Landscape Sacralisation in Post-communist Poland

Landscape sacralisation is the process of filling the cultural landscape with religious phenomena and giving it a sacred character with elements of ritualised devotion. This paper examines this process in Poland during and since the communist era (1945–1989), and with a particular emphasis on late communist and post-communist times (1980–2013). It is argued that faith, politics, economy and religious ‘traditions of place’ are the most important factors shaping landscape sacralisation in Poland, particularly since 1980. Three types of landscape sacralisation are identified – architectural, linguistic and seasonal – and this paper discusses recent trends in these processes of landscape sacralisation with respect to their prevailing religious and non-religious dimensions. In recent decades, the Polish landscape has been filled with diverse religious objects and forms (churches, crosses, monuments, public processions, annual festivals and rural and urban nomenclature) associated chiefly with the Roman Catholic Church, the dominant denomination in the country. It is argued that scholarly appreciation of landscape sacralisation is a vital means of identifying the religiosity of Polish people during and since the communist era.     

Ideology and Realpolitik: East German Attitudes towards Zionism and Israel

Over several decades, the East German stance towards Israel was marked by condemnation of Zionism, a unilateral position on the Arab-Israeli conflict and denial of reparations and restitution claims. This position had its ideological background in the communist approach to the “Jewish question,” anti-Semitism and nationalism, while the most important criterion in shaping attitudes towards Israel was the incorporation of the German Democratic Republic's Middle East policy into the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. In addition, the East German political elite followed its own political interests when it tried to break through the West German Hallstein doctrine with the help of some Arab countries.     

Spatial restructuring of old industrial areas: Polish and former East German experiences

>This paper compares and contrasts the policy initiatives and the likely policy fortunes of two older, and heavily polluted, industrial regions — Upper Silesia in Poland and the Leipzig‐Halle district of the former East Germany. The involvement of local communities in the self‐regulation of structural planning is advocated in favour of state‐regulated planning, a version of which degraded these areas.     

Financialization of hotel corporations in Spain

One of the cutting-edge topics being currently debated in social sciences is the impact of financialization on corporations and on different geographical contexts. Surprisingly enough, there have been very few studies that have explicitly dealt with this issue within tourism studies. In this paper, the issue of financialization within tourism is addressed through an analysis of hotel corporations. Taking a case-study approach, it is argued that Spanish hotel chains are increasingly becoming financialized since a minimization of the impact of global financial crisis on these corporations is urgently required. The argument is not that hotel corporations’ financialization is necessarily new, but rather that the impact of the global financial crisis has led to an intensification of this very process. Taking as case studies the three largest Spanish hotel corporations (Meliá Hotels International, NH Hoteles and Grupo Barceló), the current crisis-led hotel financialization is dealt through four interrelated spheres: (1) built environment (hotel buildings property becoming controlled by financial funds), (2) actors (emergence of new agents as a result of hotel corporations intertwining with financial corporations), (3) hotel profit extraction (reliance on the secondary circuit of capital), (4) financial engineering instruments (forms of fictitious capital that are new in the context of hotel corporations). The article shows how the process of financialization of hotel corporations illustrates broad trends of both financialization and capital accumulation. Specifically, the main findings are on one hand, that financialization not only fixes capital on the ground, but also creates liquidity. On the other hand, that the selling of property titles is an increasing profit niche with differentiated geographical locations. The last significant finding is that financialization helps to improve profitability of non-financia corporations such as hotel chains.     

From Inchoate Pronouns to Proper Nouns: A Theory Fragment with 9/11, Gertrude Stein,and an East German Ethnography

Despite the elaborate means human beings deploy to render the world predictable and transparent, we nevertheless continually confront situations which are uncertain and opaque. This is especially so in the modern world, in which supralocal institutions and information mediated from afar allow the actions of unaccounted strangers beyond our face‐to‐face knowledge to affect us closely. One of the chief means we use to gain purchase in such situations is to document them, and documentary’s main technique is to move the at‐first‐unknown persons into an understandable narrative: hence the idea that some unknown others (“inchoate pronouns”) become understandable characters (“proper nouns”). This theory is elaborated through a journalistic documentation of the attack on the World Trade Center, a literary representation of the occupation of France during the Second World War, and an ethnographic depiction of current difficulties in East Germany.     

Involving small landlords as a regeneration strategy under shrinkage: evidence from two East German cases

In light of ongoing shrinkage processes affecting a number of cities and regions in Europe and around the world, the planning literature has suggested a need for new planning concepts and strategies, or even a new planning paradigm. This paper aims to contribute to the debate by investigating the adaptation of the process of urban regeneration to shrinkage. Urban regeneration is a common policy in cities facing population and economic decline. However, particularly for inner-city neighbourhoods, it has not been sufficiently documented how urban regeneration responds to challenges related to shrinkage. Looking first at the evolving national policy framework and then at two local case studies, this paper identifies conditions leading to the emergence of new practices of urban regeneration in inner-city neighbourhoods in Eastern Germany. These practices are characterized by the moderate usage of public subsidies combined with ‘soft’ measures like cooperation with individual property owners and potential investors as well as place marketing.     

