Realism - The Ideological Chameleon
Why does anyone need, especially today, when slowly, but steadily we become victims of „virtual reality's“ cybermimesis, to attempt to be „more real“ than „Reality“ itself?
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Why does anyone need, especially today, when slowly, but steadily we become victims of „virtual reality's“ cybermimesis, to attempt to be „more real“ than „Reality“ itself?
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Communities that have lived together for a long time have used the same language and created a number of common values. All of these common values constitute the cult of that community. Culture is a complex phenomenon that reflects the ways in which a nation solves its problems, the ways in which it interacts with each other and with others, and the way they think (Naylor, 1996). This research was conducted by teachers 1-5. the structure of the class curricula and their impact on student achievement is determined by a semi-structured interview form, so it is a qualitative research based on the cause-and-effect relationship. The universe of this research is the class teachers who work in the primary schools in the cities where different mother-tongue education is provided in Kosovo. According to the teachers 'views, the influences of the programs applied for different cultures on the students' success were determined as meaningful differences in the age, education level, teaching language of the teachers and whether or not they were educated in different mother tongues in the same school.
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In my book Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), I found that I had little if nothing to say about the various dominant and subversive forms taken by male masculinity. My resistance to engaging the topic of male masculinities certainly left my project open to questions about the vagueness of the term masculinity itself and possibly created historical problems by failing to develop a model of the production of manliness. However, I argued in Female Masculinity that if what we call “dominant masculinity” appears to be a naturalized relation between maleness and power, then it makes little sense to examine men for the contours of its social construction. Male masculinity figured in my project as a hermeneutic, and as a counter example to the kinds of masculinity which seem most informative about gender relations and most generative of social change.
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The paper presents a schematic overview of five basic development constraints that are expected to significantly affect further transformation of island communities and their economy. They are the following: 1) islands' peripheral position in teritoriai and functional organisation of Croatian society, 2) close dependance of the quality of natural resources on the social system, 3) emphasized local cultural pattern ("campanilism"), 4) domination of social agents that are unable to act independently and 5) inherited rent yielding type of modernisation since these constraints have been repeatedly pointed out in research performed so far, the paper proposes redirection of research towards the determinants of a new revitalisation strategy for most important (if not for all) Croatian island communities.
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A sociological portrait of the Romani Toma the Traffic Light Man, a windshield wiper on one of the central intersections in the city of Niš. He is an interesting figure, a city guy, poor as a church mouse, very observant and picky, a bit of a buffoon, somewhat reluctant and apprehensive, protected by his guardians; he has a delineated area of operation, he has been skillful with his squeegee from his childhood, he does what he likes to do in order to survive, he earns a pretty penny, and he is the envy of many. He does not yearn for compassion, he is rarely stigmatized, he is not impudent or bad-tempered, he does not impose on people or protest, his profession is underestimated but not at all easy, he is not messy or slipshod, he does not like misers, he does not loiter around the traffic lights or smoke. Toma the Traffic Light Man is at the forefront of the squeegee men, he towers above regular cleaners that we meet daily in Serbian towns. He did not establish the profession known as the squeegee man – he is just the best specimen, the ideal type.
More...Dalibor Elezović, Balkans in letters: the impressions of an 18th-century Westerner. Sofia: Bulgari Publishing House; Kosovska Mitrovica: Faculty of Philosophy, 2019, 212 pp.
The paper gives an overview of Dalibor Elezović’s book Balkans in letters: the impressions of an 18th-century Westerner. It is about the book based on epistolary material, created from the pen of an unknown Frenchman who toured the Balkans in the eighteenth century. The book deals with the study of epistolary discourse, which is a current issue of contemporary historical science and other social sciences. The focus is on the importance of letters from a Westerner on the image of the Balkans in the eighteenth century since there are not many sources of similar content.
More...Ljubiša Mitrović, In the jaws of transition: Between the Downfall and the Alternative (A Plea for the Transition of Transition and Alternative Society). Niš: Faculty of Philosophy; Novi Sad: Prometej, 2017, 312 pp.
