Beauty Standard Perception of Women: A Reception Study Based on Foucault’s Truth Relations and Truth Games

Author(s): Hasan Gürkan,Aybike Serttaş / Language(s): English Issue: 96/2023

This study discusses how television viewers’ definitions of beauty are affected by advertisements. The media effects on the perception of beauty and truth are explained in detail as the investigation unfolds. In November 2021 and May 2022, the study collected data through individual interviews with 22 women aged 18 to 63. The data gleaned from these interviews was interpreted with Stuart Hall’s coding-encoding theory using Peircein trichotomy and Foucault’s truth relations and truth games. The study found that one of the new functions of advertising is to enable female viewers to make personal evaluations of physical beauty standards and concluded that beauty is not truth but is a construct manufactured by advertisements. Female audiences read women shown in ads with multiple dimensions of significance and sensibility to experience the presentation and re-presentation of the women.

Framing Gender in Romanian 2019’s Presidential Elections. A Comparison between Broadsheet and Tabloid Content Newspapers

Author(s): Veronica Cȃmpian,Ioana Iancu / Language(s): English Issue: 96/2023

As women are more and more represented in all domains, a political arena with a feminine presence becomes of great interest. By building off prior work on the same topic (Dan & Iorgoveanu, 2013), the pres-ent paper aims to analyze the way Viorica Dăncilă and Klaus Iohannis, as political candidates, are portrayed within 2019 Presidential elections’ campaign. The inquiry is conducted by quantitatively and qualitatively comparing quality and tabloid content. The premise of the study is twofold. First, the article investigates if there is a gender bias in the news coverage of the two main candidates for the Presidential. Second, the aim is to identify if there are differences between quality and tabloid content. The data show that the woman candidate is mostly visible in tabloid media, that men’s topics are predominant, and that the man candidate is presented as being more viable for the office.

Cyber Literacy Skills of Estonians: Activities and Policies For Encouraging Knowledge-Based Cyber Security Attitudes

Author(s): Kate-Riin Kont / Language(s): English Issue: 96/2023

With the advent of COVID-19, people spent more time at home. Countries, societies, companies and individuals suddenly became dependent on cyberspace overnight. Work, shopping and leisure meant we became more than ever weak to the risks of cyberspace. The human factor makes people the “key” to otherwise technically hardly penetrable systems – criminals play on people’s greed, emotions, happiness, etc.It is no surprise that Estonians are more active daily internet users compared to the rest of the Europeans. But what is being done in Estonia at the national level, as well as in cyber protection organisational level, to raise the awareness of residents about cyber security? What else should be done to reduce victims among ordinary citizens and how to protect various important public and private organisations from the consequences of the cyber-risky behaviour of their employees? What is the role of libraries in promoting cyber security aware-ness? A human error is a central target of cyber attacks, phishing scams, and data breaches. Cyber criminals are becoming more and more inventive. It is important to understand that cyber security risks can be managed and mitigated, but not completely eliminated. Increasing security awareness is the only factor that can help limit breaches caused by human frailty.

Tracking the Relationship Between Media Literacy and Political Participation Across Different Generations

Author(s): Dina Vozab / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

Many scholars argue that media literacy is crucial for the development of citizenship and political engagement, especially in the digital environment. While a positive relationship between news consumption and political participation has long been established, we still lack sufficient knowledge on how media literacy influences political participation. Studies about the connection between media literacy and political engagement do not point to a clear relationship between the two. Most studies on media literacy and participation focus on young media users, overlooking generational differences in news consumption. Moreover, studies should also acknowledge the expanding repertoires of political participation in a digitally networked environment. This study uses a news media literacy (NML) scale and an extended political participation scale to analyse the relationship between media literacy and different dimensions of political participation, taking into account generational differences among news audiences. Data from the survey on media literacy is used, and regression analysis is used to assess the relationship between media literacy and political participation. The results are not unequivocally in line with the normative understanding of the relationship between media literacy and civic engagement. Although media literacy education programmes have a positive impact on some forms of political participation, there is no significant relationship between news media literacy and political participation. There is also a generational gap in news media literacy and political participation. The results call for further validation of the NML scale and research of inequalities in news media literacy.

