"Do You Have Any Empties?"

Bottle Collectors’ Interactions in Public Spaces in Zagreb

Author(s): Dino Vukušić,Stephanie Stelko / Language(s): English / Issue: 39/2016

This paper describes the practices of people who collect discarded bottles and cans during public events in Zagreb, Croatia, which they return to recycling centers in order to receive a bottle deposit needed to supplement their low incomes. In addition to an ethnographic section in which we briefly describe this underrepresented aspect of everyday life in Zagreb, we address the symbolics at play in bottle collectors’ interactions among themselves and with "bottle providers" – people who gather in public spaces and consume drinks from bottles and cans. In so doing, we describe how the presence of a marginalized social group becomes visible in public spaces.

"Dr House" - gra i semiologia

Author(s): Zbigniew Kloch / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 19/2012

The paper describes how the characters of House, M.D. interact and relate to each other; it also discusses the role played by specific, semantically charged means of constructing narration. On one hand, the show largely maintains the model of a conventional medical drama, on the other, it deconstructs many of the characteristics inherent in the genre. The paper also attempts to explain the show’s huge popularity (for a certain time in the United States alone it reached 27 million viewers) achieved in spite of going beyond what an average viewer would expect, primarily by the show’s construction and by evoking ideas outside a classic medical drama.

"PROJEKT LADY" TELEVISION REALITY SHOW AS A TOOL FOR RESAPING PERSONAL BRANDING

Author(s): Jerzy Gołuchowski,Irena Kamińska-Radomska,Anna Losa-Jonczyk / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2/2016

Creating a personal brand is an important tool for professional development and success in life. The practical and research problem is the selection of the most effective methods of creating a personal brand. The aim of the article is an analysis of the innovative use of the reality show (The "Project Lady" in Polish Television TVN) as a method of shaping the personal brand using gamification. The paper deals with review of the process and the transformation of the personal image and with results of this program.

"The dangerous classes”: Hugo Grotius and seventeenth-century piracy as a primitive anti-systemic movement

Author(s): Eric Wilson / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

This essay discusses the historical and textual representations of piracy in the writings of Hugo Grotius, primarily De Indis/De iure praedae (1603-1608) and the Commentarius in Theses XI (c. 1600). Contrary to popular belief, Grotius, in stark contrast to Jean Bodin, was not an advocate of the constitutionally homogenous Nation-State. Rather, his central concept of divisible sovereignty, the lynchpin of the constitutional theory of his early writings, unambiguously presents us with the object of the heterogeneous State. In Grotian theory, the State may be “read” as a composite construction, with a residual degree of inalienable sovereignty accruing at each unit-level. Even if only unconsciously, Grotius describes a concurrent para-political sub-division of the state between institutional Government (the “magistrates”) and civil society, one that constitutes an operational system of governance within the Nation-State. Like his contemporary Johannes Althusius, Grotius’ theory allows for the emergence of a wholly “private,” albeit lawful, mode of authority. This is most apparent in Grotius’ treatment of the mercantile trading Company and its Privateering operations. The corporatist theory of sovereignty permits the Company’s private agents of violence, the legally ambivalent Privateer/Pirate, to be invested with a requisite degree of sovereignty. The Grotian theory of divisible sovereignty, investing the seventeenth-century Pirate band with legal personality, serves as a vital historical precursor to the quasi-statist (trans-) national criminal cartels of the twenty-first century. The Grotian Pirate/Privateer/Just Avenger, therefore, is a “nomad”: a liminal entity that simultaneously transverses both geographical and juro-political spaces, rendering him or herself in-determinable.

