A Christian family in a “provisional culture”

Author(s): Pawel Rabczynski / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

Contemporary culture can be described as provisional and temporary. A provisional culture is closely bound with such ideologies as secularism, individualism, relativism, practical materialism, hedonism and consumerism. These dominant cultural paradigms threaten the Christian understanding of family, hindering its comprehensive development and its ability to fulfil its basic objectives such as mutual welfare of the spouses or giving birth to and raising offspring. A provisional culture poses a threat and a great challenge for the family. Taking into account the fact that each culture is an expression of the human spirit and an environment for building identity and interpersonal relations, a Christian family must not ignore the problems of the contemporary world, but rather undertake a dialogue with a provisional culture aimed at presenting and promoting the Christian model of family, being the first school of faith, preaching and defending a culture of life.

A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF KEYWORDS IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CORPORATE PRESS RELEASES FROM EUROPEAN COMPANIES: INSIGHTS INTO DISCURSIVE PRACTICES

Author(s): Hanna Teresa Skorczynska Sznajder / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

This study provides insights into discursive practices through a comparative study of keywords in English-language press releases from British, Spanish and Polish energy companies. Even though corporate press releases have been extensively researched, there is a lack of cross-cultural and corpus-based studies in this field. In the present research three corpora of approximately 120,000 words each, containing English-language press releases from British, Spanish and Polish energy companies, were used. The keywords were identified with the Wmatrix tool (Rayson 2009) and the reference corpus consisted of business periodical articles. The analysis of corpus keywords usually provides insights that would be difficult to gain by means of manual analyses of texts or qualitative approaches. The results obtained in this study show notable differences between the corpora with regard to the keywords identified. The use of more general meaning keywords by British companies or more technical keywords by Polish companies suggest that lexical choices might be indicative of different discursive practices used to reach stakeholders and the general public.

A comparison of Italian immigration to Rochester, NY, before and after WWII

Author(s): Frank A. Salamone / Language(s): English / Issue: 27/2018

The main purpose of the article is to attempt to describe, analyse and interpret the experience of Italian immigrants in New York, in Rochester. Author of the dissertation compares the pre-war and post-war fate of immigrants. Furthermore, he is trying to find an anthropological sense and a cultural principle organizing the life of that specific ethnic group (symbols, rituals, strangers). The meaning of being a member of an ethnic group depends on both a specific situation and the total situation. The total boundary between groups must take in the total situation; that is, all the possible contacts in which a member of one ethnic group may come into contact with members of other such groups. Ethnic groups, in sum, exist to promote and organize interactions between and within groups organized on the mythic principle of common descent. Differences between those Italians who migrated to the United States before World War II and those who came after World War II can be understood through the framework of specific historical and cultural experience (mythic principle).

A Conceptual Discussion of Transformational Leadership and Intercultural Competence

Author(s): Franco Gandolfi / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2012

Transformational leadership has been defined as a process by which leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of morality and motivation (Burns, 1978). This paper examines the concepts of transformational leadership and intercultural communication competence. A deeper insight is required in order to understand the effectiveness of transformational leadership in various cultural contexts (Migliore, 2011). It has been shown that national culture orientation and intercultural communication competence tend to impact both the leadership framework and transformational leadership dimensions. Further, various aspects of effective leadership and the choice of communication strategies diverge for different cultural contexts. This paper is based on Matveev and Lvina’s (2007) work and reviews various intercultural studies of leadership that expound culturally-oriented leadership models. While universal and particularistic leadership components are present, it has been shown that the leadership styles involving charismatic components contribute the most to the perception of what effective leadership style constitutes.

A dărui și a primi

Author(s): Irma Walter / Language(s): German / Issue: 32/2018

Coming from a foreign country, one is faced with some perspectives on the customs and traditions of the people here, of which a newcomer is very eager to learn and understand. Exactly this situation had motivated Irma Walter to meditate on „Vom Geben und Nehmen“ (Of Giving and Receiving) to put down some new observations until there comes a time when she has learned more, understood more.

A few words about the identity of the Slavs, yesterday, today and tomorrow

Author(s): Martin Homza / Language(s): English / Issue: 1(23)/2018

This paper brings together the considerations that for many years the author has gathered on the origin, identity and successful expansion of the Slavs throughout the world. The author notes that although the issue of post-Roman social self-identification has been discussed for several decades not only in Europe but also worldwide, a deeper understanding of the apparition and expansion of the Slavic identity has not yet been achieved. In the author’s opinion, the success of the Slavic identity was the result of the quality and attractiveness of the Slavic cultural memory, whose evolution shows three basic stages following the necessary starting point, i.e. the revolutionary decision taken by the military community at the Low and Middle Danube to adopt the name Slav. The first phase is the formation of their cultural memory, which just like that of other barbarian military communities (gentes) in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire, was built on the literary (oral) transmission of the narrative that told the glorious deeds of the community and its elite (ruler, dynasty, retinue). The second and third stages of the development of the Slavic identity constitute the historically relatively short period of the Great Moravia, beginning and ending in the 9th century. On a political level, the increased attractiveness of the self-identification concept of the Slavic elites resulted in the vastest territorial expansion of the land of the Danubian Slavs during the reign of Svatopluk I and the formal constitution of the Slavic Kingdom, which was recognised by both, Rome and the Empire. On a cultural level, however, the success of the Moymirid dynasty was outperformed by the missionary work of St. Constantine the Philosopher and his brother St Methodius, who created the Slavic alphabet and the Slavonic liturgical language, translated the Sacred Scriptures, wrote some original literature works, etc. The author considers the Christian concept of self-identification, built on the identical wording of the word Logos, i.e. Slovo (Word) and Slovan (Slav) — which was developed by St. Constantine the Philosopher — to have become the nomen est omen of the past, the present and the future of the Slavs.

