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Nancy Fraser tracks the reconfiguration of the relations of social reproduction under successive regimes of accumulation – “separate spheres”, male breadwinner, dual-income household. Are the exactions of financialized capitalism now serving to undermine its lifeworld?
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The world economic reintegration of the East and Central European (ECE) region started in the midst of the global crises and the subsequent restructuring in the international division of labour in the 1970s. However, the region’s economic and financial dependence on the capitalist world system did not become apparent until the political regime change in 1990 and the collapse of Comecon in 1991. The consolidation of the new international division of labor was completed after the world economic crisis in 2008. Ever since the 1970s, the ECE region’s economic integration was determined by both external and internal factors. The authors strongly emphasize both the changes in the technological development that affected their access to the state of the art technologies and the reorganization of the Western European production networks around which neomercantilist institutions in the whole of the European Union has dominated. The overproduction crisis manifest in the production of the combustion engines and the increasing presence of the electric vehicles resulted in the re-organization of the German automotive value chains in the region. Due to the increasingly standardized production processes and their deteriorating ability to produce high value-added products, relocation from Germany to ECE accelerated since 2008 upon which a new semi-peripheral accumulation regime has emerged that serves the interests of German capital and reproduces ECE’s historical dependency on external finance and technology. The economic policies of the Hungarian government is understood in this context as the peripheral version of the German neomercantilist model.
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This paper examines the Arctic Search and Rescue Agreement – the first legally binding instrument adopted under the auspices of the Arctic Council – and analyses its direct and indirect implication for both the development of the Arctic shipping and the perspectives of regionalization processes. It is argued that the adoption of the Agreement should be perceived as an ambiguous achievement since, while its direct relevance for the Arctic shipping is not very substantial at the moment, it however reaffirms the indispensable and leading position of the Arctic Council in the regional governance system and offers important prospects for deepening the cooperation among the Arctic states. The Arctic SAR Agreement is also recognised as a manifestation of exercising the Arctic sovereignty by the eight states (also against non-Arctic actors) and consequently a sign of growing regionalization of the Arctic.
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The article discusses selected rescue operations in the Arctic from a historical perspective. It focuses on events that in practical terms initiated international cooperation in this area. Against the background of the development of rescue techniques and equipment, the history of attempts to increase the chances of survival in extreme conditions is outlined. The author also examines how rescue operations influenced popular awareness, stimulating the creation of a favourable climate for institutional cooperation.
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The article describes selected rescue operations that took place in the Arctic during the Cold War and afterwards. The author focuses on the international aspect of search and rescue actions and analyses the evolution of the forms and procedures of cooperation between services and the obstacles which emergency cooperation faces in this part of the world. The author also attempts to determine the perspectives of Arctic rescue operations at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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Mediation can be considered an attempt to come to a solution that is conciliatory and satisfactory to both sides of the conflict. It consists in voluntary negotiations, which are carried out with the participation of the third party called the mediator. He/she is neutral towards the sides of the conflict and the subject of the dispute. Mediations should lead to working out a compromise, i.e. a solution that is not imposed on the parties of the dispute. Thanks to the way of conducting mediation proceedings their many advantages are emphasized as well as the fact that they take place out of court. Therefore, the citizens can access judicial authorities more easily. The article aims to assess mediation as a milder form of solving disputes and to specify whether they are and should be used to solve civil, family and criminal conflicts.
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The current study reviews and traces historically the establishment of social work respectively social legislation in Bulgaria. The purpose is to present the historical background of the Bulgarian state on solving social economic problems concerning social protection from the Liberation to 1944, as well as some of the reasons for legislation initiation from social and legal perspectives.
