Стаття є детальним історіографічним оглядом проблеми політики СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. У ній розглядається та аналізується науковий доробок як вітчизняної історіографії класичного радянського періоду, періоду "перебудови", так і сучасної пострадянської історіографії. Окрема увага в статті приділяється роботам західних дослідників другої половини ХХ - початку ХХІ століття, які вивчали державно-релігійні відносини в СРСР щодо євангельських церков у 1940-1960-і роки. Розглядається також конфесійна історіографія проблеми, яка з'явилась в останні роки існування СРСР та набула свого розквіту у 2000-і роки.

The fall of the Soviet Union is analysed in conceptual terms, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The author seeks to interpret the instrumental role of the concepts perestrojka, glasnost´, reform, revolution, socialist pluralism, and acceleration in the Soviet collapse. The semantics and pragmatics are related to a wider intellectual and political context, and the conceptual perspective is used to help explain the progress of events. The author argues that the common notion of the reform policy concepts as clichés is not (...) valid. (shrink)

It is considered a huge socio-political step for a country to change its name, especially under pressure imposed by another country. In January 2019, Macedonia officially became the Republic of North Macedonia after a three-decade long dispute with its neighbouring country Greece. Macedonian citizens have long suffered the consequences of this dispute and have often expressed their dissatisfaction on the social media. However, the media played a crucial role in shaping their opinions regarding this situation.This paper attempts to present how (...) pro- and anti-government oriented media sources framed the issue and influenced the citizens’ perceptions of it. More precisely, it conducts a critical discourse analysis of 30 online newspaper articles, written during three specific periods on a timeline from January 2018 to February 2019, before, during and after the name change. The analysis sets out to identify lexical, pragmatic and discursive devices acting as potential fear triggers through which threat frames are being constructed. The results showed that both pro- and anti- government media sources appeal mostly to people’s emotions by generating fear related to a hypothetical future – in the case of the former it instigated fear of what might happen with the future of the country provided the name was not changed, while in the case of the latter, if the name was changed. (shrink)

The authors present a materialist analysis of the effects of neoliberalism in education. Specifically, they contend that neoliberalism is a form of cultural invasion that begets necrophilia. Neoliberalism is necrophilous in promoting a cultural desire to fix fluid systems and processes. Such desire manufactures both individuals known and culturally felt experiences of alienation which are, it is argued, symptomatic of an imperialist nostalgia that permeates educational policy and practice. The authors point to ‘unschooling in schools’ as a mechanism for resisting (...) the necrophilous tendencies of contemporary formations of education. (shrink)

The article deals with contemporary war history, the aesthetics of resistance, and the politics of affect in the context of the post-Yugoslav space. Looking back at the armed wars of the 1990s, as well as the numerous wars still being waged by other means, it becomes clear that there is still no peace in this exhausted zone of geopolitical discomfort. The politics of (non)belonging to this space has oscillated for decades between conflicting affects, liminal zones, and the (im)possibilities of overcoming (...) the permanent production of war through lasting peace. This ambivalent feeling of (non)belonging has led to various twists and shifts in post-Yugoslav art that have solidarized within the old and new geopolitical zones of discomfort and war(s). Using the post-Yugoslav art-based research of Adela Jušić and Blerta Heziraj, who are now involved with the Antifašistički front žena—AFŽ (Women’s Antifascist Front), as well as a long-durée activist performance by Žene u crnom (Women in Black), the text accordingly points to a common ground of politics and art that uncompromisingly resist the governing (post-)Yugoslav discourses of never-ending wars. (shrink)

This article depicts empirical research conducted in the Western Balkans and Bulgaria (project Balkan Monitor 2006 conducted by the Gallup Europe) that is geared towards the trust that citizens have in national and international institutions, as well as people in general. Empirical research provides a realistic picture of trust as seen from the inside. According to the data collected, within the general population, the strongest percentage was given to neighbors, followed by the police and European Union. A considerable degree of (...) attention was given to interreligious confidence and focus was placed on the number of adepts of a particular faith and the degree of confidence. From Islam, Orthodoxy and Catholicism to Protestantism, the degree of confidence diminishes, as well as the number of adherents, which points out to the relationship between minority and majority. The findings suggest that the degree of trust towards religious communities comes as a dominant attitude which means that these are the institutions that merit the greatest degree of trust. The exceptions are Albania and Kosovo where NATO comes first, whereas in Serbia NATO comes last. Ex- communists enjoy trust from 4% of the respondents whereas 24% completely rejects them. 8% of the respondents have a lot trust in people in general whereas 9% have no trust in people at all. For the purposes of this paper we will depict only a number of questions related to the degree of trust in various countries. (shrink)

[MAGA thought process: We must punish evil China for sending this horrible virus that is just the common cold and we don’t need masks but Trump was a hero for wearing one that one time and God bles...

