Ideology (Anthropology)

Wayne Vucinic Book Prize 2007, "for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences." 

Endorsement by Slavoj Zizek:

"Alexei Yurchak's Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More immediately seduced me by its very title with a profound philosophical implication that eternity is a historical category--things can be eternal for some time. The same spirit of paradox runs through the entire book--it renders in wonderful details the gradual disintegration of the Soviet system from within its ideological and cultural space, making visible all the hypocrisy and misery of this process. I consider Yurchak's book by far the best work about the late epoch of the Soviet Union--it is not just history, but a pleasure to read, a true work of art." (Slavoj Zizek, author of In Defense of Lost Causes)

Abstract:

Soviet socialism was based on paradoxes that were revealed by the peculiar experience of its collapse. To the people who lived in that system the collapse seemed both completely unexpected and completely unsurprising. At the moment of collapse it suddenly became obvious that Soviet life had always seemed simultaneously eternal and stagnating, vigorous and ailing, bleak and full of promise. Although these characteristics may appear mutually exclusive, in fact they were mutually constitutive. This book explores the paradoxes of Soviet life during the period of "late socialism" (1960s-1980s) through the eyes of the last Soviet generation.

The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its virtual absence from the literature less than a decade ago. While the growing attention afforded to neoliberalism among geographers is new, the phenomenon of neoliberalism is not. This paper traces the intellectual history of neoliberalism and its expansions across various institutional frameworks and geographical settings. I review the primary contributions geographers have made to the literature, and specifically their recognition for neoliberalism’s variegations within existing political economic matrixes and institutional frameworks. Contra the prevailing view of neoliberalism as a pure and static end-state, geographical inquiry illuminates neoliberalism as a dynamic and unfolding process. The concept of ‘neoliberalization’ is thus seen as more appropriate to geographical theorizations insofar as it recognizes neoliberalism’s hybridized and mutated forms as it travels around our world. I also consider some of the most salient ways that neoliberalism has been theorized among human geographers. In particular, I highlight understandings of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, as a policy-based approach to state reform, and as a particular logic of governmentality, arguing that while there are significant differences between these various formations, it may also be important to work beyond methodological, epistemological, and ontological divides in the larger interest of social justice.

In this article, I intend to concentrate on one type of process by which Scots has found new legitimation as a language, and how discourses surrounding the issue of Scots might seek to contribute to the creation of a new Scottish society. I whish to show how history is used as a legitimating discursive device by the various components of the Scots language revitalisation movement.

RE: Facades, illusions & ideological concepts created & promoted by ancient royalty out of necessity; effective creation of an alternate version of reality. It is only by knowing this information that the true nature of ancient texts may be understood correctly. Not knowing, means making incorrect assumptions & conclusions. Important!

The purpose of this essay is to review some of the basic conceptual debates in nationalism studies under the broad and interrelated categories of ethnicity, nations and nationalism, and classification of nations and nationalism. The sheer volume of literature produced on these subjects, particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, poses a major challenge, but the present selective focus using key and influential texts as examples should provide the reader with a solid foundation for further research. The essay has three sections, organized as follows. The first, on ethnicity, provides a brief history of the term and an overview of what is usually described as the debate between primordialist and instrumentalist accounts of ethnicity, but suggests that this characterization is misleading. Section two, on nations and nationalism, begins with a similar etymology before surveying the debate between modernist, perennialist, and ethno-symbolist conceptions of the nature of and relations between those two phenomena. Finally, the third section reviews the range of ways that nations and nationalism have been classified, including the now dominant distinction between civic and ethnic types.

This essay is part of the "Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration" section of the International Studies Association's "International Studies Encyclopedia" (www.isacompendium.com).

Performative engagements with specific, culturally significant places were among the primary means of configuring landscapes in the ancient world. Ancient states often appropriated symbolic or ritual landscapes through commemorative ceremonies and
building operations. These commemorative sites became event-places where state spectacles encountered and merged with local cult practices. The Early Iron Age inscriptions and reliefs carved on the cave walls of the Dibni Su sources at the
site of Birkleyn in Eastern Turkey, known as the ‘Source of the Tigris’ monuments, present a compelling paradigm for such spatial practices. Assyrian kings Tiglathpileser I (1114–1076 B.C.) and Shalmaneser III (858–824 B.C.) carved ‘images of kingship’ and accompanying royal inscriptions at this impressive site in a remote but politically contested region. This important commemorative event was represented in detail on Shalmaneser III’s bronze repouss´e bands from Imgul-Enlil (Tell Balawat) as
well as in his annalistic texts, rearticulating the performance of the place on public monuments in Assyrian urban contexts. This paper approaches the making of the Source of the Tigris monuments as a complex performative place-event. The effect
was to reconfigure a socially significant, mytho-poetic landscape into a landscape of commemoration and cult practice, illustrating Assyrian rhetorics of kingship. These rhetorics were maintained by articulate gestures of inscription that appropriated an already symbolically charged landscape in a liminal territory and made it durable through site-specific spatial practices and narrative representations.

