Imperial Boundaries

Abstract

Imperial Boundaries is a study of imperial expansion and local transformation on Russia's Don Steppe frontier during the age of Peter the Great. Brian Boeck connects the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman empires in the northern Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who were transformed from an open, democratic, multiethnic, male fraternity dedicated to frontier raiding into a closed, ethnic community devoted to defending and advancing the boundaries of the Russian state. He shows how by promoting border patrol, migration control, bureaucratic regulation of cross-border contacts and deportation of dissidents, Peter I destroyed the world of the old steppe and created a new imperial Cossack order in its place. In examining this transformation, Imperial Boundaries addresses key historical issues of imperial expansion, the delegitimization of non-state violence, the construction of borders, and the encroaching boundaries of state authority in the lives of local communities.

Unequal Conditions: A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Urban Poverty and Psychological Resilience

“…These studies used different indicators of resilience such as cognitive capacities or social skills, including: self-esteem [31], subjective well-being, individual competences and social resilience [32,40], coping strategies [20,23,38], social support and religious beliefs [20,36,41], social cohesion and trajectories of resilience [3], relationships parent-child and family's characteristics [37], adaptive responses [8,34], social adjustment response [39], sense of belonging [25,43], and close relationship with one adult as resilience responses in children [24,33,45], family cohesion [30,33], and community resilience [33]. In particular, among resilience responses in children, they an express symptoms internalizing (some signs of anxiety or depression as problems to sleep, social isolation) [40] and some behavior externalizing such as: problems of behavior at school [42], sense of exclusion, displacement or abandonment [2], deviant behavior. Among authors reviewed, one in particular referred that the community disorder as the all kind of violence we can see for the streets and graffiti as structural context which affects the resilience responses in urban poverty people.…”

“…Perspectives of whether or not community disorder (above explained) was modifiable ranged; most argued for helping to develop social and community resilience through awareness, parental involvement, and community cohesion from family or civil organizations (n=9) [3,20,21,23,31,33,39,42-43], but one paper argued that it is impossible to resolve but remains highly influential [40]. In addition to community violence more generally, another risk factor mentioned was domestic violence, which affects familial structure and psychological outcomes [42,49].…”

“…This systematic review revealed that 19 out of the 27 analyzed articles (70.3%) reported selecting their sample by using at least one risk factor or at least one adverse background condition as an inclusion criterion [3,23,[20][21]31,33,39,[42][43][44]. Although the authors do not specify or provide a clear distinction between a risk factor and an adverse background condition, the latter is seen more as a product of personal history that affects personal development and maturity, and will therefore be understood this way for this review.…”

“…Primarily, 66% of the total articles (n=18) only described parental involvement as a constructing element of resilience [37,[41][42]. In a more specific way, 16% of them (n=4) mentioned active supervision and parental participation in regard to key points and decisions in youth's life [3,31,48,50].…”

Systems and Senses: New Research on Muscovy and the Historiography on Early Modern Europe

“…In 17th-century Muscovy, migration control was in fact highly developed. 55 Print was almost nonexistent, but written documentation exploded; the growing concerns about its security were mirrored in the Sobornoe ulozhenie, which significantly strengthened the sanctions for counterfeiting. 56 The fact that written documentation of identity was important beyond just the official sphere is demonstrated by what could be called the "safe conduct to heaven," a testimonial of confession made before death that accompanied the dead on their final journey.…”