LefteastThis article deals with the connection between manele and the criminal world in Romania. Although I finished it more than a year ago, I hesitated a long time before publishing it – it seemed that these things, though known, wouldn’t necessarily do justice to my favourite musical genre and would certainly upset those who work […]
Interviewed by Florin Faje and Alina-Sandra Cucu, 11 March 2013, Budapest Biographical note John Clarke is a Professor of Social Policy at the Open University, UK and a recurrent Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, at Central European University. He is one of the best-known social policy researchers of his generation. […]
In one of his essays, Zygmunt Bauman (1999) deals with the existential terror induced from having knowledge about the finiteness of our existence. According to Bauman, the pre-modern world could deal with the fear of death by firmly weaving individual existence into the eternity of the afterlife. Two pillars assumed this role in the modern […]
There is a Robinson Crusoe-like syndrome among Albanians, which can be dissected in two psychological moments. The first, a feeling of isolation which comes not only as a political isolation of the present and past, but also as a mentality which rarely steps over the home-border of social and political commitment. Such a phenomenon produces […]
Since mid-February, a popular uprising has brought out thousands in city squares across Bulgaria, giving voice to grievances accumulated over the last 23 years and reinserting the popular into the country’s politics. What began as a spontaneous expression of discontent at the rising electricity prices grew into a protest against the role of the privatized […]
The events in Bulgaria are moving so fast that it seems that whatever commentators will say will be rendered immediately as non-contemporaneous to them: either too soon or too late. Such instability is driven by the behaviour of the main actors themselves: one day the prime minister is certain he won’t resign (so as not […]
In the first days of 2013 a photograph got to the attention of Bulgarian anti-racists and elicited a few quick replies. The photograph was uploaded in the spring of 2012 by a 28-year-old ethnic Bulgarian female, Margarita Angelova from Radnevo. The text that accompanies the photograph expresses outrage at the high income of single mothers […]
The release of Vladimir Tismaneanu’s book Lumea secreta a nomenclaturii [The Secret World of the Nomenklatura] constitutes an event. Not so much because of its content though as the author remains faithful to his own style pasting and copying information and part of the texts in the book from older published works and his personal […]
In the bestiary of east European political monsters Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is a peculiarly elusive species. When he first came to power in 2009 both the remains of the 1990s liberal anticommunist concert (think tanks-media-the old right wing parties), and the ordinary people were thrusting contradictory hopes on Borisov’s shoulders. The liberal elite […]
In December 2012 students started a series of demonstrations against recent government reforms of higher education. In Budapest and many other towns the students set up discussion forums, organized strikes, and occupied streets, squares and bridges. Besides the slowly reacting official national and local Student Union (HÖK, HÖOK), the newly organized Student Network (SN, HaHa) […]