The article deals with the process of the “secularization” of the Roman Catholic Church and its attempts to secure exclusionary patriarchal and traditional values and interpretations in the context of issues pertaining to sexual citizenship. Taking two case studies as examples – the recent Family Code debate in Slovenia and the Health Education in Croatia – it shows how the Church and its satellite civil society organizations increasingly refrain from using “biblical discourse”, substituting it with what appears as a rational, scientific discourse molded into reassuring and populist common-sense statements. In such a way, the Church is secularizing its discourse in order to “clericalize” society. Furthermore, it is successfully reinventing the issues of family and marriage as an ideological battleground of contemporary cultural wars in post-socialist societies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1033069
This article reports findings from research about trans* citizenship in 14 post-socialist countries. It evidences substantial deficits concerning trans policy making, and a lack of policy debate in this area. Most examined countries have a lack of protocols for official gender change in birth certificates, IDs, passports and other documents. Usually there are no guidelines, measures and procedures defining the standards of healthcare for trans persons. Practice concerning healthcare varies widely, and trans people and advocates exercise agency in negotiating access to care. The article suggests that trans citizenship studies need to foreground legal and social aspects of citizenship, as these are highlighted in the post-socialist context. Policy implications are discussed in relation to key citizenship debates including those concerning challenges to normative models of citizenship.
COBISS.SI-ID: 65434210
Readdressing the question of how (contemporary) societies are structured (producing and reproducing the existing relations) and how they change, we cannot but reflect on the almost eternal sociological questions and dilemmas, such as: Which is more important, structure or action, supra-individual complex units or agents? Who conditions whom? Do structures establish the conditions for individuals' actions or do individuals create structures through their actions? Those who have addressed these issues have tended to place themselves on one or the other side of these dilemmas. We agree that structures have been formed throughout history and are accordingly constructed and persistent, representing the framework of their agents. As such, structures are subjected to change and are changing. As structured structures, they are strong, resistant and rigid, while at the same time being vulnerable and prone to change. They are diverse in the different moments of history, and vary in their susceptibility to persistence and change. This applies not only to class structures coming into being and changing throughout history but also to economic, racial, gender, national, political. In this chapter we analyse the role of gender as structured and structuring structure.
COBISS.SI-ID: 57970274
This paper addresses the influence of the economic crisis on national identity in Slovenia. It first analyzes the creation of the contemporary national identity following independence in 1991 that was established in relation to a negatively perceived Balkan identity, which represented "the Other", and in relation to a "superior" European identity that Slovenia aspired to. With the economic crisis, the dark corners of Slovenia's "successful" post-socialist transition to democracy came to light. Massive layoffs of workers and the bankruptcies of once-solid companies engendered disdain for the political elites and sympathy for marginalized groups. The public blamed the elites for the country's social and economic backsliding, and massive public protests arose in 2012. The aftermath of the protests was a growing need among the people for a new social paradigm toward solidarity. We show that in Slovenia the times of crisis were not times of growing nationalism and exclusion as social theory presupposes but, quite the contrary, they were times of growing solidarity among citizens and with the "Balkan Other".
COBISS.SI-ID: 64075106
Scientific monograph focuses on theoretical articulation of nation and nationalism, it confronts the key contributions in the studies of nationalism, it shows the transformations, influenced by the rise and spread of nationalism in the past centuries, and conducts the analysis of dynamics of Slovenian nationalism and nationalism in Slovenia. With its comparative analysis of Catalan and Basque independentism it demonstrates the similarities and differences with Slovenian ethno-genesis and strategies of self-determination. The monograph places the phenomena of nationalism in the wider context of europeanisation and globalization.
