Suchergebnisse

This text offers a series of critical discussions of how sociology is responding to the challenges of globalization, to local counter-reactions to them, to the many ways 'the global' impacts our lives, and to the new questions about research this poses.

"Focused on the German-speaking parts of the former Habsburg Empire, and on present-day Austria in particular, this book offers a series of highly innovative analyses of the interplay of nationalism's discursive and institutional facets. Here, Christian Karner develops a distinctive perspective on Austrian nationalism over the longue durée, tracing nationalistic ways of thinking and mobilizing from the late eighteenth century to the present. Through close analyses of key texts representing diverse settings and historical episodes, this book traces the connections, continuities and ruptures that have characterized the varieties of Austrian nationalism"--

1. Paradigms of identity -- 2. National symbols and histories in crisis -- 3. The past, the present, nation-states and Europe -- 4. Markets and nation's : of flows and solidarities -- 5. Counter-hegemony : universal human rights versus exclusive citizen entitlements -- 6. Everyday politics : self-other relationships and lived ambivalences -- 7. 'The other' : representations of and by.

The "Ibiza-affair", a succession of scandals triggered by undercover-recordings of the FPÖ's former head Heinz-Christian Strache in compromising discussions with a purported Russian oligarch's niece, has profoundly altered Austria's political landscape and public debates. This article offers a historically contextualized analysis of the multiple voices and competing truth-claims articulated by diverse actors in the course of the scandal's fall-out. Empirically, this discussion offers a systematic analysis of political- and media discourses focused on "Ibiza" between May 2019 and June 2020. Conceptually, the argument builds on Michel Foucault's approach outlined in I, Pierre Rivière and its subsequent applications within nationalism studies. This analysis thus examines data through the questions as to who speaks about the event in question, how they do so, what is being claimed and disputed, and which political strategies and trajectories this enables. The competing, partly shifting positions revealed are the following: Strache's initial regret that soon returned to a self-ascribed "victim-cum-martyr" status; the FPÖ's distancing and eventual rupture from its formerly long-standing Bundesparteiobmann; the Kronen Zeitung's attempted ideological repositioning; the ÖVP's need and opportunity to shift its positions vis-à-vis its political competitors; and critical voices calling for far-reaching structural changes. With the full facts behind the scandal still to be established, the (post-Foucauldian) approach applied captures the contestations, (new) fault-lines and (shifting) political boundaries constitutive of a discursive field in a crisis-context.

Based on a carefully contextualized discussion of discursive and semiotic contributions to public debate in Austria during the politically charged summer of 2020, this article captures ideologically different, at times mutually opposed glocalizing strategies. The social sites and entanglement of "the global" and "the local" examined are the following: a parliamentary address in which neo-nationalist rhetoric is framed by global points of reference; local appropriations of the Black Lives Matter movement for the purposes of symbolic protest against public monuments commemorating problematic regional histories; and recent public debates in Austria that illustrate the glocalization of everyday politics. In each example, global contexts provide crucial momentum for the articulation of local concerns and mobilizations. The ensuing analysis helps illuminate some of the distinctly transnational, enabling conditions for ideological contest in Austria today. In methodological terms, the discussion demonstrates that an understanding of locally specific appropriations of a diversity of global flows demands ethnographic sensitivity, historical contextualization, and local knowledge.