"A vallási élet elemi formái"-tól "A média rítusai"-ig: durkheimi fogalmak a kommunikációelméletben

Author(s): Eszter Bartha / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 18/2012

The essay gives a critical review of The Rituals of the Media by Lajos Császi. It seeks to showhow the Durkheimian sociology of religion can be applied to the modern communicationtheory and what perspectives such a combination can store for sociology. The mediahas a significant impact on the formation of public opinion; therefore, its rituals deservea special attention. However, the opinion forming power of the media depends on thesocial structure and the movement of the masses. Today even ordinary people can broadcastInternet TV-programmes and we have not even mentioned the technical possibilitiesoffered by the various social network sites. It is not only the technical competence, whichdetermines whether a given opinion will remain embedded in a narrow subculture or itsucceeds to move the masses, which was a well-loved catchword of the 20th century

"Arabska" czy "muzułmańska" wiosna ludów? Przemiany polityczno - społeczne w Pakistanie a arabska wiosna

Author(s): Joanna Modrzejewska-Lesniewska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2014

The massive anti -regime demonstrations in Arab coun tries that started in December 2010 in Tunisia were followed by questions about causes and effects of those revolts. Attention of the researchers was understandably concentrated on Arab countries but it seems that other Muslim countries were overlooked - the adjective "Arab" superceded "Muslim" in the name of this widespread movement. This paper aims at proving that the process that culminated in the Arab Spring have not started in Tunisia in December 2010 but in Pakistan in 2007 and 2008.

"Directiveness" as a Predictor of Religious Attitudes

Author(s): Agnieszka Turska-Kawa,Waldemar Wojtasik / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

This paper examines the relation between "directiveness" and levels of religiosity (conceptualized as the three dimensions of "closing-opening," "clericalization-secularization," and "dogmatism-permissiveness"). The model used has been empirically verified and is a consequence of previous studies proving that religiosity in itself generates both pro-social attitudes (especially in regard to an individual's own religious group) and attitudes of aggression toward "outgroups." Researchers have also demonstrated that religion can be a factor that inhibits actual aggression through values such as self-control of negative emotions or impulsive acts. This study finds that the model presented is statistically significant in terms of dimensions such as "closing-opening" and clericalization- secularization: higher directiveness makes it possible to predict higher "closing" and clericalization. This finding makes it possible to discuss directiveness as a foundation for real aggression and attitudes of discrimination against individuals or groups that pose a symbolic or real threat to the unity of the Roman Catholic community.

"E bine…, dar eu aş fi scris altfel!” Ritual instituţional şi incongruenţă epistemică în evaluarea tezelor de doctorat........

Author(s): Silviu G. Totelecan / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2018

„In a job of writing, to do it well you have to live it”, said,half century ago, the great American sociologist Charles Wright Mills. That’s not an easy task, one may argue, if you want to fully embrace it with its meanings and prescriptions altogether. I took his request on board very seriously, especially knowing that in the nowadays liquid society that kind of writing could be the (only) type of text production meant to resist a bit longer than a split-second the all-encompassing melting processes. The challenge of this paper was not to simply present various life experiences of my own, something that I have done already in my previous works,where I employed (auto)ethnography and participant objectivation as a methodological toolbox (here too), but to incorporate epistemologically, through the act of writing,distinct Lebenswelten into mine, and even to live them. Being caught up in the last years in the process of reviewing doctoral theses (which is both a pleasant and a painful task to handle), with every single PhD manuscript that I have received, I got to know (practically and epistemologically) that I had a text and (references to) alifeworld in my hands. How can one deal with such an issue? There are two possible answers: one can follow the institutional-administrative way or take the unpaved road of pondering on the intellectual craftsmanship of the (thesis) work. This time, I choose to follow a dusty and shaky path instead of an immaculate and stiff one.

