Nature And National Identity After Communism

In this groundbreaking book, Katrina Schwartz examines the intersection of environmental politics, globalization, and national identity in a small East European country: modern-day Latvia. Based on extensive ethnographic research and lively discourse analysis, it explores that country's post-Soviet responses to European assistance and political pressure in nature management, biodiversity conservation, and rural development. These responses were shaped by hotly contested notions of national identity articulated as contrasting visions of the “ideal” rural landscape. The players in this story include Latvian farmers and other traditional rural dwellers, environmental advocates, and professionals with divided attitudes toward new European approaches to sustainable development. An entrenched set of forestry and land management practices, with roots in the Soviet and pre-Soviet eras, confront growing international pressures on a small country to conform to current (Western) notions of environmental responsibility—notions often perceived by Latvians to be at odds with local interests. While the case is that of Latvia, the dynamics Schwartz explores have wide applicability and speak powerfully to broader theoretical discussions about sustainable development, social constructions of nature, the sources of nationalism, and the impacts of globalization and regional integration on the traditional nation-state.

Cities after the Fall of Communism traces the cultural reorientation of East European cities since 1989. Analyzing the architecture, commemorative practices, and urban planning of cities such as Lviv, Vilnius, and Odessa, the contributors to this volume demonstrate how history may be selectively re-imagined in light of present political and cultural realities. These essays show that while East European cities gravitate nostalgically toward Habsburg, Baltic, Imperial Russian, and Germanic pasts, they are also embracing new urban identities grounded in ethnic-national, European, Western, and global contexts. Ultimately, the editors argue that one can see a "New Europe" taking shape in these cities, where a strained discourse between different versions of the past and variously envisioned futures is being set in stone, steel, and glass.

"Controversial, entertaining and alarmingly topical ... a delight to read."Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph

Why has communism’s humanist quest for freedom and social justice without exception resulted in the reign of terror and lies? The authors of this collective volume address this urgent question covering the one hundred years since Lenin’s coup brought the first communist regime to power in St. Petersburg, Russia in November 1917. The first part of the volume is dedicated to the varieties of communist fantasies of salvation, and the remaining three consider how communist experiments over many different times and regions attempted to manage economics, politics, as well as society and culture. Although each communist project was adapted to the situation of the country where it operated, the studies in this volume find that because of its ideological nature, communism had a consistent penchant for totalitarianism in all of its manifestations. This book is also concerned with the future. As the world witnesses a new wave of ideological authoritarianism and collectivistic projects, the authors of the nineteen essays suggest lessons from their analyses of communism’s past to help better resist totalitarian projects in the future.

National parks are one of the most important and successful institutions in global environmentalism. Since their first designation in the United States in the 1860s and 1870s they have become a global phenomenon. The development of these ecological and political systems cannot be understood as a simple reaction to mounting environmental problems, nor can it be explained by the spread of environmental sensibilities. Shifting the focus from the usual emphasis on national parks in the United States, this volume adopts an historical and transnational perspective on the global geography of protected areas and its changes over time. It focuses especially on the actors, networks, mechanisms, arenas, and institutions responsible for the global spread of the national park and the associated utilization and mobilization of asymmetrical relationships of power and knowledge, contributing to scholarly discussions of globalization and the emergence of global environmental institutions and governance.

This book provides a case study on the ongoing impact of displacement and encampment of refugees who do not have access to resettlement support services or are resettled in locations of low cultural and linguistic diversity. Following the journeys of displaced families and children who left Europe after the Second World War to seek resettlement in Queensland, Australia, this book brings together the rarely heard voices of these refugees from written archives, along with material from more than 50 oral history interviews. It thoroughly explores the impacts of displacement, encampment, and eventually resettlement in locations without resettlement facilities or support networks. In so doing, the book brings to light important findings that can be used to help understand the experiences of those impacted by contemporary refugee crises and can be considered when developing responses and assistance in locations where there is a lack of diversity or support for refugees. This book will be of interest to scholars and students studying and researching the history of migration, sociology of migration, psychological effects of migration and displacement, as well as demography. Practitioners and policymakers will also be able to draw from this book when considering the long-term impacts of responses to contemporary refugee crises.

The past three decades have seen the rise of a transnational European cinema, not only in terms of production, but also in terms of a growing focus on multi-ethnic themes within the European context. The collapse of the Iron Curtain and the subsequent (and on-going) enlargement of the European Union have played a major role in this shift from national to trans-European filmmaking. Its most obvious on-screen manifestation is the increased visibility of immigrant groups from former communist countries, ranging from Krzysztof Kies ́lowski’s Blanc (1994) and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort (2000) to Hans-Christian Schmid’s Lichter (2003), Ken Loach’s It is a Free World (2007) and Bobby Paunescu’s Francesca (2009). Through its focus on cinematic representations of post-1989 migration from the former Eastern Bloc to Western Europe, When East and West Meet seeks to examine what these films reveal about the cultures producing and consuming these migration narratives and to what extent these images function as a site for new (trans)regional, (trans)national and European identities. When East Meets West explicitly crosses the boundaries of national cinemas and sets out to uncover an array of common tropes and narrative devices that characterize the influences and portrayals of immigration from the former Eastern Bloc.

A comparative analysis of the foreign policies of eight post-communist states which considers the extent to which official communist ideology has been replaced by nationalism and establishes how these states express their national identities through foreign policy.