Keywords: mytho-poetic landscape; commemorative monuments; rock reliefs; place; performance; event; rhetorics of kingship; acts of inscription

В центре данной работы стоят взаимоотношения власти и народа в их институциональном оформлении, а именно проблематика соотношения власти правителя, действующей общественной нормы и ее носителей. На широком конкретно-историческом материале, включающем традиционные и модернизирующиеся общества, прослеживаются такие аспекты данной проблематики, как характер представлений о непогрешимости или, напротив, несовершенстве правителя и политической системы, возможности правителя по отношению к действующим социальным нормам, возможности критики в адрес правителя и принудительных общественных санкций в его адрес, понятия о легитимности правителя и ее источниках, концепция высших целей существования института верховной власти и др. Используемый конкретно-исторический материал обобщается на основе формализованного выделения ключевых параметров, характеризующих данные феномены с установлением корреляций между ними, что позволяет осуществить типологизацию социумов с точки зрения исследуемой тематики.

With transition to the state kinship ceases the role of the central organizing principle of society. However, the very social nature of kinship provides the opportunities for manipulating it as ideology in societies of all types. It was typical for early states to represent the state and the sovereign by analogy with the family and its head. Not infrequently the same connotations are exploited for the sake of power’s legitimation in modern states either. However, the ideology of kinship’s exploitation in states should not be confused with the cases of completely another sort. In some societies of the overall complexity level not lower than that of early states (in “alternatives to the state”), one can observe the whole socio-political construction’s encompassment not from above (as it must be in states) but from below – from the local community level, while the community itself is underpinned by kin ties. Here kinship is not only ideology but also the real socio-political background. So, there is no direct conformity between the socio-political (transition to the state) and ideological (departure from the ideology of kinship) processes and this seemingly clear fact should be acknowledged and given due attention by researchers.

""The thesis makes an attempt to explore and theorise the ways that the socio-economic trajectory of a locality evolves, through the Gramscian (1971) concept of “ideological hegemony”. The thesis questions to what extent certain powerful industrial groups can be regarded as local ideological hegemonic blocs, and explores what this might mean for an understanding of the local socio-economic trajectory. Antonio Gramsci’s writings are integrated along with Anthony Giddens’s Structuration Theory (1984) and this integrated theoretical framework constitutes the conceptual platform of the thesis, while the ontological platform is inspired by the relational perspective (Harvey, 2001, 2005, Massey, 2005) that views space as an “existent alterity” and as a medium for action. The conceptual framework developed in the thesis is applied and contextualised through empirical research on the function of the tourism industry in two Greek localities (Rhodes and Preveza), using holistic qualitative methodology.

The analysis shows that the concept of “ideological hegemonic blocs” can provide the field of Uneven Spatial Development with a supplement explanation that unpacks the ways that a local industry affects the spatial atmosphere of the locality, and subsequently the local power geometry. In other words, this concept can unpack the ways that a local industry can efficiently exploit local resources (e.g. natural environment, labour) and how this exploitation can be seen, through an ideological assimilation, as common sense by the local population, thus as a legitimate action. Moreover, it is evident that the Gramscian literature, as applied through the thesis, may help form a new way to look at the inequality of difference of human perceptions and meanings in time-space, and how these meanings reproduce and sustain specific power relations that legitimate one view of reality over others.

""

""Rad analizira društvenu uloga univerziteta unutar njegovog pozicioniranja između političkog
i društvenog polja, te mirovne kapacitete univerziteta u BiH. Razmatra dezintegrativnu ulogu
univerziteta tokom društvenog konflikta i  ulogu univerziteta  na njegovom prevazilaženju u
Bosni Hercegovini i širem južnoslavenskom kulturnom prostoru. Pri tome se razmatra
funkcija univerziteta u evropskom modernitetu i promjene u obrazovnoj praksi uzrokovane
postmodernom znanstvenom kritikom  i novim društvenim okolnostima  -  globalizacijom.
Analizira se  pozicija univerziteta u SFRJ  i njegova uloga u generiranju konflikta tokom 80-
tih i njegovom perpetiuranju. Rad osvjetljava korelaciju između autonomije univerziteta i
znanstvenog integriteta profesora  u odnosu na politički podsistem i utjecaj koji ovi
dvosmjerni odnosi imaju na društvo i njegov prosperitet. Kriza univerziteta je kriza društva i
vice versa. ""

"The Inka Empire adopted several means to create, demonstrate and legitimize the power in its conquests over a vast territory. This paper focuses on one of those means: the production and
restructuring of socially constructed space. We believe that through this process of domination, the Inka Empire imposed its ideology and its worldview over the conquered societies. Although we do not ignore or reject the explanations usually given to this process, this position evaluates the Inka expansionism as a process guided not only by economic or logistic motivations. Therefore, we believe that ideology and the use of space are both key components when analyzing any social process, and in this specific case: the Inka domination in Northwest Argentina, particularly in the area of the Quebrada de Humahuaca. In subsequent lines we aim to explore some aspects of the relationship between ideology and space as theoretical concepts with the social production of space in the Tawantinsuyu, the Inka conquest of Humahuaca and the specific case of La Huerta archaeological site."

