SOCIALIST MARKET ECONOMY - CHINA IN THE FACE OF HISTORY: IDEOLOGICAL STEREOTYPES, PRAXEOLOGICAL CLICHES, HISTORICAL INERTIA

Author(s): Liliana Gabriela Ilie,Ştefan Buzărnescu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The present article presents the elements that give originality to the Chinese model of sustainable development by solving the "enigma" of the complementarity between Chinese socialism and the Western market economy. Thus, while Western neo-liberalism devised its managerial profile according to "as slight as possible State" principles, the communist authorities in China has legitimately held the authority of the Communist Party, but have liberalized the property. If the 20th century was American, will the 21st century be Chinese? However, this point of view belonging to the sociological approach should not be ignored; a democratic world must ensure the legitimate free flow of all views. This text is a part of a large study “The Chinese Model of durable and sustainable development - a successful social experiment”, finalized in the zonal laboratories belong the Sociologists Association, Timis county, The University of the West of Timisoara. As a sociological level, is the first sociological modelling of the Chinese social space focus on socialist market economy? The socialist market economy is an original model of development starting in China since Deng Xiaoping (1978) becoming leader of Communist Party (PCC). Today, China is the second economic power of the World. As the scientist, we have obligation to study all social evolutions, behind ideological reasons.

CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENTS AND TYPES OF APPROACHES IN RESEARCHING THE NEEDS

Author(s): Cristian Nicula / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

The present article is an approach of conceptual clarification and exploration in an ongoing research on the relationship between motivation, aspirations, values and needs in the Romanian society in a determined context. As a scientific category, the need/the needs is/are used in different disciplinary areas, from sociology to marketing, for example. In the contexts in which it is used, the term/category acquires different connotations. The present article proposes somewhat a methodological reduction of the definition of the term (i.e. negative meaning and affirmative meaning) as well as two ways of its thematization (the descriptive approach and the constructive approach) in the disciplinary researches.

THE HYPOTHESIS OF “DIMINISHED MAN” UNDERSTANDING HUMAN EXPERIENCE. THE SOCIO-ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE1

Author(s): Ilie Bădescu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

Human distinguishes himself from other beings by its nucleic duality. He is also body and soul, “faulty breather” and “gifted being”. As such, he is threatened by his own identity concomitantly by a spiritual falling (a top-down dynamism) and a spiritual raising (a bottom-up dynamism). This type of analysis involves revisiting the issue of man’s identity itself and consequently requests a new theoretical system. Noological Sociology gives us the adequate categories for such a purpose. The present paper focuses on these issues and proposes a comprehensive paradigm for the upward becoming of human being within the postmodern society. This paradigm gives intelligence also for a new approach of Socio-Bioethics.

EXPRESSIONS OF MAGIC IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY

Author(s): Nicu Gavriluţă / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

This text starts from Ioan Petru Culianu's theses on the survival of magic, understood as a pre-modern spiritual discipline, in today's society. The emphasis is placed on magical (as described by Giordano Bruno) fantasies that can be found nowadays in public relations and communication, on the political scene, in the new media and in the cutting-edge technologies of today. The originality of the text consists in the interpretation of the Romanian presidential elections of 2014 as being, among other things, the perverse effect of a manipulation scenario that used fantasies of the "magical" kind. Another original element is the identification within state-of-the-art automotive technologies of certain human dreams and nostalgias that used to belong to the fabulous world of magic. The reference is to the GINA concept from the German group BMW and to two concepts (one from Mercedes and one from BMW) that allow "seeing" into the future and operation using only the owner's vocal commands. These are present-day "magical" actions: voice-based remote control, changing the appearance of the car and enhancing human sight by using automotive technology.

YOUNG PEOPLE AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION. A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS ON CRAIOVEN STUDENTS

Author(s): Vlad Ovidiu Cioacă,Stefan Laurentiu Scuipici / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The involvement of young people in politics is a recurrent topic in local public debates. Protestant movements in the last period come to confirm and enhance the interest of researchers and public figures for this issue. Through this research, without any exhaustive claims, we intend to investigate the degree of interest and participation of the students in Craiova in the political life, the perceived quality of life among them, the trust in the political institutions, their ideological positioning.The conclusions we have reached show an increased interest and active political participation of young people, satisfaction and optimism regarding the political direction in which Romania is heading, but also a notable contradiction between the self-positioning and the real ideological positioning.