Recently, we have faced the outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 in the world, which has attracted the attention of all people. Stress has become a word familiar to all people. The stressors of life are relatively clear and some of them cannot be eliminated by humans. One of the stressors in the life of humans is the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors believe that the virus is controllable but its prevalence is quicker and deadlier than other viruses. In addition, the virus (...) puts the elderly and those with underlying diseases at extreme risk. Therefore, more care is seriously required to protect members of society. However, this psychological imbalance caused by the virus is associated with stress and anxiety. Lack of proper management of this stress will be associated with emotional impacts, physiological impacts, cognitive impacts and behavioural impact.Contribution: Given the importance of this topic, this study aimed to evaluate the relationship between religious beliefs and coping with COVID-19-related stress amongst Muslim students in three cities of Russia – Ingushetia, Chechnya and the Republic of Dagestan – in 2020. Data were collected using questionnaires, the validity and reliability of which were previously confirmed. According to the results, religious beliefs had an impact on stress coping by p = 0.657. In other words, students’ ability to cope with stress improved by 0.657 units, with each unit of enhancement in their religious beliefs. (shrink)

One of the central theses of egalitarian liberals in the domain of distributive justice is that talented individuals should not be allowed to keep their entire market-income even if it flows solely from their greater abilities. This claim is usually supported by one of several arguments or some mixture of them, but in the present paper, I want to concentrate on the version that invokes equality of opportunity as its starting point. Namely, it is claimed that every human being should (...) enjoy an equal starting point in the life-race but that this is not secured insofar as some have greater natural talents than others. Therefore, egalitarians hold that results that arise from such an unfair situation are unjust and should be corrected by a redistributive taxation. I want to criticize this argument by hoping to show that it presupposes an untenable view about identity of persons. (shrink)

The conception of man as an economic animal is implied by the view that economic production is the determining “factor” or “sphere” of man or society. Against this conception can be put another, that of man as praxis. This takes account of man as a creative being, capable of realizing his freedom through his own activity. In this article the theory of the determining role of the “economic factor”, and the theory of factors in general have been examined. The economic (...) interpretation of history, a variant of the theory of factors, has been acknowledged as partly true for the self-alienated man and society, but the theory of factors in any variant has been found inadequate as a general theory of man, or society. The possibility of freedom cannot be reduced to the fact that the determining roles played by “factors”, vary, or to the hope that the economic “factor” can be subordinated to a “better” one. Man's freedom consists in his resolving the conflict of “factors”, and in realizing himself as an integral creative being, no longer split into independent and mutually opposed spheres. (shrink)

Teaching about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, has long been held to be a controversial issue. There is, however, a view of the capacity for reason that finds that those who deem homosexuality to be controversial will ultimately contradict themselves, becoming unreasonable. By this standard of reason, homosexuality should be treated as non controversial in schools. In this essay, John Petrovic argues that this epistemic position is problematic. Instead, he defends a Deweyan epistemology that casts reason as, in part, (...) a set of socially acquired habits of mind. People who have been socialized into heterosexist habits of mind must be exposed to counterhegemonic discourses. One such discourse can be found in the public values of liberal democracy through which the practice of reason must be pursued. Petrovic discusses the practical guidance provided by assuming a view of normative reason versus habituated reason in terms of both pedagogy and curriculum. (shrink)

Do sada neobjavljeni tekst iz rukopisne ostavštine Gaje Petrovića.Rukopis je za objavljivanje priredio Vinko Grgurev.Zahvaljujemo Asji Petrović što je tekst učinila dostupnim javnosti.

The article develops a critique of John Deely’s ontological realism, specifically in its relevance for the project of global semiotics. Deely, whose theorizations rely heavily on the pre-modern philosophical systems of Thomas Aquinas and the Latin scholastics, has made the most sustained attempt to give philosophical grounding to Charles Peirce’s famous intuition that “all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs”. The critique developsalong two main lines. Firstly, I contend that Deely’s account of (...) onto logical relations is unsatisfactory, for it assumes the very fact it promises to demonstrate: the identity between patterns of physical events, on one hand, and patt erns of thought, on the other. As it is never adequately explained what it means for the former to be identical with the latter, the mediating term – “ontological relation” – remains highly problematic. Secondly, I argue that even if this ontological paradigm is allowed to stand as proposed, it still fails to bridge the gap between the so-called “natural” signs and human-specific, language-based signification; for, as it posits a unity between the stipulable and the non-stipulable sign, the argument falls into a performative contradiction. (shrink)

