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There are testaments from the 16th century preserved in Kremnica state archive. They are written in Latin, German and in one sample also in Slovak language. Last wills prepared a man for a death in spiritual and secular (division of property) way. Testaments eliminated conflict between secular property and desire for an eternal life. Formally testaments consist of several parts – invocation, intitulation, profession of faith, passages about human mortality, composing of the last will and redress of sins, heritages of property, confirmation, corroborating and date formulas. The content of the testaments is an important historical source for economic, law, culture, regional history and also history of material culture and everyday life.
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According to Wahrig Deustsches Woerterbuch the concept of the “road” refers to a place which you have to walk in order to obtain your wish, to change some life situation in a positive or negative way; there the desired result of the act is achieved. Therefore, in our traditional culture the road is the place where people most often perform all sorts of magical actions including “white” and “black” magic. The crossroad has the same meaning; in a sense, it outlines the model of the horizontal division of the world which finds expression in four main directions – east, west, north, south. The article shows some of the most common “white” magical actions which aim at positive results – mostly various healing practices against diseases such as “gorska mayka” and “vankashna bolest” as well as customs dedicated to the mythical master-guardian of the village such as “Kokosha cherkva” and customs against drought. The article also examines some “black” magical actions aiming at doing harm: “binding” of newlyweds, stealing the milk of somebody else’s cows.
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The article presents perspectives on the nature and possibilities of corrective measure “placement in a Correctional Boarding School” under the conditions of CBS.
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Daniel Morrison and Monica Casper contend that disability studies and its cultural locations have been remarkably silent on matters of the traumatic origins of many disabilities, on the ongoing relationship between shocking events, their abrupt and chronic impact, and experiences of disability. This article explores how critical disability studies must intersect with critical trauma studies to address how the African American Vietnam war veterans who, traumatized and disabled by war and conflict, are further marginalized by societal constraints of race, class and gender. This essay focus on an understanding of W.E.B. DuBois’s ideology of double-consciousness, critical race theory and cultural studies and how they can emphasize the intersection of war injury and disability with a tremendous regard for the lived racial, class and socio-economic oppressions that contributed to what military service and disabilities of the African American Vietnam veteran reveal about masculine identity.
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This paper draws on the author’s ethnographic research with 11 – 15 years old adolescents conducted in a “prioriy” middle school in Normandy, France (2014 – 2017) and aims to explore these immigrant students’ experiences of acculturation, sociocultural adaptation and identity formation. In particular, I present the case study of a Moroccan boy in an attempt to uncover more profound aspects of these phenomena. I use the theoretical framework of Berry et al. (2006) regarding strategies for acculturation and identity processes in adolescence in order to analyse data gathered through ethnographic methods. Then, I illustrate how methodological pluralism can produce a nuanced picture and allow for alternative interpretations. In addition, followingPollock and Van Reken’s example of a third-culture kid, I use the concept of a third culture adolescent (Pollock and Van Reken 1999) to demonstrate how a migrant student with a diffuse profile, that defines him as marginal and confused, viewed through an ethnographic lens, can be thought of as someone creating “third culture”.
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The paper demonstrates the way in which the Russian psychologist L.S.Vygotsky, who anticipates the paradigm of the curriculum, is perceived in the American cultural space. A representative of the sociocultural constructivism in education, L.S.Vygotsky is concerned with the problem of approaching the epistemic specificity of pedagogy as a specialized science in the study of education. The process through which pedagogy turns scientific can be confirmed according to three criteria: the research object, the normativity and the research methodology. The specific research object of L.S.Vygotsky’s psychological pedagogy is represented by the quality learning that pushes the development ahead, in the area of the proximal development, possible within a socio-cultural mediated training activity through the pedagogical scaffold created between educator and educated. The specific normativity asserted in the L.S.Vygotsky’s psychological pedagogy is based upon two complementary principles: the creation of the scaffold and the orientation of education at the area level of the proximal development. The research methodology refers to: the method of the qualitative structural analysis; the genetic method; the comparative method and the instrumental method. L.S.Vygotsky’s theory of socio-cultural constructivism has generated a revolution in pedagogy, exerting a strong influence in the US, in the field of the curriculum reconstruction, initiated by the psycho-pedagogue Jerome S. Bruner. The constructivist pedagogical model developed by L.S.Vygotsky who influenced the psychological theory of learning proposed by J.S.Bruner draws attention upon the need to capitalize on three ways of organizing the training – by action (with objects), iconic (by images), symbolic/verbal (by notions formed and developed). Despite the strongly ideologized era in which he created, the Russian educator managed to anticipate an important line of the postmodern (contemporary) pedagogy.
