Around the Bloc: Navalny Says Checked for ISIS Ties
While the authorities say it was a routine detention, activist’s supporters say he and his colleagues were singled out.
More...We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
While the authorities say it was a routine detention, activist’s supporters say he and his colleagues were singled out.
More...
Despite a reduction in the levels of corruption being the key message of the Orange Revolution in late 2004 and the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, neither were able to break the pervasive grip of oligarchs on Ukrainian politics. New ideas are needed to break this cycle. In pursuit of its democratisation, perhaps Ukraine should look to its own past rather than the West for inspiration.
More...Formation of a New Identity and Modes of Contention
The university student movement in Macedonia presented a change in the context of the country’s societal and political space. It started in late 2014 and several other movements subsequently followed. However, it was the university student movement which set some modular forms of contention that were later replicated by other movements. What does the student movement tell us about youth participation and contention in Macedonia? What is the vision that students have of their society? How do they perceive their role within it? The article aims to analyze how agency was constructed through the student protests which enabled the development of a new collective identity and the articulation of the role of students through various forms of contention. The paper examines the university student movement in Skopje between 2014 and 2016 and analyzes the forms of contention that were employed and what purpose they served. It examines the effects and the meaning of the student movement, namely the reclamation of agency by young people, their vision of society and their newly established identity as students.
More...
Deliberative democracy is embedded in different theories and approaches and represents a focal point for most current democratic theory. This article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the theory of deliberative democracy from various theoretical roots, each focusing on a different level or sphere of deliberation. I will consider how each theoretical perspective understands the role of the state, civil society and the individual. Based on a review of the literature, I theorise that the often overlooked combination of micro, mezzo and macro levels of deliberation must all be included for any deliberation to be successful in terms of political equality and democratic decision-making. In my view, critical theory has the greatest potential to include all three spheres of deliberation.
More...
Polish translation Michael Taussig's essay originally published as I'm So Angry I Made a Sign in "Critical Inquiry" 39 (2012)
More...
The local elections that were held in November 2014 stirred up considerable controversy in Po-land. The article is an attempt to describe how Poles evaluated the overall functioning of democ-racy in the context of these elections and what determinants significantly contributed to that evaluation. We examined three levels of democracy evaluation: general beliefs (Jost’s system justification), the current state of democracy (Dahl’s democratic institutions), and specific events connected with the functioning of the democratic system (the quality of the elections and the level of trust in the elected representatives). We also tested the extent to which these levels of democracy evaluation were explained by sociopolitical determinants, such as the general level of trust in people, patriotism and nationalism, or the experience of security. The study was conducted shortly after the second round of the election on a sample of 524 subjects. The obtained results show a low quality of democracy (particularly on the level of general beliefs and trust in the newly elected authorities) and reveal associations between aspects of evaluation and the investigated determinants.
More...
Nikol Pashinyan likely to be only candidate when parliament meets 8 May in second attempt to elect a prime minister.
More...
Ukraine‟s civic revolutions of the last decade were supposed to bring democratization. Highly expected were improvements in media industry and journalism education that is still experiencing follow-ups of the Soviet theory-based teaching model rather than adherence to the internationally accepted best practices. The reforms have been introduced recently with adopting of new Law of Higher Education, but they meet problems and obstacles as social humanitarian crisis is in high gear in Ukraine. The objective of this study is to analyze how Ukrainian journalism education faces demands of the time and prepares students to successful careers. For this reason, the survey method was used. An online survey was conducted considering graduates of leading journalism schools, faculties and institutes of the country regarding how they evaluate the role of practical trainings during the course of higher education. The study findings prove its main hypothesis that professional journalists value practice the most. Internships are among their priorities during studying at universities. The survey results showed that graduates connect high number of practical trainings with their professional growth. Respondents generally expressed the idea that journalism schools should model professional journalism environment as much as possible by providing students with as many practical disciplines and journalism internships as available. Positive correlation between a number of internships and successful job search among students-journalists has been discovered. The study concluded that Ukraine‟s journalism education has to be transformed in accordance to market-driven media industry of the country. Both the survey and the analytical research of this study have shown that Ukrainian journalism education still has obstacles to overcome. Among them, there are quite theorized academic process, highly bureaucratized and corrupted education atmosphere, financial and conceptual crisis of journalism and professional education in Ukraine.
More...
Report from the International Academic Conference held on 2 - 3 November 2018 in Ľvov, Ukraine
More...
Accelerated advances in genetic research constantly generate new ethical dilemmas. Dworkin described the extent of ethical controversy arising from genetic technologies. Dworkin designates their application as “a moral free fall” (Dworkin, 2002: 448), while Singer specifies the significance and possible consequences of “the reproductive revolution”, a significant segment of which is the use of genetic engineering, and compares them to “the revolution in physics which produced an atomic bomb” (Singer, 1958: 588). The application of genetic interventions opens up opportunities not only for the prevention and treatment of serious illnesses but also for the selection and improvement of human characteristics, not only the characteristics of already born individuals but also the characteristics of unborn children and future generations, i.e. human species as a whole. Although some authors consider that law is insubstantial when confronted with the challenges of the biotechnological revolution, there is an increasing need to create an appropriate legal framework for the application of genetic interventions on human beings. Therefore, more and more efforts are made at the international and the national level to define the principles and rules governing the use of new genetic technologies. Imposing legal restrictions on the application of genetic engineering is often justified by the value of human dignity. As the content of this term is subject to different interpretations, in the field of bioethics it is declared to be “useless” (Macklin, 2003: 1420). In the first part of the paper, the author draws attention to the basic ethical dilemmas underlying the application of new genetic technologies, with emphasis on the role of human dignity in these ethical debates. After that, the analysis focuses on the provisions of relevant international documents relating to the application of genetic technologies, with specific reference to the so- called “limiting” dimension of human dignity, as the ethical basis underlying the adopted principles. The paper also examines the legal treatment of new genetic technologies within the national legislations of different countries. Finally, the author analyzes the existing normative solutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, i.e. its entities: Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
More...
