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The conference titled ‘It Has Happened Before, It Will Happen Again: The Third Golden Age of Television Fiction’ was a media and television studies event held in the fall of 2008.
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In this article, a comparison is made between economic and identity explanations of preferences toward EU membership in the Czech Republic. This research demonstrates that economics rather than identity is a more powerful explanation of public opinion on accession. With regard to economic explanations of public support for integration three models are examined – a winners and losers model, an international trade liberalisation model, and a foreign direct investment model. A comparison of these three models shows that support for accession was primarily based on attitudes toward foreign direct investment. Moreover, contemplating employment opportunities within the EU following accession was also an important factor. Contrary to previous research the empirical evidence presented in this article suggests that being a winner or loser in the post-communist transition process was not the strongest factor explaining popular support for membership. The results presented should not be taken to imply that instrumental rather than ideological or affect- based motivations determine general attitudes toward integration. On the specifi c question of vote choice in the accession referendum instrumental economic considerations were most important.
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A problem in educational attainment research is that measures of association, and not measures of inequality, have been used to observe inequality in the distribution of higher education between classes. While the statistical association between class and education in many countries has been relatively stable, measures of inequality applied to the same data show a marked reduction of inequality in the distribution of higher education over time. This is a result of reduced bias in the allocation mechanisms, most likely facilitated by the increasing provision of higher education. Decreasing inequality means that the conclusion in the literature that egalitarian educational reforms have been ineffective lacks empirical support. One reason why measures of inequality have been overlooked in most educational attainment research may be the fi rm but unfounded belief in the ‘margin insensitivity’ of loglinear measures. They are assumed to capture the association net of changes in the marginals of the class-by-education table, thus refl ecting the ‘true nature’ of the allocation mechanism in recruitment to higher education. This notion can be shown to be a logically untenable deduction from the property of loglinear measures of being insensitive in relation to one specific kind of change in the marginals, to the claim that these measures are insensitive to marginal changes in general.
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This article aims to show how eight women, most of them with higher education, experienced, perceived, and understood birth care in the context of the post-socialist transformation in the Czech Republic. It is based on narrative interviews and a thematic analysis of them. From a description of women’s birth-care experiences the author finds that women are most critical of the behaviour of health-care workers and the lack of communication provided by the system. Discussing the narrators’ birth-care requirements she notes the strategies women use to attain the form of care they wished. Finally, the author observes that the women she interviewed exhibit diverse understandings of birth care, on which basis the author identifies five distinct notions of birth care that differ in three key aspects: (1) women’s attitudes to medical interventions; (2) their awareness of birth care; (3) their subjectivity and position in relation to birth-care providers. These ranged from complete acceptance of the way in which birth care is provided, to notions that are critical but accepting of medicalised care, to a rejection of the medical model of birth care and the assumption of ‘a responsible consumer’ subjectivity. The article in particular looks at women’s disillusionment with birth care and interprets it in relation to clashing ideas about the relationship between birthcare provider and user associated on one hand with the socialist past and on the other with neo-liberal discourses on health.
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Why is aesthetics important to Wittgenstein? What, according to him, is the function of the aesthetic? My answer consists of three parts: first, I argue that Wittgenstein finds himself in an aporia of normative consciousness – that is to say, a problem with regard to our awareness of the world in terms of its relation to a norm. Second, I argue that the function of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic writings is to deal with this aporia. Third, through a comparison with Friedrich Schlegel’s writings on allegory, I try to show that the way in which Wittgenstein resolves the aporia renders him a Romanticist philosopher. The point of an aesthetic interaction, for Wittgenstein, is that it can render clear what cannot be described without running against the walls of our cage: the absolute. Through aesthetic interactions we are able to (indirectly) access a ground for norms by which we experience ourselves as unconditionally bound.