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The paper relates the issues of general depopulation and population ageing within existing and new pension systems in a changing macroeconomic environment of the European Union. At the EU level, the paper analyses and presents demographic factors and the consequences of demographic and macroeconomic trends. The demographic and economic assumptions upon which most existing EU pension systems are based have changed significantly. The paper researches the case of Croatia: natural growth and migration balance as demographic potential, and changes in the working population as economic potential. Unlike official public policies, it is suggested here that low employment is not a problem of demographics or pensions, but mostly an economic one. Croatia's pension potential is studied on employment distribution, wages, and pensions. Using empirical data, levels of inequality in employment and wages were calculated. In addition to low salaries and pensions, Gini coefficients show that Croatia has no inequality in the distribution of wages and that it has moderate levels of inequality in the distribution of pension payments in Pillar II and Pillar I. It was also found that Croatia does not use the available demographic potential to fulfil its economic potential through higher productivity, employment, wages and pensions, and that a significant problem lies in the material deprivation of the population. According to the Croatian experience, demographic problems are declarative and cannot be solved separately and outside the context of the pension system. Negative demographic trends are most often directly related to the deficits of the pension system, while pension problems and reforms are justified only by negative demographic trends, which closes the circle, and the problems persist.
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The research reveals current work motivation challenges and employment problems in the social care system in Bulgaria. On that basis, are outlined some challenges for the social care system in the Bulgarian regions. The conclusions are based on the authors’ survey data and a content analysis of the social services strategies in 22 Bulgarian NUTS 3 regions (districts). The paper shows which ongoing problems in the sector demotivate the social work specialists due to their own opinions and are not solved as policy and planning in the regional and municipality strategies and government level.
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The cognitive specificity of social pedagogy is its interest in the issues related to social conditionings of human development and, respectively, the specific social conditionings of the upbringing process. The notion has been developed in various directions since the very beginning of the discipline, yet the most clearly visible area seems to be the functioning of individuals, families and broader environment. Simultaneously, it is possible to observe that the issues have been entangled in certain socio-political conditions, the knowledge of which is substantial for the reconstruction and identification of the research heritage of social pedagogy. All these interrelationships allowed to distinguish particular stages of development of social pedagogy. Contemporarily, it is a discipline with descent scientific achievements which marks out and indicates new perspectives both in the field of educational practice and the theory of social activity.
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‘The Good Live-in Care Worker’: Subject Formation and Ethnicisation in Austrian Live-in Care. This paper investigates subject formation processes in Austrian live-in care. Proceeding from a Foucauldian understanding of subjectivity as a product of powerful discourses and techniques and based on an intersectional discourse analysis of interviews with different actors involved in this arrangement, it shows how the ideal live-in care worker combines professional and language skills with characteristics such as an intrinsic motivation, emotional competences, and adaptability. Ethnicity-related discourses play an important role in this context, be it with regard to highly valued qualities or as a justification for control and/or support, and thus serve as a means to reproduce power relations.
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The article deals with the issue of the possibility of classifying some cases of euthanasia as the so-called abnormal motivational situation of the perpetrator. Therefore, with the literature on the function of motivation under criminal law as a basis, the article attempts to discuss the essence of an abnormal motivational situation using the concepts of motivational background and motivational conflict, and to translate these factors into the features of a prohibited act under Art. 150(1) of the Criminal Code. Moreover, using the interpretation of Art. 150(2) of the Criminal Code and views of criminal law scholars, the article analyses the function of Art. 150(2) of the Criminal Code and tries to demonstrate the legitimacy of a further reduction of criminal liability due to the abnormal motivational situation of the euthanasia’s perpetrator.
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The author links the current systemic lack of regulation of occupational diseases in Slovenia to the socio-political changes and transformations of political relations that have taken place in the last thirty years – to the paradigm of self-responsibility in the feld of health and work and to the social understanding occupational diseases and work-related illnesses. She also focuses on the history of the occupational health and safety profession. She does not look at occupational health and safety from the biomedical viewpoint but rather fom the political-economic and socio-cultural perspective. She explains occupational health as a political and social phenomenon related to people‘s structural vulnerability. In her exploration of the experiences of work-related illness and injury, the author draws on ethnographic research with textile workers.
