Eastern European Studies Commons^™

For Food Space: Theorizing Alternative Food Networks Beyond Alterity, Renata Blumberg, Helga Leitner, Kirsten Valentine Cadieux

Department of Nutrition and Food Studies Scholarship and Creative Works

In response to calls by scholars to deepen theoretical engagement in research on Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), in this article we critically discuss and assess major theoretical approaches deployed in the study of AFNs. After highlighting the strengths and limitations of each theoretical approach, we provide an alternative framework – which we refer to as the Geographical Political Ecology of Food Systems – that integrates the contributions that have emerged in the study of the alternative geographies of food with an understanding of capitalist processes in the food system. We do this by bringing together literature on the political ecology …

The Soviet And American Wars In Afghanistan: Applying Clausewitzian Concepts To Modern Military Failure, Artur Kalandarov

Honors Projects

This paper evaluates the validity of three concepts from Carl von Clausewitz’s On War as they relate to contemporary military conflict. Utilizing the Soviet and American Wars in Afghanistan as case studies, the paper also offers a model for comparative conflict analysis by expanding upon Clausewitz’s culminating point concept. It argues that – despite limitations to Clausewitz’s theory of war – his concepts of culminating points in military operations, mass and concentration, and changing war aims provide useful insights into counterinsurgency military failures. Chapter One identifies the Soviet and American culminating points. Concluding that the concept of a culminating point …

Industrial Policy For Regional Development In Lithuania, Guoda Terleckaite

CMC Senior Theses

Lithuania is internationally recognized as a high-income developed country, but the high standard of living is limited only to a small minority of citizens. While the capital is emerging as a financial center and a hub for information technology, cities in the Western and Central parts of Lithuania are rapidly declining. Formerly industrial regions, Šiauliai, Panevėžys, Alytus, Utena, Tauragė, Telšiai and Marijampolė, now suffer from massive emigration, brain drain, high unemployment rates, and an increased risk of poverty and social exclusion among residents. Unlike larger cities, poorer counties have not been magnets for foreign direct investment and have benefited little …

Ethnonational Identity And Detached Lives In A Serbian Province: A Study Of Parallelism Among Vojvodina's Hungarian Community, Uros Prokic

Dissertations and Theses

Current theories of interethnic relations generally posit assimilation, integration and marginalization as possible outcomes between minority and dominant groups in Eastern Europe. However, there may be cases that are not adequately described by any of these existing interethnic relations paradigms. This dissertation explores one alternative, dubbed parallelism, which can be described as institutionally-driven self-isolation and detachment leading to communities living side by side on parallel trajectories and not interacting. Using the Hungarian ethnonational minority community in Serbia's autonomous northern province of Vojvodina as a case study, the author examines the institutional factors that have led to parallelism. Primary data from …

Transnational Migration And Ethnic And Religious Renewal Amongst The Ethnic German Minority In Romania, Ovidiu Oltean

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"The normalization of inter-ethnic relations after the fall of communism and the establishment of a rather inclusive minority regime has opened up new possibilities for the ethnic and religious minorities in Romania. Social, cultural and religious life has seen a pluralization and revival that was not possible during communism. Ethnic minorities developed new forms of cultural and ethnic expression and gained new leveraging instruments in relation to the ethnic Romanian majority. As Romanian society has grown more pluralistic, not only has political and cultural life developed and become more diverse but also religious forms of expression and religious organizations have …

Thirty Years Later: The Pentecostal Church In Romania And Religious Freedom In The Post-Communist Era, Dragoș Ștefănică

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The aim of the present paper is to provide a brief presentation of the evolution of religious freedom in Romania since the 1989 Revolution from the perspective of a Pentecostal believer. To better understand what this event meant for this denomination, first the situation of the Pentecostal movement in the interwar and communist times will be presented, and then survey the changes brought by the fall of the communist regime and how religious freedom evolved in the past three decades.

Thirty Years Later: Being Orthodox In Romania, Then And Now, Claudia Chiorean

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"Romanians know themselves to be traditionally Orthodox, so they declare themselves in censuses as belonging to the majority religion. But in fact, in practice, only about 30 percent are Orthodox practitioners....

If I, as a Romanian, belong to the two-thirds who have only declared themselves Orthodox without living the faith in its true dogmatic dimensions, this means I have replaced God in my life with the Internet, with the psychologist, with my job, with trips, with activities which distract my attention from myself and from my own identity."

Foreword To This Special Issue, Beth Admiraal

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

"The door that opens up to religious freedom does not always lead to expected places. Our contributors, reflecting on the past thirty years for religion in Romania, note both the joys and tribulations of freedom."

Reflections On Jehovah’S Witnesses In Romania: A Thirty-Year Retrospective, Ionut Moraru

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article provides testimony from and data about Jehovah’s Witnesses in Romania, who have suffered persecution both before and after the fall of Communism. In recent years the government has taken steps to officially recognize and protect Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Book Review: The Victory Of The Cross: Salvation In Eastern Orthodoxy, Paul Crego

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The Victory of the Cross: Salvation in Eastern Orthodoxy is the latest book by James R. Payton, Jr., emeritus professor of history at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. His previous books include Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Tradition. He also edited A Patristic Treasure: Early Church Wisdom for Today.

