Elusive Margins

As the modern state enters the stage of its liquidation, it is apparent that public discussion regarding ethnoracial diversity dominates the social sphere. Diversity has become a myth ready for consumption in various cultural spaces: politics, literature, mass media, advertising, leisure activities. This book deals with the patterns of exclusion, falsehood, and disorder constructed systematically by power elites in order to obscure diversity and quash the autonomy of subordinated communities. William Anselmi and Kosta Gouliamos go beyond critical analysis by proposing a nomadic-transcultural federation to replace the existing model of a multicultural Leviathan; such a proposal and plan for action can stop citizens from becoming consumers of elusive margins.

The first comprehensive study of the modern movement in Serbian architecture.

The field of law and religion studies has undergone a profound transformation over the last thirty years, looking beyond traditional relationships between State and religious communities to include rights of religious liberty and the role of religion in the public space. This handbook features new, specially commissioned papers by a range of eminent scholars that offer a comprehensive overview of the field of law and religion. The book takes on an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from anthropology, sociology, theology and political science in order to explore how laws and court decisions concerning religion contribute to the shape of the public space. Key themes within the book include: Religions symbols in the public space; Religion and security; Freedom of religion and cultural rights; Defamation and hate speech; Gender, religion and law; This advanced level reference work is essential reading for students, researchers and scholars of law and religion, as well as policy makers in the field.

The Optimum Imperative examines architecture’s multiple entanglements within the problematics of Socialist lifestyle in postwar Czechoslovakia. Situated in the period loosely bracketed by the signing of the Munich accords in 1938, which affected Czechoslovakia’s entrance into World War II, and the Warsaw Pact troops’ occupation of Prague in 1968, the book investigates three decades of Czech architecture, highlighting a diverse cast of protagonists. Key among them are the theorist and architect Karel Honzík and a small group of his colleagues in the Club for the Study of Consumption; the award-winning Czechoslovak Pavilion at the 1958 World Expo in Brussels; and SIAL, a group of architects from Liberec that emerged from the national network of Stavoprojekt offices during the reform years, only to be subsumed back into it in the wake of Czechoslovak normalization. This episodic approach enables a long view of the way that the project of constructing Socialism was made disciplinarily specific for architecture, through the constant interpretation of Socialist lifestyle, both as a narrative framework and as a historical goal. Without sanitizing history of its absurd contortions in discourse and in daily life, the book takes as its subject the complex and dynamic relationships between Cold War politics, state power, disciplinary legitimating narratives, and Czech architects’ optimism for Socialism. It proposes that these key dimensions of practicing architecture and building Socialism were intertwined, and even commensurate at times, through the framework of Socialist lifestyle.

One of the most misunderstood corners of Europe, Serbia is a spirited and fascinating country. Belgrade and second city Novi Sad are lively, cosmopolitan and welcoming, while rural Serbia, with its hidden monasteries and breathtaking countryside, is an undiscovered gem. This edition of the guide features the burgeoning music festival scene, bird-watching, wine-tasting and Serbia's growing litany of sporting stars such as Novak Djokovic. This edition includes a new section on the Danube cycling route with details on where to stop, where to shop and sights to see on the way. Updated throughout, the listings include boutique hotels, eco-lodges and backpacker hostels to cater for all budgets. The guide goes into greater depth than its competitors with more detail on the history, politics, culture and sights and more detailed reviews of hotels and restaurants.

This volume deals with the relation between heritage, history and politics in the Balkans. Contributions examine diverse ways in which material and immaterial heritage has been articulated, negotiated and manipulated since the nineteenth century. The major question addressed here is how modern Balkan nations have voiced claims about their past by establishing ’proof’ of a long historical presence on their territories in order to legitimise national political narratives. Focusing on claims constructed in relation to tangible evidence of past presence, especially architecture and townscape, the contributors reveal the rich relations between material and immaterial conceptions of heritage. This comparative take on Balkan public uses of the past also reveals many common trends in social and political practices, ideas and fixations embedded in public and collective memories. Balkan Heritages revisits some general truths about the Balkans as a region and a category, in scholarship and in politics. Contributions to the volume adopt a transnational and trans-disciplinary perspective of Balkan identities and heritage(s), viewed here as symbolic resources deployed by diverse local actors with special emphasis on scholars and political leaders.

A guiding principle in creating Political Marketing has been to examine the ways in which culture, politics, and society interrelate in the field of political marketing. In the course of the book, the editors and contributors consider ‘culture’ as a distinctive concept with transformative capacities that need further and deeper development in the engineering of the political marketing process. This may be introduced and, consequently, lead to broad formulation of a ‘campaign culture’. Indeed, understanding and adapting a broader ‘campaign culture’, political marketing models may be seen as sets of pathways of key resources resulting viability in human assets, forms of influence, class stratification, alternative flows of information or networking and intercultural knowledge – sharing activity. This book consists of 18 chapters which deal with aspects of political marketing and ‘campaign culture.’ Theoretical chapters are found first, followed by two chapters that deal with theoretical issues which became a subject of research. Next presented are the articles that study aspects of electoral behavior, followed by the papers that analyze aspects of nationalism & national identity. Finally, the book concludes with three case studies on various issues in political marketing.