A hatalom akarása és élményközössége

Author(s): András A. Gergely / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2018

The anthropological presentation of communication, interpretation, and the communicative systems of power is not a “purely” political science or empirical anthropological matter, because the world-life functions in a ritualized space, where transition between cultures and political establishments itself is a ritualized event, rather than some kind of “natural” state of being. Rites of power always have a governing and preservative instrument in the social space, which in its concrete designation is nothing more than the penetration of exercise, legitimacy, and “mechanism” of power, and violence. How does violence become a system, a permissible norm, a tolerated common law, a privilege of initiates, and how does the all-encompassing operation turn into a kind of communitas-constituting structure or ideology, carrying the meaning that reflects effectiveness of will, and “truth-values” sanctified by the dynamics of the era? How do functional “complications”, social stratification, contact-network, interaction, in addition to functional content, continuity, and legitimacy take shape in the social structure – according to encounters?

A Home on the Range and the (Near) Extinction of the American Bison

Author(s): Tadeusz Rachwal / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/2017

Fredreric Jackson Turner’s seminal essay on the significance of frontier in American culture interestingly posits the development of railways as extension of the buffalo trail. The presentation of his ideas in 1893 not only followed the announcement of the closing of the frontier by the superintendent of the U.S. Census (1890), but was also the time of the near-extinction of bison whose number declined from about 600,000,000 at the end of the 18th century to 300 in 1900. In the paper I will try to tone the Indian traders’ transformation of the buffalo trail into a railway with the replacement of buffalo herds by cow droves as well as the popularity the song “Home on the Range” which in a way mythologized the domestic coexistence of people with the roaming buffalo. Drawing from Thoreau’s hypothesis that cows are buffalos within and capable of reasserting their “native rights,” I will look at some examples of the return of the buffalo in the 20th and 21st centuries as, however simulated, attempts at a return to homes on the range, and at living on the frontier, even if the frontier has been relocated to the vicinity of the Fermilab bosons where a small buffalo herd is maintained.

A hungarológia intézményesített fórumai

Author(s): Ferenc Alabán / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2019

As an introduction, the author examines those forums of Hungarology, which, as institutionalized forms, gradually facilitated the development of the perspectives and horizons of Hungarian science. The paper deals with publications (journals, periodics,conference volumes, etc.) which represent an irreplaceable professional representation of Hungarian affairs. It emphasizes the facts representing the prospects of Hungarology. These professional needs emphasize the integration of Hungarians and the issues of the situation of the Hungarian minority. At the end, the paper expounds the timely problems that can be experienced at the completion of new tasks in defining the interpretation of the Central European region.

A hungarológia mint identitásképző interdiszciplináris tudomány

Author(s): Ferenc Alabán / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2018

The author of the study presents Hungarology as an important identity-forming discipline, the most important aspect of which is the knowledge of the Hungarian language. It also distinguishes a “language-dependent” and a “language-independent” Hungarology as an interdisciplinary science, the most authentic region of which is Central Europe. At the end of the paper, the author presents the latest publications of Hungarology and the symbol system of it.

A jeśli nie "wrocławska piosenka", to co?

Author(s): Jacek Grebowiec / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 03/2017

The topic of the article is music that is strongly connected to the history of post-war, Polish again, Wroclaw — the city and its cultural, social and political landscape. This includes not only songs composed by artists from Wroclaw, but also songs dedicated to this city. In the article, songs from different timespans are analysed: the ones composed in the 1950s, in the pioneering period of restoration, as well as countercultural songs from the 1980s. The paper is complemented by an analysis of the newest songs that pretend to be hits or anthems of Wroclaw, although they have never gained the same fame as classical songs written by Maria Koterbska or new-wave band Klaus Mitffoch.

A Jungian Interpretation of the Phenomenon of Heavy Metal

Author(s): Lozanka Peycheva / Language(s): English / Issue: 68/2017

Ana Stefanova. Khevi Met”l Kulturata: Izsledvane po analitichnopsikhologicheska antropologiia. Ruse: GAIANA book&art studio, 2017. 360 pp. In Bulgarian.

A kolozsvári sporttelep felépítésének története a korabeli sajtó tükrében

Author(s): András Killyéni / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2018

In the fi rst decade of the twentieth century, the sport life of Cluj has undergone a major development. The small countrysidecity suddenly became the biggest sport center in Transylvania. It was the golden age for many sports (athletics, fences, skating),in the same time other sports started to develop at a very fast pace (football, tennis, gymnastics). At the same time, there wasa lack of sports facilities. István Somodi won the silver medal at the 1908 London Olympic Games in high jump event, andthis was a starting point to put a plan in place for building a new facility. In 1911 the modern stadium was built in the areabehind the park, this was one of the most modern arenas of its time, and which become home to football, athletics and tennistournaments.

