Archives

  • Urban Nature
    No. 30 (2025)

    “Why nature, then? First, it is already here.” (Ditchev, 2005: 98)

    This issue of Seminar_BG is dedicated to urban nature – or rather, to nature in and around cities, the environment in which we live. Urban nature is a misleading term, as it can be understood as the essence of the urban, the natural state, or the inherent characteristics of urbanization. This issue distances itself from the naturalization of the historical progress of settlements. It also departs from the search for inherent urban characteristics and the presentation of a set of features as “natural”. Following the ideas of Descola and Ingold, the theme of this issue would more properly be termed the urban environment rather than urban nature, since the concept of nature can only be used by a being that succumbs to the illusion that it does not belong to it. Cities are among those spaces in which the ontology of naturalism is most visible and most difficult to overcome. Where should we begin in order to see buildings, roads, neighborhoods, and infrastructure as the environment of our own and other species? The crack in the pavement where a plant has taken root, the old lamp in which a tit has built its nest – these are the spaces and events in the urban environment where other forms of life actively define and reformulate the environment. The urban nature sought in the pages of this issue is the ecological dynamics of the city, expressed not only in what lies beyond the social, but as a dynamic between physical and social environments, human and non-human inhabitants. The authors examine this dynamic through specific cases – urban gardens in public spaces, the creation or loss of green areas, and the cultivation of endemic species.

    Radoslava Kuneva, Guest Editor

     

  • Special Issue dedicated to prof. Ivaylo Ditchev
    No. 29 (2025)

    “Ivaylo was the most insatiably curious person in the world (…)” With these words of Petya Kabakchieva, we would like you to welcome you to this special issue. “He always discovered detail, strangeness, an inversion of the usual in close and distant, unknown or supposedly familiar incidents, phenomena, events, people; he constantly saw things invisible to or unnoticed by us, his colleagues and friends.” (see Petya Kabakchieva, “About Ivaylo, the unorthodox…” in the section “About Ivaylo” at www.seminar-bg.eu)

    As wide open and free roaming was Ivaylo’s research curiosity, so was our call for papers for the current issue that we would like to dedicate to him. Some of the texts were presented at the conference “Pop Culture, Pop Politics – the Digital Turn. Interdisciplinary Analyses of the Intersections between Media, Cultures and Politics”, also in loving memory of Prof. Ivaylo Dichev (October 4–5, 2024, Sofia, Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication). Other texts we received in the following months. We did not seek to find a topic that could encompass all the texts in this issue. The unifying link has always been Ivaylo – the eternally searching, the impatient, the insightful, the extraordinary.

    As insatiable as his curiosity was, so was his proverbial ability to get lost, especially while doing fieldwork. And if you too get lost in this issue – in the labyrinth of historical periods, themes and topics – then we believe that by doing so we have given you the opportunity to experience (or recollect) how it felt to work and communicate with Ivaylo, to follow his curiosity, to search together with him, to get lost in the wealth of ideas.

    Niya Neykova and Valentina Georgieva

    Editors of the issue

    Cover design: Mina Ditcheva

    The current issue 29 of SEMINAR_BG would not be possible without the financial support of the project "Pop Culture, Pop Politics: The Digital Turn. Interdisciplinary Analyses of the Intersection between Media, Cultures and Policies" (2021–2025), funded by the Bulgarian National Science Fund within the framework of the National Program "Fundamental Research", contract number H55/2, 15.11.2021.

  • The Musical Accompaniment of Politics
    No. 26 (2023)

    Would you follow a leader who offers you a piece of music instead of a program? Don't rush to answer! Because from the dawn of human civilization, along with ideas, politicians have sought to master our emotions, and in this endeavor, music has its reserved place - from ritual to military march, from celebration to mourning. It has run like this up to this day: music channels the anger of protest, the identity experiences of the native land, the disgust of the opponent's "chalga". The issue aims to discuss those non-rational aspects of politics that political science usually underestimates. It is an element of a broader study on the relationship between pop culture and pop politics.

    Editors: Ivaylo Dichev, Ventsislav Dimov

    Cover artist: Mina Dicheva

    Issue 26 of Seminar_BG is published within the framework of the research project "Pop Culture, Pop Politics: The Digital Turn. Interdisciplinary Analyses of the Intersection between Media, Cultures and Politics", implemented by scientists from the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Faculty of Philosophy of Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski" and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, with the financial support of the FNI-MES, contract No. H55/2 of 15.12.2021.