"This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world”: Potosí and the political ecology of underdevelopment, 1545-1800

Author(s): Jason W. Moore / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

By the 1570’s, Potosí, and its silver, had become the hub of a commodity revolution that reorganized Peru’s peoples and landscapes to serve capital and empire. This was a decisive moment in the world ecological revolution of the long seventeenth century. Primitive accumulation in Peru was particularly successful: the mita’s spatial program enabled the colonial state to marshal a huge supply of low-cost and tractable labor in the midst of sustained demographic contraction. The relatively centralized character of Peru’s mining frontier facilitated imperial control in a way the more dispersed silver frontiers of New Spain did not. Historical capitalism has sustained itself on the basis of exploiting, and thereby undermining, a vast web of socio-ecological relations. As may be observed in colonial Peru, the commodity frontier strategy effected both the destruction and creation of premodern socio-ecological arrangements.

(НЕ)ЈЕДНАКОСТ ЉУДИ: ВЕЧНА – ПРЕДМОДЕРНА, МОДЕРНА И ПОСТМОДЕРНА – ИЛИ ДЕМОДЕ ПРАВНА ИДЕЈА?

Author(s): Jasminka Hasanbegović / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 170/2019

This paper focuses on the idea of legal equality of human beings, and raises the following questions: Have the two Peters, Peter Westen and Peter Unger, been right when talking respectively of the empty idea of legal equality and empty ideas in general while criticizing analytic philosophy? Is the idea of legal equality of human beings empty, i.e. outdated? Can the idea of justice exist without the idea of equality? When did the equality of human beings arise as a legal idea? Was it in Ancient Greece? Which sophists argued for it? How did Aristotle understand it? What did the stoics think? Then, what was afterwards the perspective of Christianity and of all its different teachings (i.e. churches) on this idea, as well as on the legal practices radically denying it in modern times? Who was the liber homo from Magna Carta Libertatum, and how did liber homo become homo? And how did in modern times man transform into a human being who can be both male and female? Or, conversely, how did in modern times women, the coloured, the poor, the illiterate, the heterodox, and foreigners become human beings? What are the legal problems of the modern era that, before even being resolved, have been further enlarged and complicated by the postmodern equality issues (e.g. positive discrimination,the new, wider concept of legal subjectivity, legal protection of minorities, changed view on human homosexuality).

(По)граничността в многобройните ѝ изменения (Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss, Kathryn Cassidy, Bordering. Cambridge, UK, Medford, MA: Polity, 2019)

Author(s): Stephan E. Nikolov / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 2/2019

12 Eylül’ün Gençlik Restorasyonu: Atatürk Ve Gençlik Isimli Kitabin Bir Değerlendirmesi

Author(s): Cihan Erdal / Language(s): Turkish / Issue: 2/2013

Since 19th century, during the nation-state establishment periods and through 20th century, political roles were attributed to the youth, which were the result and the representation of the modernity. These roles have differed in different periods of the nations depending on the socio-economic and cultural changes, while the concept of youth is affected by such changes. There is a common discourse in Turkey which supports that after the military coup on September 12 and neoliberal policies applied by Turgut Özal’s government in Turkey, the youth became apolitical and a generation that stayed out of the politics was created. Did the September 12 regime really meant to have youth stay out of the politics? In this article, the effort of September 12 restorations towards rebuilding the youth will be analyzed through a collective work titled “Ataturk and Youth” published by National Education, Youth and Sports Ministry Youth Services General Administration.

90-letni Zygmunt Bauman: Schopferkraft i jego dwoistość

Author(s): Tony Blackshaw / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

A brief history of international trade thought: From pre-doctrinal contributions to the 21st century heterodox international economics

Author(s): Carmen Elena Dorobăţ / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2015

The present paper outlines the development of international trade thought, from the pre-doctrinal contributions of Greek philosophers and scholastic theologians, through the theories of the first schools of economic thought, and up to modern and contemporary trade theories. I follow filiations of ideas in a chronological order, and show how theoretical investigation into the causes and effects of international trade—and the rationale for government intervention—has evolved over the last two centuries.

A comment on scarcity

Author(s): M. Northrup Buechner / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Modern economics is based on the idea that every good and service is scarce, but the standard defenses of this premise by reference to zero prices and infinite resources are invalid. The concept of scarcity is defined and used to show that ordinary scarcities are not economic scarcities. The errors regarding scarcity are traced to the methodology of modern economics, and an alternative method is suggested for a science whose subject matter is real human beings. The concept of relative scarcity is explained, and used to illuminate some important aspects of the functioning of a market economy. Some of the consequences are identified for economics if economists recognized that universal scarcity is not a fact.

