The author analyzes the sociological positions of the Croatian politician and peasant ideologue, Stjepan Radic (1871-1928). Radic was a proponent of agrarianism, which looked upon the peasant as the ...basic social, economic, political, and ethical force in society. Radic was opposed to rapid revolutionary changes, especially in the form of Marxism at the time, and supported gradual social reform, especially in the interest of the peasant masses. He judged harshly many manifestations of current life, such as bureaucratization, militarism, and capitalist profiteering. He fought for the modernization of Croatian society, but not in the sense of unfettered urbanization or industrialization, but for a gradual improvement in the conditions of the peasantry, which, at the beginning of the 20th century, made up the vast majority of the Croatian people. Radic believed in 'historical progress' and validated the 'enlightened' colonialism of the European powers, which had to 'elevate' the 'backward' peoples of Africa and Asia to a 'higher level' of civilization.
The author analyzes the sociological positions of the Croatian politician and peasant ideologue, Stjepan Radić (1871-1928). Radić was a proponent of agrarianism, which looked upon the peasant as the ...basic social, economic, political, and ethical force in society. Radić was opposed to rapid revolutionary changes, especially in the form of Marxism at the time, and supported gradual social reform, especially in the interest of the peasant masses. He judged harshly many manifestations of current life, such as bureaucratization, militarism, and capitalist profiteering. He fought for the modernization of Croatian society, but not in the sense of unfettered urbanization or industrialization, but for a gradual improvement in the conditions of the peasantry, which, at the beginning of the 20th century, made up the vast majority of the Croatian people. Radić believed in “historical progress” and validated the “enlightened” colonialism of the European powers, which had to “elevate” the “backward” peoples of Africa and Asia to a “higher level” of civilization.
The author analyzes the ecological history of human societies from Pleistocene hunger-gatherers to modern industrial societies. The ecological impact of hunter- gatherers was comparatively small and ...most of it came in the form of the use of fire and (hitherto inadequately proven) extinction of several dozens of species in Northern America and Australia. Yet their environment remained pure,
organic and wild; an environment to which humans are genetically adapted. A systematic destruction of wild habitats and species, in order to create space for an environment containing several domesticated plant and animal species, began in the Neolithic domestication with a gradual increase of population in river valleys some 10-12000 years ago. In agrarian civilizations, the demographic pressure and intensive agriculture were the main causes of ecological destruction, which in the first place included deforestation and salinization of the soil. In some cases, such
as those of the Sumerians, Romans and the Maya, these developments were the main causes of the fall and collapse of complex societies. Modern industrial societies produce by far the largest ecological impact and destruction on the global evel. The past hundred years saw the sixth major extinction of species, systematic destruction of ecological species, impoverishment of the planetary biome, introduction of foreign (exogamous) species into new habitats, mass construction of
dams and roads, mass motorization etc. More than half of the humanity lives in cities that are characterized by a high level of air, sound, food and water pollution. Various forms of ecological destruction, from the pollution of immediate environment to the destruction of wild habitats and species, are by and large the consequences of evolutionarily untested activities and life in unnatural environment of domesticator/civilized societies that have no basis in human evolutionary history and to which humans are not genetically adapted.
Autor analizira problematiku vrhunca ekstrakcije nafte i njezino značenje za suvremenu ekonomsku krizu i budućnost industrijskih društava. Masovna industrijalizacija i urbanizacija zadnja dva ...stoljeća temeljila se na obilju jeftinih fosilnih goriva, najprije ugljena,a kasnije nafte i plina.
The author analyzes the significance of the Serbian question and the status of the Serbian ethnic minority in Croatian politics from the revolution of 1848 to the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy in ...1918. The most distinguished Croatian political theorists and activists during this period – Bogoslav Šulek, Ivan Kukuljević, Josip J. Strossmayer, Franjo Rački, Mihovil Pavlinović, Ante Starčević, Eugen Kvaternik, Frano Supilo, Stjepan and Antun Radić and others – advocated different variants of a Croatocentric ideology within which the South Slav or Slavic framework was sometimes entirely rejected (in Starčević’s case), but more often accepted. Starčević and some of his followers denied the existence of the Serbian minority, believing that all South Slavs, except the Bulgarians, were Croats. However, the vast majority of Croatian politicians and national activists acknowledged the existence of the Serbs and the Serbian minority in Croatia. They adhered to the concept of the “Croatian political nation,” which encompassed all citizens of the Triune Kingdom (Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia) regardless of ethnic origin. Most Serbian politicians, accepting the identification of speakers of the Shtokavian dialect as Serbs, believed that the Serbs in the Triune Kingdom were a separate nation, which had to be bearer of statehood. Over the long term, they expected that considerable portions of the Triune Kingdom – Slavonia, the Military Frontier and Dalmatia – would become part of an enlarged Serbian state after the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Croatian-Serbian relations from 1848 to 1918 passed through periods of cooperation, particularly when confronted by pressure from the seats of government in Vienna and Budapest, but also conflict due to irreconcilable pretensions to the same territories.