What Women Politicians Could, Would, and Should, but Cannot Do. Perceptions of Women Parliamentarians Regarding Barriers to Political Representation of Women in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Author(s): Zlatiborka Popov Momčinović / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2023

This paper analyses the main barriers to women’s political representation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BH) from the perspective of female parliamentarians. The theoretical section presents the main obstacles to women’s political representation, followed by an overview of trends in the political representation of women and the controversies surrounding the presence of women in politics within the ethnocratic context of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Using the data from qualitative research, gathered through in-depth interviews with female MPs from BH elected to state and entity parliaments, this paper analyses and discusses the main obstacles to the political representation of women. They include challenges relating to family life and traditional gender roles, internal party processes and dynamics, especially informal relations among men, lack of support in election campaigns and various manoeuvres to circumvent quotas, shrunken space for women in parliaments, and distorted representation in the media. The experiences of the interlocutors are strongly gendered, and all the mentioned obstacles prove to be relevant, regardless of their varying impact on individual women MPs. Even interlocutors who have not personally encountered certain obstacles acknowledge their existence, noting that their female colleagues in politics have experienced them, sometimes in a brutal manner. There is agreement among the interlocutors that women are severely disadvantaged in politics. Therefore, serious additional positive measures should be taken to improve gender equality, given that the ethnocratic system favours ethnic representation and men maintain a firm grip on political power in post-conflict BH society.

Percepcija i (ne)izravno iskustvo seksualnog uznemiravanja i ucjenjivanja u akademskom kontekstu – perspektiva studentica

Author(s): Jovana Čikić,Ivana Milovanović,Smiljana Milinkov,Boris Popov,Ivana Živančević Sekeruš,Bojana Bodroža / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 3/2023

Research on sexual harassment and blackmail in contemporary Serbian society is relatively recent. Previous studies show that these issues can occur in various situations. However, the university context has seldom been the focus of analysis for this problem, despite the evident power hierarchy based on various sources. As female students constitute a particularly vulnerable group, this paper focuses on exploring their perceptions and (in)direct experiences of sexual harassment and blackmail, as well as their expectations regarding institutional responses. The analysis is based on the results of two focus group discussions involving 22 female students from all study levels at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education at the University of Novi Sad. The results revealed the sensitivity of female students to the issue of sexual harassment and blackmail, accompanied by a certain degree of self-censorship when discussing the mentioned problem, especially with parents or other adults in their primary environment. Additionally, a continuity of (in)direct exposure of female students to sexual harassment and blackmail in both academic and nonacademic has been observed. The students expect the faculty and university to respond to instances of sexual harassment and blackmail. Simultaneously, a portion of them believes that the institutional response should extend beyond the faculty, even beyond the academic context, to provide additional protection for the victim. A crucial aspect of the institutional response highlighted is the need for systematic education on this issue, targeting both students and all university staff. The research confirmed the complexity and multi-layered nature of the analyzed problem, and can serve as inspiration for further analyses of sexual harassment and blackmail in academic contexts.

Deep Callings: The Will of the Heart

Author(s): Adhip Rawal / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Is something calling us? Maybe the heart knows something we love, but the head is not aware of or does not believe in it. In cultures driven by patriarchal modes more remains unconscious than needs to because we lack the means to contact deeper dimensions which could be inherently alive. The narrowing of epistemology is a loss of self. Considering whether the heart has qualities of self, dream, and desire may provide a framework to recognise it in an embodied education and to liberate ways of knowing that can deepen subjectivities and enable potentials that were interrupted to begin ripening again. It may also encourage us to consider our relational agreements and to create educational spaces that refine attention to the hosting of futures. Setting up mirrors to make the heart more cognisable may revive individualities and what is meant to be in the world.

Epistemic Injustice as a Form of Misrecognition: Exploration of Student Experiences in Bulgarian Higher Education Institutions

Author(s): Asen V. Dimitrov / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing scholarly discussion on the importance and practical applicability of social justice perspectives when studying the effects or outcomes of modern higher education. It analyses context-specific experiences and perceptions of higher education students through Axel Honneth’s more general notion of misrecognition and Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice. Data comes from semi-structured interviews with a cohort of full-time first-year students in medicine and pedagogy at three Bulgarian higher education institutions and complementary academic staff accounts of student experiences. The analysis reveals patterns of academic structure and practice as linked to misrecognition or dysfunctional relations of recognition as well as to instances of systemic testimonial and hermeneutical disrespect or injustice. Selected experiences are discussed from the critical perspective of both theories in order to identify and characterise potential deficiencies, interventions needed in the higher education institutions’ organisational and institutional environment, or the conditions they provide for student self-formation.

