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Islamic Revolution of 1979. Around 1985 some decision-makers within the theocratic regime took the initiative to restart the civilian and military nuclear programmes. In 1987–2002, the government of Iran systematically, and in deep secrecy, worked to gain knowledge, personnel and infrastructure for the full nuclear-fuel cycle. Contrary to Western concerns in the ’90s, the main supplier of these technologies was the Pakistani AQ Khan Network, not post-Soviet countries or China. Later this same decade, U.S. and Israeli intelligence gained information about secret military elements of the nuclear programme, including work on uranium enrichment, tests of elements necessary for the construction of a nuclear warhead, as well as studies on the adaptation of the Shahab-3 missile to it. The revelation of secret facilities in Natanz and Arak by the NCRI proved that Iran for almost two decades had not been implementing the requirements of the NPT. The IAEA investigation is a decade long and still far from explaining all the suspected facts of the Iranian programme. The UN agency has become an important clearinghouse for information from member countries and its inspectors and also received important intelligence information from the U.S. and Germany. In response to the regime change in Iraq in 2003, Iran decided to halt its secret work on a nuclear arsenal. Expecting an IAEA inspections, Iran also decided to close its secret facilities in Parchin and Lavisian. Iran, though, never allowed full cooperation with the IAEA and continued with uranium enrichment and in 2011 the IAEA had completed all indicators of the possible military dimension of Iran’s nuclear programme. In 2007, U.S. intelligence revised its previous estimate and concluded it had halted it. The article also compares differences in available intelligence estimates and stresses their different implications for the strategies of Israel and the U.S. towards Iran’s nuclearisation. The text also reconstructs and compares the evolution of these intelligence estimates and the official IAEA reports, including them in separate appendices.
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What factors determine regional security of Central Europe? How does the map of democratization across the region shape regional security and what are its major contours? The article seeks to answer these and other related questions by first outlining framework and derive hypotheses and then testing them empirically. The article examines three dimensions of international security in the context of Europe: domestic politics with its resulting grand strategy; international order with its multiple components; and legacies of history. Empirical findings, based on international surveys and derived from measures, developed to assess democratization and the quality of governance, on the one hand, and policies pursued by Brussels and Moscow, on the other hand, offer the following picture: First, Europe is not a collection of states approaching each other as rivals but is bipolar—Russia perceives democratic states not as rivals but as foes. Second, two poles of Europe are opposites in fundamental respects—Moscow sees the world as a zero-sum game with democratization as threat to its survival while Brussels’ vision is more nuanced and less aggressive. Third, the border between two European worlds has been moving eastward following the end of Cold War in large part owing to activist EU neighborhood policy. Last but not least, the eastward shift in the border to include areas belonging to “another Huntingtonian civilization” indicates that the weight of the past can be overcome. This, in turn, suggests that investment by the EU in democratic change in Russia and former Soviet republics may yield positive results in terms of improving regional security. It seeks first to conceptualize links amongst them. Hence, it links democracy to a grand internationalist strategy seeking cooperation. States that adhere to this strategy create or participate in international arrangements built around trust and mutual respect. In contrast, at the other extreme, there are non-democratic regimes: their grand strategy is inward-oriented, statist and nationalist; their preferred international arrangements fall close to Westphalian world order with cooperation derived from overall patterns of conflict rather than patterns of cooperation on the basis of shared objectives. The last dimension: legacies of history are conceptualized in Huntingtonian “civilization terms” dividing Europe into Eastern and Western part with Moscow and Brussels depicted as their respective centers.
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Book review on Sergiu Mişcoiu, Oana Crăciun, Nicoleta Colopelnic, Radicalisme, Populisme, Interventionnisme: trois approches de la Theorie du Discours", EFES: Cluj-Napoca, 2008.
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This paper focuses on the reaction of the international community to the proclamation of Kosovo as an independent state, in an attempt to demonstrate the relevance of the realist theories in the contemporary international relations. The intention is to prove that the realist theory of international relations, in its “neo” version, can explain the international situation created by the independence of Kosovo in a non-contradictory way.
