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Keywords: Russia; Western Balkans; Energy Politics; Geopolitics
The Energy politics is today at the center of the Russian and the Western Balkans relations. It is widely known that Russia has been playing significant role in world energy supply. Therefore, Russian energy companies have taken a leading role in the promotion of their businesses in the Western Balkans. The Western Balkans region has become geostrategic partner as a transit route for the integration of Russia into the global energy world market. With regards to the transportation of gas Western Balkans as a transit route is determined to fully realize South Stream project. In contrast to “a buffer zone” role, in the past few decades the Western Balkans gained an attention from Russia and became an important geopolitical bridge towards Western Europe. Such geopolitical and geostrategic planning of Russia is apparent with regards to gas and oil. Due to Russian South Stream gas pipeline project the Western Balkans became an important European energy transforming center. These new geostrategic games over the pipeline have also revived the Russian historical interests in the Balkans. This paper aims to analyze Russian-Western Balkans relations with special emphasis on energy politics and geopolitical and geostrategic interdependence of Russia and the Western Balkans.
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Keywords: Psycho-Social; National Identity; Ethnicity; Collective Self-Esteem
This paper deals with the phenomenon of national identity as well as with its connection to personal and collective self-esteem. National identity and associated phenomena have so far mainly been investigated as part of sociology, anthropology and political science, since psychology was less engaged in the issue. The national identity out of all kinds of social identity had the greatest influence on historical events. The consequences for the human race, through history, have been both positive and negative. Understanding the importance of this phenomenon has not only theoretical but also practical value for encouraging international tolerance. In recent years, national identity is a topic of interest for many researchers, mainly because of political events and frequent conflicts that are associated with ethnicity. This concept is especially important for Bosnian citizens who are still struggling with consequences from the recent conflicts in this multiethnic country. Most previous scientific papers explain their results within one of three theoretical frameworks: the social identity theory, theories of acculturation and cultural conflict, and the development of the theory of identity formation. Due to geopolitical changes in Europe, the growing interest of psychology to national identity is present, and thus the number of diverse research in this area. In many of them, there is a question about whether reinforces strong identification with the national group as a positive self-image and self-esteem contributes to it.
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Keywords: Shakespeare; The Tempest; Language; Postmodern; Wordplay
Having been discussed for more than four centuries, Shakespeare (1564-1616), believed by many critics to be the most important English dramatist, is still inexhaustible. Through these years and especially in the twentieth century, many different approaches have been applied to his plays. This study is an attempt to have a postmodernist reading of The Tempest (1610). Based on the definition and characterization of postmodernism by Ihab Hassan and Brian McHale, and through a careful language analysis, the postmodernist elements in the speeches of characters are detected and discussed. By using postmodernist elements and techniques such as puns, wordplays, paradoxes, and versal prose, the language becomes anarchic, playful, disperse, polymorphous and indeterminate. By finding and analyzing these features in the language of the play it becomes arguable that The Tempest is a postmodern comedy.
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Keywords: Illegal Migration; Refugees; Asylum Seekers; Human Trafficking and Smuggling
This study aims at exploring the flows of transit migration to North Cyprus by type: whether or not it is labour, refugee or asylum. To determine that, the question of which push factors lay behind transit migration in the origin country tries to be answered. Also this study seeks to analyze origins, routes and destinations of transit migrants in TRNC from 2004 to 2008. In addition, the paper analyzes what kind of measures TRNC government was taking to deal with illegal transit migrants, human trafficking and smuggling through its borders, and how non-state institutions in TRNC considered and dealt with transit migrants and especially refugees.
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Keywords: Ethics; Neuroscience; Dualism; Mind-body Dillema; Human and Non-human Participants
From Avicenna and Descartes a long debate on the role of mind-body dilemma has left a huge impact on ethics of psychological research. That is especially applicable on researches that include both human and non-human participants, as well as their limitations and constraints that are connected to ethical principles. However, these principles are closely related to the interpretation of mind-body dilemma, which depends on different understandings of connection between soul and senses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the major impact of well-known “mind-body” dualism on ethics in psychological researches, with special emphasis on neuropsychology and neuroscience in general, as well as major constraints related to that dillema. The thought experiment has been recognized as a precursor to Rene Descartes’ famous ‘Cogito ergo sum’, as well as his body-mind dilemma. However, Avicenna's argument is more intended to demonstrate conceptually that Aristotle’s empirical axiom “there is nothing in the mind which was not first in the senses” is mistaken, since there is at least one thing in the mind which is not contingent upon experience, and that is self-awareness. The major contribution of this paper is the inclusion of two philosophical debates on mind-body dilemma while considering ethical approaches to neuropsychological research on both human and non-human participants.
