Article critically evaluates epistemological background of contemporary theories of culture: the British cultural studies, the French cultural history and the American new cultural history. They made a resonant break with the scientific prepositions of economic and social history that have until recently influenced the Humanities. They developed, instead, new materialism and theory of representation which are, the article assesses, new cloths for old research approaches: historical factography disguised as new materialism and the theory of mentalities as theory of representation.
COBISS.SI-ID: 41599586
The book analyses the sphere of culture in the long period of Modern Europe: it starts with the 15th century when the culture as autonomous sphere was established and ends with our time when the market regulation overflows the field of culture. Contrary to the presupposition about spontaneous cohesive effects of culture, the book shows that it is a destructive power and has a function of Danaian gift. Concrete studies demonstrate the thesis: sponsorship to the arts as an alibi for prohibited financial operations in the past, authors’ rights as important source of accumulation of the capital …
COBISS.SI-ID: 245946112
This paper deals with the question of the relationship between consumerism and formation of European identity. It is argued that the notion of Europe is not made present to the citizens only in the form of an abstract political concept but is, above all, a lived reality of everyday, banal, experience. In the former socialist states, this experience is, by and large, guided by memories of the Cold war era. Adopting the Veblen's concept of conspicuous into "inconspicous" consumption, the author then discusses the political and ideological effects of the construction of "two Europes".
COBISS.SI-ID: 40165218
The article discusses the logic of contemporary capitalism, its articulation with cultural ideologies, and the role of religious and identitary ideologies in political extremism. It analyses the fundamental discontinuity between classical capitalism (labour force/production means division) and contemporary capitalism (labour force + production means/social conditions of production division). Legal, cultural and ideological practices are now both factors of production and factors of social integration that entails the separation of the producer from social conditions of production.
COBISS.SI-ID: 37046882
This study aims to theoretically further the concept of ‘Mitteleuropa’, with the insights from political and cultural reality of post-socialist society. A comparative analysis of European, CE and Slovenian appropriations of this notion leads to the conclusion that Mitteleuropa is predominantly a discourse: although people may identify with it, it does not denote a space of/or identity, but a mode of interpretation which, despite its imperial meanings, allow for the development of multiperspectival Europe. The paper was published in the top-ranked journal, devoted to the issue of Mitteleuropa.
COBISS.SI-ID: 36444258