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The aim of this paper is to introduce a pertinent management model for municipalities and relevant groups to support the local communities in dealing with social and economic issues, or as in our case, with the effects of the global pandemic, while promoting sustainable development, through corporate social co-responsibility and efficient allocation and reallocation of resources. SPIRAL Methodology was used to implement exploratory research using the focus group as main research method and ESPOIR software for the statistical analysis. 2275 answers were collected from 198 citizens in Brasov Municipality. The citizens’ answers positively correlate with the social and economic situation, dominated by the effects of the Great Recession. Mostly, well-being through their eyes is related to the working place, purchasing power, education and mental and physical health. Secondly citizens focus on improving their lives and contributing to the society. Lastly, they pay attention to the personal equilibrium. SPIRAL represents a useful tool in supporting governments and local stake holders to identify the pain points, find solutions and locally available resources while, sharing responsibility and successfully overcoming the negative impact of the global pandemic over the economy and society. When comparing the effects SPRIAL methodology had in the communities where it was applied, with the current situation around the world and with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, we contribute to enriching the management knowledge by providing a comprehensive tool that promotes sustainable development, measures wellbeing and nurtures cooperation and social innovation.
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In recent years, we have seen a growing interest in the happiness and well-being of people from international organizations (especially the United Nations, which this year celebrates its 75th anniversary), regional organizations, but also each individual state, starting from the premise of creating a new right, the right to happiness of people and, implicitly, of citizens, although we are aware that happiness does not have the same content everywhere and that its perception depends on many objective and subjective factors. In this article we have tried to identify a series of measures and projects adopted to ensure and respect the right to happiness, in order to improve the standard of living in cities, standard of living that directly influences the happiness of citizens, following the emergence and evolution of the concept of smart cities. These projects help to shape public policies that must promote the well-being of citizens, their happiness, greater transparency in the provision of people services and, last but not least, adequate security. The conclusions drawn at the end of this article show that the relationship between smart cities and happy cities, although a directly proportional relationship that provides concrete evidence of citizens 'happiness and a more sustainable and, why not more humane, future does not permanently result in citizens' happiness.
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This paper presents explores the impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the global changes of the 21st century, such as population aging, population increase, climate changes, and the great scissors between the poor and rich on social work. Predictions are given of the challenges and development of social work in the future. The main areas of social work are highlighted, where the greatest changes will be observed, in particular in the nature of the work of the social worker and in the management of social work.
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The research summarizes estimation of the experience rate of loneliness and life satisfaction in a sample of individual cases of older adults – users of social services. The empirical analysis shows significant negative correlation between loneliness and satisfaction variables. It can be concluded that interventions for supporting the quality of personal contacts and profound intimacy are much more essential in the gerontological social work from those interventions that focus on expanding, diversifying and growth of relationships in a quantitative aspect. The utilized research tools can be applied in practical social work for differential assessment of the rate of life satisfaction and social functioning. This way in the individual assessment it is possible to be distinguished areas of stability and satisfaction from those with unsatisfied needs, deficiency and dysfunctioning.
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Social services for people with disabilities which are based in the community are of great importance for their right of independent living among their natural environment/ community. It is possible by social work, well define and planning social policy and also appropriate direction of resources – financial, human and others.
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The aim of this article is to describe and discuss the key challenges of social and healthcare services in Slovakia, focusing on the Integrative Elderly Care Model as part of a changing welfare state. It also examines the opportunities and challenges related to the transformation of community-based social and healthcare services. The Slovak welfare state has undergone several revisions during the last decade; so too has the elderly care sector, which is a combination of public and non-government organisations. Elderly citizens, however, remain in a precarious situation. The trend toward marketisation and re-familiarisation of elderly care ‘go towards the EU average’, indicating an increase in public social expenditure directed towards aging.
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Between 2011 and 2020, the Hungarian National Film Fund was responsible for distributing funds for feature films in Hungary. In this era, different circumstances led to a boom of films that were funded independently from the state, resulting in approximately the third of all movies being independent. In this paper I examine these productions based on their position on a dependent–independent spectrum. Firstly, I inquire whether they aim to use radical aesthetics, or on the contrary: reproduce the forms or genre cinema. Secondly, this paper will also address the wider question whether movie production can exist independently from power as such, or on the contrary, even politically engaged movies remain mere reactions and counter-discourses to existing power structures. Finally, I will look at the above-mentioned questions through a case study on Szabolcs Hajdu’s It’s Not the Time of My Life, released in 2016, also analysing the informal labour and symbolic resources required in making of an independent film.
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