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The model of society put forward by Marxist theoreticians as descriptive of a post-revolutionary society had a quasi-constitutional status in countries that claimed to adhere to Soviet-type socialism, particularly those of Eastern Europe. As the model’s main function was to legitimise the actions of those who wielded power, it acquired doctrinal significance. In the Eastern European countries, the history of the sociology of social structure and stratification clearly illustrates the conservative nature of official doctrine. However, the real mechanisms of society, in so far as they deviated from the official paradigm, upset doctrinal stability and may consequently have led, if not to a revision of the official dogmas, then to the acceptance of a certain degree of flexibility. In order to understand the development of the theoretical analysis of social stratification and social inequalities (the most sensitive area of debate) in totalitarian and post-totalitarian Soviet type societies, it must be noted that post-war sociology has reflected a continuing effort by sociologists to create an independent scientific framework for their discipline. This is why we try, in this article, to combine evaluating the attitudes of different Eastern European sociologists from across the political spectrum with the evolution and adaptation of their theoretical approaches and creativity.
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The post-war history of Romanian sociology followed a tortuous path, similar to the evolutions within other countries of the Soviet Bloc. Defined as a “bourgeois” and “reactionary” social science, sociology was purged from the academic field for almost two decades. Its subsequent re-institutionalisation in the mid-1960s was a process largely influenced by social evolution in Romania (industrialisation, urbanisation, and the collectivisation of agriculture), but also by the desire to re-connect the Romanian social sciences to the international field of dialogue and debates. My paper discusses not only the institutional articulation and development of sociology in communist Romania, but also how the discipline was re-imagined and re-contextualised by the regime.
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For all the post-war decades sociology in Poland has been focused on problems that are typical of peripheral modernising societies. The aim of this text is to identify, from today’s perspective, successive stages of sociology’s development after the Second World War. In the beginning, sociology was focused on perceiving the communist revolution as a social laboratory. In the 1960s and 1970s, Polish society underwent enforced industrialisation and urbanisation. In the next decade, studies were dominated by critical analysis of the communist system in crisis. After 1989, social scientists started to study the post-communist transformation, which was seen as a “return to normality.” The entire time, sociological studies oscillated between the monitoring of project implementation and the recording of new grass roots processes. The author considers that sociology’s recent departure from the narrative of catching up and imitation creates a chance for a more precise view of social processes in Poland.
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This article covers the development of sociology as a scientific discipline in Belarus in the period of the 1960s through 1980s. It analyses the close interrelation between sociological and philosophical knowledge. It also looks at the phenomenon of the double identity of the sociologist and the philosopher, leading to their reciprocal influence. The indirect influences of Western sociological and philosophical conceptions are explained as an important source of sociology’s development. Analysis shows that some Western ideas were known rather well and were presented in academic publications and textbooks in the form of “criticism of bourgeois science,” which, despite its critical form, could often provide real information. Analysis of the main texts (monographs, textbooks, and dictionaries, as well as memoirs) helps to cover the main problems, approaches, works, and concepts that were transferred to, and referred to, in Belarusian sociology in the period of the 1960s through 1980s. The process of transfer had a slow but permanent and constant character and the usage of Western conceptions became ever more normal and legitimated. The findings reveal the real importance of “Western” knowledge as a “shadow” factor in the development of sociology (often in close connection with philosophy) in Soviet Belarus in the 1960s through 1980s.
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The text investigates the prevalence of neoconservatism among the population of Serbia, as an assumption enabling a political conservative turn. Having in mind that the evaluation of the prevalence of a phenomenon is a relational category, here the prevalence of neoconservatism has been measured, on one hand, in relation to the period of ten and/or fifteen years ago and, on the other hand, in relation to the current prevalence of other ideologies among the population of Serbia. The comparative framework has been constructed and measuring instruments have been adapted to secondary data collected within other studies.
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From the first discoveries of fossil fuels in the late nineteenth century to the present, the importance of energy resources has been gaining global proportions, not only in economic, political and social terms, but has become an indispensable aspect of national and international security. Energy has become an important factor in international cooperation (gas pipelines, oil pipelines), but also of open and covert conflicts and tensions (oil shocks, gas crises, economic sanctions). The work analyzes the development of theoretical directions for post-Second World War security studies and its weaknesses in understanding the importance and role of energy security in complex international relations. The aim of the work is to analyze and explain energy resources as an important factor of national and international security and its interdependence and complexity of economic, military, political, social and ecological phenomena with the aid of sector theory and global sociological approach.
