Intercultural Conflict And Harmony In The Central European Borderlands

This crossdisciplinary collection of essays combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to re-examine the most influential contemporary theories of intercultural relations and their application in various domains including historiography, sociology and cultural studies. A particular focus lies on Central Europe, historical Banat and Transylvania, but also on the current public policies toward ethnic and religious minorities as well as recent immigrants. It argues that much more complex approaches are needed, both historically and conceptually, in exploring intercultural relations. Thus, the political decision-making in East Central European countries and the European Union as a whole could benefit from a well-informed historical perspective by learning from the successes and errors of their predecessors.

This crossdisciplinary collection of essays combines qualitative and quantitative approaches to re-examine the most influential contemporary theories of intercultural relations and their application in various domains including historiography, sociology and cultural studies. A particular focus lies on Central Europe, historical Banat and Transylvania, but also on the current public policies toward ethnic and religious minorities as well as recent immigrants. It argues that much more complex approaches are needed, both historically and conceptually, in exploring intercultural relations. Thus, the political decision-making in East Central European countries and the European Union as a whole could benefit from a well-informed historical perspective by learning from the successes and errors of their predecessors.

Built on up-to-date field material, this edited volume suggests an anthropological approach to the palimpsest-like milieus of Wrocław, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Chişinău. In these East-Central European borderline cities, the legacies of Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, and violent ethno-nationalism have been revisited in recent decades in search of profound moral reckoning and in response to the challenges posed by the (post-)transitional period. Present shapes and contents of these urban settings derive from combinations of fragmented material environments, cultural continuities and political ruptures, present-day heritage industries and collective memories about the contentious past, expressive architectural forms and less conspicuous meaning-making activities of human actors. In other words, they evolve from perpetual tensions between choices of the past and the burden of the past. A novel feature of this book is its multi-level approach to the analysis of engagements with the lost diversity in historical urban milieus full of post-war voids and ruptures. In particular, the collected studies test the possibility of combining the theoretical propositions of Memory Studies with broader conceptualizations of borderlands, cosmopolitan sociality, urban mythologies, and hybridity. The volume’s contributors are Eleonora Narvselius, Bo Larsson, Natalia Otrishchenko, Anastasia Felcher, Juliet D. Golden, Hana Cervinkova, Paweł Czajkowski, Alexandr Voronovici, Barbara Pabjan, Nadiia Bureiko, Teodor Lucian Moga, and Gaelle Fisher.

Reframing Swedish–American relations by focusing on contacts, crossings, and convergences beyond migration Studies of Swedish American history and identity have largely been confined to separate disciplines, such as history, literature, or politics. In Swedish–American Borderlands, this collection edited by Dag Blanck and Adam Hjorthén seeks to reconceptualize and redefine the field of Swedish–American relations by reviewing more complex cultural, social, and economic exchanges and interactions that take a broader approach to the international relationship—ultimately offering an alternative way of studying the history of transatlantic relations. Swedish–American Borderlands studies connections and contacts between Sweden and the United States from the seventeenth century to today, exploring how movements of people have informed the circulation of knowledge and ideas between the two countries. The volume brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines within the humanities and social sciences to investigate multiple transcultural exchanges between Sweden and the United States. Rather than concentrating on one-way processes or specific national contexts, Swedish–American Borderlands adopts the concept of borderlands to examine contacts, crossings, and convergences between the nations, featuring specific case studies of topics like jazz, architecture, design, genealogy, and more. By placing interactions, entanglements, and cross-border relations at the center of the analysis, Swedish–American Borderlands seeks to bridge disciplinary divides, joining a diverse set of scholars and scholarship in writing an innovative history of Swedish–American relations to produce new understandings of what we perceive as Swedish, American, and Swedish American. Contributors: Philip J. Anderson, North Park U; Jennifer Eastman Attebery, Idaho State U; Marie Bennedahl, Linnaeus U; Ulf Jonas Björk, Indiana U–Indianapolis; Thomas J. Brown, U of South Carolina; Margaret E. Farrar, John Carroll U; Charlotta Forss, Stockholm U; Gunlög Fur, Linnaeus U; Karen V. Hansen, Brandeis U; Angela Hoffman, Uppsala U; Adam Kaul, Augustana College; Maaret Koskinen, Stockholm U; Merja Kytö, Uppsala U; Svea Larson, U of Wisconsin–Madison; Franco Minganti, U of Bologna; Frida Rosenberg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm; Magnus Ullén, Stockholm U.

