Varför utgör Navalnyj en sådan utmaning mot Putin och det etablissemang han leder?15 dec 10.05-10.20 inledningstalar Prof. Bo Petersson (RUCARR, Malmö universitet) om ”Varför Navalnyj utgör en sådan utmaning mot Putin och det etablissemang han leder” vid Sydöstra Skånes Mänskliga Rättigheterskonferens, Simrishamns Rådhus.
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Seminar with Dr. Astrid Hedin, Associate Professor, Visiting scholar at Harvard Univ. Davis Center: Communist state administrative structures. Welcome!
When? December 14, 4.15-5.30 pm
Where: Zoom link
Despite the common progeny of communist regimes across the world, research has often treated each communist regime as sui generis, as a class by itself. At the same time, area studies tend to assume that readers are already familiar with the basic structures and core administrative traits of communist regimes.
This article seeks to acquaint a broader set of researchers with communist state administration as a “family” or type (cf. Wollman, 2021). In focus are the core political-institutional features and administrative traditions of the communist state; the historical doctrines, terminology, and actual practices under communism. Administrative structures are described from a broad institutionalist perspective, guided by classic questions concerning principles of hierarchy, autonomy, and complexity, as well as historical praxis and norms, emergent standard operating procedures, and informal rules and relations.
Popular understanding often envisages communist-type administration as hierarchical commands from the top, which can be quietly resisted and circumvented by a purportedly nonpolitical bureaucracy and everyday life. In contrast, empirical studies of both historical communist regimes and 21st-century China draw up a picture of political control more as a tangled and overlapping grid, trellis, espalier, or net.
A concluding section comments on the historical difficulties of doing research on communist administration and suggests some prospects for the field’s change and development
Dr Rico Isaacs, Associate Professor in Politics, University of Lincoln:The new publication The Putin Predicament” by Prof. Bo Petersson has appeared. Congratulations! Celebration at the Department of Global Political Studies.
Using the Russian president’s major public addresses as the main source, Bo Petersson analyzes the legitimization strategies employed during Vladimir Putin’s third and fourth terms in office. The argument is that these strategies have rested on Putin’s highly personalized blend of strongman-image projection and presentation as the embodiment of Russia’s great power myth. Putin appears as the only credible guarantor against renewed weakness, political chaos, and interference from abroad—in particular from the US.
The Putin Predicament. Problems of Legitimacy and Succession in Russia
Welcome to the RUCARR seminar with Prof. Vello Pettai, University of Tartu: Foresight Scenarios on Populism: Imagining Central and Eastern European Politics in 2030
When: September 28, 3-5 pm (Swedish time)
Where: Zoom, sign-up here
Foresight research offers a range of techniques and perspectives in order to analyse political trends looking toward the future. This presentation will lay out a series of foresight scenarios about populist politics in Central and Eastern Europe that have been developed within the EU Horizon-2020 project “POPREBEL”. The scenarios are not meant as predictions, but rather as perspective-enhancing exercises about how different drivers might come together to create different outcomes by 2030. Participants will be asked to provide their analytical advice about how to improve the scenarios.
RUCARR researcher Dr Kamal Makili-Aliyev has recenly publised two new articles:
The role of traditional rituals in resisting energy injustice: The case of hydropower developments in Svaneti, GeorgiaRUCARR seminar with Dr. Nino Antadze (University of Prince Edward Island)
October 19, 3.15 pm (zoom)
This study with co-author Kety Gujaraidze intervenes in the energy justice literature by bringing to the foreground the local, emplaced, and bottom-up perspective. We specifically explore the potential of place-based agency, expressed in the form of traditional rituals, to expand the repertoire of extra-institutional means of resistance against various manifestations of energy injustice. We investigate the recent developments in the hydropower sector in the Svaneti region of the Republic of Georgia. Based on a qualitative research design involving personal interviews and document analysis, we explain how and why the traditional ritual of taking the oath of unity on the icon of St. George has been used to oppose hydropower developments, and how the employment of this extra-institutional action is linked to the changed political opportunity structure. In addition to underscoring the need to recognize and respect the cultural and religious importance assigned to traditional rituals by local communities, the findings of our study imply a need to consider traditional rituals not merely as symbolic or/and performative means of resistance, but also as political tools that may have a significant impact on the development of energy projects.
Dr. Nino Antadze is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island (Canada). Dr. Antadze studies environmental planning processes with the emphasis on environmental and energy justice, and large-scale environmental change with the focus on climate justice and just transitions. Dr. Antadze earned a PhD in urban and regional planning from the University of Waterloo, Canada. She also holds an MSc in Environmental Management and Policy from Lund University, Sweden and an MSc in Environmental Sciences and Policy from Central European University, Hungary.
Karina Vamling, Co-Director of RUCARR, gave a guest lecture in the series “Russian outside Russia” on June 23 2021, organised by the Slavisc Department of the University of Cologne (link). Topic of her talk: The Russian language in South Caucasus with special focus on Georgia.
New publication: Language and Society in the Caucasus. Understanding the past, navigating the present – a collection of articles presented as a festschrift for Prof. Karina Vamling, May 25 (below). Editors of the volume are Christofer Berglund, Katrine Gotfredsen, Jean Hudson and Bo Petersson.
Articles
- Oliver Reisner: Reflections on the history of Caucasian studies in Tsarist Russia and the early Soviet Union
- Gerd Carling: Caucasian typology and Indo-European reconstruction
- Manana Kobaidze: Recently borrowed English verbs and their morphological accomodation in English
- Merab Chukhua: Paleo-Caucasian semantic dictionary
- Klas-Göran Karlsson: The Armenian genocide. Recent scholarly interpretations
- Stephen F. Jones: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918-21
- Derek Hutcheson & Bo Petersson: Rising from the ashes. The role of Chechnya in contemporary Russian politics
- Lars Funch Hansen: Russification and resistance. Renewedd pressure on Circassian identity and new forms of local and transnational resistance in the North Caucasus
- Lidia S. Zhigunova & Raymond Taras: Under the Holy Tree. Circassian activism, indigenous cosmologies and decolonizing practices
- Alexandre Kukhianidze: Georgia: Democracy or super mafia?
Journalisten och författaren Kalle Kniivilä presenterar i samtal med Bo Petersson (RUCARR) sin bok Putins värsta fiende : Aleksej Navalnyj och hans anhängare. Boken utkommer den 7 juni på bokförlaget Atlas.
Tid: Tisdag 8 juni, 15:00 – 16:30 (på svenska / in Swedish)
Den 20 augusti 2020 förgiftades den ledande ryske oppositionspolitikern Aleksej Navalnyj med ett militärt nervgift som nästan tog hans liv. Den ryska säkerhetstjänsten stod bakom mordförsöket, vars uppenbara syfte var att bli av med den jobbiga mannen som inte låtit sig tystas. När Navalnyj envisades med att inte dö försökte makthavarna tvinga honom att stanna utomlands och förvandla honom till ännu en marginaliserad regimkritiker i exil. Men han återvände till Ryssland, trots att han visste att Vladimir Putin i så fall kan låta bura in honom så länge han vill. Varför är han inte rädd och varför måste han tvunget återvända till Ryssland? Och framför allt, varför är Vladimir Putin rädd för honom, om det nu är så att majoriteten av ryssarna fortfarande tycker att Putin gör ett bra jobb, medan bara ett fåtal aktivt stödjer Navalnyj? Vem är egentligen Navalnyj och vilka är hans anhängare? Det är några av frågorna den här boken försöker ge svar på.