Acta Historica Universitatis Klaipedensis

The theme of this article is regionalisation processes in the region of Latin America. The article tries to find the basic tendencies of regional processes and development in Latin America. It was ascertained that regional processes in Latin America increased after the Cold War when new regional associations were establishing and collaboration between different regions increased. Regional processes do not happen for a long time due to the politics of national protectionism, tension between countries of that region and uneven collaboration in economic sphere. However, increasing political and economic influence of Latin America encourages regional processes by expanding the need of collaboration with this region.

This article analyses inter-regional colloboration between Latin America and European Union (EU) in order to find out the processes of regional integration to international extent. Basic reasons of inter-regional collaboration between EU and Latin America which are related with social inequality and destitution, shortfall of democracy and growth of Latin America’s economical potential as well as appearance of various new markets are excluded in this text. EU encourages economical, social and institutional integration which is associated with regionalization processes in the area of Latin America. Inter-regional collaboration happens through international organizations such as Rio group, MERCOSUR, UNASUR, CAN. This article deals with general aims of inter-regional collaboration, various branches of it and relations between EU and Latin America in regional, sub-regional and bilateral level which are intermingled among themselves.

Ships are no Flying Dutchmen! They need a harbour. Therefore, the development of ship construction is pretty much connected with that of harbour construction, and beyond this, they influence the topography and infrastructure of a harbour. The transition between the Medieval period and the Early Modern Age is a period of great change in the development of larger ships, even in the Baltic. Furthermore, the internationalisation of Baltic trade took place. In Medieval times, ship construction followed conditions in the harbours. In the Early Modern Age, it was the other way round. Now, harbour construction, topography and infrastructure follow the development of ship construction. The paper focuses on the deep impact that larger multi-mast sailing ships had on the development of Baltic harbours.

Anthropology as a discipline is largely concerned with understanding human beings on a local and inter-national scale. As the subject has evolved, a number of sub-disciplines have come to the fore, the most prominent being biological, archaeological, linguistic, social and cultural. Political anthropology is generally placed as a sub-specialism within the context of social and cultural anthropology. This essay argues for greater significance for political anthropology as a sub-discipline of anthropology generally and especially within the Baltic States. Following an initial review of political anthropology in and of Europe, the essay outlines some of the key issues to which the Baltic States can make particularly unique contributions. The Baltic States already have a well-developed tradition of European Ethnology. This essay emphasises that they are also in a unique position to contribute to the development of political anthropology as an important sub-discipline which has acquired a new relevance in the context of an ever-changing EU. In a Europe that has witnessed many political changes over the past half-century and the emergence of new borders is going, insights into the political process can hardly be acquired through the disciplines of politics or sociology alone. The Eastern enlargement of the EU gives an urgency to our thinking about Europe.

The debate about the public role of ethnology and folklore has been ongoing for some time, and has its parallel in the current debate about an ‘applied anthropology’. In Great Britain folklore and ethnology are, at least in institutional terms, virtually absent from higher education institutions. An author set pointers for the future – concentrating on the need for the study of culture to focus on lived experience as well as, and perhaps before, text; the need to revisit the political roots of the discipline in a critical but constructive spirit; and, the need to reconceptualise the region as the theatre of ethnological fieldwork – with a view to developing an ethically aware, evidence-based, policy-oriented and culture-critical European ethnology. Within this broad framework, we need to explore further the issues surrounding cultural mediation as a process for applying, but also generating, cultural knowledge and understanding, and the role(s) that ethnologists do, could, should, and perhaps should not play in that process.