Over the last the three decades, punitiveness on the part of the state in Greece in the field of law and order has been on the ascent. The most obvious indicator of this has been the steeply rising use of imprisonment. A striking accompaniment of state punitiveness has been punitive public opinion. As soon as one broaches the question of why this is the case, however, one is confronted with at least two puzzling findings. First, the prevalence of crime has only risen modestly, in sharp disproportion to the high recorded levels of fear of criminal victimisation, of distrust in the police and judicial authorities, and of public punitiveness. And second, fear of criminal victimisation itself does not axiomatically bear a positive correlation with expressed public support for state punitiveness, though it does predict lack of confidence in criminal justice authorities. This chapter sets out to review these contradictions and the limits of available explanations. We begin by outlining the different ways in which Greece’s authoritarian past and the dictatorship of 1967-1974 in particular are thought to have influenced state and public punitiveness in the years that have followed. The next section summarises scholarly and commercial research on the levels and patterns of fear of crime and public punitiveness in contemporary Greece, as both distinct and interrelated themes. Attention is then drawn to the disconnect between crime and imprisonment rates as an illustrative example of the irrational foundations of state punitiveness and its degree of public support; a disconnect that is all the more prominent when examined with reference to the nationality of prisoners. Taking inspiration from political economies of punishment in jurisdictions elsewhere, the remainder of the chapter points to state deployment of a law-and-order discourse and the use of punishment as symbolic devices by which social insecurities, generated in large part by the state itself, are displaced and discharged onto suitably weak subsections of the population.

The article analyses main institutional and ideological features of the popularization of sciences in Central and Eastern Europe in 1950´s. Three societies established upon the Soviet model are analyzed: East-German Society for Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge (Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung wissenschaftlicher Kenntnisse), Czechoslovak Society for Dissemination of Political and Scientific Knowledge (Společnost pro šíření politických a vědeckých znalostí) and Polish Society for General Knowledge (Towarzystwo Wiedzy Powszechnej).

The main goal of this paper to decode the ways in which meanings are embedded in advertisements by examining the links between signs, signifiers and signifieds in the visuals of ads, published in Japanese newspapers during the last months of Russo-Japanese war. The analysis reveals the hidden nationalistic discourse in the visual polysemic images used in advertisements of such everyday products as soap, cosmetics, medicines etc. В периоды кризиса национализм, зачастую под видом патриотической идеологии, проникает практически во все сферы общественной жизни. Идеологический дискурс формирует общественное сознание не только открыто, но и исподволь. Целью исследования было установить, каким образом символизация (т.е. процесс представления сущности через образ) используется для «наведения мостов» между двумя разными понятийными мирами: потребительской культурой и националистической идеологией. В качестве первичных источников для анализа использовались рекламные объявления, публиковавшиеся в японских газетах (как на японском языке, так и англоязычных) во время русско-японской войны. На анализе конкретных рисунков в работе показано, что визуальная реклама служит иконографическим отражением не только потребительской, но и национальной идеологии. Помещенные в определенный исторический и социальный контекст, полисемичные образы могут демонстрировать расширение семантического объема сигнификата и интерпретироваться как национально-идеологические символы.

In Russia today one can observe the latent rebirth of the official pre-revolution ideological postulate, “Orthodox Christianity – autocracy – nationhood”, in the new shape: “Orthodox Christianity – state – Rus-sian ethnicity.” This postulate’s instilling can be possible only in a state the power of which “impends” over the people being legitimized by the assertion about the relation between it and the society by way of Orthodox Christianity. In the quasi-religious present-day Russian society Orthodox Christianity’s actual becoming the state ideology would also result in quasi-sacralization of power: The appearance of a civil religion with a distinctive nationalistic component under its cloak. The instilling of the “Orthodox Christianity – state – Russian ethnicity” ideological postulate would contradict the Russian society’s present conditions and trends of development, as well as the global tendencies. Formal religiosity has already be-come, and consolidation of Orthodox Christianity as state ideology can become, a characteristic feature of the Russian version of contemporary post-religious society. An earlier but more extensive Russian version see: http://www.nrgumis.ru/articles/article_full.php?aid=63&binn_rubrik_pl_articles=207"

Turkey is famed for a history of tolerance toward minorities, and there is a growing nostalgia for the “Ottoman mosaic.” In this richly detailed study, Marcy Brink-Danan examines what it means for Jews to live as a tolerated minority in contemporary Istanbul. Often portrayed as the “good minority,” Jews in Turkey celebrate their long history in the region, yet they are subject to discrimination and their institutions are regularly threatened and periodically attacked. Brink-Danan explores the contradictions and gaps in the popular ideology of Turkey as a land of tolerance, describing how Turkish Jews manage the tensions between cosmopolitanism and patriotism, difference as Jews and sameness as Turkish citizens, tolerance and violence.