Cosmopolitance

The dislocated, deterritorialized discourse produced by repatriates from formerly European colonies has remained overlooked in academic scholarship. One such group is the Eurasian “Indo” community that has its roots in the former Dutch East Indies, today’s Indonesia. This article focuses on Tjalie Robinson, the intellectual leader of this community from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. The son of a Dutch father and a British-Javanese mother, Robinson became the leading voice of the diasporic Indo community in the Netherlands and later also in the United States. His engagement resulted in the foundation of the Indo magazine Tong Tong and the annual Pasar Malam Besar, what was to become the world’s biggest Eurasian festival. Robinson played an essential role in the cultural awareness and self-pride of the eventually global Indo community through his elaboration of a hybrid and transnational identity concept. By placing his focus “tussen twee werelden” (in-between two worlds) and identifying “mixties-schap” (mestizaje) as the essential characteristic of Indo identity, Robinson anticipated debates on hybridity, transnationalism, and creolism that only much later would draw attention from scholars in the field of postcolonial studies. This article highlights Robinson’s pioneering role in framing a deterritorialized hybrid alternative to nationalist essentialism in the postcolonial era.

Kwame Anthony Appiah (London, 1954) is one of the most renowned philosophers of contemporary thought. His work in the field of ethics and moral reach diverse subjects as sexual orientation, nationalism, social discrimination on ethnic or religious reasons and responsibility of governments and international organizations in development and poverty eradication.

"A magyarországi bolgár kisebbség etnikai és kulturális identitásának demográfiai mutatói a 20. század végén


Penka Peykovska
Történettudományi Intézet - BTA


Összefoglalás




Jelen tanulmány feltárja a magyarországi bolgár közösségen belül a 20. század folyamán végbemenő etnikai folyamatokat a magyar népszámlálások, különösen az 1990-es és 2001-es népszámlálások adatai elemzése segítségével. A statisztikai adatok 20. század utolsó évtizedében történt változásait kritériumokként használjuk az interetnikus folyamatok sajátosságainak meg-állapításához; a belőlük nyerhető információk segítségével az általános tendenciák azonosíthatók; mivel ezek az interetnikus változások a bolgár közösségen belüli társadalmi, gazdasági, politikai és kulturális folyamatokat is tükrözik, figyelembe vettük e közösség kialakulásának és fejlődésének bizonyos sajátosságait is.
A magyarországi bolgár közösség etnikai identitása dinamikus specifikum, amelyet létének sajátos körülményei, valamint a domináns magyar etnikummal való kölcsönhatások befolyásolnak. A magyarországi bolgár közösségen belül lezajló demográfiai folyamatok indikátorai és egyben mozgatórugói bizonyos etnikai folyamatoknak. A népszámlálási adatok lehetővé teszik, hogy nyomon kövessük a magyarországi bolgár közösség demográfiai jellemzőinek változásait az I. világháború végétől a 20. század végéig. Ez az az időszak, amikor kialakult a magyarországi bolgárság, mint közösség és kisebbség, de amikor az előző időszakkal összevetve létszáma csökken és továbbra is diaszpórában élt, erősen szétszórt maradt a városi és elővárosi területeken – ezek mind olyan tényezők, amelyek általában kedvezőtlenek az etnikai identitás megőrzéséhez. A bolgárság ennek ellenére nem volt kitéve az asszimiláció hatásának a fogadó Magyarország részéről, sőt, éppen ellenkezőleg, nagyon jó fogadtatásban részesült, tiszteletben tartva a viszonosság elvét a kétoldalú diplomáciai kapcsolatokban a bulgáriai magyar közösség (bár az lényegesen kisebb számú volt) jóléte érdekében.
A magyarországi bolgár közösség támogatást kapott az anyaországtól, amely tanárokat és papokat küldött Bulgáriából, hogy segítse az általa létre-hozott kulturális intézményeket és különösen az iskolákat.
A bolgárkertészet és a konzervatív, patriarchális kertésztársadalom hanyatlása, az értelmiség létrejötte és növekedése, az egyre több vegyes-házasság megteremtette a feltételeket az integrációs és akkulturációs folya-matokhoz, bár ezzel együtt a magyarországi bolgárok olyan etnostabilizációs intézményeket is létrehoztak, mint a Bolgár Művelődési Ház (épült 1957), Martenica bolgár táncegyüttes (1982), a legújabbak pedig a Bolgár Kulturális Fórum (1999), Pro Kultúra Bulgarika (1992), Pro Scola Bulgarika (1994), a Bolgár Ifjúsági Egyesület (1998),  Haemus c. Kétnyelvű folyóirat (1991), Bolgár Hírek c. havi újság (1996).

