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This article deals with the question how cultural borders are being negotiated through the protagonists in Gunther Geltinger's road novel Benzin (2019). In doing so, it presents two antithetical positions from Postcolonial Studies regarding cultural borders. Firstly, the paper examines the role of Edward Said's influential but dialectical notion of the "orient" versus the "occident" in the 18th and 19th century, while analyzing to what extent it is applicable to the border between the 'global north' (Europe) and the 'global south' (Africa). Secondly, it outlines the widely influential work of Homi K. Bhabha, who sees borders not as a place where negotiations stop, but where negotiations emerge and form new, hybrid identities. Thirdly and most importantly, the article is concerned with the cultural borders in Gunther Geltinger's novel Benzin, which are being shown as more solid than permeable. In this way, the novel thematizes the persistent feelings of guilt and cultural bias of European tourists in present day South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In spite of the continuing European integration process, some Austrian cities are still disconnected from the dynamic development in the big metropolitan areas. Being confronted with growing competition and threatened by shrinkage processes, these mostly small and mid-sized cities have to fulfill their role as regional centers and economic growth engines. This is especially true for small towns in the Austrian region of Waldviertel, where conditions have changed dramatically since the fall of the Iron Curtain. Hence, this paper will investigate whether the risk of further peripheralisation has been banned in this formerly peripheral region near the border to the Czech Republic. In this context the paper discusses the main theories and concepts explaining regional development in current literature. It examines the most relevant driving forces of regional economic development stressing the importance of endogenous factors and relational capital. The empirical analysis of the Waldviertel reveals the main characteristics of recent economic and demographic development and tries to identify processes of centralisation and peripheralisation within the region. The main results show a slight improvement of the economic situation in recent years and prove that the rural areas can only participate in growth impulses in the regional centers if they are economically linked to them. Based on these empirical findings, the paper elaborates the role of small towns in strategic planning approaches in Austria and discusses opportunities to offer endogenous strategies for sustainable development. It concludes that territorial competitiveness of peripheral regions needs to be supported by comprehensive and network-based planning approaches on a regional level. English Title: Small Towns as Growth Engines for Rural and Peripheral Regions: the Case of Waldviertel [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with nostalgia tourism in the Czech-German border areas. Using the example of homeland tours to Usti nad Labem/Aussig an der Elbe before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, it presents some of the mental images the expelled Germans constructed about their former homeland and how these changed over time. The material basis for the analysis presents the Heimat journal Aussiger Bote, years 1989-1995, which aimed at the expellees from the Usti nad Labem region and largely reflects the Sudeten German Landsmannschaft policy of a culture of remembrance. For contex- tualization and a possible chronological comparison, the volumes preceding the year 1989 are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with pictures of the Czech borderlands as part of the Czechoslovak cultural memory. It focuses on the Photo Editing Department of the Czechoslovak News Agency ČTK that was the main player in the fields of creating, storing, mediating, and consolidating visual knowledge (not only about the borderlands). It also gives insight into the Photo Editing Department’s practices of categorizing and keywording pictures, which had consequences on further publications of certain photos.

The article focuses on a three-day international conference titled "Crossing the border. Illicit crossings, controls, strategies (16th–19th centuries)" held in December 2023 at the Free University of Bolzano. It explores the intersection of sociology and history, emphasizing complex dynamics of borders, including the power dynamics, social constructions, and the involvement of various actors such as outlaws, and non-human elements, shedding light on social construction of borders.