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European agriculture has recently undergone important changes connected with the reorientation of EU policy towards regional, recreational, and land-use subsidies, and owing to the internal divergence in agriculture itself, which has led to large ‘industrial’ farming companies on the one hand and small, ecological farms on the other. During the period of transformation, the Czech agricultural sector has been forced to confront these changes and full stability remains a long way in the future. Transformation has thus brought both advantages and disadvantages to all the players involved. The former include the existence of large-scale farms, relatively highly skilled workers, and a cheap labour force, which make Czech agriculture competitive on a European scale. On the other hand, Czech attitudes towards work and respect for the property of others are inadequate; production efficiency and quality are low, whereas the expectations of farmers are high. Czech entrepreneurs have opted for relatively strict, unsocial, win-win strategies and understand their business simply in terms of material profit. Conversely, Western businessmen active in the Czech Republic more highly value the long-term profit, social ties and the symbolic functions of agriculture, though that does not mean they would not prefer ‘industrial’ forms of farming. The main problem of Czech agriculture is thus the absence of family-type farms rooted in their local, social environment, and there is only limited potential for this to develop. Unfortunately, this fact creates the threat of a ‘two-speed’ European agriculture: the Western model, combining both small and ‘industrial’ farms, and the Eastern model, focusing solely on extensive large-scale farming.
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This study looks into the culture of nursing professionals in the present-day Czech health-care system at a time of personal, generational, and educational transitions (reforms), which have driven a change of organisational-cultural means in the relationship between two key professions: doctors and nurses. The article presents the results of a biographical study of nurses, paying detailed attention to their emotional labour in cooperation with doctors in accident and emergency ward settings. The study draws on the concept of organisational culture in practice/action, on a Goffmanian and Garfinkelian ethnomethodology of scripts of interaction (rules, norms) in order to reconstruct the feeling rules that govern a nurse’s emotional display and her role in cooperating with doctors. The article stresses the importance of emotion management as a substantial part of the gendered professional identities of health-care workers and discusses the situations when nurses’ subordinate status requires a kind of stressful emotion management to keep the doctor-nurse professional relationship intact, which is not required from doctors. The study also presents a variety of coping strategies or practices normalising these morally questionable feeling rules and norms, which guide action as an integral part of the ordinary practices of the social organisation of the nurse’s occupation in hospital settings.
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Tottenham Hotspur football fans are victims of regular antisemitic abuse from opposition fans. They are commonly referred to as “Yids.” Interestingly, Tottenham supporters appropriated the Jewish image and embraced it as part of their fandom identity. They have been using symbols and content associated with Jewish identity, even if their club has never been a Jewish organization, and the vast majority of them are not Jewish. The objective of this paper is to describe and explain the main characteristics of the phenomenon of what I call the “Jewish identity” of the fans. The research presented in this paper was based on sociological and anthropological qualitative methods; above all—in-depth interviews with the fans and participant observation in the stadiums during Tottenham games. The analysis and interpretation of the material collected for the study allowed me to explore the questions of “how,” “why,” and “what” happens in the stadiums (and outside the stadiums) from the perspective of the fans in the context of their “Jewish identity.” I particularly focus on the mechanism Tottenham supporters use to manage and fight stigma and investigate how different groups of fans have created different narratives around Jewish identity to make it meaningful for them.
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Welfare states in Europe are facing major challenges today. Some have even announced the end of the welfare state. By contrast, civil society has been assigned a greater share of responsibility in these states. The key challenge is to balance divergent interests, or at least to provide approaches that enable learning to live with these conflicting interests. Thus, civil society plays a great role for welfare states in Europe. There are many opportunities for citizens and civil society organizations in Europe to voice their opinion and participate in the processes of policy making in order to strengthen freedom and democracy as a guarantee that the welfare state will be run well. Freedom and civil society are two sides of the same coin. This can be illustrated by developments in Eastern European and Western countries. While civil society in Eastern European countries is primarily characterized by its striving for political rights, particularly during the transformation process (freedom from authoritarian suppression), in the Western European states, civil society organizations primarily focus on representing societal interests and engaging in and providing relevant services for modern societies (freedom to achieve social improvement). The authors argue that these two roles of civil society are closely interlinked: If civil society succeeds in enforcing the rights of citizens, it must then be determined how it can continue to pursue its goals in an organized way. As part of this transformation process, civil society has a great potential to stabilize European welfare states. It provides a variety of approaches as to how welfare states can negotiate diverging, or even conflicting, interests, or rather how public and civil actors can live with these differences. This chapter aims to illustrate the linkage between the two functions of civil society and points out the resulting chances and challenges.