"Małe Ojczyzny" Michała Bogusławskiego - film dokumentalny w służbie społeczności lokalnych

Author(s): Angelika Uzieblo / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1-2/2015

Between 1993 and 2000 Micha‡ Bogus‡awski directed the execution of hisown project in Polish Television Channel 2’s Documentary Department: a series of documentary films, ‘Little Homelands’. Over 180 documentaries weremade, portraying people engaged in the life of their local milieus: villages,towns and regions. From the beginning the goal of the working team was tosupport the efforts of those local communities whose actions were meant tomaintain traditional bonds and values, and cultural identity, while at the sametime respecting and understanding other social groups and national and religious minorities. This series, deriving from the idea of animating local culturalheritage, proved one of the most valuable set of programmes in the history ofpublic television in Poland (TVP). In October 2013, during the conference ‘LittleHomelands’ in the Holy Cross Mountains, filmmakers, cultural activists andrepresentatives of academia initiated discussion regarding how to save the workof Micha‡ Bogus‡awski and his team, as well the possibility of resuming theproduction of documentaries in the series. The conference was attended bymembers of TVP’s Board of Management and Poland’s National BroadcastingCouncil (the KRRiT).

"Na ramionach olbrzymów". Wspomnienie o profesor Elżbiecie Tarkowskiej

Author(s): Joanna Zalewska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

"Pisz mi o wszystkim dokładnie" - Rzeczywistości kulturowe w listach malarzy z kręgu Bombay Progressive Artists' Group

Author(s): Renata Czekalska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1-2/2015

This article reflects over the record of activity and experience contained inletters by Indian painters belonging to the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Groupby applying the concept of the humanistic coefficient coined by Florian Znaniecki, and understood as a tool of comprehension. It presents the cultural realities described by the individual artists and the cultural fact that the artisticgroup they created constituted, and then shows how they underwent changein direct proportion to the changes taking place in the minds of the individualpainters.

"Polska walcząca" nie tylko podczas II wojny światowej

Bogdana Nawroczyńskiego bilans walki o państwowość, ziemie i język: na podstawie opracowania Nasza walka o szkołę polską 1901-1917

Author(s): Dawid K. Wieczorek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2015

The following text is an analysis of the struggle for the independence of the Polish nation between the 19th and 20th centuries. This analysis takes an educational perspective and is based on a largely forgotten work of Bogdan Nawroczyński, Nasza walka o szkołę polską 1901-1917. When speaking about the freedom struggle one can distinguish between a more common meaning connected with military conflict, and a less common meaning connected with organic, cultural-based work. The second meaning is especially interesting due to the important role played by education therein. The organization of secret and official schooling in that period not only served to promote the spread of knowledge, but was also used for the rebuilding of the state. Nawroczyński's piece is also important from the point of view of contemporary problems and conflicts.

"Suszyć, skruszyć, zmielić, zważyć". Kino gatunków a filmy z Panem Kleksem

Author(s): Radoslaw Pisula / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 15 (22)/2016

Polish genre cinema in the time of Polish People’s Republic was in stagnation due to the sociopolitical situation. Limited access to the thriving foreign film industry suppressed a natural evolution within the genre cinema. However, the liberalization of stagnant and overly politicized rules in the communist film industry brought change in the 1980s.The government used to saw movies as a way to sell propaganda in the country. This cultural revolution was marked by the appearance of a new generation of directors, similar in some ways to American New Hollywood; rise of a VCR market and laxity of political restrictions.One of the best representatives of this progression is the Mr. Kleks movie trilogy. Adaptations of Jan Brzechwa’s cult book series: Academy of Mr. Kleks (1983), The Travels of Mr. Kleks (1985), Mr. Kleks in Space (1988). All of theme were directed by Krzysztof Gradowski. The series is a perfect example of a genre-melting pot. Something unprecedented in the Polish cinema.Although there are many radically different conventions in the story, the narrative is very coherent. The release of the first installment clearly marks the beginning of the transformation in the Polish film industry.In the article, I will present the ways in which the film genres are functioning in the Mr. Kleks movies and analyze how these highly original productions were part of a turbulent period of transformational change in communist Poland.