  • Wаstе as a Resource
    No. 25 (2023)

    The unnecessary - or trash in colloquial language - is a hybrid and we as societies are constantly struggling with this hybridity by introducing and guarding the boundaries around and within them. The conceptualization of trash and the unnecessary as waste and as potential resources is the extreme expression of this aspiration.
    This issue started from the problematization of the topic of waste as a resource within the framework of an unfunded project for inter-university cooperation under the Rila Program and gradually grew into a challenge to this contested hybridity and order, making visible the different possible perspectives on the topic of waste from the social sciences and humanities to artistic and student projects experimenting with new forms of knowledge assessment.
    The materials are organized into two groups. The first part is dedicated to research projects that treat the topic of waste. In the second you will find several strong and provocative perspectives on the topic of waste in the contemporary cultural situation.

  • The Dissolution of Religious Field: Holistic Spirituality
    No. 24 (2022)

    Despite the eclectic nature characteristic of the beliefs and practices referred to as “holistic spirituality,” this concept has acquired the status of a terminus technicus in contemporary sociological, cultural, and anthropological studies of religion. This issue of Seminar_BG features articles that interpret the concept from various theoretical perspectives, while simultaneously demonstrating that—as the German sociologist Georg Simmel noted as early as the beginning of the 20th century—the religious, as a spiritual form, can take on a wide variety of social modalities. And while “religion” manifests itself in institutions, intermediaries, rituals, and dogmas, “spirituality,” according to Simmel, is linked to the subjective experience of the divine; it is “the form in which the human soul lives” —a state of being and a disposition toward the intimate process of life, free from any materiality, which only religion transforms into an objective world.

    With the advance of modernity, the “sacred veil” over human existence gradually erodes, and the monopoly on interpretations of the transcendent weakens. This has permanently altered the religious landscape: individuals have gained not only the opportunity to autonomously choose the social framework of their religious experience, but also to creatively experiment with various traditions. They readily immerse themselves in countercultural magical, occult, or esoteric teachings and practices, insist on a radical (utopian) transformation of the political order through a higher collective consciousness, or simply adopt a consumerist approach to “religious goods” as a convenient tool for managing their anxiety about the acceleration of social processes. The ranks of “new spiritual leaders” are also growing; their activities not only redefine the spheres of competence within the religious field but, as the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observed in the early 1980s, transform its very boundaries. Together with the authors in this special issue, we invite you to reflect on the directions and effects of these changes—both at the level of beliefs and their organizational forms, and through the lens of historical, generational, and gender dynamics.

     

    Galina Goncharova, Teodora Karamelska, issue editors

  • Feminism: Mobilizations and Contexts
    No. 23 (2022)

    In recent years, numerous feminist and LGBTI+ mobilizations have been observed at the global and local levels. Some of these mobilizations are reactions to growing conservative voices from various political formations, which have begun to noticeably influence our socio-political life. In many countries of the European Union, laws have been introduced prohibiting the wearing of clothing that covers or hides the face in public, imposed by far-right spokespeople as a means of suppressing and discriminating against migrants. At the same time, however, towards the end of 2022, we are witnessing the unfolding of a feminist revolution in Iran, which erupted after the death of Masha Amini (or also in Kurdish, Zina Amini), which was caused by the Iranian “morality police”. The Kurdish slogan Jin–Jiyan–Azadî (“Woman–Life–Freedom”) has become the main one for women’s struggles, and the waving of the veil – their symbol of liberation. The debates surrounding the ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the so-called Istanbul Convention) are also shaking up a number of societies. There is a dominance of feminist activism focused on the problem of domestic violence and gender-based violence. Bulgaria is one of the radical examples where the Istanbul Convention was declared unconstitutional in 2018. But even other countries that have already ratified the convention are withdrawing from it, as is the case with Turkey. Last but not least, in a number of countries, attempts are being made to ban and restrict abortions, but in parallel, socially conservative policies to stimulate birth rates are being observed, which fixate women in their role as “mothers” who take care of the family and home. In parallel, a number of protests are unfolding around the feminized public service sector, tied to caring work, or domestic workers are increasingly organizing politically.

    Motivated by these and other processes, the Network for Cultural Studies organized a conference on January 28 and 29, 2022, titled “Feminism: Mobilizations and Contexts,” with the support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women, which aims to make sense of them through the perspective of progressive women’s resistance and queer mobilizations. What are the possible paths of resistance? And what forms does it take? These questions were discussed by representatives of both the academic sphere and the civil and cultural sectors. This issue brings together articles, interviews, and video recordings, presenting the multiplicity of different interpretations and possible directions of analysis that structured the debates within the conference.

    Lea Vaisova, Valentina Gueorguieva, Vladislav Petkov, Mila Mineva, editors

    Cover illustration: Albena Baeva

    Cover design: Vladislav Petkov

    Issue 23 of Seminar_BG is published with the support of the Bulgarian Fund for Women, “Feminism in Action” competition.

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