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Digital Captivity. İklim Sanat, Ankara, December 6, 2018 - January 4, 2019
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Digital Captivity. İklim Sanat, Ankara, December 6, 2018 - January 4, 2019
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This paper draws the parallel between the processes of learning in the human brain with strategic thinking in business organisations. It also suggests implicit learning as a possible element within the cognitive functions of artificial intelligence. Five case examples are provided to illustrate innovative strategic thinking with the use of Big Data.
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Tawarruq which is also known as commodity Murabahah in Islamic banking is widely practiced in Malaysia to structure different types of Islamic banking products. The widespread use of tawarruq has made Islamic banks to be re-named as “tawarruq banks” and some even call tawarruq as the “magic lamp” of the industry. Shariah scholars have criticised this frequent usage of tawarruq in Islamic banking industry of Malaysia, while the practitioners have replied by saying that if tawarruq is a shariah approved concept, then what is wrong with the usage of it? However, from the shariah perspective, the issue here is not about the shariah compliance of tawarruq transactions per se. It is about the shariah limitations imposed by the scholars on the use of it. This simply means that there is a reservation made by shariah scholars in allowing the usage of tawarruq contract in Islamic finance as tawarruq is a contract allowed to be used when one has to choose between a conventional loan and tawarruq. The purpose of this research is thus to show the alternative Islamic commercial contracts that could be used to structure Islamic banking products that have been structured in the market using tawarruq. It is anticipated that the outcome of this research will assist Islamic banking industry to understand why and how they can move away from tawarruq.
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The development of the aviation industry affects airport structures. Liberalization currents and the phenomenon of globalization also diversify airport ownership. The importance of the privatization approaches of airports also leads airport operators to new business models that will increase their income. In this context, the airport city model defines a structure in which airport activities are located in the center and its environment is urbanized with the related industry branches. Given that airport revenues consist of aviation and non-aviation revenues, maximization of non-aviation revenues is also important in airport cities. The fact that the aviation industry is an ever-growing attractive market brings the element of competition among the sector players to the fore. The commercialization activities of airports also affect competition between airports and airport cities. According to the traditional approach, the primary customers of the airports are airline companies. Passengers stand out as secondary customers. In the airport city approach, both airline companies and passengers-greetersvisitors and employees are included in the airport customer group. For this reason, there are many income increasing units in the airport city model such as accommodation facilities, living areas, and shopping centers. In the model, the demand for airline transportation activities is expanding by increasing the regional attraction with the diversification of industry and social reinforcement areas. In this study, the airport city model is discussed and evaluated from a conceptual point of view. Important issues were discussed for the sustainable success of the airport city model. Finally, the elements needed to treat Istanbul Airport as an airport city are proposed.
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Being a term that embodies from art to design, from science to all fields being classified as daily routines, creativity has been discussed with different perspectives throughout the history, and various definitions and classifications have been made for it.The existing definitions and classifications related to creativity are kept out in this paper, and it is dealt with a more different sincerity by involving human perspective. After briefly touching on creativity, the paper discusses an important figure to be able to read the term thoroughly. This figure is Herbert Alexander Simon (1916-2001) who observed in the twentieth century that creativity spreads along three disparate fields of applied sciences – social sciences, behavioral sciences and computer sciences. He was a “Renaissance man” although this term seems like a chronological mistake in modern times.Simon spent 60 years of his career on studies relating multidisciplinary creativity. The idea of design is based on the principles Herbert A. Simon introduced in his 1969 article. Being reduced into five main phases, these principles underlie the idea of design: empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing. It is worth emphasizing that each of these five phases underlined by Simon has creativity-supporting qualities in itself and is critical in all fields, not just in designing.The objective of this paper is to underline the importance of the power of creative human which is the most priceless thing today. The reason why it’s priceless is that rapid development of technology (especially, computer technology) in a globalized world in the late 20 years has changed creative potential of individuals. In order to achieve the objective, the importance of creativity is explained in terms of realizing, confrontation, process and product. Moreover, it is underscored that creative people are the ones who will shape the future of societies.Therefore, the common features of artists, designers, scientists, writers etc. who are in pursuit of the new and the different, and spend most of their lives on studies and theories relating their own professions are that they all have the power of changing and transforming the existing by using their creativity. A creative individual of the information age that we live in today must read a lot, watch, research and feed own creative intelligence consistently with verbal and visual inputs. As a result, he/she must increase the possibility to find new and original solutions.