The constituting and internal organizing of a local community involves arrangements for total national defence and social self-protection. For this to function all the relationships based on socialist self-management ought to be fully developed. The basic human forces that make up of the system, and in particular the people associated within the Socialist Alliance of the Working People can be still more completely engaged in this task. The local community's role in defence and protection will be the more effective the more fully the working people and citizens «nil participate in the decision-making concerning total national defence and social self-protection.
More...
This article deals with the issue of civil society development in Croatia as a transitional and post war country during the 1990s. Civil society development in this time is very much related to the humanitarian crisis caused by the War and involvement of international and foreign organisations. Beside that, civil society in Croatia has a poor tradition, its development has been hindered by half a century of communism and totalitarian ideology, coupled with the lack of experience with the concept of freedom of association. In the second part of the article, using the concept of CIVICUS Index on Civil Society Project, we analyse four dimensions of civil society in Croatia: the structure of civil society; the legal, political and socio-cultural space in which civil society operates in the larger regulatory, legal and social environment; the values civil society represents and propagates and the impact civil society has on social and community development as well as on the public policy process.
More...
Head of Bucharest Muncipality Museum published an article criticized for its anti-Semitic tone, weeks after vandals damaged a Jewish cemetery.
More...
This paper discusses the different use and understanding of the concept of civil society in Serbian sociology. We analyzed The articles published in the three representative sociological journals - Sociology, Themes and Sociological Review - published in the period after 2000. The transition between the two millennia is considered to be important in this area, since the regime change led to the more straightforward direction towards European integration of Serbia, and to the adoption of the Western values and standards. In this context, civil society as a political project and the scientific concept became especially socially relevant. However, despite the expectation that scientific papers and studies dealing with the concept of civil society will be relatively numerous, analysis has shown that the concept mostly remained outside the main currents of sociological thought.
More...
The article concerns the citizens’ budget (BO), understood as one of the forms of social participation, thanks to which the residents can directly (by voting) influence the expenditure from the budget of their city/commune/voivodeship. The aim of the work is to demonstrate that the citizens’ budget (BO) is a valuable tool to learn about social preferences in the field of landscape design. In the course of the research proceedings a general BO analysis was carried out in Poland and then, on the example of projects selected in subsequent editions of BO Lublin, the inhabitants’ needs were identified in relation to shaping the landscape of their city. In particular, attention was paid to their attitude to improving the city’s aesthetics and the role of green areas in the city. Analyzes have shown that projects related to aesthetics and greenery are becoming more and more popular, while among the BO projects winning the greatest support, infrastructure tasks (roads, sports) dominate.
More...
If there were a fruitful time for sociological research, it is present time. Sociology must defend the truth whenever it is threatened, and a threat comes primarily from those who have been permanently absorbed in lust for power, from those with an unmistakable sense for the location of the money and those who find it as genuine seekers of truffles. That is how these precious mushrooms now got their most dangerous high-sophisticated exterminator. At the same time, highest social demands of a nation and fight for survival cannot stay out of consideration, all those requests that are today, because of exceptionally pragmatic, anti-patriotic aspects attacked fiercely as a romantic, old-fashioned and conservative, with a motive for globalization and foreign interests have no alternative.
More...
This paper begins to illuminate the therapeutic function of Serbian anti-war activism during the armed conflicts of Yugoslav succession. Such a specific aspect of civic engagement in the 1990s Serbia has been insufficiently explored in the existing accounts of the Yugoslav/Serbian pacifist efforts. Serbian anti-war activists perceived "sanity" maintenance as an important aim of what is normally considered to be exclusively political involvement. I draw upon in-depth semi-structured interviews and documentary sources to examine how collective enterprises, such as candle lighting, petitions, street protests and demonstrations were conceptualized as spaces of personal freedom without necessarily having specifically articulated political objectives. An inductive thematic analysis of the collected material revealed the following themes under the overarching category of therapy: staying "sane", recovering agency/empowerment, personal growth and maturation, and resistance to "psychologization". These themes are discussed in the light of complex interactions between the personal and the political through which social movements, groups and organizations, that generally tend to be perceived as disturbing elements of unrest and change, become islands of civility and creativity in a political environment marked by destruction and violence.
More...
Re-established almost three decades ago, after the fall of the Communist period, the profession of social work in Romania has been facing a range of challenges such as developing a new institutional and legal framework, social and economic transition, austerity measures, limited coverage of social services, lack of professionals from rural area, an uncertain image of the profession in mainstream society and lack of professional identity. Additionally, taking into consideration the new global challenges that affect the profession globally (human trafficking, the refugee crisis, environment issues), reinforces the need for social workers to find new strategies to manage these new social claims. In this respect, seeking international community reactions, activism can be considered a viable option to respond and find feasible solutions to many of these emerging challenges. However, considering the current situation in Romania, the activist approach is also a challenge because of the social, cultural, and institutional barriers faced by social workers. This paper presents a preliminary snapshot of activism in Romania, including the conceptualisation of activism among social workers, its potential effects in practice, motivations and barriers encountered by social workers, and stakeholders involved in social work activism.
More...