A Conceptual History of Political Regimes: Democracy, Dictatorship, and Authoritarianism

Author(s): Adam Przeworski / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

The labels we attach today to distinguish political regimes have histories. Applying them without understanding these histories is sometimes anachronistic and ethnocentric. I have little new to say about “democracy” and “dictatorship”, so that the discussion of these concepts is just a reminder. “Authoritarianism”, however, is a dubious neologism. I advance two claims: (1) In all regimes the power to command and be obeyed entails some dose of reason-giving, (2) What distinguishes regimes is the form and the extent to which the authority of rulers is monopolised by physical force. I conclude that the concept of “authoritarianism” adds little to the distinction between democracy and dictatorship.

A criterion for realism, with an application to behavioral economic models

Author(s): Gustavo Marques,Diego Weisman / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

Many economists working within the framework of behavioral economics (BE) label the conventional way of modeling as unrealistic, and consider their own approach as more realistic than the standard practice. However, a criterion for realism is lacking in behavioral economics literature. This paper offers a simple criterion for predicating realism to economic models, and provides an illustration of such criterion at work on a particular BE model.

A Critical Analysis of Two Audience Prototypes and Their Participatory Dimensions

Author(s): Miroljub Radojković,Ana Milojević / Language(s): English / Issue: 21/2011

This article discusses how the concept of audience theory has been developed within two basic intellectual traditions, resulting in two basic prototypes. On one side, there is the trajectory of the “mass audience” that was created and developed parallel with the emergence of the media of mass communication. The mass audience is regarded as a multilayer collectivity, residing at the end of a successive linear communication process – sender, channel, message, receiver and effects. In this one-way communication model, the audience is primarily the receiving structure, with little or no opportunity for feedback and participation in the communication process. The other prototype is linked to the development of new digital media and the internet; here the public is theoretically considered as “cross media” and active. The audience of new media is seen as a heterogeneous and structural collective in the communication model that characterizes the thow of information “many to many”. This prototype attributes to the new, active audiences or users unlimited power to participate and shape the communication processes. We discuss features of the two prototypes, including media usage, media access, information resources, time engagement and functions derived from media use. The most important feature we take up, however, is participation. We point out the problems and limitations of both prototypes in this regard. On the one hand the study of audiences has long been rooted in the concept of mass audience and limited with its primal orientation towards the effects of mass communication, while on the other hand, the emerging prototype 2 is all too easily granted participatory capacities, especially concerning the public sphere. therefore, the theorists of new and old media must step outside the prevailing postulates and consider the audience beyond the two prevailing prototypes in order to further deepen our knowledge and understanding of contemporary audiences and their participation.

A depresszió kialakulását valószínűsítő hálózatok

Author(s): Domonkos Sik / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2016

The paper aims at reinterpreting the psychological insights on the formation of depression from the perspective of critical theories and tests the resulting model. In the first part of the paper based on Bourdieu’s, Giddens’, Habermas’, Honneth’s and Lash’s theories of social integration, an attempt is made to identify those network constellations, which simultaneously block goal attainment and veil the social components of the blocking. These distorted networks are considered to be contributing factors of the emergence of depression. In the second part of the paper based on the database of ESS 2012 the correspondence of such network distortions and depression is analyzed along with the causes of the adding up of various distortions.

A generative framework for creative learning: A tool for planning creative-collaborative tasks in the classroom

Author(s): Sylvia Truman / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2011

In this paper a generative framework for creativity is presented which extends upon Wallas’s model of creativity (1926), social learning theories and creativity theories. The framework offered here presents a distillation of learning and creativity theory drawing upon salient roots of both creativity and learning theories in the 21st century. The generative framework can be instantiated for use as a learning support tool to assist with the design of classroom and / or other creative learning experiences. Creativity theories are discussed in relation to their appropriateness of the framework. An explanation of the framework is present-ed and an example instantiation provided. The development of the generative framework has been influenced by psychological accounts of creativity and socio-constructivist accounts of learning. The framework presented here has a number of implications for creativity theory as well as teaching and learning practice.