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In this study I look into the behavioral pattern of the “Greek” merchants who came to Moldavia and settled in its capital, the town of Iași. The merchants were attracted by its geographical position: at the crossroad connecting centres in Transylvania or the Danube, ports of the Black Sea and towns of Poland. Because they dealt with regional trade for various merchandise, the merchants chose to invest in land, houses, stores and cellars located in the most relevant streets within the two commercial cores of the town, where they shared the space with many craftsmen, boyars but also monasteries. Whereas they represented an economic force and had money, some merchants made efforts to become boyars by purchasing villages and obtaining offices. Others chose to stay loyal to the urban world, and kept their properties across several generations and maintained their line of business. It was, thus, a very dynamic and ever-changing society, which allowed an easier transition from the structures specific to the late medieval world to the ones of modernity.
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With the Covid-19-induced situation in the summer term 2020, instructors at campus universities were confronted with the need to radically modify their face-to-face teaching practices. Switching to teaching fully online, they needed to cope with an oftentimes little chartered pedagogical territory, adapt to online distance education practices and do so in a very short time. As part of an institutional evaluation of the summer term, this study draws on the responses of n = 29 instructors who reported zero years of prior experience with digital teaching at the outset of the summer term at one German university. It provides evidence on the kinds of tools that they used in their teaching, the most important learning experiences they identified and the elements they would like to modify in their future teaching.
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This paper attempts to answer the questions of how present perception and conceptualizations ofeveryday life in the city recreate representations of the past and the image of a long demolishedneighbourhood of a workers’ colony, and how this image is used as a “mnemonic device” when narrators seek to respond to the perceived socio-spatial problems. We deal with what we call “oppressedmemory” of a neighbourhood that does not exist in its “memory form” anymore, but is, though, livedas a communal memory space and used as a memory device to respond to the perceived current social and spatial problems of the city of Pilsen and beyond.
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tolerating bullying humour in order to belong at work
Our study examines the impacts on workers when organisational humour is repeated,sustained, dominating, and potentially harmful, and thus can be considered to be bullying. Inan ethnographic study of an idiosyncratic New Zealand IT company, we observed humour thatwas sexualised, dominating, and perpetrated by the most powerful organizational members.We argue that the compelling need for belonging in this extreme organizational cultureinfluenced workers to accept bullying humour as just a joke and therefore acceptable andharmless even when it contravened societal workplace norms. Our contribution is inidentifying and extending the significant theoretical relationship between workplace humourand bullying that, to date, is not well-explored in organizational research.
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Istraživanje javnog mnijenja u BiH na temu homofobije provedeno je tokom maja mjeseca 2013. godine na reprezentativnom stratifikovanom uzorku od 1010 ispitanika_ca, s ciljem utvrđivanja stepena homofobije u bh. društvu. Ciljevi istraživanja su saznajni i pragmatički, jer se, osim što se dobija uvid u opću strukturu ispitivane pojave i njenu eksplanaciju, otvaraju mogućnosti za različite oblike aktivnosti s ciljem smanjenja stepena homofobije u društvu. Glavni rezultati istraživanja ukazuju da, generalno, postoji nizak stepen senzibilizacije opće populacije prema LGBT osobama – mali broj poznaje probleme sa kojima