No. 82 | (Summer 2009)

The two thematic sections of this issue of Eszmélet are linked to each other by the question of "class and/or ethnicity". Now theoretical thinking focuses again on ethnicity, a notion that originally noted an ancient community linked by (actual or imaginary) blood. Its use is spreading recently, what is connected to the local, national and ethnic resistance against global trends. In fact what actually was reborn is the ethnic consciousness as the ideological representative of the "wrong antiglobalism". This is not separable from the fact that after the systemic changes in the East, the Marxist class theory has been marginalised by the mainstream scientific narrative in East Europe. Our selection of articles demonstrates the actual relevance of class analysis in an empirical approach of historic-sociological studies, showing how it helps in explaining East-European symptoms developed after 1989, if social-economical consequences of the systemic change are seen as a dynamic play between ethnic and class categories.

The second section is addressing the war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Around our virtual roundtable different interpretations of the events are delivered from historic, geopolitical, international legal and social-psychological approaches. The real problem in the Middle East is (either) not the confrontation of "civilisations" or "ethnicities" but the fact that large or middle powers of the smaller and greater region transform conflicts into their own vocabulary, making them their tools in the power play – in the seemingly endless capital accumulation.

Table of contents
  1. Kovács-Eichner György : The Gaza war, Israeli society and the developments in the Middle-East
  2. Paragi Beáta : “The road matters not the goal”
  3. Valki László : Gaza: questions of international law
  4. Lugosi Győző : The long shadow of Ariel Sharon
  5. Kacper Poblocki : Whither antropology without a nation-state?
  6. Don Kalb : Conversations with a Polish populist – globalisation, class, “transition” somewhat closer to the skin
  7. Theodora Vetta : Nationalism versus European belonging: the usefulness of “class” in reading through “identity dilemmas” in contemporary Serbia
  8. Florin Faje : Together but still apart: class positions and identities among futball fans in Cluj-Napoca, Romania
  9. Krausz Tamás : On the destruction of futball culture in Hungary
  10. Juhász Gergő : Fotball business in the UK
  11. Szabó Kornél : Why European futball is not a business in the US?
  12. Mitrovits Miklós : Football in East Europe
  13. Pajor-Gyulai László : The press and football
  14. Ch. Gáll András : The Hungarian way of patching budget holes
  15. Lewis H. Siegelbaum : The Donbass miners’ movement in the very late Soviet era: an historical perspective
  16. Tütő László : Eurafrica belongs to Eurafricans?
  17. Juhász János : Nobel prize winner Sir John Hicks’ affair with the interest rate