This volume is meant to be a retrospective look at the field of Comparative Literature as it has developed in the past two decades, as well as a reflection on its future direction if it is to remain relevant (and innovative) as a field of study. From its inception in the second half of the twentieth century, Comparative Literature in the US has been conceived as a cross-disciplinary, cross-national, and crosscultural enterprise that brings together theoretical developments in the Humanities and Social Sciences to reflect on the most important intellectual and cultural trends from a comparative perspective through the lens of literary studies. Most of the founders of Comparative Literature were distinguished European scholars who sought a safe haven from the ravages of World War II and its aftermath and who, understandably focused on the Western literary, intellectual and cultural tradition, which at the time was in danger of being annihilated by the onslaught of Fascism and Communism. With the advent of the age of globalization the field of Comparative Literature has become increasingly diverse and must, therefore, be reoriented and recognized accordingly.

Charts the transnational story of Romanian Germans in modern Europe - their migration, their position as a minority, and their memories.

The expectations of European planners for the gradual disappearance of national borders, and the corresponding prognoses of social scientists, have turned out to be over-optimistic. Borders have not disappeared – not even in a unified and predominantly peaceful Europe – but rather they have changed, become more varied and, in a certain sense, mobile, taking on an important role in the everyday lives of more people than ever before. Furthermore, it is now widely accepted that borders do not just hinder communication and the formation of relationships, but also channel and prefigure them in a positive way. Presenting a number of studies of everyday life in European borderlands, this book addresses the multifarious and complex ways in which borders function as both barriers and bridges. Focusing on ‘established’ Western European borderlands – with the exception of three contrasting cases – the book attempts a turn from conflict to harmony in the study of borderlands and thus examines the more mundane manifestations of border life and the complex, often unconscious motives of everyday cross-border practices. The collection of chapters demonstrates that even in the case of ‘open’ political borders, the border remains an enduring factor that is not adequately described as either a problematic barrier or a desirable bridge. The studies look at bordering processes, not only approaching them from different disciplinary angles – sociology, anthropology, geography, history, political science and literary studies – but also choosing different scales and making comparisons that range from different borders of one country to the reactions and attitudes of different individuals in a single borderland village.

This book offers a substantial and up-dated discussion and presentation of the new European “frontiers” related to complex and controversial social and spatial (re)integration issues in multicultural and border regions. It represents an inter-disciplinary endeavour from human geographers, social and political scientists, and linguists to understand and interpret the current developments of the European “unity in diversity” paradigm, based on simultaneous and continuous processes of social and spatial convergence and divergence, changing territorialities and identities, particularly in the wider EU’s “inner” and “outer” border regions. These studies convincingly display the prominence of context in understanding the regional and local geo-histories and in making sense of the meanings of borders for social communities and wider societies. They also show how (re)integration potentials of border and multicultural regions are strongly dependent on the creation of a viable multi-level social and spatial planning and cooperation system, within which both “conflict-to-harmony” processes and “common cause” behaviours and practices may become effective, and thus give a new role to local communities in the numerous borderlands across Europe. The book offers both a synthesis of current theoretical-methodological approaches and an analysis of selected case-studies provided by internationally-acknowledged scholars. It represents a valuable instrument for researchers and students of social and spatial integration, human and political geographers, social anthropologists, and social and political scientists, as well as language planners.