se ova populacija susreće kao i zakonsku regulativu koja se odnosi na ovu oblast. No, mogu se naći i rudimenti tolerantnosti budući da više od 90 % ispitanih ne bi vršilo fizičko ili verbalno nasilje nad ovom populacijom, a ¾ ga ne bi posmatralo pasivno, odnosno pomoglo bi žrtvi nasilja. Kada je o stepenu socijalne distance riječ, dobijeni su, uslovno rečeno, raspolućeni odgovori ali je stepen odbijanja ispitivanih oblika socijalne interakcije – komšijskih odnosa, poslovnih i prijateljskih – veći od njihovog prihvatanja. Istraživanje je pokazalo da su LGBT osobe najmanje prihvaćene / prihvatljive kao prijatelji, potom kao šefovi na poslu, zatim kao radne kolege i na kraju kao komšije. Iako se po skali socijalne distance komšijski odnos posmatra kao socijalno bliži u odnosu na poslovne odnose, te se, ako je određena grupa u društvu odbačena, tu dobijaju i veći stepeni socijalne distance, u slučaju našeg istraživanja to nije bio slučaj. To je vjerovatno posljedica činjenice da se komšijski odnosi mogu dijelom izbjeći, dok poslovni odnosi pretpostavljaju svakodnevnu interakciju tokom radne sedmice i svojevrsnu etiku kolegijalnosti. Prijateljski odnosi, u koju osoba ulaže čitavu svoju ličnost najmanje su prihvaćeni / prihvatljivi za naše ispitanike i ispitanice. Porodične odnose, kada se kroz njih prelomi tema seksualne orijentacije, ispitivali smo kroz prizmu interakcije roditelj–dijete budući da je riječ o dugotrajnom, emotivno prenapučenom odnosu koji traje čitav život. Rezultati pokazuju da bi roditelji pokušali da izbalansiraju odbacivanje LGBT tema iz svog porodičnog miljea, u isto vrijeme održavajući kontakt sa djetetom koje je drugačije seksualne orijentacije, različitim taktikama – daleko najčešće ubjeđivanjem, potom prihvatanjem, podrškom a na kraju i batinama. Kada je o coming outu riječ, tj. javnom manifestovanju drugačije seksualne orijentacije, tu su dobijeni odgovori koji u natpolovičnoj većini ukazuju na odbijanje. To se naročito pokazuje za ljubljenje na javnom mjestu, što je za ¾ ispitanika_ca neprihvatljivo, dok je npr. promjena spola manje neprihvatljiva (za ukupno 59,5 % ispitanika_ca), vjerovatno jer se dešava „unutar četiri zida“ (ovog puta hirurških ordinacija). No, kada je riječ o paradi ponosa, dobijeni su više nego zanimljivi podaci. Iako je u društvu stvorena lažna slika da su faktički svi građani_ke BiH protiv održavanja ove manifestacije, da u njoj vide provokaciju, naši ispitanici_e su imali podijeljeno mišljenje, što vjerovatno odražava ideološke i druge polarizacije koje postoje u društvu. Ohrabrujući je podatak da 65,7 % ispitanih smatra da homoseksualne osobe treba tretirati jednako kao sve druge građane_ke, s upozorenjem da se radi o prihvaćenosti na apstraktnoj ravni, a ne u kontekstu neke konkretne socijalne interakcije kao što je to bio slučaj kada smo mjerili stepen socijalne distance. Iako se iz istraživanja može nazreti postojanje homofobije u bh. društvu, činjenica da su na neka pitanja dobijeni pozitivniji odgovori ili je uočena podijeljenost u mišljenjima ukazuje na to da su u društvu prisutni rudimenti tolerantnosti prema Drugom i Drugačijem, koji mogu poslužiti kao osnova za dalji rad na edukaciji, senzibilizaciji svijesti i promociji vrijednosti otvorenog i tolerantnog društva. Tako je stepen obrazovanja bio najznačajniji prediktor kada je o izraženom stepenu homofobije riječ. Što su ispitanici_e obrazovaniji, to su u većoj mjeri imali pozitivnije i otvorenije stavove. To su potvrdili i dobijeni stepeni statističke značajnosti utvrđeni faktički pri svakom pitanju kada smo utvrđivali njegov odnos sa nivoom obrazovanja. Posebno je bitno podvući da su samo fakultetski obrazovani u natpolovičnoj većini prihvatali različite oblike interakcije sa LGBT osobama (komšijske, poslovne i prijateljske). Fakultetski obrazovane osobe također u većoj mjeri navode da poznaju neku homoseksualnu osobu, i ovo poznavanje u kombinaciji sa većim stepenom obrazovanja svakako doprinosi liberalnijim stavovima. Također, spol se pokazao, nakon obrazovanja, kao statistički najznačajniji faktor koji utiče na stepen homofobije. Žene su pokazale liberalnije i otvorenije stavove u odnosu na muške ispitanike, s tim da su oni u procentualnom