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Commuting has become an increasingly important feature of modern life. Theories of public participation, such as the civic voluntarism model, claim that commuting is likely to reduce the time available for political activism. Based on data from an American context, Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone has concluded that this is exactly what happens. However, empirical studies based on European data on how commuting may affect political participation are rare. This article aims to address this question with regard to Swedish city-regions. Is there also a negative relationship between commuting & citizen participation in Sweden? The analysis is based on survey data for 7,200 citizens from seven Swedish city-regions belonging to three different size categories. The relationship between commuting & several different forms of public participation is investigated, controlling for the variables suggested by the civic voluntarism model. The analysis indicates that there are no signs of a negative relationship & some aspects of participation are actually positively linked to commuting. These findings suggest that the civic voluntarism model needs to be revised, at least in a European context. The article ends with a discussion about how differences between Sweden & the US can be accounted for & what the more general consequences for democracy may be. Tables, Appendixes, References. Adapted from the source document.

SUMMARY:
As in Western Europe and in America, the railroads had far-reaching effects on the economy, culture, and ordinary life of Imperial Russia. They initiated social processes and fostered the expansion of the Russian Empire. While the role of the autocracy and the imperial elite in this seems to be evident, this article focuses on a broader social group that was interested and involved in bringing railroads to their regions and to their cities. Of special interest are the ways in which regional actors did communicate and bargain over the railroad construction in the 1860s and 1870s, the period of railroad fever in Russia. The analysis of petitions and publications of local representatives from the provinces of Tambov, Saratov, and Vologda suggests that nobles, merchants, and entrepreneurs sketched out diverse mental maps, using concepts from "locality" ( mestnost' ) to "Empire" to promote their political interests. Their determination to get a viable connection and the competition with other regions and cities forced the actors to re-construct their regions and to re-conceptualize them as an integral part of Russia. The railroad construction provoked a polyphony of concepts – for example, Povolzh'e, Saratovskij or Severnyj kraj – which the actors borrowed from scientific discourses and from the emerging voices of the "local", later to be called kraevedenie . Thus, the different actors not simply relied on well known geographical or administrative units. In setting the railroad connection to their regions on the political agenda, the actors remapped the Russian Empire: The chorus of regional self-definitions created an Empire consisting of diverse spatial entities, whose organic interrelations would be strengthened by the railroads. With this discourse, the representatives of the local self-governments and city communities contributed to the process of empire building.

SUMMARY:
Андреас Фрингс продолжает критическое обсуждение выдвинутой Ab Imperio программы изучения "языков самоописания" империи и нации. Фрингс высказывает мнение, что присущие этому методу недостатки и отказ от четкого определения понятия "империя" неизбежно ведут к новому эссенциализму, чего редакторы AI пытаются избежать. Рассуждая в традиции аналитической философии, автор предлагает альтернативный подход: экспликацию основных аналитических понятий и интеграцию этих понятий в настоящую теорию.

SUMMARY:
Николай Вуков, антрополог из Болгарии, анализирует постсоветскую судьбу памятников, возведенных в Восточной Европе для увековечивания памяти о Второй мировой войне. В частности, он анализирует исторические и общественно-политические дискуссии на эту тему в Болгарии после 1989 года, где обсуждение памяти о Второй мировой войне было тесно связано с проблемой памятников, возведенных в память о Русско-Турецкой войне 1877–1878 гг. (поскольку в советской Болгарии события XIX века и Второй мировой войны объединялись в формуле "двойного освобождения"). В статье прослеживается как история коммеморации Второй мировой войны в контексте формирующегося коммунистического режима, так и история памятников Русско-Турецкой войне в ее связи с процессом легитимации болгарского национального государства. Отдельный сюжет в рамках статьи представляет анализ подрывных культурных и идеологических практик, направленных на памятники, созданные в советский период в Болгарии. В связи с этим Вуков констатирует нерешенность в Болгарии вопроса об исторической оценке событий Второй мировой войны. Автор показывает, что тесная связь между памятниками Русско-Турецкой и Второй мировой войнам спровоцировала в болгарском обществе переоценку "первого освобождения" как проявления имперской политики России, которая затем полностью раскрылась в политике Советского Союза по отношению к социалистическим странам Восточной Европы. В анализируемых в статье дискуссиях (в том числе на международном уровне – между Российской Федерацией и Болгарией) проявляется главная проблема исторической памяти об "ушедшем ХХ веке": как растождествить память о Второй мировой войне и память о коммунистическом режиме в Болгарии и при этом не впасть в ревизионизм, реабилитирующий фашизм и пересматривающий итоги Второй мировой войны.

SUMMARY:
The article is an example of a still rare study of the politics of ethnicity in the contemporary Russian school. It focuses on the stereotypical thinking of St. Petersburg teachers confronting such phenomena as new ethnic differentiation of the student body, ethnic migrations, and the collapse of the Soviet nationality policy. In this new sociopolitical and professional situation, ethnic stereotyping becomes an instrument of self-orientation for the teachers. Being an important institute of population homogenization and reproduction of the dominant discourses, the school acts as a model of power-relations in contemporary Russian society. The author's goal is to deconstruct the semantics of the teachers' language of otherness; their understanding of the Russianness and foreigness; the status of the Russian language, religion, "culture", history, family patterns in these constructions; etc. The analysis is based on problem-oriented interviews conducted in 2002–2004 in fifteen public schools in St. Petersburg. The author concludes that contrary to the actual low social and economic prestige of their profession, public schools teachers participate in the (re)production of the dominant discourse defining the limits of culture and non-culture, political participation and non-participation. This discourse is not self-reflective and well-defined; it refers to the old Soviet values hierarchy based on a high status of "culture" in society. At the same time, this discourse reflects current phobias produced by the crisis of the "national idea," the failure to deal with labor migration, the economic competition that it produces, and so on. Petersburg teachers are troubled by the academic success of their non-Russian students that opens their path for successful social mobility. Through national stereotyping these non-Russian students are marked as a lower social group that cannot pretend to share cultural capital with Russians. At the same time, the teachers lack real instruments of power because their own social capital was dramatically devaluated during the 1990s.