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El objetivo del trabajo es presentar el derrotero de la urbanización, de la configuración de la
estructura económica y de la dinámica del mercado inmobiliario local de los barrios Villa Lugano
y Villa Riachuelo. Ambos se localizan al sur de la ciudad de Buenos Aires, y comprender el proceso
de su urbanización permite entender mejor cuáles han sido los procesos que explican, en parte, la
fisonomía actual de la ciudad. El trabajo se apoya en investigaciones previas y material de archivo
existente sobre el proceso de urbanización e historia de ambos barrios, entrevistas a informantes
clave (funcionarios y líderes de organizaciones barriales) y fuentes de datos secundarias.

“Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism”
My Urban Legacy 15,482 words on 46 pages
by Barie Fez-Barringten
www.bariefez-barringten.com
Introduction

Thesis and premises:
How many of you ever thought about urbanism (populate) as a culture (condition) or that urbanism could be cosmopolitan (universal)?
The title of these lectures is the “Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” because it aptly describes who we are and what we face. The sooner we understand our culture and its peculiar characteristics the sooner we can manage our lives and improve our living conditions. Increases in population and density culture our personal, family and business lives. We are cosmopolitan and urban as we agree, disagree, peruse common goals, tolerate stress and congestion, discern between community and privacy and distribute precious resources. For example, an urbanized person negotiates traffic, crowds, street signs, home mail delivery, and crowded places of public gatherings, ambulating, few stars due to bright skies, pollution, live entertainment, public transportation, and close proximity to neighbors.
The culture of cosmopolitan urbanism is both about those affected by population’s dynamics and the way they are able to utilize these affects to facilitate further population growth. Like any culture it can be inherited and once experienced, it can be conveyed and inherited by others. It is the responsibility of persons that have been cultured by urbanism to convey that experience to others to preserve the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism.

How many have ever thought of themselves as being affected by their environment and that an urban background can affect the way you think and behave?
Culture is the development of the intellect through training or education and the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns including arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought. Dense population, crowds and opportunities breed specific kinds of social behavior and unique metaphors, which affect individual persons, families and institutions. These in tern conversely contribute to develop the social, cultural and built environment. It is a conversation between an increasing collective as they add and reject persons and institutions and the environment they form to support their individual and collective interests enabling us to mature, authenticate and develop our identity. We are one with our surroundings and expect them to perform.

In our time, we wonder what can be done to make the urbs feasible, livable, and desirable, what are the problems, and how can they be mitigated?
Sometime the problem looms before us.

What can we do to make the urb everyone’s identity, metaphor and home?
I believe if we fit the city to the metaphors of the population and its diversity then more people will care and when more care, the city will greatly improve. After all, form should follow function, and the population will only care if the city is their metaphor.

So, who will do this and what can we do to foster urban quality?
Is there one size fits all or are we already doing what’s right by acclimating and adjusting to the variables of our demographics, geography, climate, and socio-political necessities?

I believe when the A.I.A. asks, “What can be done to make cities livable” that the A.I.A. is taking responsibility for what they and others have neglected for several generations. I would put the question “what can be done to make cities livable and worthy to be called home”.
The Culture of Cosmopolitan Urbanism” wants “livability” to be home.

But we don’t always perceive our surroundings as home. Some would agree and others disagree that American rural, suburban and urban cities find themselves needing to mitigate the bad choices, carelessness and narrow vision of their past. Since I gave my fist lecture on metaphors and architecture at Yale University and established the Laboratories for Metaphoric Environments in New York City in 1970, I have watched as the rift widened between architects and planners and therefore cities further deteriorated.
Can you identify any thing you do as having a particularly urban identity?