The Croatian name until the revoution of 1848-1849was completely unknown to the wider European public. It was often metioned, although mainly in a negative context, in the former European periodicals ...and pamphlets. These negative stereotypes particulary affected the radical left-wing intellectuals decades later, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. However, the affirmation of the Croatian name as the protagonist in the European community of nations was also a prerequisite for a positive image, which gradually emerged in the years before WWI.
The author analyzes social theories in the works of the Croatian politician
and ideologue Ante Starčević (1823-1896). In his works, Starčević developed a
system of national ideology in which he ...addressed many significant political,
economic, and cultural issues. He proposed the cooperation of the various social
classes in order to more easily realize his key political objective: the creation
of an independent Croatian state. He represented an idealistic view of the
state as a moral community which had to ensure a good life for its members
and the concept of civic nationalism by which all members of the nation were
citizens without regard to their ethnic and religious origins. In terms of political
views, Starčević was a typical 19th century liberal, because he argued for the
principle of national sovereignty, but with a strong bent toward elitism, so that
women and the lower (peasantry) social classes were not directly to participate
in political life. On the question of religion, he was a supporter of laicization,
though he was not an atheist. Starčević sought the economic and cultural modernization
of Croatian society, though he did not believe that great strides
could be made toward this goal while Croatia remained politically suppressed
within the framework of Austria. He believed that the peasant communes, in
which the bulk of Croats still lived, should be preserved after certain reforms
were carried out and that they should only be dismantled if it was a matter of
great duress. Starčević had faith in historical progress, considering the societies
of Western Europe, particularly France, the pinnacle of progressive development.
Starčević ignored current theories of evolution and retained the
traditional humanistic notion of humanity’s exceptionality.
The author analyzes the political activity of Dragutin Kušlan (1817–1867), a Croatian
politician from Banska Hrvatska, between the 1840s and his death. During
the Illyrian (National Revival) ...Movement, Kušlan was a member of the Narodna
stranka (National Party). Shortly before the revolution of 1848 he made an unsuccessful
atempt at establishing a new party with a more radical social and political
programme. During 1848, as the editor of the journal Slavenski Jug (‘The Slavic
South’) he represented the Austroslavic direction, which advocated the reorganization
of the Habsburg Monarchy into a pluralist federal state of equal peoples,
including the territorially unified Croatia. In the spring of 1849 he tried to
contact the Hungarian revolutionary government but this was a private venture.
Following the restitution of the constitutional state he became the grand notary
of the Zagreb district 1861–1863 and composed numerous applications. In these
he advocated the state autonomy and teritorial integrity of the Three-partite
Kingdom and its equality with Hungary. As a member of the opposition Narodno-
liberalna stranka (National-Liberal Party) he was removed from his position
in 1863. He was a firm opponent of Austrian centralism and as late as the 1860s he
advocated, in his private manuscripts, the need to federalize the Monarchy. In the
1840s as well as the 1860s Kušlan condemned the Hungarian hegemonial politics
and its refusal of the right to autonomy and equal national rights to other ethnic
groups within the Hungarian Kingdom.
The author analyzes modern biological theories, from Darwin’s theory of evolution
to socio-biology and evolutionary biology. He emphasizes their significance for
social disciplines including ...historiography. Studies of recent human history from
Neolithic domestication to modern industrial societies should be based in the theory
of bio-social discontinuity and its two basic tenets. First, humans are animals
genetically adapted to life in small communities in wilderness. Second, abrupt social
changes in recent history, from Neolithic domestication onwards, have resulted in
an increasing gap between human nature and social environment. Anthropogenic
problems—wars, environmental destruction, exploitation of people by people, most
diseases, boredom, loneliness, most forms of violent behaviour—are results of life in
an unnatural environment to which humans are not adapted. The author advocates
the significance of evolutionary biology, by analyzing chief anthropogenic problems
and the existence of basic human needs: wilderness, community, equality and peace.
Darwinist theories argue for human nature as a universal and fixed category that entails
biological adaptation to hunter-gatherer life, affected little by cultural changes.
The theory of bio-social discontinuity opposes two equally one-sided approaches: the
standard model of humanities, which rejects the existence of human nature in favour
of absolute social-historical circumstances, and the standard model of Social Darwinism,
which ignores cultural diversity and social influence on human behaviour.
The author analyses the notion of history within the framework of social sciences
and humanities. He pays particular attention to historiography. History is no neutral
term but a notion deeply bound ...up with the system of values dominant in the
modern civilization, especially with the myth of progress and the belief in the exemptionalist
paradigm (human separation from nature) as well as biological discontinuity
between humans and other species. The concept of history is part of the standard
model of humanities that considers the biological and ecological perspectives
as irrelevant to the study of human society. Human society, within this paradigm,
exists in a separate world of History and Culture. The author analyzes the work of
three scholars—the ecologist Paul Shepard, biologist Edward Wilson and the anthropologist
Robin Fox—who criticized the conventional understanding of history
and the standard model more generally. They emphasized the importance of our
ancient evolutionary past. The author starts from this scholarship to argue for a
stronger position of ecology and evolutionary biology. Ecology recognizes human
ties to the Nature, and evolutionary biology accepts the existence of human biogrammatics
and the importance of the millions of years of evolution of our human
and hominid ancestors.
