Diversity in Daugavpils: Unpacking Identity and Cultural Engagement among Minority School Youth in Eastern Latvia

Abstract

Studies of minority ‘integration’ often focus heavily on group boundaries of ethnicity, language and identity. This essay challenges these conventional approaches in Latvia by examining individuals’ quotidian, lived experiences and how these transcend common analytical boundaries. Using the Daugavpils region as a case study, I explore Russian speaker and Latvian participation in events explicitly linked with ‘ethnic’ Latvian cultural identity. I argue, by adopting multifaceted analytical measures of identities, ethnicity and belonging, new perspectives on banal integration and minority engagement within national culture emerge. Individuals engage with each other and with ‘national’ identity and culture in complex ways. Young ‘Russian speakers’ are often more integrated with their ethnic Latvian peers than the extant literature suggests, both civically and in Latvia’s cultural sphere, as consumers and producers of Latvian ‘national’ identity.     

Analyzing and Interpreting Lime Burials from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): A Case Study from La Carcavilla Cemetery

Over 500 victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were buried in the cemetery of La Carcavilla (Palencia, Spain). White material, observed in several burials, was analyzed with Raman spectroscopy and powder XRD, and confirmed to be lime. Archaeological findings at La Carcavilla's cemetery show that the application of lime was used in an organized way, mostly associated with coffinless interments of victims of Francoist repression. In burials with a lime cast, observations made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the presence of soft tissue at the moment of deposition, the sequence of events, and the presence of clothing and other evidence. This study illustrates the importance of analyzing a burial within the depositional environment and taphonomic context.     

Sustainable citizenship for a technological world: negotiating deliberative dialectics

Incorporating the notion of sustainability is the biggest challenge for citizenship in a technological era. Existing conceptions of citizenship have not been able to grapple with compounded ecological, economic, cultural, and moral threats facing modern technology-infused societies. Nor has increased public participation, engagement, and dialogue resolved polarized positions on issues such as what constitutes quality of life or what is meant by the integrity of nature. This paper draws on the scholarship of both sustainability and citizenship to propose a framework of sustainable citizenship that seeks to emphasize shared values through a deliberated clash of ideas. Such a framework involves a negotiation of the dialectics of rights and responsibilities, state and non-state, public and private, human and non-human nature, universal and particular, and democracy and capitalism. The paper illustrates how sustainable citizenship can be applied to deal with contentious political and policy issues of new and emerging technologies.     

The co-ordination of conflict prevention and development aid in southern Georgia

This article examines how various organisations co-ordinate conflict prevention and development aid in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of southern Georgia, and how this co-ordination might be improved. Several contradicting perspectives are pitted against one another to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of the region’s troubles and the manner in which these multilateral, bilateral, local, regional and nongovernmental actors have dealt with them. The paper pays particular attention to the question of whether organisations working in Samtskhe-Javakheti should focus on development assistance or conflict prevention, and whether early warning about the region has been exaggerated and uncoordinated. It concludes that there has been a reasonable balance between development aid and conflict prevention, that early warning has mostly been cautious, and that there has been considerable information sharing and synchronisation between agencies. However, this co-ordination has depended on a number of non-governmental organisations performing co-ordinating roles on their own initiative.     

Do pro-market economic reforms drive human rights violations? An empirical assessment, 1981–2006

Liberals argue that economic policy reforms will benefit most in terms of better access to goods, less inflation and better economic opportunities. Critics of market reforms, among them Marxists, critical theorists, skeptics of globalization as well as a large portion of the NGO community, see the majority as losers from such reform, expecting resistance that would lead to political repression. They suggest that free-market policy reforms are analogous to “swallowing the bitter pill.” We make use of the change in the Index of Economic Freedom as a measure of market liberalizing reforms, employing data from a panel of 117 countries for the period from 1981–2006. Our results show a strong positive association between reforms towards more free markets with regard to governments’ respect for human rights, controlling for a host of relevant factors, including the possibility of endogeneity. The results are robust in relation to sample size, alternative data and methods, and a sample of only developing countries; and they are substantively quite large. Our results support those who argue that freer markets generate better economic conditions and higher levels of social harmony and peace, and it seems as if getting there is less problematic than people generally think—in fact, halfhearted measures and backsliding that prolong crises could be more dangerous to human rights.     

‘Women of substance’: Commodification and fetishization in contemporary advertising within the Indian ‘Urbanscape'

Advertising today has become an intrinsic part of modern culture. Apart from the obvious and tangible extolment of the virtues of a product and/or brand, more insiduously and less tangibly, advertising plays a key role in the functioning of social attitudes and values. This paper examines how advertising discourses in India, in particular the hugely successful and representative Woman of Substance’ ad campaign in the magazine Femina, transforms the manifold attitudes and qualities of the woman into commodities to be marketed; and how the ad campaign positions the woman within the nexus of her social interactions. The paper traces the economic and socio‐cultural changes that have characterised India's transition towards an open market economy to situate the role that advertising discourse plays in urban India today in the representation of the ‘Woman of Substance’. These changes have occurred in a relatively short space of time and have interacted profoundly with advertising discourse. This can best be seen in the fact that an urbanising trend in India has diversified the range of approved cultural models available to women in the search for what has come to be fashionably referred to in recent times as ‘lifestyles‘— exemplified both in the ‘Woman of Substance’ ad campaign, and the magazine itself, Femina.     

A place in the Sun? IRENA’s position in the global energy governance landscape

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), created in 2009, is the only intergovernmental organization dedicated to renewable energy. Drawing on several new datasets, this article explores IRENA in the context of three other major international energy organizations: the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Energy Agency and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Through this analysis, several empirical approaches to comparing international energy organizations are tried out. Direct comparison between IRENA other international energy organizations is found to be problematic as each organization is different and comparisons inevitably encounter apples and oranges type issues. The study finds that IRENA’s niche in international renewable energy governance is not yet fully carved out, but that the organization’s mandate and institutional structure, as well as recent international developments, indicate that it may grow rapidly in importance.     

The political ecology of traditional farming practices in Thana district,Maharashtra (India)

This article attempts to discuss the traditional agricultural practices dalhi and rab, in Thana district, Maharashtra (India): in 1818, when the British took over the district; the 1880s, when the effects of the British land revenue and forest policies were visible; and the 1980s. It is suggested that the traditional system was appropriate, in the past, given the existing ecology and the level of development of technology; and that even now a well‐regulated utilisation of forest resources for rab may be sound, in the long run, from the viewpoint of preservation of soil fertility and a pollution‐free environment, especially in the absence of viable alternatives.     

Rural landlessness,extended entitlements and inter‐household relations in south Asia: A Bangladesh case

This article shows how people in one part of Bangladesh rendered landless and impoverished by river bank erosion make innovative use of kinship and other ideologies legitimating reciprocity and mutual aid to re‐establish themselves rent‐free on the land of others. It thereby addresses a larger empirical issue: where are the fully landless rural poor in South Asia living, and through what means? Theoretically, it extends Drèze and Sen's analysis of entitlements and poverty to instances of inter‐household cooperative conflict and mutual aid among extremely poor people. A culturally informed, gender disaggregated analysis of those locally called uthuli because they have settled on others’ land without monetary payment demonstrates that women's ‘extended entitlements’ [Drèze and Sen, 1989:10] as daughters, sisters and mothers are often critical assets in establishing residence. Women are also key agents in the establishment and maintenance of uthuli residence and in managing the benefits stemming from it. Using this approach, we show how landless women's entitlements are pivotal in securing access to a houseplot for themselves and their families.