16 articles tagged with nation building were found.
History is not fixed and unchanging, and the way we think about the concept of nation can affect the way we talk about the past. This also applies to the history of music. Let me give you an example. In volume 2 of his seminal book on music history, The Oxford History of Western Music, the late Richard Taruskin talks about the circle of fifths, a diagram that helps you visually organize Western music theory’s 12 chromatic pitches for learning purposes. He mentions that the circle of fifths first appeared in a Russian music theory book published in Moscow in 1679, decades before Western music theorists began to talk about it. However, the book itself was not originally Russian, but was translated from Polish. Moreover, the author was a Ukrainian clergyman and singing teacher who was born in Kyiv, at that time part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with Krakow as its capital.
When Taruskin published his book in 2004, the background for the first appearance of the circle of fifths was just an interesting anecdote referring to the ethnic and linguistic diversity of Eastern Europe in the 17th century. But how can — or should — one speak of it after February 24, 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? How do you even pronounce the name of the Ukrainian cleric? Nikolai Diletsky, following the Russian form as published in the first edition, or Mykola Diletsky, in the Ukrainian form, as he was born in Kyiv and is considered part of Ukrainian music history?
By
Gergely Fazekas
September 18, 2024
Countries in the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe have been called home by some of the great composers of music history, and the region hosts some of the world’s most prestigious higher classical music education institutions. Despite this fact, Liisamaija Hautsalo states in her essay, the last of this section, that the Finnish-born composer Kaija Saariaho was perceived as being from “a faraway periphery” when she moved in the classical music circles of France, Germany and the US. In a scholarly context I was recently told that (post-communist) Central and Eastern European institutions are not representative of European higher classical music education. The person making this statement obviously assumed that European higher classical music education happens in the UK, or maybe in Germany and Austria. While I did not agree, this feedback speaks volumes about how classical music and higher classical music education is constructed as belonging to Western Europe in international academic debate today. In this special section the authors wish to problematize the role of nation and gender in higher classical music education, and the classical music contexts this education operates in, by focusing on the Baltic and Central and Eastern European region. By doing so we put the assumed Western European identity of classical music and higher classical music education in question.
By
Ann Werner
September 18, 2024
When looking at transitions from imperial to post-imperial rule, scholars have tended to look either at ruptures or at direct continuities of structures, laws, relationships, etc. I want to suggest a different approach. I believe we need to study more closely how political projects of a hugely different nature interact with one another across the divide of state collapse — and how this dynamic interaction raises expectations across long stretches of time. With a focus on East Central Europe, I would therefore like to present a specific, hopefully original narrative, but I also want to propose a research agenda.
By
Klaus Richter
January 23, 2022
This article explores the potential of the Kazakh “model woman” narrative in the context of the socio-cultural perspectives of Stalinism in traditional oriental societies. In her well-written memoirs, Shara Zhienkulova, founder of the Kazakh dance school, reconstructs personal accounts of the Bolshevik cultural modernization project, through the introduction of new cultural practices and her own hard-won battle for a place in the new Soviet culture. We argue here that while her body served the regime as a kinesthetic mediator for the projected ideological imperatives to be oriented on European style – in the Soviet manner – her soul and mind remained (as containers of personal and ethnic memory) ethnic Kazakh in nature. Through her memoirs Shara Zhienkulova intended to leave not only a name but also a voice in the Kazakh culture, recounting the inner world and thoughts of subaltern women.
By
Didar Kassymova and Elmira Teleuova
April 22, 2021
The growing sector of heritage industry and creative uses of the past in Russia illustrate that, besides the undeniable existence of restorative nostalgia, there are other, more progressive forms of nostalgia that address social change and the protection of heritage sites.
By
Ekaterina Kalinina
April 21, 2021
The purpose of this theme section is to put the question of religion into the focus of the studies which approach different aspects of Ukrainian reality today and show how an analysis of an intricate interplay between religion, politics, and society can help us better understand this reality. The articles and interviews show the importance of including religion in the studies of societies and look closer into complex entanglements that reveal religious traces, sometimes in the most unexpected places.
By
Yuliya Yurchuk
October 8, 2020
The concept of nation is not only, as is often assumed, related to states but to the people who feel that they belong to a community based on a common identity, wherein language and culture are often emphasized as something that knit people together. History, as well as contemporary experience, reveal the notion that state nationalism tends to oppress local languages and cultures. However, in a cultural nation interpretation, all national minorities, while being citizens of their state of domicile, are per definition not members of the majority nationality.
Essay by
Thomas Lundén
February 20, 2020
The main reason why we have not seen more severe conflicts between majorities and minorities in the new EU member states is, in the authors view, the EU’s success as a normative power. The pressure that the EU put on the candidates for membership to adapt to norms on minority protection and to solve their potential border conflicts had a positive effect.
By
Barbara Törnquist-Plewa & Magdalena Góra
January 21, 2015
The author argues that the equation of culture and natural resources has become a fundamental metaphor of the official patriotic discourse of identity in contemporary Russia. This conceptualization of the past frames nation building and state construction, the “nostalgic modernization”.
By
Ilya Kalinin
October 20, 2014
Like many other modern states, both the Soviet Union, with its authoritian socialism, and Sweden, with its social democracy, strived to shape their citizens' lives for the better. Both states considered it their duty actively to plan, organize and control housing.
By
Jenny Björkman & Johan Eellend
October 20, 2014
Issue 2025, 1: 
Baltic Worlds covers; the Baltic Sea Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, CentralAsia, Caucasus and the Balkan area.