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Electro baglama which entered to our music life with the influence of the globalization process in the late 1960s, it has been a global product that crosses the borders of the country until today. Electro-baglama has penetrated almost all areas of music in more than seventy years and has turned into a highly influential soloist instrument. Electro bağlama, the electric guitar who came to Turkey with globalization, loud sounds are used to provide the magnetic intensity is manufactured by mounting a local binding instrument. This change made by Erkin Koray, one of the pioneers of Anadolu Pop; has led to the emergence of a new urban version of the bağlama. In parallel with the development of music technologies in the future, it has undergone rapid and effective changes by adding some sound and effect devices to electro bağlama, and these features have turned electro binding into a preferable instrument. Electro bağlama, thanks to its technological advantage and offer technical sense, Turkey has become an indispensable provider of entertainment sound types are arranged in urban and rural areas. The mobility has accelerated in the last century with the globalization process. The displacement of items such as product, information, finance, people, and cultural elements, especially within the accelerated flow with technology, has had a noticeable effect on society and individuals. Thanks to the said flows, different cultures and cultural products started to exist in new ways by being affected by each other. Accordingly, the changes caused by electro-bonding, especially in local areas and partly globally, constitute the research subject of this study. The study was conducted by obtaining data by using observation and participatory observation techniques in a method based on ethnographic research. The data obtained are combined and interpreted in the direction of similarity-difference relationships with the secondary data obtained in the literature review.
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The process of migration has been the subject of extensive debates throughout Europe. Migration patterns are constantly changing in our current globalized economy; therefore, it is insufficient to assume that countries sharing cultural, geographical, and linguistic similarities experience synchronised migration flows. This article attempts to contribute to the understanding of one of the most dominant migration streams from Eastern Europe, specifically the movement from Ukraine to the Czech Republic and Poland. The period of interest follows the accession of the destination countries into the EU between 2004 and 2014. The results show that Ukraine suffers from much worse economic and social conditions than Poland and the Czech Republic. GDP growth, unemployment, and the poverty rate are three important indicators that explain why there has been such a large influx of Ukrainians into the host countries. While educational attainment was also massively deficient in Ukraine, it appears this is a reflection of the institutional failure of the Ukrainian education system, thus leading to the education– occupation mismatch of Ukrainian migrant workers. Despite the fact that Poland and the Czech Republic are linguistically, culturally, and geographically close, the immigration flow from Ukraine has behaved very differently in each case; for instance, the most notable contrast reveals that migration to the Czech Republic, but not to Poland, was substantially affected by economic crises.
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This article focuses on one of the factors that is conducive to the rise of the far right in current European societies: the articulation of phobic discourses. Far-right leadership has engaged in a systematic manipulation of phobias that lie in fears, anxieties, and discomfort towards the unknown and unfamiliar, omnipresent in our globalised world. This article investigates a set of phobic discourses articulated by the leader of the farright Bulgarian political party ATAKA, Volen Siderov, but not uncommon in other far-right parties. More specifically, it explores ethnophobia, implying that the nation is withering away and that the country is being transformed into a mere colony, focusing on the topoi of “treachery and disaster” and “threatened identity.” It then examines Islamophobia, encapsulating a fear of Islam and a fear of a threat from within, that is, the Muslim minority. Within this framework, the topoi of “perpetual cultural confrontation with Islam” and “religious terrorism” are analyzed. Last, it analyzes Romaphobia, denoting fear towards the marginalised group of Roma, and within this framework, the topoi of the “demographic explosion of Roma” and the “bad human capital.” Such phobic discourses are emphasised by the far right for electoral benefit.
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The paper considers the use of the term “social distance” during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is indicated that the term has been uncritically adopted by the scientific medical-epidemiological and public discourse from sociology, and that its subject and content of the concept are essentially different. An argument is proposed for the thesis that such situation was caused, on one hand, by the failure to apply the concretely dialecticallogical rules of definition and, on the other hand, due to ideological attitudes about individualism which are common both to neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The article emphasizes the need to replace the concept of “social distance” in epidemiology with the concept of “physical distance” or just “distance” or “space”.