More...Marginalia on the occasion of the publication of Pierre Bourdieu’s book Signals of Lights ~ Signals of Lights 2. Beograd: Serbian State Publisher of Textbooks, Edition Societas, 2019. Translated from French by Milica Pajеvić, foreword by Ljubiša Mitr
The collage of Bourdieu’s debates and polemics (Signals of Lights ~ Signals of Lights 2) most expressively illustrates how sociology of knowledge is organically connected with political sociology, or sociology of symbolic power his work; the unity of theory and practice is achieved in an aspiration to reaffirm the engaged role of the sociologist’s profession, renew the role of intellectuals and form a new European social movement. Although he thought that today “it is not always easy to achieve the ideal of the collective intellectual”, which he aspired to identify with, Bourdieu hoped that his critical reflections and polemical interventions, as the “lit signals of lights”, may “serve as a useful weapon to all those who are trying to resist the neoliberal scourge… if not hoping to move a mobilization… at least to destroy the impression of unanimity that constitutes the essence of the symbolic picture of the dominant discourse” (Bourdieu, 2019, pp. 41-42).
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The paper argues that social capital presents one of the most attractive concepts exploited in public discourse in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, treated by sociology as a social resource that aids or obstructs individuals’ access to other resources - economic, natural, social and political ones. Bearing in mind that communication and connection between people is increasingly moving from physical to virtual space, thanks to the advancement and development of technology, in this paper we examine the connection between social capital and the representation in the cyberspace, that is, the connection between social capital and online identity. The question is whether virtual connection with others has the same power of connection that is realised in face-to-face communication and that occurs in real world, and to what extent Internet interaction affects social capital. The paper also examines whether online interaction is a kind of upgraded face-to-face interaction, rather than its replacement, as well as whether persons active in offline world are equally active in online world of communication.
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The paper argues that social capital presents one of the most attractive concepts exploited in public discourse in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, treated by sociology as a social resource that aids or obstructs individuals’ access to other resources - economic, natural, social and political ones. Bearing in mind that communication and connection between people is increasingly moving from physical to virtual space, thanks to the advancement and development of technology, in this paper we examine the connection between social capital and the representation in the cyberspace, that is, the connection between social capital and online identity. The question is whether virtual connection with others has the same power of connection that is realised in face-to-face communication and that occurs in real world, and to what extent Internet interaction affects social capital. The paper also examines whether online interaction is a kind of upgraded face-to-face interaction, rather than its replacement, as well as whether persons active in offline world are equally active in online world of communication.
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This article offers a case study of the adaptation strategies of a section of second-generation young male Alevi Kurds in London and the social conditions which make some of them more prone to join gangs and to reject mainstream institutions in their search for instant material rewards. It is instructive to use Durkheim’s analysis of society’s integrative and regulative functions and particularly his concept of anomie to understand a situation where the legitimate means in the pursuit of material wealth and comfort are out of balance with the demand, calling into question the legitimacy of the institutions which provide these functions. Those who cannot compete through existing institutions are more likely to seek alternative means to achieve these ends. Durkheim identified youth as more vulnerable to such unregulated desires and I argue that his approach offers valuable insights into the anomic pressures confronting second-generation migrant young men in particular.
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The subject of this paper is a review and critical analysis of the basic sociological theories of ethnic entrepreneurship. The first part of the paper will refer to the original theories of ethnic entrepreneurship, classified as classical theoretical approaches, while the second part will be dedicated to contemporary theoretical models of ethnic entrepreneurship. In the first case, it seemed justified to choose the term theoretical approaches since within each of the theories the problem was approached from a specific point of view. On the other hand, the term “model” is used as each of them incorporates all the theories that have emerged so far and integrates them into explanatory models of the process of ethnic entrepreneurship.
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Colonialism, dating back to the discovery of the American continent, appears as both economic and cultural domination. Cultural domination is realized by orientalist discourse that legitimates the Occident’s activities of civilization in colonies. The orientalist point of view, enclosing the Orient in a time behind the moment when the Occident live in a place far from himself, reaches the current era by repeating itself for hundreds of years; and this knowledge produced about the Orient is used as a fiction material in literary works. These literary works describe the Orient as bizarre and mysterious. At this point, just as postmodernism is the critique of modernism, the postcolonial approach involves the criticism of orientalism and colonial order. This study examined Jules Verne’s narrative of Around the World in Eighty Days in the framework of postcolonial theory as a critical theory. In this novel, the subjectobject, power-other, master-slave and masculine-feminine dialectics are fictionalized with an Orientalist point of view. When viewed from postcolonial theory, it can be seen that the Orient is represented as an object of desire in which the Occident can fulfill the subconsciously repressed feelings. No matter how far the East is, the world is round and the voyager will return to his starting point, the Occident. Therefore, the study emphasized that the Orient is the lower-self/Other of the Occident.