New Books

Author(s): / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

HASAN-EF. LJEVAKOVIĆ (1913–1986) I NJEGOVA POLEMIKA O POZICIJI ŽENE U ISLAMU

Author(s): Mevludin Dizdarević / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 96/2023

Hasan-efendi Ljevaković in some sense is a role-model of an imam in the period of socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina. His effort in promoting the teachings of the Islam and in affirmation of the Islamic Community in those difficult times is truly exemplary. His dedication to his work and energetic and innovative approach to it is equally evident in his service in his role as a religious-education referee and in his role as an imam. His life and experience of show trials which resulted in long-term imprisonment as a political prisoner in Zenica prison, being followed and watched by the socialist state agency is also a paradigm of the life of an imam in the period after the Second World War. This article aims to present, based on relevant documents, the life and work of this ‘alim, and also to review his opinion about the issue of the position of women in Islam. With this purpose, we present here his debate with renowned muderris of Zenica Dervišefendi Spahić which we used here as a platform for analyzing his theoretical position on this important social issue.

Contesting Imaginations of Romantic Love: An Ethnographic Analysis from the European Border

Author(s): Miriam Gutekunst / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

Imagination has become an important social practice throughout the world in times of globalization and deterritorialization, as argued by the anthropologist Arjun Appadurai. This development has an effect on the formation of romantic relationships: more and more couples meet across borders. Migration through marriage has become one of the most important legal channels to Europe. In this article, I argue that romantic love can be understood as imagination and, thereby, as a driving force for migration. At the same time, imaginations of romantic love are in the focus of migration control and, consequently, highly contested and shaped by different state actors while travelling across borders.

Između emancipacijskog potencijala i totalitarnih nagnuća: sudbina zajednice kao sudbina avangarde

Author(s): Zvonimir Glavaš / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 2/2023

Review of: Zrinka Božić, The Community in Avant-Garde Literature and Politics, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, 183 str.

“A splendid figure of revolting womanhood”: The Women of Brendan Behan’s Short Fiction

Author(s): Natalie Lamprecht / Language(s): English Issue: 67/2024

Following Patricia Coughlan’s prompt to question representations of women in the writing of male authors, this article sets out to analyse the representations of women in the work of Brendan Behan, more specifically his short fiction. As a workingclass writer, the issue of the portrayal of his own neighbourhood and community quickly emerged as a central concern for Behan. As Michael Pierse has argued, within the oppressed group of the Dublin working class, it was women who were most at odds with the status-quo, suffering double marginalisation through both gender and class. When looking at Behan’s depictions of women in his short stories, no straightforward conclusions may be drawn. Behan can hardly be classified as a feminist writer, but he treats most of his female characters with similar empathy as he does his male characters, allowing them the capacity to be anything from self-denying saints to “screwy bitches.” Some of his stories are written in homage to the women who raised him, others seem to criticise a society that victimises them.

Pedagogical Framework for Cultivating Children’s Data Agency and Creative Abilities in the Age of AI

Author(s): Juho Kahila,Henriikka Vartiainen,Matti Tedre,Eetu Arkko,Anssi Lin,Nicolas Pope,Ilkka Jormanainen,Teemu Valtonen / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2024

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) topics into K–12 school curricula is a relatively new but crucial challenge faced by education systems worldwide. Attempts to address this challenge are hindered by a serious lack of curriculum materials and tools to aid teachers in teaching AI. This article introduces the theoretical foundations and design principles for implementing co-design projects in AI education, empirically tested in 12 Finnish classrooms. The article describes a project where 4th- and 7th-graders (N = 213) explored the basics of AI by creating their own AI-driven applications. Additionally, a framework for distributed scaffolding is presented, aiming to foster children’s agency, understanding, creativity, and ethical awareness in the age of AI.

Another Look at Jared S. Moore’s Comprehensive View of Beauty

Author(s): Filippo Focosi,Pier Francesco Corvino / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2023

According to what is known as the classic theory, beauty can be defined as unity or formal harmony. To overcome some of the criticisms that it encountered, the American philosopher Jared S. Moore proposed, in his paper from 1942, a modernisation of such theory, by distinguishing various types and subtypes of harmony which, taken together, are intended to cover both the objective and the subjective sides of beauty. Our goal is to look closer to some of the main principles that emerge within Moore’s intricate taxonomy of harmony – most notably, the principles of organic unity, fittingness, and empathy – which in his article are only sketched or implicitly suggested. Employing such supplementations, we hope to make J.S. Moore’s comprehensive view of beauty even more complete from a theoretical standpoint and suitable to face the challenge posed by the modernist and postmodern artistic practices, which seemingly undermined the notions of beauty and formal harmony.

The Nose of Hate

Author(s): Chantal Jaquet / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2024

The paper analyses the olfactory figures of hate and the various kinds of discrimination based on smell. It shows how figures of hate express themselves in the olfactory form of rejecting the other who stinks. All of the categories considered to be contemptible or inferior are olfactorily devalued. The paper examines successively the nose of anti-Semitism and racism, the nose of homophobia and sexism, the olfactory social discriminations, and the fiction of the stinking enemy. One may ask why this theme of the other’s bad smell so thoroughly permeates the discourses of rejection. One of the reasons is doubtlessly related to the uncontrollable nature of smell, which invades space and intimacy, and betrays your identity. Eyes can be turned away or be deceived, but the nose knows. It is supposed to sniff out otherness and perceive invisible differences despite all efforts to hide them.