The Psychologization of the Socialist Self: East German Forensic Psychology and its Deviants, 1945--1975

In the late 1940s and throughout most of the 1950s, East Germanylargely criminalized and politicized such things as drug abuse,alcoholism, delinquency, and even mental illness, often treatingthem as moral threats and acts of subversion. By the 1960s,however, policy makers, courts, and social services in the GDR,in a development paralleled in other industrialized countriesat the time, began turning to psychological and psychiatricapproaches in addressing antisocial behaviour. Based on publishedand archival records, this essay argues that this change wasthe result of a constellation of social, party-political, institutional,and international developments that led not only to a reconsiderationof anti-social conduct in the GDR, but also to a sweeping reconceptualizationof the psychological workings of the individual within socialism,culminating in the ideal of the ‘socialist personality.’This mirrored trends in contemporary western Europe and theUnited States, granting psychological complexity and depth todeviant personalities in East Germany; however, it representedless a pragmatic concession to western reforms than an extensionof the socialist utopian project. As a result, professionalsand policy-makers in the GDR minted an historically unique conceptof deviance that wedded Marxism—Lenin-Leninism with mainstreampsychiatry and psychology. The example of forensic psychologyin East Germany raises important questions about the relationshipbetween liberal, socialist, and fascist projects of social reformin twentieth-century Germany.     

Preserving Law and Order: Britain, the United States, and the East German Uprising of 1953

Feverishly the strikers watched for signs of intervention bythe American and British occupation forces. It was beyond theircomprehension . . . that the nations of the free world withwhom they felt themselves allied, should stand idly by whilethe Soviet Union crushed the rising with its war machine. Insome places rumour had it that American tanks had crossed thezonal border, that American aircraft were to drop weapons.¹     

考古发掘现场文物保护中的整体提取技术

馆藏东汉陶马是四川地区出土的大型陶质文物,身长一般都在80cm以上,身高在100cm以上,出土时大多残破。经修复后入藏。由于陶马受出土前的埋藏环境的影响,陶马文物入库前修复保护处理不当,以及文物库房保存环境等因素影响,产生了严重的腐蚀风化的损毁,需对其抢救修复保护。为此,对陶马的金属元素含量进行了综合分析。根据分析结果,确定采用10%氨水、75%乙醇、5%醋酸和蒸馏水等对陶马进行表面污垢清除,用丙酮对已老化的粘合剂进行清除,对已经风化、酥松、掉粉、起层等部位采用5%～15%聚醋酸乙烯酯,D-801、GSP-53陶瓷加固;对断裂处采用505树脂、DG-4双酚胶粘剂、A356胶粘剂粘合等方法修复保护。实验结果表明,这件东汉陶马的修复保护取得了良好效果,恢复了本来面目,为今后修复保护大型陶马提供了宝贵经验。     

The woman of Pritschoena: an example of the German neolithic neurosurgery in Saxony-Anhalt

We present an outstanding example of successful prehistoric double trephination dating between 2700 and 2200 BC, most likely to the Corded Ware culture, at the end of the Neolithic Age. The particularity of this case is the presence of a double trephination, one frontal over the sinus sagittal superior and one parietal right. There is evidence that the patient survived months to years after the operations. The purpose of the procedure is not known. The case confirms the astonishing degree of technical skills reached in Saxony-Anhalt over 4500 years ago without anesthetic, antiseptic, or technologic aids.     

The nuclear nation and the German question: an American reactor in West Berlin

This essay analyses the relationship between nuclear technology and ideas about the nation in the late 1950s by looking at the US–West German bilateral agreement and at American proposals to develop reactors in West Berlin, both of which emerged from Eisenhower's 1953 Atoms for Peace programme. American efforts to maintain tight control over the German nuclear sphere contradicted the claim that reactors were solely instruments of peace. At the same time, plans to build a reactor in West Berlin underscored that city's status as an occupied city with an uncertain future and with ill-defined relationships to East and West Germany.     

Start-up Competitions as an Instrument of Entrepreneurship Policy: The German Experience

The number of aspiring entrepreneurs in high-tech industries who successfully complete the transition from a nascent start-up project towards an operational new venture is comparatively low in Germany. Since the mid-1990s, policy-makers have initiated numerous start-up competitions (SUCs or business plan competitions) to facilitate this important step in the venture creation process. SUCs have two key objectives. They are aimed at increasing start-up activity by motivating potential entrepreneurs, while they should also help to increase the likelihood of subsequent entrepreneurial success through providing necessary entrepreneurial skills to prospective entrepreneurs. With our explorative study, we provide the first comprehensive empirical evidence from a cross-sectional survey of existing SUCs in Germany. Overall, 71 SUCs are identified which are analysed regarding their development, regional distribution, and main structural characteristics. Finally, we outline an agenda of future research questions concerning the effectiveness and efficiency of SUCs as an instrument of entrepreneurship policy.