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The article presents the concept of moral panic, i.e. a disproportionate social reaction to a specific phenomenon, perceived as a threat to societal order, norms and values. Nowadays, in Poland, moral panic has become for rightwing politicians and columnists a tool to hinder changes in family life. In fact, even if almost half of Polish families take forms others that traditional nuclear family, conservative commentators continue to affirm strongly that the common good of Poland and of Polish society as a whole would depend on the condition of “traditional Polish families”. While in the Western countries the same-sex marriages are institutionalized, Polish conservatives tend to perceive such changes in the devil terms.
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When writing about universal education, anyone would hardly argue with the statement that school has some specific links with the ideological sphere. School curricula may become a tool used to exert social control: they allow for the transfer and reproduction of specific type of knowledge, and as such, according to Michel Foucault’s concept of knowledge/power, for either maintaining the status quo or eliciting change in the structure of power relations. The paper discusses traditional and modern theoretical concepts which consider universal education as a tool of ideologically-oriented social control. In practice, it may be illustrated with the on-going debate on sexual education in Polish schools, with examples of attempted influence by various, not ideologically indifferent groups on the content and form of knowledge transferred within the framework of the school curriculum.
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The paper focuses on the presentation of the author’s concept of analysis of the domain located at the intersection between such notions as subculture, deviations, norms, values and social capital. It presents the foundations of the analysis, which are of paradigmatic and theoretical nature, and the conclusions from own empirical studies: qualitative, field research of Warsaw hip-hop subculture community, and studies on youth groups from Jelonki residential area (Bemowo District) threatened with marginalization and social exclusion. Considering that youth subcultures are equivocal —they display both risky (deviation) and developmental (social capital related) patterns — we have used a dual structure of analysis. The practical part of the paper presents the outcomes of the application of research results and their implementation into the activities of the third sector.
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It has been long since philosophers have talked at large about the collapse of values or their total revaluation. We are living in times when the concepts by Freud, Foucault and Bauman seem to be of particular relevance. In this paper, we would like to discuss how values and norms operate in the modern society, named a “surveillance society”. Technological advances have brought about changes in human mentality. In the past, humans tended to avoid surveillance as it entailed constraints. Today, we voluntary submit to social supervision. Newly emerged values create behavioral norms in a society in which every citizen operates under the watchful eye of the Big Brother. Social changes lead to the loss of individuality. Contemporary culture devours humans through the inculcation of new norms of conduct. Then, individuals lose their ability to think independently, and hierarchies of values are toppled down by new ones, developed within the surveillance society. Based on the analysis of those specific concepts, we may be able to suggest a diagnosis of the modern society which becomes free inside its own prison.
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The paper is based on the results of two-year own field ethnographic studies carried out in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2010–2012). The author stayed there for a long time, which helped her immerse into the cultural space of this modern yet sharia law absolute monarchy. The paper discusses the elements of formal and informal social control elements relevant for shaping children’s attitudes in the course of socialization process.The analysis concerns primarily the internalization by socialized individuals of socially desirable patterns and the development of their internal social control mechanisms, expressed in their profound conviction that cultural norms shared with the whole society are legitimate. The discussion covers mechanisms used for conformism, supervision, discipline and punishment, as observable in the contemporary Saudi society. Moreover, the paper outlines the issues of ritualistic religiousness and the impact of religious ideology on applicable norms and cultural customs.
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Families formed by same-sex couples who raise children are a relatively new social phenomenon. They pose a challenge not only for social norms as regards the acceptance of homosexuality, and, at the same time, to the present form of institutions existing, among all, in education, healthcare or welfare areas. In order to function, families formed by same-sex couples need to go beyond dominating norms in various dimensions, for instance those which regulate the foundation of the family, its structure or gender roles within the family. The aim of the article is to discuss how such normative borders are crossed and what the ensuing consequences are, mainly based on a review of studies conducted by Western social studies researchers.
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The paper intends to discuss empathy in the context of social control mechanisms, understood as efforts undertaken by the society (e.g. by legal or moral systems) in order to shape the character and identity of an individual so that social order and viability of social institutions be ensured. It includes the analysis of two social personality typologies, developed in the first half of the 20th century by Znaniecki and W.I. Thomas (with the special focus on the functioning of the creative individual), and by Riesman (mainly the personality subject to external influences). Additionally, the said typologies are compared with ideas presented by J. Rifkin in his book published in 2010, where the human being is described as “homo empathicus”.
