The article, based on the study of a wide scope of literature available on the Minangkabau of West Sumatra, Indonesia, as well as on the author’s own previous ethnographic research, describes the peculiar functional symbiosis of two cultural traditions: social organization based on the principals of matrilineal kinship and institutionalized male migration, viewed from both a structural and a historical perspective. It thus provides a summary of the current state of knowledge about the problem preliminary to further field research planned by the author beginning from July of this year, which will focus on new developments resulting from major socio-political changes in the Indonesian society in the last 10 years since the fall of the regime of President Suharto.
The social changes throughout the twentieth century had provoked uneven development of cities within the former Czechoslovakia. Each of the political regimes that alternated at the periodicity of approximately twenty years had marked, through the ideology, not only the ethnic and social profile of the city and its districts, but also their urbanistic and architectonical characteristics, symbolism and the outer appearance of the streets. As a result, important changes occurred in the spatial division of the city as well as the identity of city spaces. The author analyzes the impacts of social changes on the spatial diversity of the city and social composition of its districts from the beginning of the twentieth century, but focuses especially on the processes of transformation of the post-socialist city and its present state. Analyses the role of local memory in the politics of the self-government of the city and in the attitudes and activities of its inhabitants.
In late 1980s – early 1990s part of local intelligentsia in Palesse region of Belarus (that is, South-Western part of the Republic of Belarus, which is also referred in English academic literature as Polesia, Polesie, Polesje and Polissya) propagated the idea of existence of independent East-Slavonic Poleshuk nationality different from neighboring Ukrainians and Belarusians. Trying to shape a new Poleshuk identity and spread it among the local population, Poleshuk identity-makers developed a wide range of activities. Alongside with the creation of Poleshuk literary language, reinterpretation of history became one of the most essential tools used by representatives of the local intelligentsia in their identity-building efforts. Poleshuk history-makers readdressed and reinterpreted the whole range of key events in the mediaeval, modern and contemporary history of Palesse tailoring them to their current ideological needs and using historical material for legitimizing alleged Poleshuk distinctiveness from their Ukrainian and Belarusian surroundings. Alternative model of history elaborated by Poleshuk ideologists often contradicted to traditional clichés of both Soviet historiography and national historiographies of independent Belarus and Ukraine and was not easily accessible for the general public.
The aim of this paper is to show how the theory of an active society by Amitai Etzioni can provide a theoretical framework for the study of innovation processes - in particular social innovation, which is generally defined here as the implementation of a new social practice aimed at solving social problems and/or meeting social needs. An active society is a society in which collectivities (social groups) have the potential to articulate values and needs, to participate in consensus building processes and decision processes, to develop organisational structures and to realise values through collective social action. This paper discusses the general differentiation and interrelation between culture, structure and agency which is the fundament of the theory of an active society and additionally presents a systematisation which combines these domains with the “elements” (consciousness, commitment, knowledge, power) and “processes” (consensus building, mobilisation, decision making, control/guidance) that Etzioni perceives as the main dimensions of the active orientation. This systematisation can be seen as an adaptation of Etzioni’s theory which tries to make the interrelation between different theoretical dimensions more explicit. and Alexander Kesselring.