A scholarly journal from the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) Södertörn University, Stockholm.
Each contribution in this special section here presented, provides different cases and different ways of considering the tensions between local communities and national policies, between pasts that ground people and pasts which hold them back, and between the survival or memorialisation of one form of heritage and its reimagining in another form for other ends. However, for all contributors the heritage itself, and especially various processes of heritagization, are “not about the past but about the use (and abuse) of the past to educate — and at times inculcate — the public.”
For more than a decade the government of Georgia, following consultations with international and transnational actors involved in financial politics and development work, is attempting to stimulate economic development in the countryside by encouraging tourism. The mountainous regions play a specific role in this process. Mountains provide a seemingly good starting point for the development of tourism as they can be defined as being very rich in both cultural heritage and natural landscapes. The main question addressed here is whether the current spatial plans and heritagization strategies of the government for Tusheti are subtle steering mechanisms primarily concerned with encouraging a free market economy. Towards this end, the local population are expected to become entrepreneurs in tourism services. In order to theoretically embed and explain what is happening in Georgia, the concepts of governmentality and heritage regimes will be used. The focus of this paper is on governmentality as it is perceived from the perspective of critical heritage studies and the anthropology of development.
On Sunday March 1, Slovakia woke up to a new political era. Slovaks showed to former ruling parties (SMER – SD, Slovak National Party and the Bridge) that there were fed up with their empty promises and all the corruption, scandals and nepotism. They decided to give a chance to Matovič and some of the other opposition parties.
Conversation with Slavenka Drakulić, Croatia; Samirah Kenawi, Germany; Tamara Hundorova, Ukraine; Ewa Kulik-Bielińska, Poland; and Olga Lipovskaia, Russia.
Kristina Jõekalda and Linda Kaljundi in a conversation with Joep Leerssen on past and present nationalism in Europe and beyond. Joep Leerssen, Professor of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, is one of the leading scholars of nationalism, having initiated several innovative projects and produced influential texts in the field.
The theme of this year’s conference, the 13th Conference on Baltic Studies in Europe (CBSE) was “Baltic Solidarity” — and most appropriate, no one less than Lech Wałęsa was there to open the event.
Around 20 researchers met in the Polish city of Kalisz for two days in mid-October, to present their on-going projects exploring issues related to artists in the political systems of the countries of Central Europe after 1945.
The WeberWorldCafé-event “Legacies of Colonialism in East Central Europe”, took place in October 15, 2019 in the Museum am Rothenbaum – Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg.
This paper examines the politics of monument building and the “de-communization” of public space in Ukraine. It first introduces the conceptual categorization of societal-political interaction over memory in order to showcase permutations between between the two types of memory. It then proceeds to evaluate recent memory developments in the case study of the provincial town of Shyshaky in central Ukraine. I argue that official governmental memory politics is secondary to a broader social memory dynamics in re-structuring the local memory landscape in how it represents Ukraine’s WWII experience and its Soviet past. Approaching the local memory developments as a case of permutations between social and political memories yields greater and more accurate insight.
The author traces the transformation of vineyard hills and their change of function through the example of a small village close to Lake Balaton. Under the impact of tourism these areas are gaining a new function: besides agricultural production they are now acquiring a recreational role. As part of this process there have also been substantial changes in the use of the buildings used to process grapes and store wines as the new owners have converted them into second homes or holiday homes. In certain respects the buildings on the vineyard hill also reflect this transformation in the relationship between the landscape and man. The newcomers no longer look on the landscape as a source of livelihood but as a kind of refuge where they can escape urban life from now and then.
A conversation with geographer Mark McCarthy and anthropologist and human rights lawyer Adriana Arista-Zerga on the clashes, conflicts, but also cooperation, when rural areas and historical narratives become cultural heritage and tourism attractions.
For more than a decade the government of Georgia, following consultations with international and transnational actors involved in financial politics and development work, is attempting to stimulate economic development in the countryside by encouraging tourism. The mountainous regions play a specific role in this process. Mountains provide a seemingly good starting point for the development of tourism as they can be defined as being very rich in both cultural heritage and natural landscapes. The main question addressed here is whether the current spatial plans and heritagization strategies of the government for Tusheti are subtle steering mechanisms primarily concerned with encouraging a free market economy. Towards this end, the local population are expected to become entrepreneurs in tourism services. In order to theoretically embed and explain what is happening in Georgia, the concepts of governmentality and heritage regimes will be used. The focus of this paper is on governmentality as it is perceived from the perspective of critical heritage studies and the anthropology of development.
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.
Issue 2020:1, Special Issue: Women and “the People” 
Issue 2019:4 Special Section: Remembering and reimagining rural communities 
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