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„The third wave” of democratization had a real challenge: to disarm brutal dictatorships and enable the process of building the institutions of the liberal democracy. Political scientists scrutinized the process of democratization and created its transitional paradigm. Unfortunately, as the paradigm and the democratization process failed (the so called „fake democracies” emerged), the proponents of the liberal democracy faced a new challenge: to turn back the trends of democratic erosions and to build a more sustainable,post-liberal democracy in the future. The important question remains: what kind of a new paradigm would best encompass contemporary challenges? This essay aims at drawing such a new paradigm referring to likely transitional strategies that may end up in new kind of democratic settings (also in a form of „fake democracies”). To come up with new schemes failed transitions and new trends are discussed.
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The paper deals with the public sociologists of the former Julian Hochfeld’s circle in the time of the political system change in Poland. Among the sociologists of that school Jerzy J. Wiatr played the most important role as both a traditional and an integral public sociologist involved in the Left-wing party politics. The paper depicts his activities as a public intellectual who became an eminent political leader, as well as his work as a social and political analyst. The paper confronts his vision of the political system change, as presented in the writings of the 1989–1991 period, with the work of another eminent sociologist of that school, Zygmunt Bauman. The latter did not play any political role and was much less involved in commenting the political change that was happening at that time, being a lot more skeptical about its result.
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This study analyses the relationship between failure and success from two perspectives: creative psychology and sociology of creation. By starting from Angelo Mitchievici’s recent book, “Farmecul vieților distruse. Câteva reflecții despre ratare” [The Charm of Failed Lives] (2022), which explores one of the favorite themes of decadent literature and art (failure), I aim to highlight the most relevant existential postures in a writer’s life: the anti-bourgeois aristocratic posture (the dandy) and the proletarian-democratic posture (the bohemian). It is not by chance that Mitchievici dwells on the works the Romanian-French writer Emil Cioran, who tried to build an image of a secluded writer, close to anonymity, avoiding to cultivate both the bohemian and the dandy style, by adopting a lifestyle shaped by the cult of work and discipline, in the spirit of the Protestant ethics theorized by Max Weber. Mitchievici explains very convincingly how, once he emigrated to Paris, Cioran completely abandoned the Romanian language, in which he was convinced he was failing as a writer, in order to devote himself exclusively to writing in French, with the idea of conquering global glory. In addition to Cioran, the authors in focus are Francis Scott Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Flaubert, Dino Buzzatti, Mihail Sadoveanu, Mircea Cărtărescu, etc., which provides the critic with the opportunity to reconnect with his former books (e.g. “Decadență și decadentism în contextul modernității românești și europene”, 2011) and to show a refined and mature essayist’s vein.
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The deportations from the Moldavian SSR took place during the first decade of the Sovietization of Bessarabia and represent a traumatic event in the contemporary history of the Republic of Moldova. Given the collective silence during the Soviet period on this phenomenon, the last two decades have been marked by efforts to create scientific and cultural representations of this historical event. Being part of the category of anthropogenic historical traumas, in which the traumatic factor is individually human, the subject of transformations of human relations in a totalitarian context is a central one for research projects dedicated to deportations. This article deals with deportees' representations of the causes and conditions of deportations and highlights hypotheses formulated by deportees. One of the deportees' hypotheses refers to local social animosities, and the issue of envy is invoked. The article presents the deportees' arguments, followed by psychoanalytic theorizations of this hypothesis.
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Marlen Haushofer’s novel, The Wall (Die Wand), published in 1963, elevated the author to fame, winning the admiration of readers and critics beyond the German-speaking world. As a result of a twist of fate she can neither grasp let alone understand, the heroine is cut off from the external world by an invisible obstacle – the titular wall. Behind it, human and animal life dies away, literally. She is the sole survivor of the catastrophe. From then on, she has to live in complete seclusion, left to her own devices and to fend for herself. Her only companions are a small group of animals giving sense to her existence. The sense of responsibility she feels for those living beings, her care for them, and the total isolation and sense of hopelessness become the determinants of her everyday life. This paper aims to present the main character’s uncommonness of daily living conveyed by the title and caused by an unexpected disaster. It seems important to investigate the protagonist’s attempts to reconstruct her own social space, where human interactions are replaced by interactions with animals. It is no less important to investigate her survival strategies, which are based on the strategies she had known before the disaster. The character has to take on a new role in a new reality that turns out to be a kind of reflection of her previous social role. This paper attempts to review the established social rules which had to become devalued to a certain extent when the character was faced with a radical change. Haushofer’s work can also be interpreted as a parable of the present time, in which fear of what is unknown (a disaster, a war, a pandemic) determines the way that the individual lives day by day. This paper is based primarily on the source text, namely M. Haushofer’s The Wall, and the analysis in this paper refers to feminist discourse, ecocriticism and animal studies.