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The paper analyses the phenomenon of informal social control in relations between the participants of a specific type of organizations, i.e. escort agencies. The control relates to the way in which the group of work mates (and other social actors from the community under study) influences the construction and enactment of roles by women who provide sexual services in escort agencies. The main aim of the analysis is to identify meta-norms which define the rules of operation of the agency, as developed and maintained through interactions in the group of work mates, as well as sanctions applied for their violations. In this context, we present the socialization process of new workers into the agency environment. The paper is based on the qualitative field study carried out in escort agencies in one of the Polish regional capital cities. Data has been collected through observation and free-form interviews, and analytical procedures have been derived from the methodology of the grounded theory.
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The paper intends to analyze the case of Ethan Couch: a 16-year old American who caused the death of four individuals while driving under the influence of alcohol. He was then quite leniently treated by the judge who had accepted the arguments put forward by the expert psychiatrist that the offender showed symptoms of “affluenza” — condition related to the inability of assessing social norms due to a permissive upbringing style. The author argues that the judgment is the consequence of aberrant coupling of two phenomena present in American law: privatization of the justice system (concept emerged in the law & economics school), and the contextualization of norms considered as environmentally created (concept which gained its momentum within the framework of post-modernism studies). While norm contextualization was initially used to justify more liberal treatment granted to lower-class representatives, in the said case it was employed in reference to individuals from upper levels of the social ladder. This was caused by the privatization of the justice system, which led to the differentiation of the actual position of individuals in the legal system.
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The paper analyses the custom of bride kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan (called in Kyrgyz language kyz ala kačuu) in the context of social control and social pressure. It provides the description of the custom and the model marriage by abduction, with the focus on the pressure put on the bride. Moreover, we include the analysis which reveals that the abduction concerns not only the kidnapped woman and her future/potential husband, but also the community as a whole. The community, entangled in its moral norms through mutual (and not only individual) persuasive actions maintains a specific social model. Based on the subject literature, press, documentaries and field studies carried out by the author in the North-West of Kyrgyzstan, bride kidnapping is depicted as a type of norm, binding in that region.
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The paper intends to analyze possible redefinition of limits of the right to use collective violence which took place after September 11, 2001, i.e. the WTC attack. The author attempts at determining whether the event could have given rise to moral panic and what legal and social consequences it entailed. The paper includes the analysis of moral panic, based on S. Cohen’s definition, complemented with the theory of E. Goode and N. Ben-Yehud. The questions of terrorism, changes in international law and in public awareness are analyzed in relation to the role of media in the perception of threats from religious and ethnic groups, to the identification of Islam as a radical and incrementally important security issue, and to the media and social stigmatization of Muslims as “others”, culturally foreign and defined as folk devils. Conclusive remarks are devoted to the impact of Nagasaki syndrome which may possibly result in violent acts being perpetrated repeatedly and without any further thinking. towards specific groups of “others”.
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The article attempts at presenting the ethics of creativity as a response to the change in a paradigm decisive for basic skills required in most professional activities. As for creativity as a desirable professional skill, it would be highly justified to develop a coherent normative framework. When living within clearly defined boundaries, we can integrate all four basic dimensions of the human nature: spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical, and then, thanks to the ability for transcendence, realize the discovered potential. Ethics of creativity assumes that the normative framework should be properly understood and carefully developed in all its essential elements; then, once apprehended it will create a space for ontological safety, and will simultaneously inspire us to act creatively, following the pace of civilizational progress. Normative system refers in its essence to such objective principles as truth, dignity, freedom, responsibility, courage, love, joy, honesty, tolerance. Thanks to the adoption of an appropriate narrative structure — in our discussion the suggested metaphor is that of a house — it may become a clear point of reference for the achievement of individual desires and predispositions.
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The main aim of the paper is to present the savoir-vivre rules from the sociological perspective. The analysis covers rules of civility promoted in manuals of good manners as well as their validity (presence) in the practice of social life. The author focuses on two key questions. In the structural approach (1) the question is discussed how a relatively rigid code of behavior (included in the philosophy of savoir-vivre) fits into the current opening of social structure, in its relational and distributive aspect. With the framework of the functional approach (2) we will discuss whether it is legitimate to define savoir-vivre rules as a cultural relict and how the promotion of such norms meets the need of the contemporary society.
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