Thankfully, there are a few that simply love cities the way they are and accept the city with all there pros and cons, as a matter of fact the more the apparent contradictions, complexities and anomalies the better.
In these people are the seeds of hope but they are not usually the ones who take responsibility for shaping public policy, planning and design.

However, without pride, a personal sense of ownership and overwhelming moral and ethical mind I have found that states and cities become corrupt, permissive and pedantic frustrating those that love and invest their identity in the city’s metaphor and who believe their identity is authenticated and synonymous with the identity of the city and will accept most of any of its conditions.

What is the one thing that we all want in our home?
However romantic and interesting are war zones and circuses, man’s interests cannot be nurtured and developed in such areas. We all agree that law and order by civilized behavior is desired and necessary. On the other hand, life is more than the maintaining law of order.

From the farmhouse in Iowa to the penthouse in Manhattan, we all call our country, state, city, neighborhood, and community and house our home. It is the repository of all our metaphors, hopes and dreams. It is very precious, valuable and worthy of our attention despite the many who merely make a business and career out of profiting and policing agreements by consensus.

I have learned that without passionate and urban educated professionals the choices presented is less often the better of two evils. And neither one of them engenders civic pride and ownership. In Florida, the problem is how to shift the pride away from a snowbirds city of origin to a persons’ Florida home. For those in Florida where Florida is their home state, the problem is restoring and building their pride and interest in a quality city. As without a vision, a nation perishes so without a personal identity and affiliation of one’s home we lose our initiative, creativity and authenticity. Already the implications have manifest themselves in avoidances and overwhelming acceptance of banality and boredom. Since form follows function, we all know we work harder for less and with limited choices. Our new gained affluence has provided us ways of maneuvering around in a very prescriptive and formulary life style. I believe, the more we have a point of view about this culture of cosmopolitan urbanism the more we can improve the way we live.

So, who’s to blame?
Despite the warnings, I find few that really care for the future and generations that will follow, I have seen many who believe that planning is really un-American, and look to destroy our past with little care for the future. Therefore, I believe it is the job of our institutions to educate and be the custodians of the urban metaphors, which will help us, choose and manage urban contexts. For years, learned journals have published my monographs on this subject and still universities and governments do not have a way of knowing the metaphors of their constituents save the markets of commercial developers and the public’s reactions to infringements on their privacy.

What can the individual do?
I know that most are not in a position to choose large, medium or small urban contexts but rather to choose between rural and urban where these days’ most non-agricultural families choose sub-urban or urban clusters. On the other hand, if one chooses an urban context we may find ourselves managing its renovation, expansion or reaping its benefits and failures. Weather and climate aside, I believe an urban person’s first responsibility begins in choosing a city where he can find agreement and observe the qualities contributing to a better way of living. However, I observe that our society has come to rely on remedies and cures for everything hoping anything can be mitigated.

Does the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism make a difference?
Take the extreme example of how New Orleanians persists in settling in below flood elevation areas as do homesteaders insist upon building in coastal flood areas. Such strong and determined will overcomes many natural obstacles and I have observed that in urban settings such people are a force for the right decisions. We can see the culture of cosmopolitan urbanism at work in the will that strives to overcome the inertia of the physical. The urban person strives to maintain the status quo.

What is one of the ideals in any urban environment?
Aside from options and choices, our culture intuitively recognizes minimum standards that whatever the size, urban context is best balanced by a rural and undeveloped surround, which is often farming, mountains, forest, wetlands, or waterways.

I believe it wrong when these lands are sub-urbanized reducing escape options and quality of life. It makes this new area subordinate to the urb and without its own identity. In this frustration and without a national policy I observe people continue to migrate to places where these choices are possible. I believe New Orleanians, as most urban places will be faced with arresting and reversing this very basic practice. As they do, urban densities will naturally increase and our culture will evolve a cosmopolitan set of values.
What is the one word that means populating our surrounding land?

