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The author discusses three major aspects in the history of the Dutch nation, which have exercised considerable influence on the shaping of its “character”, and through that also have given birth to some stereotypes of the Dutch. These are the role of the water, the civilian and democratic character of Dutch society, and the role of religion in Dutch history, especially the role of Calvinism. These aspects are regarded in their interrelation. The common effort to master the water was one of the main elements to build up a feeling of solidarity and togetherness between the inhabitants of the Low countries: the first stage of nation-building. In addition, the water has always been an important factor in the protection of the country against the invasion of foreign enemies. It is also a prerequisite for the development of the civilian and democratic character of Dutch society, based on such features as the commercial spirit, spirit of enterprise and international orientation. Calvinism, in turn, with its democratic, sober and individualistic tendency fitted extremely well into the civilian, early capitalistic character of Dutch society. The essence of the “pillarisation” phenomenon of this society is also represented in the article.
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The article views the latest anti-communist revolutions in Bulgaria and some of the Balkan states as postmodern transitions. The basic hypothesis raised is that the new agent of the revolutions, youth, forms postmodern dimension of the social change and solves problems of cultural identification of the young generation. The features of postmodernity are as follows: first, total lack of political narratives. Young generation substitutes ideological discourses with new cultural texts. Second, the revolutions are a splash of artistic creativity and a breakdown of the distinction between popular and political culture. Third, confusion over time and space is expressed in “here and now” perception of political change. Forth, commoditization of revolutionary practices, recontextualizing of advertisement and media images into political meanings. Fifth, young participants in anti-communist revolutions use a specific political vocabulary marking an identification distinction rather than constructing a political discourse.
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The paper sets the parameters of one of the Serbian national myths – Kosovo, giving examples of its political utilization. The importance of this myth for the political power leads to its persistent presence in the national and cultural space, on the one side, and on the other hand, to its enrichment with novel meanings which might compensate the lack of real historic and geographic facts able to become its natural components. Speaking about Kosovo is a sacral act which few people allow themselves to abuse. But when the Serbian ethnologists have the floor they are not always understood properly even by their own countrymen.
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The article treats the distribution of activities and social roles with regard to sex in three types of communities: those of Bulgarian Orthodox Christians, Sunni Turks and Bulgarian Muslims. The materials used are from a field work done in the West Rhodopes, the town of Hadzhidimovo, Gotse Delchev region during the period 1996-1998. The research covered the project “Cultural Interpretations of Ethnic Images”. A special emphasis has been put on the understanding of gender and its effect upon power/competence relations within the frames of everyday communication and cast distribution in the traditional culture of the settlement.
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The article is a part of a larger study of the images of religion, spread in everyday culture in Bulgaria. The study summarizes data, gathered during the last few years within a number of research projects, concerning two regions with ethnically and religiously mixed population: North-eastern Bulgaria (Razgrad area) and the Western Rhodopes (Gotse Delchev and Velingrad regions), as well as the results of an inquiry held in May-June 1999, on the role of religion in society today. Through a number of fieldwork methods, such as interviews, open inquiry, life history approach, observation, photo and video documentation, a large number of people of a varying social, religious, ethnic background have been examined. A certain number of everyday concepts and images of religion and religiousness proved to be circulating in the social sphere, some of them fostered by official sources like the media, but most of them of a specific shape and interpretation. To outline these “folk” interpretations of the religious is the aim of the article. Here the interpretations of religion as an image of social change and as tradition are mainly discussed. The latter is described by things like the motivating role of family, education and ethnic identity in determining religious affiliation, as well as by the use of religion as a basic symbolic language in expressing social, ethnic, cultural identity. The various concepts of religious belief, religious institution, religiousness, shared by members of different generations, ethnic and religious groups in Bulgaria, are discussed in this perspective. Other popular images: religion as a social integrator and a symbol of diversity, religion as magic action, religion as an indicator of ethnic identity, religion as a remedy against anomie in today’s society, complete the picture.
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The paper gives cultural interpretation of the mechanisms for creating and utilizing the national myths. It treats some regional variants of the chosen people myth spread in the Balkan countries. The starting point of the discussion is that the concept of ethnic choice cannot be interpreted as common ethnocentrism. The chosen peoples are not only unique; they also have a mission to the other peoples – a mission determining their moral obligations and quite a specific historic fate. Noteworthy is the fact that this myth most often has a written source and is being secondarily popularized and folklorized. Thus the narratives spreading the myth among the members of a given ethnic-cultural community are structured in a specific manner. The paper is divided into several sections: • Ethnonym • Ancient Origin and Glorious History • Language and Letters’ Achievements • Faith and Wisdom of Tradition • Direct Evidences of the Mission • Challenges • The Fate of the Balkans and My Own Fate (Instead of Conclusion) Different aspects of the chosen people myth and the cultural images which turn into a part of its entire structure and meaning have been discussed in the above sections. The importance of these images for the motivation of human activities and the jeopardy of their being deliberately developed and spread has been emphasized.