In the jaws of transition: Between the Downfall and the Alternative (A Plea for the Transition of Transition and Alternative Society), the work of sociologist, professor emeritus of the University in Niš, gives an analytical contribution to the contradictions of social transition. The author bases the social critique of dehumanized neoliberal transition and offers the perspective of the society science in current national and world conditions and challenges. The analysis is focused on the poor condition of economy in the Republic of Serbia, with the emphasis on the problems of dependent modernization, class polarization and destruction of the social state. Apart from analyzing the above-listed problems, the author recommends the role of sociology as the humanistic critique of the modern society.
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The article aims at describing research into the relationship between culture and religion and presents current ideas how culture affects human behaviour and cross-cultural communication. The early research focused on the issues of interrelated culture and religion. The majority of researchers agreed that the interpretation of religious issues differed due to cultural diversity. In the past, researchers concentrated on the following issues: 1) analysis of the links between the cultures and the five most influential religions in the world: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism; 2) comparisons of key similarities and differences as well as rituals and practices of different religions including postures and gestures of believers; 3) the relationship between human beings and God(s). Nevertheless, it is believed that up to now the issues of links between culture and religion remain understudied and contradictory. Ongoing research into cultural issues is based on the iceberg model, which was designed and described by T. Hall in the previous century. It comprises visible and invisible elements that are learnt either sub consciously or consciously. This model remains up-to-date in the 21st century due to its ubiquity. The cultural dimensions theory that describes how culture affects the values of society members and how values are relevant to their behaviour has been recently developed by G. Hofstede, who argues that national culture imposes itself on human behaviour.
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The 6th mass extinction of many species of wild animals that has already started prompts artists to take on a partisan approach in order to change people’s minds, because those in power are too indebted to the fossil fuel industry to stop the climate change. One of such partisans is the Lithuanian artist Aurelija Maknytė who explores the lives of beavers in marshes, rivers and melioration ditches for her on-going project The Landscape Partisan: Castor Fiber (started in 2013). She photographs the dams and lodges that beavers construct against the will of humans that keep destroying their work. By trying to access the point of view of other species unpolluted by human perception, the artist questions the traditional distinction between culture and nature, the ownership of landscape and the apparent lack of subjectivity in animals. She practices what Timothy Morton has defined as an ecological thinking and discovers the interconnectedness of cultural-natural ecosystems in the spirit of Bruno Latour. Since her project is never finished, Maknytė attempts to remain in the prolonged everyday documenting what appears to have survived the catastrophe, seeks to keep time in its indecisive state, while living into Giorgio Agamben’s messianic time, “the time it takes us to bring time to an end”.
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Chi ha scarsa familiarità con la cultura polacca potrebbe restare sorpreso dal fatto che tra i dibattiti intellettuali che hanno caratterizzato il periodo post-1989 ci sia anche quello sulla fine dell’attualità del romanticismo, ossia, per usare la felice espressione coniata da una delle maggiori studiose del periodo, Maria Janion, sulla fine del paradigma romantico.
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In questa sezione verranno presentati due saggi degli anni Settanta e Ottanta del secolo scorso, rappresentativi di un ricco filone di studi sulla manipolazione linguistica insita nella lingua dei testi ufficiali, giornalistici e propagandistici (e non solo) nella Polonia del socialismo reale.