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Fashion as a contemporary socio-cultural phenomenon is not only a problem related to clothing trends but also one related to the social behaviors of consumers and producers. Thus, the psychology of the fashion consumer is one of the central elements on which the evolution of fashion towards one direction or another is based, and at the same time it is one of the main concerns of designers, stylists, fashion journalists and marketing specialists. On the one hand, they analyze the different needs and typologies of fashion consumers, and on the other hand, they try to identify the necessary ideas to determine their interest in consumer goods and new trends. Along with the establishment of the main identity features that lead to the formation of the clothing identity, respectively the main features that the individual will have in the role of fashion consumer, relating the image to the individual, clothing is defined in accordance with all the components of the self, including self-awareness that stands out as the main influencing factor of the clothing image. In the process of self-knowledge and in interpersonal communication, the clothing identity of one person is defined through a conscious process of choices, being configured and reconfigured permanently in relation to social trends, standards and collective models.” People want to be in their own fashion tribes, so they want to wear the same clothes to be connected to everyone else in that tribe. But they want to be different from other tribes.” Cristian Lacroix
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The present paper explores the cognitive side of persuasive discourse and the role of power in it. The main purpose of the article is to put into discussion various models of Critical Discourse Analysis which were formulated by linguists from the domain and to present a general picture of methods that refer to discourse analysis. We focus on the inter-disciplinary aspect of the discourse analysis which covers different perspectives: linguistic, cognitive and socio-linguistic. Also, we emphasize the similarities and the differences between different branches of discourse analysis such as critical linguistics, the historical approach of discourse analysis and the cognitive one. By synthesising and comparing these methods we aim at developing a comprehensive and integrate model of discourse analysis, which will reflect the interaction between discourse, cognition and the social context.
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Family involvement in children's education is fundamental for success in education. Given the even more important role of the family and the community in the Roma context, it is essential to identify the consequences of early school leaving on Roma children, in terms of personal development, as well as on their future socio-economic integration. It is extremely important that there is a collaboration of Roma families in terms of staying in the educational system of Roma girls, who are the most affected by the high rates of early school leaving. Therefore, a widespread phenomenon that should be treated with greater attention and that has become a serious problem of Romanian education is school dropout. School dropout is found among all students, but especially among those of Roma ethnicity, students who adapt with difficulty both in society and in the education system, who face the difficult acceptance in communities (more and more parents are reluctant to enrol their children in classes where there are also children of Roma ethnicity). (The Gentle, 2021) Roma cultivate, especially in children, a sense of reality as well as the ability to conceive survival strategies and less concern for school, they, in turn, receive the same education.
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The paper presents types of legitimization in the self-presentation of International Crisis Group (ICG), a non-governmental organization which is globally referred to as the leading source of information, analysis and high-level advocacy in the field of conflict. Given the privileged access to the world policy makers and the powerful social status of the ICG founders and the Board of Trustees’ members, as well as the ICG’s presence on the ground in the countries where conflicts occur, the paper posits that the legitimacy of the ICG’s persuasive power is grounded on authority and information as social resources. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of two self-promotional ICG brochures points to the equal contribution of both social resources in providing legitimacy for the organisation’s existence and work. Namely, it is found that legitimization by reference to personal authority, as well as commendation legitimization, are enacted not only through personal authority vested in ICG’s members on the grounds of their individual, respective (former) roles in governments, in the media, business, and in financial institutions, but through the personal authority vested in the individuals (re)commending the work and stature of ICG (high officials of the parties in conflict, as well as world’s top governments officials), whose affiliations are always stated in the analyzed corpus. Their authority gets implicitly transposed to the organization itself. The role of mythopoesis, as the type of legitimization enacted through storytelling, is to portray the organization as the hero and the voice of the world’s vulnerable. The combination of rationalization and moral evaluation provide legitimacy for the “field-centred research” and “allegiance to the facts on the ground” as components of ICG’s “methodology” in obtaining and producing information thus implicitly legitimizing the truth about a conflict that the ICG analysts may establish.
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