smislu manji u odnosu na faktor stepen obrazovanja. U statistički značajnoj mjeri su pokazale manji stupanj socijalne distance prema svim oblicima socijalne interakcije koji su ispitivani, u većoj mjeri bi prihvatile seksualnu orijentaciju vlastitog djeteta i manje su sklone verbalnom ili fizičkom nasilju prema LGBT osobama, što bi, također statistički značajno, rjeđe posmatrale pasivno (iako važe, navodno, za „slabiji spol“!). Kada je o coming outu riječ, i tu su žene pokazale veći senzibilitet, s tim da za polovinu pitanja iz ove oblasti nisu dobijene statistički značajne razlike. Tik uz spol, značajan prediktor stavova bio je i tip naselja, gdje su stanovnici_e urbanih područja pokazali da imaju pozitivnije stavove prema LGBT populaciji. I na kraju, kao značajan faktor pokazala se i dob ispitanika_ca. Iz dobijenih distribucija frekvencija na postavljena pitanja, uočena je tendencija da su ispitanici_e u većoj mjeri liberalniji i otvoreniji prema LGBT osobama što su mlađi. No, razlike su u stavovima u manjem broju slučajeva bile statistički značajne nego kada je riječ o drugim sociodemografskim obilježjima, ali su faktički na svako od postavljenih pitanja ispitanici_e mlađi od 50 godina imali liberalnije stavove u odnosu na starije ispitanike_ce. Zanimljivo je da je najmlađa starosna kohorta (18–35 godina) u nekim pitanjima imala liberalnije stavove u odnosu na narednu starosnu kohortu (36–50 godina), a u nekima ne, što je svakako povezano sa manjkom znanja, iskustva, socijabilnosti (nisu roditelji, nemaju posla i sl.) ali i većom ravnodušnošću pa i otuđenjem koja odlikuje mlađe generacije. I na kraju, religioznost se pokazala kao najmanje značajan prediktor stavova budući da su u ovom kontekstu najrjeđe dobijane statistički značajne razlike, iako u procentualnom smislu osobe koje su deklarativno izjavile da nisu religiozne imaju u nešto većoj mjeri otvorenije stavove prema LGBT osobama. No, kako je religioznost složen fenomen koji se ne može mjeriti samo deklarativnim opredjeljenjem, jer ima i višedimenzionalnu i složenu praktičku dimenziju, zbog nedovoljne operacionalizacije ove varijable i činjenice da se nije pokazala statistički značajnom, nismo je detaljno analizirali sa drugim sociodemografskim obilježjima (poglavlje br. 5). Ovo istraživanje, može se zaključiti, ima veliku saznajnu kao i praktičku dimenziju. Slična istraživanja su u BiH više nego rijetka te se otvara prostor i polje za ulazak ove teme u naučni i društveni mainstream. Nadalje, jasno se očitavaju i praktičke dimenzije ovog istraživanja, jer se pokazuje da treba raditi na edukaciji, senzibilizaciji svijesti i upoznavanju sa konkretnim, realnim Drugim i Drugačijim o kojem nerijetko imamo stav, a da se s njim nismo nikad susreli u realnom životu. Naime, skoro ¾ ispitanih navodi da ne poznaje nijednu osobu homoseksualne orijentacije. Da je edukacija bitna ukazuje i izrazito veća liberalnost visokoobrazovanih, no ostaje upitno u kojoj je mjeri moguće raditi na edukaciji osoba sa izrazito niskim stupnjem obrazovanja budući da imaju ograničena znanja i slabiji kategorički aparat na koja bi se ovaj novi, drugačiji senzibilitet mogao nadograditi. No, činjenica da su žene u manjoj mjeri od muškaraca znale da navedu koji su glavni problemi homoseksualnih osoba i koji zakon reguliše ovu oblast, pri tom pokazujući veću otvorenost i senzibilnost, uključujući i spremnost da se umiješaju i pomognu LGBT osobi koja je žrtva nasilja, pokazuje da senzibilnost i osjećajnost ne idu uvijek ruku pod ruku sa kognicijom, te da postoje načini da doedukacija i rad na senzibilizaciji obuhvati sve kategorije stanovništva. Da postoje mogućnosti za promjenu stavova o LGBT osobama, pokazuju i longitudinalna istraživanja provedena u Evropi koja oslikavaju trend mijenjanja stavova građana_ki Evrope u pozitivnom pravcu. Dok su npr. sedamdesetih godina dominirali negativni stavovi, a osamdesetih ambivalentni (no opet ispod srednjeg skora, što znači nešto bliži netolerantnim opredjeljenjima), od devedesetih godina prošlog vijeka pa nadalje istraživanja pokazuju porast tolerancije i uopće prihvaćenost LGBT osoba, s napomenom da postoje regionalne evropske razlike, razlike od zemlje do zemlje u stepenu ovih promjena.