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Aufgrund der geografischen, ethnischen und kulturellen Nähe spielte Finnland eine wichtige Rolle bei der kulturellen und politischen Entwicklung Estlands. In den Jahren 1904- 1914 erlebte die estnische Architektur ihre Finnische Periode. Wichtige staatliche Gebäude in Estland wurden von finnischen Architekten entworfen. Für viele Esten war Helsinki die nächstgelegene europäische Großstadt; ein Besuch dort lag nur 80 Kilometer über die Ostsee entfernt. Helsinkis Stadtentwicklung fand seit den 1890er Jahren in estnischen Zeitungen ihren Widerhall. Zu den urbanen Errungenschaften Helsinkis, die dort hervorgehoben wurden, zählten die Boulevards, Parks und Denkmale, die Neubauten, der moderne Straßenverkehr und vor allem die Sauberkeit im Stadtbild sowie das zivilisierte Auftreten seiner Einwohner. Im Jahr 1904 errangen die Esten bei der Wahl zur Tallinner Stadtverordnetenversammlung erstmals die Mehrheit. Orientierten sie sich im Folgenden, konfrontiert mit der praktischen Verwaltungsarbeit, an Helsinki als dem Modell einer europäischen Stadt? Angesichts des immer dichter werdenden kommunikativen Netzwerks zwischen den beiden Stadtverwaltungen wird in dem vorliegenden Beitrag der Standpunkt vertreten, dass beim Transfer von Wissen bezüglich kommunaler Verwaltung auch Städte an der geografischen Peripherie als Vermittler von Innovation auftreten konnten. Der internationale Wettbewerb eines Generalplans für Tallinn (1913) war der erste seiner Art im Russischen Reich. Bedenkt man den finnischen Einfluss auf die estnische Architektur, war es nur zu natürlich, dass der finnische Architekt Eliel Saarinen eingeladen wurde, um den Wettbewerb vorzubereiten. Zugleich rezipierten die Angehörigen der Tallinner Stadtverwaltung die zumeist deutsche Fachliteratur und verbanden diese Recherchen mit Studienreisen nach Deutschland. Joseph Stübben und Theodor Goecke, führende Experten im Bereich der Stadtplanung, wurden in die Jury berufen, wo sie auf Bertel Jung aus Helsinki und Grigori Dubelier aus Kiev trafen. In ihrem Bestreben, den Planungswettbewerb für Tallinn auf ein möglichst hohes Niveau zu heben, zeigten sich die estnischen Verantwortlichen flexibel und wandten sich best-practice-Beispielen in ganz Europa zu – auch in Ländern wie Deutschland und Russland, denen die Esten in kultureller Hinsicht eigentlich reserviert gegenüberstanden. Professionalität zählte hier also mehr als Nationalismus.
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Thuggee as a distinct class of criminal homicide has generated much interest ever since the British colonizers in India exposed it in the nineteenth century. While the male thugs were certainly more common, female practitioners of thuggee were not entirely unknown. Curiously, both colonial writers and contemporary researchers have conceptualized thuggee as an all-male activity, thereby consigning the female thugs to oblivion. By bringing the focus back on the female thugs, this paper questions the gendering of thuggee. It also shows how the acknowledgement of the existence of the female thugs destabilizes both colonial constructions of thuggee and contemporary understandings of the subject.
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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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According to Spiegel and Dawson “the meaning of ‘America’ in the 21st century is itself subject to the transnational flows of a ‘global’ image market in which television and digital media play a central role” (Tillet 2008). The direction(s) of the development of digital media is/are unpredictable and its transformations beyond its classical boundaries defined by the postmodern era is subject to investigation. Postmodernism operates with the concept of nation that revolves around culture, geographical positioning, and language therefore cannot offer a suitable apparatus for re-defining its meaning in the era of the digitalized transnational world. This also may evoke the false idea that the very concept of nation has become obsolete and outworn, however we may only lack the suitable vocabulary necessary for the correct description of its new meanings. The objective of this paper is to investigate whether digimodernism, as one possible alternative to postmodernism, has the potential to redefine the concept of nation in a globalized world, maintain its original meaning, and at the same time suitably describe it in this new epoch of social evolution.