A LARGE-SCALE STUDY OF WORLD MYTHS

Author(s): Marc Thuillard,Jean-Loïc Le Quellec,Julien d’Huy,Yuri E. Berezkin / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2018

The study of the narrative elements in tales and myths (motifs) belongs to a long tradition, initially aimed at finding the area of origin of early narratives (Urtexts). This objective, which has been much criticized, is generally abandoned today, but is it possible to establish the basis for an objectively verifiable mythogeography? Computer technology enables sophisticated mathematical computations on databases of an unprecedented scale, which makes it possible to base the comparative mythology on replicable calculation processes. In order to check for several subsets of motifs that could be specific to particular zones or continents, we test here two new methods on a corpus of 2264 motifs from ca. 40.000 myths recorded among 934 peoples around the globe, and we show that these motifs are best classified into two main groups.

A Lifetime of Crisis

The Story of a Dalmatian Peasant in the Mid-20th Century

Author(s): Nataša Miškovic / Language(s): English / Issue: 19/2016

This paper explores the traumatic experiences of Stevo, a Serbian-Orthodox peasant, and his coping strategies as revealed in his autobiography. Stevo wrote down his experiences at the young age of thirty in the years after World War II. The critical events in his life had various causes: poverty, family conflicts, migration, political convictions, communal unrest, deportation, and war. In his first 30 years of life, however, Stevo experienced more trauma than most people do in an entire lifetime, and these traumas are additionally closely entangled with the history of Yugoslavia. Carefully contextualised and combined with further written and oral information about his family, Stevo’s life story constitutes an excellent case for an historical-anthropological lifeworld study that demonstrates how macrohistory influences microhistory, and vice versa.

A magyar elit iskolázottsága

Author(s): Luca Kristóf / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2011

2009-ben az MTA Politikatudományi Intézetében kvantitatív elitfelvétel volt, a magyarországi politikai, gazdasági és kulturális elit tagjait kérdeztük életútjukról, életmódjukról, anyagi helyzetükről, identitásukról, politikai és gazdasági attitűdjeikről. Az alapsokaság összetételét az 1. táblázat mutatja.

A mi smo kak su stari rekli... Mladi u seljačkim obiteljima Prigorja i Hrvatskog Zagorja između dva svjetska rata

Author(s): Suzana Lecek / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 22/1999

The article shows the role of the youth in the family economy of the peasant families of Prigorje and Hrvatsko-Zagorje between the two world wars. The period of youth has been observed through two aspects: working ability of the youth, and choosing the spouse, which is one of the most important decisions for the whole household. Contracting a marriage meant founding a new economic unit (or supporting the old one). Therefore this decision is not left up to personal attraction, but to common appraisal of the responsible members of the family (elder generation).

A moldvai csángók vallásossága

Hagyományos világkép és modernizáció

Author(s): Lehel Peti / Language(s): Hungarian / Publication Year: 2008

These essays the author shows the operation of the moldavian csangos traditional religious forms of consciousness, the contemporary role of alterations occurred due to the modernization and transformation of communities based on ethnic, cultural, anthropological and sociological aspects of religion.Special merit of the book is that the observations and conclusions presented are based on their own collection, but confidently apply the latest scientific findings.

A parasztok maguk csinálják történelmüket, de nem szabadon

Author(s): Philip McMichael / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 25/2019

This essay employs contemporary peasant mobilizing discourses and practices to evaluate the terms in which we understand agrarian movements today, through an exercise of historical specification. First, it considers why the terms of the original agrarian question no longer apply to agrarian change today. The shift in the terms corresponds to the movement from the late‐nineteenth century and twentieth century, when states were the organizing principle of political‐economy, to the twenty‐first century, when capital has become the organizing principle. Second, and related, agrarian mobilizations are viewed here as barometers of contemporary political‐economic relations. In politicizing the socio‐ecological crisis of neoliberalism, they problematize extant categories of political and sociological analysis, re‐centring agriculture and food as key to democratic and sustainable relations of social production.

A Perspective of Intercultural Dialogue in Education

Author(s): Ana-Maria Neagu,Liviu Mihai MATEESCU,Marta Christina Suciu / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/2014

The paper discusses briefly some modern visions of the topic of intercultural dialogue within the context of a multicultural education environment and pluralistic society. The main reason for choosing this topic is directly related to the globalization process that marks our existence today. Globalization might provide opportunities for education and for businesses. But it also addresses serious challenges as well. We believe that by supporting intercultural sensitivity and intercultural dialogue within the education system in the spirit of multicultural societies will generate mostly on the long-run benefits for both individuals and organizations. The paper provides mostly a theoretical perspective of intercultural dialogue that is complemented by some guidelines for an effective intercultural education with a focus on how and what kind of education should contribute to better prepare people to live in multicultural societies.