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Keywords: Traditional Games; Digital Games; Internet; Social Media; Parents; Digital Natives
Internet, already a part of our lives far surpassing its limits as a means of communication, seems to have shaped most fields in human life and changed most of our daily habits and as a consequence the digital natives are observed to be completely living in Internet culture. One of the reflections of this culture and arenas in the Internet, social media has substantial impacts on gaming habits of digital natives. Up to the period in which Internet has interfered in man’s life, the games played by parents were passed from older generations to the new ones as a tradition, so generations used to play the same games; when the children of a previous era became parents they described the games they used to play to their kids thus paving the way to the sustainability of this game tradition. While different generations used to play the same games, today with the dissemination of Internet and social media caused a change of format in the traditionally played games and street games started to give their places to those played on the computers. Therefore, children started to play games on the Internet, an endless space whether negative or positive. The fact that parents are alienated from this arena, enabled the children to play violent games without any boundaries and to take place in social media arenas that could have negative impact on children’s worldly and spiritual well-being. The study is highly important in the sense that it clarifies the extent to which Internet and social media, which is actually the agent of change in children’s gaming habits, environments changed parents’ gaming habits among themselves and with their children. Surveys are conducted to the parents of primary school students as a field work to identify the changes originating from Internet and social media. According to research results, social media and Internet are found to be altering gaming habits of parents with their children. It is identified that parents keep themselves away from online environments in which their kids take place thus possibly breaking off the communication relationships between kids and parents.
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Keywords: Attitudes; Cultural Values; Hofstede; Different Cultural Symbols
The companies, in International markets, are required to examine the attitudes and the behaviours to recognize the consumer to be able to make their products preferable under constantly growing competitive conditions. Therefore, it is of great importance to know cultural values of the customers in the country's where global brands compete and to shape ads which is one of the marketing communication tools in this direction. In this respect, knowing the cultural similarities or differences of the countries where the ads are used (such as that country's religion, language, norms and cultural values) gains importance. The consumer attitudes towards the ads change in accordance with their cultural similarities or dissimilarities and this attitude change determines the tendency of shopping. According to Geert Hofstede, social anthropologist who analyzes the cultural levels and the relationships among them the basic elements of the culture consists of symbols, heroes, rituals and values underlying them. Thorough symbols, a number of cultural values are conveyed to ads. The problem of this study which was carried out in order to determine attitude change towards the ads including cultural differences is “Is there a difference in the attitudes towards the ads including different cultural symbols? How it is distributed according to gender differences?" In this study, a qualitative research method was applied and interviewed with 20 test subject. 20 students studying in one of the universities in Turkey were selected with formal sampling, they were asked questions, and it was tried to determine the difference between the ad of Doğuş Çay-a tea brand which uses the symbols and local accent of Black sea region in Turkey in its ads- and the ad of Lipton which is an international British tea brand. At the end of the study, it was found out that sample’s the attitude was positive towards ad of Doğuş Çay, not Lipton.
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Keywords: Serials; Telenovelas; Genre; Propaganda
The focus of this work is to establish the inherent features of the genre of series and discuss their importance and impact on society, politics and everyday life. We usually tend to address everything related to TV and sequel featured as series and soaps. This common presumption is wrong on so many levels, because the genre of sequels has many subgenres and mixed genres and they are constantly changing in the light of the new technologies of filmmaking, TV broadcast and demands of the market. The societies in transition are subjected to various media contents among which the greatest popularity is bestowed to the melodramatic narrative of telenovelas. The promotion of cultures and deconstruction of cultural stereotypes inherent to the mass audience is one of the values of this media content. How much does the genre of telenovelas differ in the context of cultural nuances and what is the genesis of the human urgency in retelling the melodramatic and tragic narratives? Is this genre based on Turkish production now trespassing into the territory of ancient tragedy, thus returning to the roots of all the fiction? Is so, why is that happening to this genre? Enormous popularity deriving from these stories is reflected in the prime time broadcasting by Croatians, Serbian and Bosnian TV stations since 2010. The paper will explain the ontogenesis of the popularity, reflections and influences on societies and cultures, and features of this hybrid and changing genre of telenovelas produced in Turkey.
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