And how does sprawl it affect us?
Sprawl dilutes personal identity
We already know that the sprawl of the city’s structure and population damages urban lifestyle by adding time and expense to travel from the urb. For others, the only financially feasible option is the suburb because reasonable options are not locally available. So they surrender their urban for the sub-urban rather than downsize to a smaller urban....

The following review explores Intercultural Information Ethics (IIE) in terms of comparative philosophy, supporting IIE as the most relevant and significant development of the field of Information Ethics (IE). The focus of the review is threefold. First, it will review the core presumption of the field of IIE, that being the demand for an inter- mission in the pursuit of a founding philosophy for IE in order to first address the philosophical biases of IE by western philosophy. Second, a history of the various philosophical streams of IIE will be outlined, including its literature and pioneering contributors. Lastly, a new synthesis of comparative philosophies in IIE will be offered, looking towards a future evolution of the field. Examining the interchange between contemporary information ethicists regarding the discipline of IIE, the review first outlines the previously established presumptions of the field of IIE that posit the need for an IE as grounded in western sensibilities. The author then addresses the implications of the foregoing presumption from several non-western viewpoints, arguing that IIE does in fact find roots in non-western philosophies as established in the concluding synthesis of western and eastern philosophical traditions.

This report presents the results of a review of the literature–primarily UK-focused but incorporating key international studies–concentrating on a range of factors that have been identified by researchers, policy-makers, interest groups and others as facilitating or inhibiting social mobility. The aim has been to cover a wide range of issues, some of which have been intensively investigated, others much less so. A series of thorough searches have been undertaken; however, the review should be regarded as extensive but not ...

Globalization via the digital age is upon us, demanding a new ethics and an intercultural awareness while the dialectics of globalism and cyberspace mandate a committed reflection on what the synthesis between the digital realm and global citizenship entails. In many ways, the borders that previously separated us as citizens physically and culturally have begun to dissipate, replaced by a call for an intercultural accountability and a form of global citizenship that, on one hand, surpasses borders, patriotism, and nationalism alike, but while on the other, demands an understanding and respect for the cultural idiosyncrasies among us, acknowledging the unique existential paradox of universal citizenship that posits each of us as both stranger and citizen on a commonly shared globe.

What is cosmopolitan in the digital age? Is a global digital citizen the same as merely a digital citizen? While talk of digital citizenship has increased in recent years, usually centered on a capitalist drive, encouraging a full electronic participation in society and a responsibility to digital commerce, many questions remain unanswered.  Is the netizen the citizen of a democratic state, and of digital democracy? As a citizen of the world interacting online, how will one’s “rights” and “duties” be determined? And are these “rights” universal, and in such a case, what does “universal” mean? What are the legal parameters of netizenship, and what will they be as globalization further takes hold? Is democracy critical to citizenship, or is it not? What are the political landscapes of global citizenship in the digital age? And last of all, is the concept of digital citizenship even tangible? Is it real?

In 1862 Middlesbrough was heralded by Gladstone as a ‘remarkable place, the youngest child of England’s enterprise…an infant Hercules’. In under a century the town expanded from having been a tiny hamlet with only 25 inhabitants in 1801 to one exceeding 90,000 by 1901 and approaching 140,000 thirty years later. Central to Middlesbrough’s growth was the establishment of the town’s iron industry, which went on to dictate the economic, political and social development of the town in the ensuing decades, with the town’s ironmasters sitting on the town council, providing the first Member of Parliament and gifting to the town its first public park and urban institutions.

However, the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been seen as a period that heralded a decline in participation by British urban elites in the towns and cities that housed their businesses as they withdrew from leadership in the urban sphere and adopted a more leisurely, gentrified lifestyle. Recent work has however, challenged the extent of this elite withdrawal and it is the intention of this paper to argue the period instead saw a reconfiguration of industrialist engagement with the Victorian Boom Town rather than a decline. Taking Middlesbrough as a case study, it will be shown that through leadership of voluntary organisations, patronage of company-driven initiatives and continued involvement with municipal authorities, the town’s steel magnates played a crucial role in the fabric of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century manufacturing town alongside the petite bourgeoisie and working-class organisations that emerged during this period.