THE POWER OF SPIRITUAL MANIFESTATION. SIMMEL’S THEORY OF CONFLICT APPLIED TO JUDAISM

Author(s): Mădălina Măndiţă / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

The study analyses the way in which the spiritual manifestation - the Judaism - forms in a very profound way the identity of a community. In this view we discover those key elements that become essential in the sociological understanding of a very troubled history, and we can reach this objective using the conflict theory of Georg Simmel. For this sociology of Judaism through what we can call creative conflict (with positive outcomes) we use the impressive studies of Max Weber and Antonin Causse concerning the ancient Judaism. The research of Judaism by the founding fathers of sociology permits us to read this unique people, contributing also to a right framing to understand present social realities, but also to the discovery of those decisive points that forms the immutable character of Jewish identity.

IN THE WAKE OF SLEEPING BEAUTY. EVER-CHANGING FACES OF FEMININITY IN TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING. FROM CHARLES PERRAULT TO WALT DISNEY

Author(s): Ana-Maria Niculescu-Mizil / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

Within the broader discussion about remediation (Bolter and Grusin, 1996), transmedial storytelling (Jenkins, 2006; Ryan, 2013) and transfictionality (Ryan, 2013), the present paper advances the proposal of a comparative intersectional qualitative analysis of femininity in Charles Perrault's version of the story La Belle au bois dormant (1697), Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Walt Disney and Roth Films' Maleficient (2014) based upon associations between body representations, age groups and types of character. What would Evil look like if it were a woman? Would she be slender or voluptuous? What about the Good? Would she be wrinkled or sappy? This is a series of topics the current inquiry will put to the issue adjusting the intersectionality theory. However, it is not the experience of oppression that is central to the present analysis, but rather the pattern of intersection between gender, age and good or evil nature and how body representations coagulate at such intersections.

The semiotics of the face in digital dating: A research direction

Author(s): Massimo Leone / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

The article investigates the socio-cultural meaning of the face in relation to its natural and biological features, focusing on the particular domain of mating habits. After surveying the role of the ‘face’ in the sexual behaviors of several non-human animals, and especially of primates, the article ponders on the crucial role that the face plays in the seductive discourse which precedes and accompany mating in all human cultures and also in many primates’ behaviors. It, then, deals with the transformation that these seductive patterns of signification and communication undergo in the passage from face-to-face intercourse to digital dating. Here, the gap between the necessarily realistic representation of one’s bodily face and the idealized version of it allowed by digital picture editing widens, to the point that new epistemic parameters start to circulate throughout the digital semiosphere.

Kant’s System of Judgments

Author(s): Silviya Kristeva / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

In the Transcendental Analytic of Critique of Pure Reason Kant realizes a remarkable achievement – he derives the system of logical functions of judgment. This is namely the “legal claim”, which Kant’s investigation of the judgment has to prove in front of the court of reason. For this purpose, we will undertake a reconstruction of the course of proofs on which Kant generates this system. We will start with its initial grounding – by introducing the pure concepts, which divide “the entire field of the understanding”. From here, we have to reveal the connection between the pure concepts of the understanding and the judgments in thinking. In this consideration, Kant acquires a new definition of judgment and a new establishing of its constitution. Finally, a solid proof must be presented for the logical principle and the completeness of the system of logical functions of judgment in thinking.