Auksinės sraigės opera kaip antropoceninės savivokos apraiška

Author(s): Vytautas Rubavičius / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 119/2024

Drawing on the example of the “Golden Snail Opera”, the article discusses the essential aspects of the cultural, scientific and political impact of contemporary art, which is rising ecological awareness and appealing to the understanding of the challenges of the Anthropocene. By transcending the distinction between nature and culture through works of art or artistic political events, the prevailing idea of the aesthetic relationship with the work of art and the theoretization based on it are becoming meaningless. The primary is an artistic exploratory political process involving the wider community. The group of 4 women artists and scientists who created the "Golden Snail Opera" is an example of the unbreakable globalization of East and West, as well as the cultures and scientific institutions of the global South and North. In the video of 7 actions with a prologue and an epilogue, there are three characters, whose texts can be read by one or three voices, and the connection of the work is performed on Taiwanese drums. The work was created by filming and recording the specific experience of a particular farming in the cultivation of rice in an area of Taiwan, it collected and summarized large-scale, diverse scientific data that showed how lifestyles and people's self-awareness changed in this area, how modern capitalism "broke" traditions, how people were forced to adapt to new living conditions, which increasingly began to be associated with the events of globalization and their consequences. The main character of the opera is a golden snail appearing in its own sounds and images, brought from Argentina and became a harmful invasive species with which humans began to learn to coexist. The article also uses other works of ecological scientific artistic research that develop a "more than human" attitude towards the world or an "ontological turn", and highlights the aspect of the world's multispecies consciousness and spirituality that emerges in these arts. In this aspect the experience of the life of mankind is accumulated.

Ne tavo kiaulės, ne tavo pupos: kaimo visuomenės užvaldymo istorija

Author(s): Kotryna Bėčiūtė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 52/2023

1917 m. lapkričio 7 d. istorijos dvasia į mūsų pasaulį atnešė Spalio revoliuciją su Leninu priešakyje – buvo žengtas pirmas esminis žingsnis kolchozų visuomenės kūrimo link. Lygiai po šimto šešerių metų, 2023 m. lapkričio 7 d., istorijos dvasiai jau kurį laiką iš esmės pakeitus nuomonę apie kolchozus, Vilniaus universiteto Istorijos fakultete daktaro disertacijos „Kolchozų visuomenės sukūrimas: Lietuvos kaimo sovietizacija 1940–1965 m.“ stojo ginti tada doktorantas, o dabar – jau daktaras, Antanas Terleckas. Mokslinis disertanto vadovas – doc. dr. Nerijus Šepetys (Vilniaus universitetas), o disertacijos gynimo komisiją sudarė: gynimo tarybos pirmininkas prof. dr. Arūnas Streikus, dr. Marius Ėmužis (Vilniaus universitetas), dr. Sigita Kraniauskienė (Klaipėdos universitetas), dr. Mindaugas Pocius (Lietuvos istorijos institutas) ir dr. Regina Laukaitytė (Lietuvos istorijos institutas).

Онлайн-петиции как институт демократии во Франции

Author(s): Olga A. Smirnova,Natalia A. Kuznetsova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2024

Democratic system of many modern countries isn’t a homogenic institute, it’s becoming more and more dynamic and a quickly developing system. System of online petitions is widely spread in Western Europe and in France in particular. Here, in the birthplace of democracy many countries use widely this voting method and method of making decisions. Online-petitions are the form of modern political participation. For French society such petitions have become the real leverage on the politicians but in very few spheres such as human rights and environment. System of online-petitions is a controversial institute. On the one hand, special platforms for voting and websites for online-petitions are logical transformation of collection of public opinion from papers to electronic date. On the other hand, this opportunity of usage of online-platforms for petitions is ideal for lobbying.

Переписка главного режиссера Ивановского молодежного народного театра Р. М. Гринберг и коллектива театра с представителями творческой элиты московской интеллигенции

Author(s): Sergey Valerievich Tochenov / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2024

Tochenov, S. V. (2024), ‘Correspondence between the chief director of the Ivanovo Youth People’s Theatre R. M. Grinberg and the theatre staff with representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia creative elite (Continuation. Beginning: “Intelligentsia and the World”. 2024, no. 1: 156—171)’, Intelligentsiia i mir [Intelligentsia and the World], no. 2: 165—189 (in Russ.).