Book Review: A Short History Of The Georgian Church [SakʻArtʻVelos Eklesiis Mokle Istoria], Paul Crego

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Metropolitan Archbishop Anania Japaridze (1949-present) is a member of the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in Georgia and has served as a bishop in that church since 1991. He has published several books, mainly on the history of the Orthodox Church in Georgia, but also books on how Georgians have been converted to other Christian denominations or religions, and, thereby “converted” to other ethnicities. The thesis of one such book is that Georgian converts to Islam in the northwest part of historical Georgian territories lost their Georgian language and national identity and became Abkhazians. (Apʻxazetʻi: kʻartʻveltʻa "gaapʻxazeba" = Abkhazia: …

Beyond Europeanization: The Politics Of Scale And Positionality In Lithuania’S Alternative Food Networks, Renata Blumberg, Diana Mincyte

Publications and Research

This article brings geographical insights to understanding the Europeanization of agri-food politics in new European Union member states. Most literature on agri-food policy and law in the European Union has conceptualized policy making and implementation as an institutional process involving multiple levels of governance. In this perspective, Europeanization is understood as a process through which stakeholders formulate, negotiate, and implement legal principles and procedures across various institutions at different levels of governance. By employing the conceptual tools developed in geographical research, we contribute a spatial and historical dimension to these studies. Our analysis shows how the politics of scale and …

Women In The Serbian Orthodox Church: Historical Overview And Contemporary Situation, Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović, Radmila Radić

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Research on the position of women in the Eastern Orthodox churches is still scarce. Some recent studies show differences among the various Orthodox Churches in Eastern Europe regarding women’s issues. The position of the women in the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) was addressed as late as in the 1990s, but this is still an insufficiently examined field. Eastern Orthodox theologians have rarely discussed the problem of the position and role of women in the SOC. During the socialist era, they did not engage this topic, except in studies related to female monasticism. On the other hand, sociological and anthropological studies …

Post-Soviet Transformation For Evangelicals, 1991-2018: Deepening Causes For Discord, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

During the great transformation between 1989 and 1991, the majority of American journalists were completely surprised by the transformations of 1989 in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, since it contradicted their stereotypes so profoundly. Several developments within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe turned out to be signposts for those with the eyes to see. Literary figures and philosophers circulating their thinking in samizdat form, or through the emergence of dissenting movements, pointed to the disillusionment with the grand socialist promises. Solzhenitsyn had already drawn attention in his Nobel speech to the power of truth …

Crimean Anti-Religious Persecution In 2018 And 2019, Felix Corley

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

In Russian-occupied Crimea in 2018, there were 23 prosecutions brought against individuals for ill-defined "missionary activity," of which 19 ended with punishment, Forum 18 has found. Many of those punished were prosecuted for sharing their faith on the street or for holding worship at unapproved venues. Cases against two more were due to be heard in mid-January 2019. This represents a doubling of such cases in the Crimean peninsula since the first year such punishments for "missionary activity" were imposed. July 2016 to July 2017 saw 13 known cases of which eight ended in punishment.

Book Review: Church In A Divided World: The Encounter Of The Lutheran World Federation With The Cold War, Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Research on the mutual impact of Christian churches and the Cold War is proceeding albeit slowly. One of the most important initiators of such research, the prominent church leader Risto Lehtonen of Finland, has now added his own study based on his personal experience in executive positions with the World Student Christian Federation and then more pertinently as Director of the Department of Church Cooperation of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF). With occasional direct references to his own role in the historical development of the churches’ role in the post-World War II rupture of the world into two hostile camps, …

Frontmatter (Volume 39, Issue 6), Paul B. Mojzes

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

No abstract provided.

Eurasian And Eastern European Evangelicals: Tested Over Two Centuries, Walter Sawatsky

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The oppression of evangelicals has been a persistent legacy, but it has not applied to all of them. Therefore, we must begin by defining evangelicals and oppression. A further query to pursue is: what intensity of oppression has permitted creative survival?

The Truth In Fiction: A Discussion Of Educational Agency And Hierarchical Truth In Children’S Literature, Grace Griffin

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

I wrote and created With Wings and Words, a children’s picture book based off of interview material gathered about the 1989 Velvet Revolution, in order to demonstrate the inherent multiplicity of truth around historical events and break down the construction of a “national” truth by placing personal narratives and interpretations in conversation with each other. These narratives, while present and available in the Czech Republic, are important to display and discuss in order to avoid the oversimplification of events or erasure of the emotional complexities they cause. After consulting with various relevant Czech children’s books, I completed interviews and used …

A Secret In The Words Tales Of Literature And Dissent In Communist Czechoslovakia, Thea Toocheck

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In order to better understand the parallel culture of the 1970s and 1980s Czechoslovakia, this paper aims to tell the stories of six members of the Czechoslovak samizdat community: Marie Klimešová, Ivan Lamper, Ladislav Šenkyřík, Tomáš Tichák, Jáchym Topol, and Jarka Vrbová. Through personal interviews with these individuals, we understand how editors, typists, artists, writers, translators, and readers played significant parts in this parallel culture as well as how these people continue to play important roles in society today. While the tales told here are only parts of the lives of six individuals, they help reflect the impact of an …