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Suicide is one of the socially undesirable phenomena across the globe. As such, the United Nations via the World Health Organization has recognized suicide as one of the health issues, requiring serious attention globally and domestically. Although there are statistical evidences about the understanding of the phenomenon and its prevalence worldover, especially among the developed nations, much is left to be desired for among the developing nations in the understanding of the social antecedence of suicide and the sustainable mechanism to the phenomenon. Since the fundamental theoretical concept by Emile Durkheim, which has triggered unprecedented research on suicide, classification and identification of the social phenomenon responsible for suicide thought and action, is yet to be given a crystal distillation among the developing nations such as Nigeria. There are social indices facilitating suicide thought and actions, which are domicile with these nations according to Durkheim's classifications. However, little attempt has been made in theoretically capturing these social indices and their current and future implications to the nations involved. As a matter of fact, Nigerian government over the years has included suicide in principle, as one of the socio-health policy issue, requiring some level of emergency but lacks theoretically sound policy approach. Having identified the existence of lacuna between policy intention and the understanding of the socioeconomic and political elements inducing suicide as they are present in the country’s atmosphere, the present paper deals with the capturing of these elements in Durkheimian suicidological perspective for clear view and knowledge informed policy strategy.
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Globalization is one of the most discussed issues as a mobility which has world-wide effects nearly on all of the world nations. As soon as globalization has emerged and been discussed for several decades, local cultures and creole cultures have also been studied as a result of controversies on interaction between globalization and localization. Mohsin Hamid’s fiction can be examined through the global and local cultures which cannot be separated from identities of individuals and cities that seem to be the basic carriers of cultural values. In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, he deals with the conception of creole culture and dilemma of a Pakistani immigrant in America and also changing milieu of both New York and Lahore in which globalization enters a contesting process with the local structures. Conceivably believing that there is not any obvious line between the global and the local spheres, the writer displays cultural consequences of globalization which do not signify any homogenization or clash for cultural identities of cities and individuals.
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The article discusses the phenomenon of the democratisation of culture in the context of the transformations within contemporary capitalism. The issue of distance reduction (Karl Mannheim) is presented against the concept of equalisation (Max Scheler). The term managerial discourse is introduced against such a background and in reference to the historical transformations of entrepreneurial culture. Simultaneously, the article also focuses on two principles which regulate the managerial discourse, namely the principle of managerial correctness and the principle of discursive reversibility. The former allows for the division of public communication into unique content (related to social inequalities) and privileged content (related to predispositions), whereas the latter enables statements that emphasise human agency (agencification of subordinates) and statements that objectify employees (handling of objects) to coincide in the same discourse. Not only does democratisation in the culture of capitalism appear to be an area of discourse analysis, but it is also a realm of research on so-called thought styles a contact point of the sociology of knowledge (Karl Mannheim) and the sociology of thought (Ludwik Fleck).
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Childhood is an extremely important stage in everyone’s life. However, it does not always run smoothly and in a gentle way. The text presents the problems of growing up and socializing in the extremely unfavorable conditions of concentration camps on the example of Helga Weissova’s book The Daily Helga. A girl’s testimony about life in concentration camps. This reading is not only a description of living conditions in Nazi camps, but above all, it is a record of growing up in a reality not adapted for this purpose. It shows the girl’s private perspective on the rapidly changing world that surrounds her. For this reason, the reading arouses a lot of extreme emotions and therefore provides very interesting analytical material on the subjects of childhood, adolescence and primary socialization.
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Young people are the most vulnerable group because of their sensitivity and vulnerability to injury. Children have great potential for development and are able to succeed in their future lives, both private and professional, if they have the opportunity to grow up in the right environment and follow a good example. Although the work of a streetworker is non-institutional, like any profession or group, streetworkers are guided by a set of guidelines, norms and rules regarding their behaviour, attitudes, getting in contact with the child and their family, relationships with other streetworkers, etc. They also use a set of tools that serve them to work effectively on the street. These elements play a fundamental role in working with young people. In this paper we will highlight the most important of them. They may become a source of reflection for future streetworkers.
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The fierce change in economic environment and the rapid boom fluctuation in past years have squeezed the survival space for ecotourism industry and resulted in fierce competition in ecotourism industry. The promotion of ecotourism adds new vitality and new meanings to traditional tourism and enhances the conservation of natural resources and the extension of local tradition. However, the shortage of talents results in the awareness of ecotourism not being implemented. For the development needs, ecotourism talent cultivation has to be constantly innovated. Aiming at employees of ecotourism industry in Fujian Province, as the research objects, total 500 copies of questionnaire are distributed and 382 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 76%. The research results show significant correlations between 1.talent cultivation and organizational climate, 2.organizational climate and knowledge sharing intention, and 3.talent cultivation and knowledge sharing intention. According to the results, suggestions are eventually proposed in this study, expecting to help ecotourism businesses apply talent cultivation and cooperate the culture of knowledge sharing to precede knowledge management or general knowledge sharing.
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