This article critically explores John Rawls’s contention that the personal assets of individuals, i.e. their mental and bodily powers, should not determine the size of their holdings. Since such an argument may have several forms, the first task is to establish which of them Rawls himself advocates. He relies, it is argued, on a version that attempts to convince us that personal assets should not play a decisive distributive role because they are undeserved. This account is then formally reconstructed, making (...) all the relevant premises visible and preparing the ground for a critique that concentrates on the argument’s separate steps. Coming under attack first is the claim that everything should be deserved. The discussion examines next the premise urging us to find an ultimate, indisputable ground for desert-claims. Debate about this issue reveals some fundamental weaknesses in Rawls’s position: that he demands too much and is inconsistent; that some strong counter-intuitive consequences follow from his demands; and that his entire project, were such a criterion taken seriously, is undermined. Final comments are directed against the assertion that the community should own everything an individual does not deserve, showing that this does not remove moral arbitrariness, allows for the use of some persons as resources for others, and cannot plausibly limit its range of application. Most of these criticisms are not original, but are in accord with this paper’s main intention of combining as many good points against Rawls as possible. (shrink)

The article discusses the necessity for the diversification of stories of Yugoslavia, arguing for the importance of incorporating the affects and experiences of Yugoslavia?s citizens into the historical narratives. Acknowledging the difficulties emerging form the fact that what is articulated as historical narrative is still part of the experience for millions of citizens of post-Yugoslav societies, the article reflects upon the potential for and obstacles to an affective history of socialist Yugoslavia through the lens borrowed from German sociologist Georg Simmel. (...) It particularly refers to - and makes use of - two sets of Simmel?s ideas. The first concerns the nature of material and the way we are making a story out of it - more precisely, the relationship between history and experience, life and representation. The second is about the perspective from which we look at, approach, and synthesize this material. Simmel?s reflections on history and form offer a very useful tool to look at the Yugoslav case and also help de-essentialize and normalize Yugoslav history, making the anxieties that characterize it part of a much broader discussion about history, its nature, and its internal contradictions. nema. (shrink)

This article defines a public good, arguing that higher education should be considered a public good. This requires moving away from an orthodox economistic understanding of public goods. It also requires understanding the relationship between higher education as both a private good and a public good to the extent that it promotes individual flourishing necessary to the public good.

The study of controversies is an important methodological tool for understanding key aspects of scientific activity that are invisible from within the science itself. Following Sarah Whatmore, we argue that controversies are a force field within which there is a redistribution of expertise. As an application of the basic principles of ANT, the mapping of controversies lacks the disadvantages of constructivist and epistemological approaches to science. While preserving the validity of scientific facts, it could demonstrate the practice of finding allies (...) and creating new associations in the process of creating science. The analysis of controversies shows that a key feature of neuroscience today is a theoretical "consensus". The most important principle of this "consensus" is the idea of neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to be changed as a result of new experiences. The use of mapping methods allows us to show that this agreement hides a complex of controversies that touch on the problem of brain plasticity and theoretical models of behaviors. An attempt to explore these controversies reveals various strategies for finding allies within opposing research programs. These competing trends were divided into two groups: proponents of "universal" plasticity, which presupposes general laws for different structural levels of brain organization, and proponents of multiple plasticity. One of the most important strategies for expanding networks used by participants in the study is to reconstruct the history of their own object, as well as to attract non-specialists to obtain the necessary data for research. (shrink)

The paper offers a critical discursive and pragmatic analysis of a corpus of hateful Facebook and Twitters status updates of politicians, political activists and voters in the 2016 pre-and-post election period, in Macedonia. Aiming to determine how power is exerted on social media, the paper focuses on identifying the stance social media users take when posting messages with political content. The analysis first attempted to unveil what speech acts the hateful posts are predominantly composed of, what roles the authors of (...) the posts normally assume, who the hateful political discourse in the given socio-political context is directed to, as well as what are some of the predominant linguistic strategies underlying the analysed hateful comments. The results show that, by using mostly assertive and expressive speech acts, social media users assume mainly the roles of analysts and judges and only subsequently the one of activists, they mostly address politicians directly and they use a lot of negative lexis, rhetorical figures and boosters as interpersonal metadiscourse markers to express their negative stance and exert power and dominance. (shrink)