This essay explores human dignity and humiliation phenomena in the post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) by examining them in two different contexts. The first context is the one directly related to the war, specifically the slow and insufficient punishment of the perpetrators of war crimes by international and national judicial institutions, percieved by the victims’ family members and the surviving victims of war as humiliation. The other context refers to one of the most prevalent form of social capital in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina – nepotism, cronyism, rankism, elitism, and other forms of individual and group opprtunisms, as integral and recognisable features of corruption in its widest sense, which ordinary decent citizens who do not practice or favor "using pulls" to obtain services and benefits percieve as humiliation of their personal and human dignity.

Cultural capital, originally a general sociological concept, has been transformed into a construct that is often applied in predicting scholastic attainment. Intellectual ability (IQ) has also been proven to be a strong, although basically psychological, predictor of educational attainment. However, these strands of research have hardly been contrasted in terms of their predictive power and in terms of their potential interaction. In the current study of Slovenian secondary school students, the results indicated that both constructs had statistically significant predictive power, both as to attainment and as to transition into type of secondary education. Results also indicated that: both constructs were fairly robust, as their predictive power remained statistically significant even after control variables were entered into the model; and they operated independently as results indicated no interaction between these constructs. The ‘return’ on cultural capital was greater for students whose parents had lower educational status.

espanolEn este trabajo se abordan los conflictos urbanos que emergen durante el desarrollo de procesos de regularizacion urbanistica y dominial en villas y asentamientos de la Region Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Para ello, se caracterizan los principales instrumentos juridicos y politicas publicas implementadas, asi como la trama de actores sociales involucrados y los principales conflictos que emergen en su desarrollo. Asimismo, se identifica al Estado y su intervencion como uno de los principales factores de estructuracion del territorio en las urbanizaciones populares. El analisis de los casos permite identificar cuatro ejes problematicos fundamentales a partir de los casos estudiados: a) la gestion de las obras y su impacto territorial, b) las diferentes temporalidades en los procesos de ocupacion, c) la evolucion de los lotes en el marco de procesos de cesion y mercado, d) la falta de adecuacion entre la normativa urbana existente y los procesos de produccion del habitat. Eng...

Critical theory was always characterised by a particular attempt to develop a general theory of society on the basis of an integrative approach characterised by a combination of philosophy and sociology and of normative and descriptive approaches. In Frankfurt, the original epicentre of this particular school of thought, this has however come to an end. Contemporary Frankfurt theorists essentially have abandoned the sociological and descriptive dimension and re-casted what is left of the Frankfurt School into a subdivision of Anglo-American analytical political philosophy. As apparent from the book under review and his entire oeuvre, Hauke Brunkhorst, the last of the Mohicans of real Frankfurt style critical theory, have always resented this development. He has therefore found himself in internal exile at the University of Flensburg, the intellectual equivalent of Siberia in the German academic context, for the last decades. The exceptionally brilliance of the book under review thereby confirms the old insight, which has been illustrated again and again throughout history, that the best books tend to be written in exile. Written by authors who did not correspond with the prevailing Zeitgeist but who nonetheless choose to stick to their guns.
The book literally begins by the dawn of man and ends with an analysis of the pressing problems and challenges characterizing contemporary society. As such the book also reads as a history of the world in its entirety at the same time as the its main focus is on four revolutionary processes: The Papal Revolution of the 11th and 12th centuries, the Protestant revolution of the 16th century; The Atlantic Revolution of the late 18th century and the Euro-Asian (in particular but not only the Chinese and Russian revolutions) of the early 20th century. Finally, as a fifth wave, the global transformations which came about through decolonisation and the transitions from authoritarianism and totalitarianism to democracy and human rights in the latter half of the 20th century are analysed. Full review available at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2015.00710.x/abstract