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The aim of this paper is to point to the cognitive dissonance caused in people by different information about the new COVID-19 disease. The information originates from different professional and laymen sources and is often inconsistent. The fact that science itself has not entirely clarified the origin of the virus causing COVID-19, the symptoms, treatment protocols and consequences of disease, complicates the situation. Cognitive dissonance causes frustration, fear and stress, which, if prolonged, lead to health disorders. In search of a way out of cognitive ambiguity, many accept conspiracy theories as a solution to their own tensions.
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This work is focused on reporting of daily newspapers in Serbia during coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, and specifics of dominant narratives and relationship between the government and popular press. The content research includes the first half of 2020, when 1,271 from eight influential daily papers were analysed. While the representatives of the quality press have tried to steer the attention of citizens and introduce serious questions most tabloids trivialised the danger as another spectacle which will secure larger sales irrespective of social consequences and ethical norms of journalistic profession. Objectivity and unbiasedness are sacrificed for sensationalism, spectacle and political clientelism. Celebritization of medical profession has only led to spread of confusion in public opinion, while revealing how political elites eagerly use crisis for promotion of their own ideas and programs, instead of professional debate.
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The context of a pandemic caused by an infectious agent and the resulting health risk to a large number of people is a new type of risk contemporary humans are not quite familiar with. In addition to forcing citizens to rely on the effects of controlled medical and epidemiological measures, this kind of situation steers citizens towards cooperation and solidarity as well as towards personal capabilities of functioning during a crisis and it requires a certain degree of trust, not only in the institutions but also in other persons. The aim of this paper is to learn to what degree Serbian citizens trust others during the COVID-19 pandemic and whether this level of generalized trust differs among different sociodemographic groups, or more precisely, which groups were affected the most by the absence of generalized trust. The paper also analyzes a set of variables which are either a part of the concept of subjective well-being (feeling of happiness and life satisfaction) or are closely connected to it (the feeling of control over life, subjective health assessment, and assessments of solidarity and honesty of others). The analyzed data were obtained from a sample of 602 adult Serbian citizens who participated in an online survey in May 2020 by completing a questionnaire they received via e-mail and social networks from multiple access points. These data are compared to the newest available data on the given indicators in Serbia before the pandemic, collected within the European Values Study (EVS) in 2017 and the European Social Survey (ESS) in 2018. The results indicate a significant decrease in happiness and continuously low levels of the feeling of control over life and life satisfaction, but also an increase in the assessed honesty and solidarity of others. These findings are in accordance with the results of the previous studies, which revealed different dominant aspects in the analyzed concepts, leading to their different flexibility and (non)resilience to the changes in society.
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In this text, we consider the short term and long-term consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic among people throughout the world. In many societies, as a result of the health danger, governments have intervened by denying basic social and political rights. Because of these changes, economy has experienced a crisis whose effects many compare to the Great Depression of the last century. By dealing with the new problems, many countries have enforced measures of quarantine and closed their borders. The answer to the problems has not shown international solidarity, but state-centrism. The text first discusses what the old anti-epidemic measures brought to modern societies that had to be resorted to in preventing the spread of the epidemic. This is followed by an attempt to predict the possible long-term consequences for the functioning of social structures and government systems. As countries increase control and penetration into the sphere of everyday life of their citizens, in which they are substantially aided by new technologies, this trend can be expected to continue. On the other hand, citizens will lend support with the enforcement of such control in exchange for the sense of security. In the long run, such processes indicate the possibility that countries will emerge stronger from this crisis, although until recently it was thought that they had weakened under the impact of globalization.
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Fake news is getting more attention because of the Internet and the rise of the online platforms and social networks, particularly in the age of COVID-19. Its sudden popularization creates important issues regarding how this phenomenon affects the society and democracy, as well as the consumers, competition and market. The question is what happens when fake news are spread (online) and misused during pandemic – whether to apply the European Union competition law in such cases? The author considers that European Commission should not deal with fake news challenges in the context of potential anticompetitive conducts. It is pointed out that fake news problem is not a competitive problem because the struggle against fake news is about the content not the competition and market power.
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At the end of 2019, the Law on the Freedom of Religion was adopted in Montenegro, causing protests and mass litanies from December 2019 to March 2020. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the authorities in Podgorica actually abolished the freedom of assembly and the freedom of religion. Thus the authorities in Montenegro, under the pretext of the urgent social need or public health protection, acted disproportionally and inappropriately during the epidemic. That was the violation of the international conventions guaranteeing universal protection of the freedom of religion and the regulations prohibiting discrimination. The COVID-19 epidemic was used by the authorities to clamp down on the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro for the purpose of establishing the non-canonical Montenegrin Orthodox Church, expropriating the church property and imposing the provisions of the illegitimate and illegal Law on the Freedom of Religion.