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Border regions have to overcome substantial locational disadvantages in order to have a stake in the competition of regions and to achieve an ordered economically and socially stable and future-oriented development in terms of spatial planning. A peripheral location often brings barriers and potential risks for further development in border regions. However, it may also provide opportunities – based on the clever and comprehensive utilisation of all endogenous potentials. The region Bodensee-Oberschwaben, as part of the tri-national Bodensee region D-A-CH (Germany-Austria-Switzerland) is on its way to successfully dealing with impediments resulting from its location at the border: dividing elements such as the large Lake of Constance, the Alps and the relatively long distances to the administrative centers in Stuttgart and Berlin, are overcome in the sense of a de-peripheralization. In conjunction with other regions of a similar structure and with corresponding directions of development, the region is positioning itself in a “Network of European Spaces”, which works in addition to metropolitan Region-approaches. This paper analyzes and describes why and how regions succeed in stepping out of their peripheral location. English Title: Peripheries Don't Have to Remain Peripheries. De-peripheralization in the Bodensee-Oberschwaben Region [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Praehistorische Zeitschrift is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most recent studies on multilingual writing deal with literature by first- or second-generation immigrants. This article responds to debates about multilingual literature by examining the asymmetrical, historically-rooted multilingualism of minority groups in East-Central Europe. It does so by exploring linguistic diversity and its effects in the novels of the bilingual Serbian-Hungarian author Petar Milošević, novels that put the Serbian minority in Hungary centre stage. It is argued that Milošević's prose fiction not only invites the reader to rethink the nature of script, standard language and cultural identity as historically contingent and multiply entangled, but also effectively refashions the cultural memory of the Serbian minority in Hungary. The novels' broader relevance lies in their foregrounding of the minority's cultural and linguistic doubleness, both in relation to the nation-state in which they live and to the external homeland. As such, they also potentially illuminate the position of other linguistic minorities in former Habsburg borderlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"In deine Erde erzverkrallt, wir wollen wurzelnd bleiben" [In the Veins of Your Earth, Our Roots Should Always Flourish]: Bohemian Germans' Ideas about Space and Landscape 1880-1914. The following study aims to explain how the Bohemian landscape was created and developed in the imagination of primarily German writers who formulated their own ideas of the presence of the German ethnic group in Bohemia up to World War I. The contemporary historiography and the historiography of these times is also discussed. In this respect, the works by Erich Lehman and Ernst Gierach are crucial. The aforementioned authors construct ideas about the typical German landscape in Bohemia as a symbolic counterpoint to the image of the ideal landscape of the competing ethnic group, i.e., the Czechs. The loss of the cultural center(s) of Prague and others in the Bohemian lands was an impulse for the German nationalists to seek a center in the peripheral regions with the specific landscape of these times. The landscape has been perceived from symbolic, political and scientific points of view. It is therefore clear that the text conceives of landscape in purely constructivist, not environmentalist, terms. "Area," "landscape" and "site of the memory" are key terms that are used in the analysis of the topic. The authors of this study ask how the area, or more precisely, the landscape, were constructed and (mis)used by nationalists, especially at the end of the "long" nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relation between daily life and the press in the context of Russian and Chinese newspapers in Harbin, China from 1900 to 1932. The notions of borders and sovereignty are addressed in light of Russian influence in Manchuria. Also discussed are the portrayals of the Manchurian plague epidemic of 1910-1911, economic conditions, and trade between China and Russia. Newspapers addressed include "Kharbinskii vestnik" ("Harbin Herald"), "Yuandongbao" ("The Far Eastern Paper"), and "Novyi krai" ("New Territory").

The article focuses on struggle to interpret the Drina Interwar Yugoslavia. It mentions unnatural separation as described below with the administrative divisions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in nine ties finally overcome and the condition out of time restored to the Roman Empire. It also mentions alternating or competing patterns of interpretation can be divided into categories Border, bridge and in the wars as well as memory culture attributions also summarize space of violence. It also mentions debates between the Yugoslav Committee posing as Representation the southern Slavs in the dual monarchy.

The article deals with pictures of the Czech borderlands as part of the Czechoslovak cultural memory. It focuses on the Photo Editing Department of the Czechoslovak News Agency ČTK that was the main player in the fields of creating, storing, mediating, and consolidating visual knowledge (not only about the borderlands). It also gives insight into the Photo Editing Department's practices of categorizing and keywording pictures, which had consequences on further publications of certain photos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the Asian Economic Crisis in 1997 and the fall of president Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998, rural and urban Indonesia experienced a surge in vigilante killings and the rise of non-state forms of authorities working within the twilight of legality and illegality, assuming the role of the state. Institutional uncertainty, large-scale decentralisation reforms and the deterioration of formal legal authority in post-New Order Indonesia encouraged these processes. This apparent ‘lawlessness’ became especially evident along the fringes of the Indonesian state where state authority has continuously been contested and in a state of fl ux. This paper argues that observing these processes of lawlessness and vigilantism from the borderlands provides us with an exceptional window to understand the ambiguous relationship between law and order in post-New Order Indonesia. ----- Nach der Asienkrise 1997 und dem Sturz des autoritären Regimes Präsident Suhartos 1998 waren sowohl in den ländlichen Regionen Indonesiens als auch in den Städten eine Zunahme an Bürgerwehrmorden und ein Anwachsen nicht-staatlicher Behörden zu beobachten. Zwischen Legalität und Illegalität übernahmen sie vielfach die Rolle des Staates. Institutionelle Unsicherheiten, groß angelegte Dezentralisierungsreformen und die Verschlechterung der formellen Rechtssprechung förderten nach dem Ende der „Neuen Ordnung“ diese Prozesse. Diese scheinbare Gesetzlosigkeit wurde besonders in den Grenzregionen des indonesischen Staates deutlich, wo die staatliche Autorität permanent in Frage gestellt wird und umstritten bleibt. In diesem Artikel argumentiere ich, dass die Beobachtung dieser „Gesetzlosigkeit“ und Selbstjustiz in Grenzregionen eine außergewöhnliche Möglichkeit bietet, die mehrdeutige Beziehung zwischen Recht und Ordnung in Indonesien nach dem Ende der „Neuen Ordnung“ zu verstehen.

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Copyright of Zeitschrift für Soziologie is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)