COBISS.SI-ID: 259231744
This monograph addresses the problem of the impact of EU conditionality on democratization and transformation of post-socialist countries in Western Balkans. EU conditionality is part of a larger story of association process and Europeanization, which we have to study in conjunction with the post-socialist transition and its characteristics in the region. Research method is based on an interdisciplinary approach of political sociology that researches topics, which are traditionally located in the sphere of political science, from a sociological point of view. Transition in the Western Balkans was seriously hampered by the ethnic violence and the rise of illiberal democracies in the 90s. One of the EU conditions was also cooperation with ICTY and here the collided with national identities that have been formed through the past ethnic conflicts. The case study of the impact of EU conditionality on the Croatian political elite and their cooperation with the Hague Tribunal by the method of critical discourse analysis shows that national identity is an important variable, which in certain circumstances affects the effectiveness of EU conditionality and, consequently, the transformative power of the European Union on the candidate countries.
COBISS.SI-ID: 287829504
The monograph brings new insights into the field of migration studies, in particular the extension of the understanding of the EU's migration policy as restrictive, repressive and anti-European, which is the prevailing framework of the critical theory of migration, with a new understanding of the functioning of the European apartheid in the 21st century. The latter is marked not only by the repressive aspects of power but increasingly often also by productive dictions of fundamental European values in its declarative humanistic orientations. The author uses a historical comparative text analysis of the key documents of European migration policy, and draws attention to repression and exclusion within the new field of European apartheid, which is characterized by affirmative discourses of fundamental European values, the protection of human lives, humanity in humanitarianism, thus, discourses that look safe, inclusive, and diametrically opposed to the repressive action on the ground.
COBISS.SI-ID: 290709760
The scientific monograph is based on the doctoral dissertation titled "Violence against women and intimate partner murders of women in Slovenia". It is a work that provides a detailed insight into the characteristics of intimate partner murders of women in Slovenia. The content is based on a theoretical understanding of violence in general and specific intimate partner violence against women. It discusses the murders and the need for sex-specific study of intimate partner murders, as well as the theoretical conceptualization of intimate partner violence and femicide. The central part of the book is a comprehensive contextual analysis of empirical material on intimate partner murders of women in Slovenia. It is one of the few works that deal with the issue of intimate partner murders in Slovenia from a sociological perspective.
COBISS.SI-ID: 291989504
The European Union's (EU) Structured Dialogue, a consultation process between young people and policy-makers on the EU's youth policies, has achieved remarkable popularisation and is perceived as a valuable mechanism in finding remedies for the risks facing young people across the EU. Applying the Foucauldian analytics of government approach, this article critically analyses the formation and features of the Structured Dialogue and its practical implementation during the final phase of the third work cycle under the Greek Presidency of the EU (January 2014 to June 2014). It shows that the proliferation of dialogue is a practical feature of government at the EU level undertaken by a multiplicity of stakeholders. In this constellation, risks associated with youth are mobilised as representational notions that render reality in such a form to make it amenable to specific types of operations and interventions. The Structured Dialogue works as a practical form of governing reconstituting power relations so that government is reaffirmed as a valid and legitimate process through which actors collectively search for the best possible outcome and in the interest of all, while youth are pursued and encouraged to make them active citizens capable, as both individuals and communities, of managing their own risk.
COBISS.SI-ID: 34343773
This article explores the process of disintegration of Yugoslavia, the state-building process in Slovenia and the context of the specific phenomenon - the erasure that took place in Slovenia in the early 1990s. It reconstructs the socio-historic and political contexts in which the independence of Slovenia occurred. While describing the state-building process, the process of democratisation and the dilemmas about minority protection in Slovenia - including the distinction between the recognised "autochthonous" minorities and the non-recognised "new" minorities - it paves the ground for theoretical and sociological discussion of the "erased". The theoretical discussion is based on the questions of human rights, nationalism and citizenship, both in its classic (nation-state) conception and its alternative forms such as global citizenship. Sociologically, it places the "erasure" into a broader frame of investigating the processes of democratisation and Europeanisation, thus highlighting the key factors that caused the perforation of Slovene democracy in its twenty years of independence.
COBISS.SI-ID: 45709922