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The COVID-19 pandemic, which is unprecedented in human history and has to date resulted in 15.8 million confirmed cases with 640,016 deaths, has seen governments undertaking strict lockdown measures which not only affected local business activities but also disrupted global value chains resulting in massive economic implications. The purpose of this paper is to review the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy with a special focus on the African continent. Because the coronavirus pandemic is still evolving and its duration is uncertain, it is difficult to accurately quantify the economic implications of the pandemic. As a result, this paper used the scenario basis analysis as well as extensive literature on the subject. The results show that the pandemic, although it has devastating social impacts due to loss of human life, it has also presented serious economic challenges which inter alia include economic recession, reduced trade volumes and subdued financial flows. Because of globalisation, Africa is not immune to these challenges. As noted in this paper, major economic activities and sources of foreign exchange in Africa such as the tourism sector, export of commodities, external finances and local business activities were negatively affected, resulting in most African economies falling into recession which has wiped out economic gains of the last ten years as noted by the International Monetary Fund. In mitigating this pandemic, African countries should use incentive packages to save businesses as well as institute a number of fiscal measures such as tax waivers and engage international development partners for bail out.
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Increased risks are inspiring context for family practices’ analysis as they can impact changes in practices, thus changing family functioning and relations. The aim of the paper is to identify features of the main family practices (reproduction of everyday life, partnership, parenthood) during pandemic and state of emergency in Serbian society. It is assumed that these conditions led to practices’ changes. The issue is analysed based on data collected on a sample of 265 female respondents using a combined research plan. The results showed that the state of emergency and the pandemic of COVID-19 virus induced changes in main family practices. The most common were changes in the reproduction of everyday life (especially, groceries shopping), while pre-pandemic partnership practices were the most resistant to change. Traditional and egalitarian practices showed greater resilience to change, while masculine practices are usually newly established. There is continuity in the use of “female” resources in family practices, but with a shift from this pattern towards more frequent engagement of “male” resources, due to changes in the professional roles during the state of emergency.
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The paper deals with the discussion of cities from a socio-ecological perspective, from the standpoint of health and quality of life from the time of the first industrialisation to the current social crisis. Rethinking the connection between health and life in the city in modern social theory has resulted in new constructive concepts of the city, and some ideas of such concepts in the current situation may be guidelines for the development of cities of the future. The second segment of the paper is based on the analysis of selected results of the broader empirical research conducted in 2020 by anonymous online survey and applying comparative-analytical and statistical methods. The respondents’ views on the quality of life in the city and countryside at the time of the pandemic generally show that, despite the fact that the respondents evaluate the countryside more positively than the city, their attitude is such that minority of them agree with the fact that the experience with the pandemic will direct people to life outside cities in the future.
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This paper provides a contextual discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent reality of taken-for-granted nuances using the epistemology of everyday sociology. The COVID-19 pandemic has become a global disease that has virtually affected all facets of life. Nigerian government has moved swiftly to curb the pandemic through containment protocols of lockdown, social distancing, face masking, discreet salutation and hand hygiene. As social actors continue to interact amid the pandemic, they construct and reconstruct the world around them through the social interpretations and contextual meanings derived from these containment protocols. The taken-for-granted nuances and meanings embedded in these micro interpretations allow social actors to take interpretive actions based on the meanings attached to COVID-19 pandemic and the containment protocols.
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Along with climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic represents a specific planetary event, with surprising effects that require a rethinking of the social. The paper starts from the thesis that the pandemic essentially undermines modernity and the institutions of sovereignty, geopolitics and political economy due to their essential separation from non-human things. In the second part of the paper four propositions for a better understanding of planetary events are offered, including removing the difference of parts/wholes, non-relational thinking, rejecting the difference between global and local, and understanding collectives as constantly made in a continuum of humans and non-humas. Finally, the importance of speculation as the basis of planetary thinking is considered. There is a need to revise scientific practice and enhance its sensitivity to recognizing heterogeneous attachments of humans and non-humans in planetary settings.
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