Leisure and lifestyle patterns were analyzed employing a representative sample of Slovenian youth. The Slovenian data is compared on several indicators with survey data from Croatian and Kosovo Youth studies (both 2012), and with German Shell Youth study (Albert, Hurrelmann, and Quenzel; 16. Shell Jugendstudie, Jugend 2010). Listening to music is the most frequent activity (84 %) among Slovenian youth, followed by socializing with friends (83 %). Watching TV is frequently done by 54 % of Slovenian youth. Almost a half of Slovenian youth is frequently active in sports and are watching TV, while only one fifth of youth are reading in their free time. Slovenian youth socialize with their friends most frequently, while Kosovo youth the least; still, over one half of Kosovo youth frequently hang out with their friends. The largest cross-national differences can be observed for watching TV (Kosovo youth watch TV most frequently) and reading magazines (again, Kosovo youth read books and magazines more often). Youth from all three post-Yugoslav countries are very similar with regard to leisure activities (i.e. Slovenian and Croatian youth often listen to music and socialize, while Kosovo youth seem to prefer somewhat more solitary activities (reading and watching TV)). With regard to lifestyle, Slovenian respondents were asked which ideas, preferences and behaviour were nowadays “in” and "out" (i.e. "trendy" vs. "not trendy"). Slovenian youth believe having a career, being independent, having a college degree and looking good are most trendy preferences. Incidentally, first three items are also the one where Slovenia and its youth have had the largest amount of problems in recent years, with high levels of youth unemployment, prolonged period of living with parents and dependence of family. Compared to three post-Yugoslav youth's, wearing designer's clothes and looking good were assessed as most trendy by German youth. Among leisure activities, largest differences within Slovenian youth were found for reading books and magazines; girls, those with higher education, older youth and those from urban environments read most often in their free time. The results largely corroborate earlier studies on Slovenian youth.

""As billions of dollars are invested in mitigating the digital divide, stakes are raised to gain validity for these cost-intensive endeavors, focusing more on online activities that have clear socio-economic outcomes. Hence, farmers in rural India are watched closely to see how they access crop prices online, while their Orkuting gets sidelined as anecdotal. This paper argues that this is a fundamental problem as it treats users in emerging markets as somehow inherently different from those in the West. After all, it is now commonly accepted that much of what users do online in developed nations is leisure-oriented. This perspective does not crossover as easily into the Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) world, where the utilitarian angle reigns. This paper argues that much insight can be gained in bridging worlds of ICT4D and New Media studies. By negating online leisure in ‘Third World’ settings, our understandings on this new user market.
can be critically flawed.""

I possess a wide range of experience critiquing and editing academic literature including abstracts, articles, book chapters, proposals and thesis drafts. I have edited ESL work from international scholars and international PhD students from Brazil to Romania to Germany. I am currently Co-editing a Festschrift project from proposal to final manuscript, incorporating input from authors, consultants and reviewers. My editing services include copy editing, content editing, style editing and proof reading. Topics of expertise include, but are not limited to, Humanities Computing, Philosophy, History, Religion, Digital Humanities, Information Ethics, Philosophy of Information, Digital Citizenship, Global Citizenship, and Intercultural Information Ethics. Services available at www.jaredbielby.com

As Chair for the International Center for Information Ethics, I am responsible for promoting and maintaining the founding vision of the academic community of ICIE, for managing its global-wide membership, its advisory board, and for attending to and updating global chapters, credentials, contacts, and communications.

The present study examined the prevalence, frequency, and sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of three types of electronic media use (internet, social media websites and computer/video games) among a nationally representative sample of Slovenian youth aged 15-29 (N = 1257, M age = 22.5, SD = 4.25). 98.1 % of respondents reported using the internet, 34.9 % of respondents daily spend 2 or more hours on the internet, and 45.7 % of them spend 30 minutes or more on social media sites. Living in an urban environment was the only significant sociodemographic predictor of internet use, while gender, age and income were also significant predictors of social media sites use and playing computer games. All three types of media use turned out to be significantly and positively associated with several indicators of unfavourable youth development indicators and risk behaviours, among others with narcissistic exploitativeness, alienation, hedonistic and fatalistic time orientation and deviance. Computer games use had the highest number of significant coefficients, indicating that they are mostly played by youth with lowest levels of psychosocial adjustment. The implications of our results for researchers, parents, and youth policy makers are discussed.