Projects / Programmes
The Second Transition and the Production of Meaning: Processes of Cultural and Scientific Exchange Between Slovenia, the European Union, and the Balkan States
January 1, 2004
- December 31, 2008
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.03.00 |
Social sciences |
Sociology |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| S210 |
Social sciences |
Sociology |
collective identification, construction of identity, economic culture, new religious communities, religious pluralism, glocalisation, strategies of scientific development, European research area, centres of academic excellence, cultural consumption, transnational identities, mobility of researchers, transfer of knowledge, lifestyles, symbolic representations
Researchers (15)
Organisations (1)
Abstract
The focus of the research will be to identify, describe, analyse and interpret the processes in which the exchange of cultural symbols, ideas, and commodities takes place. The research looks at these processes in the context, on the one hand, of the Slovene ethnic space and, on the other, of South-eastern Europe and the Balkans, with the understanding that these processes are overdetermined by the integration mechanisms of the European Union. If Slovenia's achievement of independence in 1991 represented the first transition of the sovereign state, then Slovenia's entry into the European Union signalises a second transition. While the European Union's explicit historical goal is to ensure the conditions for 'universal peace', the contractual fantasy of mutually strengthening social confidence is not universal, since it applies only to member states. Thus the question of the E.U.'s external borders takes on dramatic proportions. The E.U. must, in order to successfully abolish its internal borders, strengthen its external frontier. While this may be understood as a positive move toward modernisation, adoption of the E.U.'s Schengen borders may, at the same time, be considered in a negative light, as the E.U. is transferring uncertainty onto the weakest countries, the post-communist states of Eastern Europe. As the southern frontier of the E.U. after March 2004, Slovenia has in this regard certain relative advantages evident in its geo-strategic position as a crossroads, if not a bridge, between the Romance, Germanic, and South Slavic traditions. Within this framework, then, the processes of cultural exchange, in which individuals construct temporary identities and collaborate in the transformation of collective self-understandings, are marked by a dialectic of adaptation and resistance in the production of locally valid meanings. What is at issue is 'glocalisation', the local appropriation of global ideas, customs, and lifestyles in which there exists a sheaf of cultural traditions with their own unique regional and social manifestations in Slovenia-although not the national identity as a normative value. Both the national and the European identity are themselves onlyworks-in-progress, understood as a process of ceaseless transformation, invention, and negotiation over temporary meanings, which result in'communities of memory'. The research takes as its object the processes of sustained endurance and cultural exchange along the axis of Slovenia, the E.U. and the Balkans.
Significance for science
The relevance of the present research program and its analyses is in its contribution toward adwancement of accumulated critical and empirical knowledge of European integration that provides impetus for the debates in the public sphere as well as it is available for transfer to university educational programs; in making possible the comparison with other relevant scientific studies in an international frame; in a pioneering broadening of limitations on social science insights into identity construction and identity politics in the region.
Significance for the country
Research results are relevant for Slovenia insofar as they provide a coherent cogntive foundation for the strategic decision-making, facilitating the adaptation of Slovenia and its cultures to function under the conditions of globalisation, especially with regard to maintainance, strengtening and deepening of Slovenia's participation in the processes of symbolic exchange in the region under scrutiny. The research findings emphasises that culture is not a miror-image of the reality of lived context, but is instead grounded in a choice of relevant possibilities for the kind of identity construction that would flexibly respond to manifold challenges Slovenian faces as it sits on the border of European Union and its periphery. In other words, it is culture that creates a "specific difference" that in turn contributes to a borader manuvering room for a free choice of collective ways of living.
Most important scientific results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Final report,
complete report on dLib.si