Colonialism, Ethnicity and the Quest for Community Development in Africa

Author(s): Temisanren Ebijuwa / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2019

The aspirations of post-colonial political elites in Africa can be summed up as the quest for development. This quest since independence, involves, in part, the pursuit of a common citizenship, shared nationality and common interests and values, the evolution of which provide the bedrock for mutual co-existence and the commitment of all to the common good. It also involves the establishment of institutions that will guarantee peace, justice, and fairness. However, the process of realizing these goals of broadening the scope of socio-political interactions have been vitiated by our colonial experiences and consequently unleashed certain centrifugal forces that have made the quest for community development in most African states a daunting task.The divisive tendencies of the colonialists created communal identities, which provided a new symbolic and ethnocentric focus for each group where none existed and thus complicated the task of welding diverse elements in each colony into a coherent whole. This became the source of the proliferation of many life threatening conflicts which has impeded the process of community development in Africa. But why has these conflicts persist in spite of the several attempts to meet them? This paper argues that the above account fails because it ignores the values Africans place on human worth given expression in their communal context. The attempt here is to explore South Africa`s indigenous unifying social ethic of Ubuntu in arriving at a humane society that has a participatory value; founded on co-operation, charity, reconciliation and justice rather than the individualism of the West. This paper will, therefore, employ the analytic descriptive method to examine the above in a manner many scholars have ignored in an attempt to develop a viable sense of community in Africa. Hence, it is expected that this paper will initiate a perspective that will challenge extant interpretation of this discourse.

Академичната автономия в контекста на съвременната университетска идея – философски и правни аспекти

Author(s): Veselina Slavova,Andriyana Andreeva,Darina Dimitrova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2019

The subject of the present paper is academic autonomy as one of the fundamental principles for the functioning of the higher education institutions. The need to examine it is necessitated by changes in public attitudes and the resulting new requirements for higher education institutions. This demands the implementation of a multi-disciplinary (philosophical and legal) approach, through which both the notion of academic autonomy and its relationship with the idea of the university are to be explored. The changed attitudes towards the notion of knowledge, motivated by a number of factors (scientific, political, economic), have an impact on the idea of its free distribution and acquisition. This calls for the creation of new models of higher education and the necessary legal regulation of the relations between the higher education institutions and the state, based on a balance between the freedom and autonomy of the academic community and the state control.

Древноиндийският философ Бхартрихари за първи път на български език

Author(s): Mitko Momov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2019

The first part of the treatise On the Sentences and Words (Vakyapadia) – Brahmakanda, of the Ancient Indian Philosopher Bhartrihari is presented. It was first published in Bulgarian in 2019. The treatise is described as one of the most emblematic products of the metaphysical philosophy of the language created in the framework of the Advaita Vedanta School. According to Professor Bratoeva, the translation of this remarkable philosophical text into Bulgarian was done by M. Patseva with professional skill. The analytical introduction to the text is a valuable attempt to bridge the ancient Indian and contemporary interpretations of the mechanism of language processes.

Petko Hristov, Anelia Kassabova, Evgenia Troeva, Dagnoslav Demski (Eds.). Contextualizing Changes: Migrations, Shifting Borders and New Identities in Eastern Europe. Sofia: Paradigma, 2015

Author(s): Stanoy Stanoev / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2019

Възбудени читатели: поезията като средство за коментар в онлайн форумите

Author(s): Orlin Spassov / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2019

The text analyses an interesting phenomenon: commentary in poetic form that appears frequently in online discussion forums. What causes the participants in the discussions to switch to poetic means of expression? Why, in some cases, are verses and rhymes saturated with obscene words and hate speech? The use of such language tactics complicates the relationship between the media and their publics, as it opens opportunities for creativity and resistance to imposed norms.

Отвъд колективните въображаеми: разкази без разказвачи

Author(s): Snezhana Popova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 6/2019

The understanding that the social imaginary is not the “opposite” of the real, but a peculiar reality, is among the most important social insights of the last century. For today century, the anxiety of the advance of the imaginaries remains. The article traces their evolution – from collective representations generated in structured communities and reference groups, through virtually formalized subjects, constituted in media, to various forms of narration in virtually collective non-entity. The focus of attention are precisely the “subjectless stories” (conspiracies, social tendencies, social desirability), the imaginary ones launched through them, and the participation of contemporary media in the legalization of arbitrary relationships.

