Juraj Bualka analyes the interplay between religion, politics and memory in the context of post-socialist transformations in south-east Poland. He shows that two Catholic churches play a crucial role in commemorations of the warfare and ethnic cleansings that took place here during and after the Second World War: while the Roman Catholic Church claims a privileged status for the Polish nation.

What does it mean to know a world area, or to be part of one, for that matter? The most prominent of "Caucasus paradigms" paint a picture of a region famous not only for its cultural, linguistic, religious, political, and economic pluralisms, but for its violence, savagery, conflict, and corruption; its nobility, hospitality, natural beauty, and severity. Such paradigms present a paradox: Despite such histories of diaspora, migration, conquest, and cohabitation, the Caucasus is most often conjured as a place of closure to those "from outside." This volume seeks to turn a longstanding handicap...

What makes private property valuable, desirable, or workable? This book focuses on the social and economic dimensions of private property in Azerbaijan after the agrarian reforms of 1996. It looks at the kinds of land and cultivation strategies emerging in the decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, and it examines why rural households are often unwilling to cultivate the privatized land shares they have received for free, despite the threat and existence of rural poverty. Consideration is given to households that engage in cultivation and households that do not - including households of...