Gregor Tomc

Gregor Tomc (born 3 February 1952) is a Slovenian sociologist, musician and activist. In the late 1970s and 1980s, he was member of the famous Slovenian punk rock band "Pankrti".

Biography

Tomc was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia, then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. He is the younger half-brother of the famous columnist and historian Alenka Puhar. He spent his high school years in New York City, where he became a fan of Bob Dylan and developed an interest in rock'n'roll music. He studied sociology at the University of Ljubljana. In 1977 he founded, together with his friend Pero Lovšin, the punk rock band "Pankrti". He wrote almost all the lyrics of the group and for for ten years he worked as their unofficial manager. Under the impression of the Helsinki Accords, he founded the association People for a Free Society in order to promote the notion of personal freedoms in the socialist society in Slovenia.

In 1982, he became a researcher in the Institute for Sociology of the University of Ljubljana, where he was the co-worker of the famous philosopher Slavoj Žižek. He wrote in many Slovenian alternative and critical magazines, such as "Problemi", "Nova revija" and "Mladina". During the Slovenian Spring (1988–1992), Tomc was active in many political and civil society organizations participating in the democratization process in Slovenia. In the first free elections in 1990 he unsucessfully ran for the Slovenian Parliament as an independent candidate.

Since the 1990s, he has been working as a lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana. During all this period, he wrote essays and columns on contemporary political and social issues. In 2006, he was elected to the Ljubljana city council on the List of Zoran Janković. He is currently an advisor for culture to the mayor of Ljubljana Zoran Janković.

Since 2004, Tomc has been an outspoken critic of the cultural policies of the current centre-right Slovenian government led by Janez Janša.

Work

Gregor Tomc was, together with Frane Adam, one of the first Slovenian and Yugoslav sociologist to study the phenomena of contemporary social movements, with an emphasis of youth subcultures. He later turned to the study of cognitive psychology.

Major works

*"Od Poljske do Pol Pota" ("From Poland to Pol Pot". Maribor, 1983);
*Druga Slovenija : zgodovina mladinskih gibanj na Slovenskem v 20. stoletju ("The Other Slovenia : History of Youth Movements in the Slovene Lands in the 20th Century". Ljubljana, 1989);
*"Profano : kultura v modernem svetu" ("Profane : Culture in the Modern World". Ljubljana, 1994);
*"Small Societies in Transition: the Case of Slovenia : Transformation Processes in a Small Post-Socialist Society" (co-editor with Frane Adam. Ljubljana, 1994);
*"Šesti čut : družbeni svet v kognitivni znanosti" ("The Sixth Sense : The Social World in Cognitive Science". Ljubljana, 2000);
*"Mentalna mašina : možgani kot organski motor na duševni pogon" ("Mental Machine: the Brains as an Organic Engine on Mental Fuel". Ljubljana, 2005).

See also

*Punk rock in Yugoslavia
*New Wave music in Yugoslavia
*Slovenian music

Sources

* [http://www.slovenskapomlad.si/2?id=18&highlight=gregor%20tomc Profile on the webportal Slovenian Spring]