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The health care reform, and the decentralization of the health system are perceived, understood and accepted in different ways, by the different social actors involved. This paper takes a close look to these two processes that Romania underwent in the last years, from two perspectives: the human resources in the medical system (physicians) and the system’s beneficiaries (patients). Two levels of analysis are pursued, with a quantitative approach (secondary analysis on Opinion barometer of Health Care Services, considering data between 2002 and 2008). The longitudinal analysis is focused on very recent changes in Romanian health system, initiated by the hospitals decentralization process announced since 2009, started in June 2010 and completed by the end of 2010. All these changes are analysed in the broader context of health care reform.
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Last years trends, particularly in the developed countries, of increasing energy demand, car using and urban garbage disposal, bear an adverse impact on the environment and the quality of life, becoming a high concern for the whole society. Therefore, many international, European and national organizations plead for the implementation of some more sustainable practices of production and consumption. In this direction, the increased utilization of the renewable energy sources, practicing ecological agriculture on larger areas and a smarter urban garbage management are major goals, not only for environmental policies, but also for increasing the quality of life.
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This paper is the result of a research that investigates how the accessibility of higher education is perceived by people with visual impairments, without disabilities. The first chapter introduces the reader to the main topic of this research. The next chapter includes the research approach and results. The research investigates two groups of students with visual impairments, without disabilities from “BabesBolyai” University, Cluj-Napoca. The research-tools are two questionaires with open questions. In analyzing the collected data is used the software for qualitative data Atlasti, and the results are presented through a comparative approach. Generally, there aren’t major difficulties identified in the accessibility of higher education, and positive attitudes mark the behavior towards people with visual impairments. With few exceptions, students with visual impairments do not face big problems and attitudinal barriers in their acces to university. The nature of this phenomenological research has it epistemological limits, requiring a more in-depth and extended analysis.
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Two types of indicators are usually employed for measuring life satisfaction at individual level. One of the options is to measure a general or overall life satisfaction (OVLS). Another option is to consider the satisfaction with various life facets or domains (DS). Top-down, bottom-up and integrated models may be imagined for describing the relations between the overall life satisfaction and the domain satisfactions. The top-down (TD) approach supposes that OvLS determines DS as an intermediate chain for more general personality characteristics which determines life satisfaction. The bottom-up (BU) explanation sees OvLS as a product of the objective life condition mediated through the DS. An integrated model (IM) searches to reconcile the two perspectives, simultaneously considering the TD and the BU dependencies. Our paper tests for empirical validation of the three approaches, using simultaneous equation modeling on the EQLS 2003 data. We show that BU, TD and IM find similar support within the data, but the IM seems to better fit empirical evidences. On the other hand, no matter the approach, each DS-OvLS relation remains significant, even when controlling the objective life conditions. We found support for conceiving each domain of satisfaction as part of a dense network of interrelations with all other DS. More than this, each DS is strongly embedded in a more general satisfaction that depends on the objective conditions.
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Romanian migration to Italy witnessed a series of structural changes, in the past two decades. Romanians were first illegal migrants in search for informal jobs, and became legal migrants in 1998 and 2002, when they legalized their status, due to the Italian regularization campaigns. Global economic and political contexts, as well as different individual socioeconomic characteristics featured migrants’ experiences differently. A recent pattern is the return to Romania. Romanians planned their migration as temporary and, therefore, we can expect important rates of return. In the past years, return becomes more visible in some migrant communities. The research aims at shedding light on the determinants of return migration from Italy to their place of origin, Vulturu, situated in Vrancea County. Different levels of economic, cultural, and social capital can issue opposite patterns of reintegration of the returnees, in respect to the transferability of skills learned abroad, quantity and quality of the stock of social capital in migrants’ origin countries, and economic opportunities. Moreover, men and women have worked in different domains in Italy and tend, therefore, to have unequal chances to participate in the labor market of their region of origin.
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It is not the first time that Michael Haneke challenges his audience. How are we to understand what the film shows and reveals? What is the meaning of the film’s story? The author of the article tries to pin point the performative nature of the film and the importance of corporeality in the presentation and telling of this story. He claims that the action (performance) is more important than words in the film, which is why this film can have a very strong impact on the viewer. The “performativity” of the film forces onto the viewer a different kind of reflection, one far exceeding easy expressed meaning. The director puts forward very strongly the issue of self determination, the possibility of deciding one’s own fate, even when it is no longer an easy matter to take that fate into one’s own hands. He presents a situation, a “place” where the individual loses out to the organised raison of “society”, which supports “life”. The article also raises the question of the adequacy of the film title. The author comes to the conclusion that Gabriel Marcel’s opinion that to love means to tell the other person: “you are never going to die”, paradoxically, is highly adequate in relation to this film.
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In modern humanities understanding of the body as a substance or being gradually gives way to interest in processes, sensations and affects that pass through and between bodies. The emphasis on intangible and unconscious flows poses a particular kind of challenge to a film analyst, as these are the dimensions of human experience that to a large extent are not subject to verbalisation or visualisation. Szarecki proposes to consider body as a medium between the representation and the materiality of the image, taking into the account both politics of meanings focusing on the representations of the body in film, and the politics of experience associated with the creation of affective relationships. The author demonstrates this approach using the example of the Japanese film "Happy flight" by Shinobu Yaguchi, arguing that although the body images presented in the film bypass the dynamics and movement of affective flows, these might manifest themselves in sensory responses to the developing action and the accompanying changes in sounds and images.
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