A House Ready to Crumble? Putting Back the Building Blocks of Macedonia’s Parliamentary Democracy

Author(s): Katerina Kolozova,Gordan Georgiev / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2018

A jeśli śmierci nie ma…

Author(s): Stefan Czyżewski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3 (24)/2017

The text undertakes the subject of death in the perspective of cultural studies, at the same time preserving the chronology of the intellectual reflection on these issues. The main thesis is presenting changes in the approach to the category of death in the history of the Mediterranean culture. Practically, the category of death has been perceived in two aspects: culturally (religiously) and „scientifically”. What is more, in biblical times the „scientific” aspect was not present, whereas the religious one dominated. In the course of time and development of science the proportions between these two aspects become reversed. The changes are directed towards the secularization and the scientific bias of the image of the world, which in the civilization of the West in the 20th century have reached the apparently extreme dimension. At the same time, these changes as a whole have not brought about the „taming” of death by man and the conclusion must be drawn that some sort of respect of its power will always accompany people.

A kapitalocén – avagy mibe kerül az olcsó természet?

Author(s): Attila Szigeti / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 25/2019

In the last decades the Capitalocene discourse was emerging in the Marxist ecological thinking. This approach offers a sociohistorical explanation to the current ecological crisis by questioning the historical narrative of the Anthropocene discourse. Authors of Capitalocene are arguing that climate change and ecological crisis was not caused by the collective and homogenous humanity (predetermined by the human nature). According them capitalism’s accumulative and expropriative socioeconomic relations are responsible for climate crisis.This paper analysis how Capitalocene-arguments are applying the Marxist critique of capitalism, especially the labour theory of value and its contemporary expansions and corrections in the understanding of the current ecological crisis. The first two subchapters are summarizing World-Ecology theory of Jason W. Moore, than I interpret the debate of Moore with the Metabolic Rift school (John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm and others), and finally I analyse the possible normative ecopolitics from the theoretical perspective of Capitalocene.In the last decades the so-called Capitalocene discourse was emerging in the Marxist ecological thinking. This approach offers a sociohistorical explanation of the current ecological crisis by questioning the historical narrative of the Anthropocene discourse. Authors of Capitalocene are arguing that climate change and ecological crisis were not caused by the collective and homogenous humanity (predetermined by the human nature) in general. According them capitalism’s accumulative and expropriative socioeconomic relations are responsible for climate crisis.This paper analysis how Capitalocene-arguments are applying the Marxist critique of capitalism, especially the labour theory of value and its contemporary expansions and corrections in the understanding of the current ecological crisis. The first two subsections are summarizing World-Ecology theory of Jason W. Moore, than the paper interprets the debate of Moore with the Metabolic Rift school (John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Andreas Malm and others), and finally it analyses the possible normative ecopolitics from the theoretical perspective of Capitalocene.

A MAP OF SOCIOLOGY

Author(s): Ștefan Buzărnescu / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

Starting from the hypothesis that, if sociology is an epistemic image of a socially evolving reality, then sociology logically finds itself in the constant redefinition of its explanatory fundamentals (Buzărnescu, 2007), the question "are still valid its traditional concepts in the understanding of contemporary realities, completely changed?" appears perfectly legitimate. In addition, the offensive pragmatism, which is specific to our days, frequently brings to question the place and role of the sociological approach in the area of decision-making bodies, increasingly vulnerable to various journalistic and political projects, either failed (the Soviet experiment, for example), or controversial nihilism (globalism). With the stated intention to bring praxiological testimonies on the current status of sociology as a discipline of study, institution and profession, I propose a map of sociology inspired by the map of the chemical elements in the Mendeleev table similar to the map of logic proposed by Petre Botezatu in the year 1972.