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
The collapse of socialist regimes across Southeastern Europe changed the rules of the political game and led to the transformation of these societies. The status of women and sexual minorities was immediately affected. This volume contrast their status in the post-socialist societies of the region with their status under socialism. Kuhar’s chapter specifically addresses the new role of the Roman Catholic Church after its rehabilitation in early nineties in the context of sexual citizenship debates in Slovenia.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1068141
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 analyze the role of gender as structured and structuring structure.
COBISS.SI-ID: 57970274
Citizenship education has been an important part of the European Union's (EU) agenda to integrate a European dimension into schools' curricula. The usage of European symbolism in citizenship education curriculum material has been an especially important (yet understudied) means not only to promote a distinct European identity and increase knowledge on EU-related topics, but also to regulate (young) EU citizens and population. The paper analyses the content related to the EU and European dimension in citizenship education textbooks and workbooks at the lower-secondary school level in Slovenia. It demonstrates that, through diverse symbolic displays, which are understood as a specific governmental technique, the idea of a European community as a site of opportunities is promoted while students are stimulated to understand themselves as subjects who must be active and responsible EU citizens. Moreover, European symbolism is employed to nurture and promote Slovenian identity as being purely European and, as such, distinct from earlier Balkan-situated, Yugoslav and socialist forms of identity and belonging.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32730973
Using the example of immigration to the newly-established city of Nova Gorica, the article offers some insight on the complex subject of migration to Slovenia from other Yugoslavian republics before the year 1991 and on the forming of urban identity before and after '91. Statistical information on the migration to Slovenia is supplemented by oral sources and testimonies about life in Slovenia before and after its independence. The article explains the identity strategies adopted by the immigrants and how this strategies changed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
COBISS.SI-ID: 3287412