Article analyses specifics of the nostalgia for socialist period of Central and East European countries, as it appears on different levels of their social life: in politics, culture, art, consumer culture, media and tourism. It can be understood more as a critics of the contemporary condition - transitional ideologies and practices of neoliberalism and ethnic-nationalism - as mere praising the past.
COBISS.SI-ID: 29045085
The article explores the relationship between Slovenian national identity and popular music. A substantial empirical research (150 interviewees from 4 different Slovenian regions) has been conducted to find out what kind of music Slovenians themselves perceive as typically Slovenian and what are for them the defining characteristics of these music acts or styles. The results show that the vast majority of interviewees understand as typically Slovenian just one music style, Slovenian folk pop (narodno-zabavna glasba). The key features that make Slovenian folk pop Slovenian are for them its content (beauties of Slovenia), its contribution to Slovenian national awareness, Slovenian lyrics, etc. Various possible reasons for such uniform and even self-referential answers are discussed. Among them are cultural re-traditionalisation of former Yugoslavian republics (now independent states) after the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, recent modernisation of Slovenian folk pop, and the need for a country as culturally, historically, geographically, etc. diverse as Slovenia to organise its symbolic imaginary around simple and understandable signifiers.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32694109
For human beings, the future is never vacuous but an open space filled with various expectations, either in form of hopes or fears. These expectations fulfill an important function because they serve as a reminder that the world does not have to be as it is—that there are other possible (future) worlds. More specifically, utopian dreams have always stimulated human actions with the aim to change the present, the existing world.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33921117
The article proposes an interpretation of metaphors and metaphoric discourse through the perspective of touch. The article first deals with metaphors of touch in the history of western philosophy (especially traditional metaphysics from Plato to Hegel) in order to produce an operative category of touch that will allow, in the second step, to grasp the tactile quality of the metaphors. If metaphors are usually (rhetorics, politics, literature) regarded as a specific form of language able to not only touch the subject matter in the most suitable way but also touch on the target subject (listener/reader), then it is precisely because there is a certain haptic quality involved in language itself, discernible especially in the discourse of those who know how to best exploit metaphors in their endeavours.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34219357
This article utilizes Durkheim's definition of religion to demonstrate the religious dimensions of the Apple phenomenon and by doing that aims to assert the presence of religiosity outside of its conventional sphere. The analysis of Apple consists of four elements of Durkheim's definition-community, beliefs, sacred, and rituals. The devotees of Apple's community base their beliefs on notions of individuality, creativity, and counterculture, and this system of beliefs is supported by a mythos surrounding Apple's history and Steve Jobs's life. The Apple brand itself is the most sacred symbol of the community, protected by the taboo of criticism. The products act as religious fetishes to Apple devotees, and Apple stores function as temples. Followers perform public pilgrimages to store openings and Apple conferences, and private rituals of product unboxing.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33061469
The aim of the article is to map Slovenian popular music heritage (PMH) and to critically assess the prospects of its future development. The article supplements the constructionist perspective on heritage with the Foucauldian concept of regime(s) of truth, which enables a better understanding of the complex processes of the social construction of heritage and the power struggles related to it. It then uses this framework to critically examine the current situation of PMH in Slovenia with the emphasis on the tensions between different PMH practices, discourses and the producers of heritage.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32134493
Margan as a physicist and Tomc as a life scientist discuss time and space in contemporary science. They describe a physicist and a constructivist approach to understanding both phenomena and leave the choice of the more adequate answer to the reader. Their theoretical dialogue is rare but much needed in times when the borderline between nature and nurture is becoming increasingly obsolete.
COBISS.SI-ID: 282549248
Slovene Textbooks as an Agent of Ethnocentric and Racist Socialization: the Case of Elementary School Geography Textbooks The article demonstrates the main findings of critical discourse analysis of the sixteen elementary school geography textbooks regarding the discourse on the West and Europe, on the individual continents and the relations between them. The author states that a great majority of the textbooks discussed include linguistic strategies, content, mental schemas and illustrative material which lead to stereotypic, simplified, Eurocentric and racist conclusions about the non-European world and its inhabitants, migrants etc. The author states that several of the textbooks on the market for this subject do not assure the plurality of discourses and contents as a tool to achieve defined standards of knowledge.
COBISS.SI-ID: 40295981
The 2011 Slovene Public Opinion Survey and World Values Survey have determined that trust in the Roman Catholic Church in Slovenia has fallen to an all-time low in the post-independence era: only 25 percent of Slovenes expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the Church. This article considers how the Church’s social power has been impacted by the so-called Holy Crash, namely, the 2010 collapse of the Archdiocese of Maribor’s financial empire and its investments and interests in various enterprises controlled through its Gospodarstvo Rast financial management company. Revealed is the fact that, in recent years, trust has been eroded most in the Podravje (Drava) and Koroška (Carinthia) regions of Slovenia, both of which lie within the Maribor archdiocese. This decline supports the central hypothesis that the scandal and secrecy surrounding the collapse have negatively impacted trust in the Roman Catholic Church.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31236701
This article offers a strictly qualitative approach to the range of historical and contemporary cultural practices and images, as well as literary histories, regarding doll s and doll ificati on in East Asian context. The phenomenon of people, and especially women, considered and/or fashioned into "living dolls" is confirmed eth-nographically and discussed theoretically. Direct ethnographic voices and the author's own autoethnographic and theoretical observations regarding South Korean everydayness and/or popular culture are included, covering dollification in its narrower, subcultural and/or fetishistic sense, but also, more importantly, in its broader sense as the loose yet visible entanglement of already normalized and mainstreamed gendered procedures, narratives, and events. Dollification is analyzed in conjunction with the problematic aspect of Westernized gaze and the on - going need for both feminist and post-colonial critiques of limited agency and social mobility of undollified women.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34954589