A Virtue-based Model for Medical Ethics and Practice in Edmund Pellegrino

Author(s): Philemon Ayibo / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This paper deals with the resurgence of interest in virtue ethics in professional ethics, specifically as it applies to Edmund Daniel Pellegrino’s account in medical ethics. Pellegrino investigates in a clear manner the ethical problems of contemporary medicine from a virtue ethics point of view and offers a virtue-based ethic for medicine as an effective tool and a practical guide for confronting the challenges of modern medicine. His account builds on a thesis of the indispensability of virtuous character traits for a sound medical practice. Pellegrino’s virtue ethics offers a plausible and distinctive alternative to utilitarian and Kantian (principle-based) approaches to understanding and evaluating professional roles. It is hoped that our exploration of Pellegrino’s account will underline the place of a virtue ethics in medicine and stimulate a similar inquiry into social welfare, and into other forms of human professions and disciplines.

Modern European Separatism: the Role of the European Union and Wealth

Author(s): Veselin Vasilev / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The article is aimed at the change of the separatist discourse from ethnic self-determination to secession based on public spending and wealth redistribution. Further, it aims to explain the role of the European Union, its legislation and politics, in these processes amongst its Member States. Besides establishing that such role is both increasing and diminishing separatist tendencies due to the Single Market, legislation on regions or siding with Member States against secession, the article argues that the paradigm may change yet again to the notions of human rights, citizenship and immigration, due to the stall of economic secessionist aspirations.

Пепел и сърце – шифрите „следва”

Author(s): Lidia Denkova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 40/2020

The question “What next?” is a key one to all philosophical theories that consider causality, continuum, discontinuity, potentiality, and, more generally, probability. The notion of "cause" (aitia) and the rigid causality are based on what was said in the Fifth Book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, but ancient atomists, especially Plato, introduced the possibility of free "bifurcation of consequences", of symmetry and asymmetry of "next", which commence from an absolute new beginning. The principle of an absolute new beginning follows the interpretation of the myth of the deluge in De sapientia Veterum (1609) by Francis Bacon. The "logical pluralism" of numerous cause and effect relationships as well as the continuity principle (as formulated by Leibniz) are encompassed in two ciphers in accordance with the classical definition of cipher by Karl Jaspers. The cipher “sameness” and the cipher “change” suggest that we ask ourselves once again about Aristotle's "probable impossibility", and the starting point is the little-known myth of Dionysus, torn to pieces and restored to a new body thanks to his heart, as well as the creation of humanity from the ashes of the stricken Titans.

Homo corporalis as the communicated muse and centrepiece of commercialized culture

Author(s): Hana Pravdová,Zora Hudíková,Nataliya Panasenko / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The study deals with the issue of human corporeality in a retrospective outline of the European cultural tradition and in terms of significant features of post-modern culture, post-modernism and pop culture. The authors form the premise that Homo corporalis has represented the muse of artistic imagination and the centrepiece of everything from ancient culture to the present. At the same time, they argue that Homo corporalis was at the centre of culture throughout individual periods of cultural history, and this position has changed in contemporary social, economic and cultural conditions. While remaining the centrepiece, it has now become the subject and object of commercialised culture. Based on a logical and hermeneutic analysis of relevant source materials and based on empiricism, the traits of the individual cultural epochs are defined and conceptualised within the context of broader cultural associations and artistic visual culture. The assertion is that late capitalism, the post-modern, post-modernism, and pop culture have brought about different kinds of extremes, experiments, peculiarities, provocations, attractions, etc., including paradoxicality. Creators abandoned more noble aesthetics in favour of provocation and experimentation and pop art permeated into all cultural levels, including pop culture and the media. Homo corporalis has been transformed into an individual fixated on his own image and focused on his own goals and pleasures. He is in the position of being the object of commercial interests and their products. His personal goals, attitudes and value scale are formed against the backdrop of the ethos of egoism, individualism, hedonism and narcissism.

« Love man love woman – the tale of Master Đức » : le genre comme destin sacré

Author(s): Thi Thanh Phuong Nguyen-Pochan / Language(s): French Issue: 24 (2)/2019

Through an analysis of the movie “Love man love woman” directed by Nguyễn Trinh Thi en 2007, our paper will examine how the media performance allows to demystify the “sacred destiny” fiction of the transgender male mediums within worship of Mother-Goddesses in Vietnam. This analysis is part of the gender performance perspective as well as the semio-pragmatic approach of the media narrative. It is placed in a broader context of hegemonic culture and the mediatization of normative heterosexual discourse.