change in the Yugoslav Successor States
In the 1990s, amid political upheaval and civil war, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved into five successor states. The subsequent independence of Montenegro and Kosovo brought the total number to seven. Balkan scholar and diplomat to the region Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski examines four of those states—Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia—and traces their divergent paths toward democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration over the past two decades. Boduszynski argues that regime change in the Yugoslav successor states was powerfully shaped by both internal and external forces: the economic conditions on the eve of independence and transition a...
Social Exclusion, Power, and Video Game Play
While many books and articles are emerging on the new area of game studies and the application of computer games to learning, therapeutic, military, and entertainment environments, few have attempted to contextualize the importance of virtual play within a broader social, cultural, and political environment that raises the question of the significance of work, play, power, and inequalities in the modern world. Studies tend to concentrate on the content of virtual games, but few have questioned how power is produced or reproduced by publishers, gamers, or even social media; how social exclusion (based on race, class, or gender) in the virtual environment is reproduced from the real world; and how actors are able to use new media to transcend their fears, anxieties, prejudices, and assumptions. The articles presented by the contributors in this volume represent cutting-edge research in the area of critical game play with the hope of drawing attention to the need for more studies that are both sociological and critical.
Magic in the Air
In this timely volume, James E. Katz, a leading authority on social consequences of communication technology, analyzes the way new mobile telecommunications affect daily life both in the United States and around the world. Magic in the Air is the most wide-ranging analysis of mobile communication to date. Katz investigates the spectrum of social aspects of the cell phone's impact on society and the way social forces affect the use, display, and re-configuration of the cell phone. Surveying the mobile phone's current and emerging role in daily life, Katz finds that it provides many benefits for the user, and that some of these benefits are subtle and even counter-intuitive. He also identifies...
The Quest for an Ideal Youth in Putin’s Russia II
The so-called Democratic Antifascist Youth Movement “Nashi” represents a crucial case of a post-Orange government-organized formation whose values have broad support in Russian society. Yet, at the same time, in view of the movement’s public scandals, Nashi was also a phenomenon bringing to the fore public reluctance to accept all implications of Putin’s new system. The Russian people’s relatively widespread support for his patriotic policies and conservative values has been evident, but this support is not easily extended to political actors aligned to these values. Using discourse analysis, this book identifies socio-political factors that created obstacles to Nashi’s communication strategies. The book understands Nashi as anticipating an “ideal youth” within the framework of official national identity politics and as an attempt to mobilize largely apolitical youngsters in support of the powers that be. It demonstrates how Nashi’s ambivalent societal position was the result of a failed attempt to reconcile incompatible communicative demands of the authoritarian state and apolitical young.
Democratic Transition in Slovenia
The first of the Yugoslav successor states to successfully build a democratic system and to enter the European Union, Slovenia stands as a model for democratic transition. This ground-breaking volume analyzes the challenges confronting the post-Communist government and evaluates the strategies adopted in refashioning its value system. Sabrina P. Ramet and Danica Fink-Hafner have assembled a team of outstanding specialists to analyze various aspects of the country's transformation from socialism to democracy. The editors note that while a great deal has been written on political and economic questions, relatively little attention has been paid to the transformation and transmission of values ...