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The demographic structure of Kyrgyzstan is predominantly Kyrgyz, but consists of different ethnicities. The denominator, which holds all these differences together until its independence, has been the strict ideological policies of the Soviet. After the independence, the ideological pressure of the Soviets triggered mass migration and caused social tension. Despite the need to build the common identity and civilization of people who lived in this environment, Kyrgyzstan could not develop a common culture and nation identity. In the Kyrgyz society, the common language of the ethnicities is Russian, and it still functions as the second official language. It is actively used in science, art and law, especially in higher education. This poses a problem in determining common culture and identity. There is no effective national education policy in the formation of the common culture and identity of Kyrgyzstan. The common education programs are not at the same level in every region due to political and economic factors.
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The article seeks to compare the functioning of cultures of remembrance in several cities. The choice of comparative perspective should particularly provide answers to two questions: a) is it true that formation and functioning of cultures of remembrance in the peripheral cities did not differ from those in a central city of the same national culture, as is argued in historiography?; and b) how did cultures of remembrance in cities under different conditions of social structure and political order function? For that purpose, three cities which belonged to the same state in two different periods, before and after WWI (until 1933), have been specially chosen for comparison: Berlin is considered to be central, Memel peripheral, and Königsberg peripheral in respect of Berlin and central in regard to Memel (in 1923-1939 Memel belonged to Lithuania but was still under strong German cultural influence). In the article, Memel is taken as the starting point for the comparison – not only because of relatively well-investigated processes of memory formation in this city in the 20th century but also with the intention of giving the role of starting point to a peripheral city situated in a frontier area. It is these attributes that often give rise to case-studies which examine the functioning of cultures of remembrance in a single city. The first part of the article investigates the contents of dominant cultures of remembrance. It states that during the Kaiserreich period in all three cities, the borussianistic historical master narrative constituted a basis for this content, while after WW1, its role was supplanted by the group experience of those who had lived through the war. However, this commonality was incident not because of the status of a city in the axis of centre-periphery but due to the peculiarities of the political and social order. The latter are analysed in the second and the third parts of the article where it is stated that a distinct role of the all-German network associations maintaining the dominant culture of remembrance can already be observed in the Kaiserreich period. Until 1918, the role of the authorities in determining the meaning of public remembrance was more pronounced only in Berlin. After 1918, the consensus on ideology and value-systems reached between the authorities and public societies became increasingly responsible for whether or not different communities of memory maintaining heterogeneous recollections would gradually develop into a homogenizing culture of remembrance and whether the latter would acquire an ambition to expand. This process was more effective in peripheral Memel for it was the only one of the three cities to be directly affected by WWI and in which such a consensus in the interwar period was encouraged by the national tensions between the Lithuanians and the Germans. The fourth part of the article is devoted to discussing the alternatives to the dominant culture of remembrance. This aspect of investigation is oriented towards the period before 1918, thus attempting to show that such alternatives may not necessarily form in pluralistic societies or under democratic circumstances. Before 1918, the most pronounced alternatives in all three cities were formed from the völkisch-nationalist discourse and the activities of the social democrats. In both cases, the network associations constructed on the same principles as those maintaining the dominant culture of remembrance constituted the structural basis of the communication milieus in which the alternative to the latter had formed. In Memel, however, already before WWI, there were attempts to form such an alternative expressing the ethnic peculiarities of the Prussian Lithuanians. Thus, in cities situated in the periphery and on the frontier of several nations, the possibility of competition between cultures of remembrance based on national differences is higher. On the other hand, this competition encourages the increase in demand to refer to the dominant meanings of national culture of remembrance in the periphery.
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Art is something that somehow pleases our mind. Except of being a means of selfexpression, art is very often the main reason certain social and socio-political changes were induced. History of human kind has proven that arts have been with us ever since the Lascaux and Altamira paintings and will be with us even nowadays in the digital and digitalized era where arts has shifted from manmade (hand made products) to man-initiated (where the man designed and the industrial equipment or artificial intelligence produced the work of art). Certain areas on Earth, specific nations and national federations can be thankful to art as the moving force for change, for the cultural evolution. Now, more than ever before, art is what we need for its human-kind savior potential. Marketing the arts, to make art businesses a sustainable business at any level, is what our article deals with.
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