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The aim of this paper is to present the role that onions and spa tourism play in local identity in the Hungarian town of Makó, as well as the possible explanations that cause the two phenomena to manifest differently in the local (urban and community) self-image. What the two phenomena have in common is the economic aspect, which in the past and in the present constitutes the main sector of the town, but we can see that this orientation is also perceived differently at many points. The question is relevant from an anthropological point of view because we can witness stacked layers of meaning that in some cases support or conflict with each other, and these affect both the self-image of the locals and the image of the town. The interpretive framework of the article is the theory of competing histories, incorporating concepts of tourism, festivals, identity, collective memory, and narrative research.The field of research is Makó, a small town in southeastern Hungary which is primarily known for its onion production but which a few years ago was also placed on the tourist map, on a national and international scale, in connection with the Hagymatikum Spa. This study seeks to answer the following questions: (1) what is the role of onions (agriculture) and spas (tourism) in the local identity of Makó; (2) how are the narratives of the two phenomena structured socially and historically; and (3) how are they intertwined in the endeavours of contemporary identity-construction? These questions are further interpreted through the theoretical framework of competing local histories and narratives that affect the construction of the local identity.
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This investigation relates to the professional development of in-service teachers on online teaching in K-12/P-12 schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. The main questions concerned the autonomy and support from/in schools, alternatives found and implemented. A model was developed and applied in different institutions. This article will focus on analysing the results of one Portuguese school. The study follows a Design-Based-Research methodology. The results revealed teachers have knowledge gaps regarding intermediate/advanced digital skills. Through the training course, teachers’ awareness was raised about the distinction between Remote Education and Distance Learning and some skills inherent to online teaching were developed.
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The article presents an analysis of the news broadcast on Czech public television during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Based on the concept of post-politics, the analysis illustrates how Czech Television created consensus, naturalized the measures adopted by the government, and transformed a potentially political space into one that privileged instrumental and technical solutions. The author argues that the later emergence of protest movements in Czechia may also be related to the first wave of the pandemic being presented in a consensual, post-political form in public service media. This activity prevented society from recognizing the socially unequal impact of the pandemic and the measures aimed at reducing its impact. Dealing with the question of how to represent a world that went through a rapid change, because of a pandemic, the article ends with a plea for agonistic media pluralism.
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Quantum tunneling is a phenomenon in which an atom or a subatomic particle appears on the other side of a potential barrier that should be impenetrable to the particle, given the difference between the kinetic energy of the particle and the potential energy of the barrier, the former being significantly lesser. However, if the barrier shrinks enough the particle will be able to tunnel right through it. This is among the most well-known quantum physics phenomena. Historically, physicists struggled to grasp the wavelike and particle-like duality of light and subatomic particles. The aforementioned phenomenon occurs due to the wavelike behavior of photons. Quantum phenomena, such as quantum tunneling, might appear quite convoluted, therefore a simple experimental demonstration was performed to highlight the basic mechanisms of the phenomenon in a manner comprehensible to the wide masses. The demonstration, however, is just what we are in fact observing instead of quantum tunneling – “optical tunneling”, perhaps more commonly known as Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR). This mathematically analogous phenomenon serves as a mere tool for explaining quantum tunneling while aiding our understanding of it and facilitating its visualization. The experimental demonstration shall prove that quantum tunneling is a daily occurring phenomenon and that it is possible once the barrier is thin enough. If these arguments are indeed met with a successful visual demonstration a wavelike character of the photons happens to be confirmed as well.
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