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I defend Jack Goody's approach to explaining expansive social and intellectual changes by pointing to the contributions of the technologies of communication, and specifically, of the use of writing (Goody 1987, 2000). I argue that conceptually driven approaches to social or human kinds contribute the clarifications needed to alleviate and respond to his critics’ concerns surrounding the notion of a literate society (Collins 1995, Finnegan 1999, Sawyer 2002, Bloch 2003). My defense of Goody also identifies and endorses a few main criteria and resources for the success of any satisfactory definition of the related notions of a literate society/literate mind.
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The Attractiveness of a Forgotten Topic: Sociology of Professions in the Changing World of Work. The main task of this article is critical analysis of usefulness of the concept of professions. The main argument presented in article is that the most widespread theoretical perspectives on professions – based on structural functionalism or neo-Weberian approaches – are not helpful in analysis of contemporary world of work. We argue that actual transformation of organization of work is the main reason why the concept of professions as a special and unique occupational group should be abandoned and replaced by the concept of professionalism, understood as a specific discursive mechanism of control. Sociológia 2009, Vol. 41 (No. 5: 411-436)
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Partner Choice Preferences. Do the Divorced and the Unmarried Differ in their Marriage and Partner Preferences? The research on social homogamy in marriages answers up to a certain point satisfactorily the questions about the nature of assortative mating. Nevertheless, these analyses are not able to examine the tie between partner choice and the preferences of marriage candidates. On one hand, there are the characteristics of the contracted marriages, indicating the results of the assortative mating process while on the other, there are the notions of ideal partner, which all of the marriage candidates more or less explicitly exercise while seeking in the marriage market. This paper has three aims. Firstly, it describes the partner choice preferences by the basic dimensions like the education, age, physical attractiveness and wealth of hypothetical “ideal” partner. The second aim is to distinguish between the segments of population with different partner preferences and to find social determinants of these preferences. Thirdly, it compares the preferences of divorced people with unmarried population in order to contrast the first and repeated choices. To answer these questions we use the data from Generations survey, conducted on general population of the Czech Republic, with the boost samples on divorced people and younger cohort. Sociológia 2009, Vol. 41 (No. 5: 437-456)
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The Main Actors in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and their Social Networks, Allocative and Authoritative Resources. This study deals with the issue of global terrorism. It begins with Beck’s description of a pattern of behaviour which is in contradiction with the interests of civilisation. Next, it evaluates Bush’s choice between two flows of social capital and his GWOT strategy from the perspective of Giddens’ concept of norms and resources. The encounter between the 43rd U.S. president and the al-Qaida chief is explained as a duel between a patron and a broker. The study goes on to provide a comparison of the main actors’ social networks and social capital from 9/11/2001 up to the present. In the end, the author juxtaposes the U.S. direct strategic culture and the crafty and insidious culture of al-Qaida and its allied movements. Sociológia 2009, Vol. 41 (No. 5: 457-484)
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Cristian Ghinea writes an article about Romanian mayors’ political affiliation. The journalist comments a series of percentages gained or lost by the leading political parties and stresses how easy things can change: if after the elections in 2000 the SDP mayors represented 35,5% out of a total, nowadays this number seems quite not many!
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The research was not the main concern for Romania since 1989. There are many reasons to be disputed on this issue, but there is no doubt that first of them is the lack of financial resources. You can read the full story in this interesting collection of articles and interviews.
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Magdalena Boiangiu writes an article about the problem of immigration and the new Romanian Constitution. The journalist suggests that the Romanian politicians avoid as much as possible such a subject, but there are some European examples to be analyzed and taken as excellent solutions.
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Anca Manolescu writes a much-documented article about tolerance. The journalist takes as a demonstration for such an essay the work and the life of René Guénon (1885-1951), as well as Simone Weil, André Scrima, Nicolaus Cusanus, and Nikolai Berdiaev.
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The need for a continuous and increasing oil supply has been a determining factor in the foreign and security policy of the United States in the recent years. The focus of the executive power on energy has apparently sharpened since the Bush administration entered office in early 2001. The paper investigates the role of oil in US policy vis a vis two countries, Iraq and Venezuela. For different reasons, both can be seen as countries of high importance for Washington. The differing reasons and pre-history, however, explains the different ways and means of intervention in the two countries, and in the two countries. Both examples show, nevertheless, that American policy is by no means so omnipotent as some theoreticians of the unipolar world order would suggest.
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The article analyses three problems of the EU from the perspective of political theory. The first one is the question of democracy-deficit in the EU. It is a consequence of the fact, that political leadership and governance of the Union are institutionally and procedurally not connected to and independent from the democratic elections of the European Parliament. Neither the European Council nor the Commission depends on the political composition of the EP. The author argues, that this democratic deficit of the Union is connected to a substantial weakness of the European unification, namely to the lack of a European demos, the European political community. There is neither a European public opinion, nor a European party-system. The latter is clearly visible in the electoral competition for the seats in the EP, which is taken place separately in national political arenas. Secondly, the author analyses the question, whether the notion of federalism is suitable to characterise the political structure of the European Union. He argues, that although the EU is not a state, it can be regarded a quasi-federation, a federal political system. Thirdly the article focuses on the highly debated issue of sovereignty. The author differentiates between two concepts of sovereignty. While accepting a quantitative concept of sovereignty, the transfer of more and more public-policy functions from the member states to the Union means at the same time a gradual transfer of sovereignty to the European Union. Sovereignty in this sense is a synonym for the aggregation of the state functions, and therefore it is divisible between the members states and the Union, according to the various policy-areas. But there is a narrower, a qualitative concept of sovereignty, based on the theory of Carl Schmitt, where sovereignty means the final political authority, a final decision power, like waging war, announce a state of emergency, adopting a constitution, define the public enemy or choosing allies. Sovereignty in this sense is not very much visible in normal circumstances, it appears and prevails only in crises or extraordinary situations. Taking this qualitative notion of sovereignty, sovereignty stays at the member states of the European Union.
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The article contrasts the structural properties of Western and Eastern European party systems and analyzes the converging and diverging trends in the two regions. The process of European unification highlights the differences between new and old democracies, especially given the resistance of party systems to Europeanization. The article shows that many specificities of recent Western patterns, particularly the weakening social functions of political parties, are more pronounced in Post-Communist countries than in the West. At the same time the cited data prove that in some areas (e. g., the institutionalized role of parties in government) the most consequential divide is not between the old and the new democracies, but within the post-Communist region. The consolidation of the party systems in Post-Communist countries is well underway, but there are notable exceptions, and some aspects of it (e.g., stability of parties) seems to be related more to certain institutional factors and to the level of polarization, than to the general level of democratic development.
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Though nobody can accuse the present-day Conservative parties and movements of being the sworn enemies of democracy, it is an indisputable fact that Conservative thinking, following the traditions of Burke, had for a long time serious reservations concerning political democracy. As a matter of fact, Conservatives are even today less enthusiastic about the democratic form of government than their rivals, the liberals or the socialists. This study makes an attempt to give a picture of how the most prominent late-Victorian Conservative thinkers evaluated the process of democratization and its social consequences. The paper is concerned primarily with the views of three scholars: the author of „Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, James Fitzjames Stephen, the famous historian of law, H.S. Maine, who expressed his sceptical views on democracy in „Popular Government”, and another noted historian, W.H.Lecky, whose „Democracy and Freedom” presented a crushing opinion on the prospects of democracy. It is interesting to note that although in the second part of the twentieth century it has become almost a commonplace in political theory that democracy and liberty are inseparable, this was far from being the case even in late-Victoran Britain.
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