"The dangerous classes”: Hugo Grotius and seventeenth-century piracy as a primitive anti-systemic movement

Author(s): Eric Wilson / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

This essay discusses the historical and textual representations of piracy in the writings of Hugo Grotius, primarily De Indis/De iure praedae (1603-1608) and the Commentarius in Theses XI (c. 1600). Contrary to popular belief, Grotius, in stark contrast to Jean Bodin, was not an advocate of the constitutionally homogenous Nation-State. Rather, his central concept of divisible sovereignty, the lynchpin of the constitutional theory of his early writings, unambiguously presents us with the object of the heterogeneous State. In Grotian theory, the State may be “read” as a composite construction, with a residual degree of inalienable sovereignty accruing at each unit-level. Even if only unconsciously, Grotius describes a concurrent para-political sub-division of the state between institutional Government (the “magistrates”) and civil society, one that constitutes an operational system of governance within the Nation-State. Like his contemporary Johannes Althusius, Grotius’ theory allows for the emergence of a wholly “private,” albeit lawful, mode of authority. This is most apparent in Grotius’ treatment of the mercantile trading Company and its Privateering operations. The corporatist theory of sovereignty permits the Company’s private agents of violence, the legally ambivalent Privateer/Pirate, to be invested with a requisite degree of sovereignty. The Grotian theory of divisible sovereignty, investing the seventeenth-century Pirate band with legal personality, serves as a vital historical precursor to the quasi-statist (trans-) national criminal cartels of the twenty-first century. The Grotian Pirate/Privateer/Just Avenger, therefore, is a “nomad”: a liminal entity that simultaneously transverses both geographical and juro-political spaces, rendering him or herself in-determinable.

"This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world”: Potosí and the political ecology of underdevelopment, 1545-1800

Author(s): Jason Moore / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2010

By the 1570’s, Potosí, and its silver, had become the hub of a commodity revolution that reorganized Peru’s peoples and landscapes to serve capital and empire. This was a decisive moment in the world ecological revolution of the long seventeenth century. Primitive accumulation in Peru was particularly successful: the mita’s spatial program enabled the colonial state to marshal a huge supply of low-cost and tractable labor in the midst of sustained demographic contraction. The relatively centralized character of Peru’s mining frontier facilitated imperial control in a way the more dispersed silver frontiers of New Spain did not. Historical capitalism has sustained itself on the basis of exploiting, and thereby undermining, a vast web of socio-ecological relations. As may be observed in colonial Peru, the commodity frontier strategy effected both the destruction and creation of premodern socio-ecological arrangements.

"Ukrainian revolution" – is the scientific object or source of mythmaking

Author(s): Volodymyr Kyrychenko / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

It has passed the century since the revolutionary events of 1917, which radically changed thehistorical fate of the Russian Empire and the peoples that were part of it. Anniversaries are provides anopportunity both for fresh rethinking hundred-year-old events, and for summarizing the results of theresearches of the phenomenon revolution as a subject. The Decree of the President of Ukraine is ordered tohonor the traditions of the struggle for the independence and unity of Ukraine and the military victory of thedefenders of the native land, the creators of national statehood, the millennial history of the state formation ofour people, the recognition of the historical significance of events associated with the liberation struggle of thebeginning of the XX century and the establishment of Ukrainian statehood.The word "revolution" has integrated into Ukrainian reality with vigour, because Khmelnitchina is alreadyconsidered today by many domestic researchers mainly in the context of the revolutionary paradigm. There isthen the Ukrainian Revolution of 1917-1921, which we celebrate today. Then finally followed by a string ofrecent colored revolutions completing this revolutionary movement. There is a powerful populist taste,however, with the objective perception of this "revolutionary series". Populism is an instrument of politics, andit is simply impossible in State affairs without it, besides it falls on the fertile ground of mythological thinking.The modern era has demonstrated the inseparability of myth from society. The modern myth has begun to beperceived in a negative context as far-fetched, erroneous, conditional, fantastic, moreover, it has emerged as apolicy instrument. A political idea generates a political mythology which establishes the contact between thosewho govern and those governed. Turning into symbols, they create a symbolic space in politics, in which typesof decision-making can be realized, for which mythology becomes the most important element of this process.Modern historiography devoted to the phenomenon of revolution, is represented by dozens of contradictoryauthor's approaches, which differ from each other, first of all, its attitudinal dimension. Not only thefundamental indicators of the revolution are being debated: chronology and periodization, causes andpreconditions, character, driving forces, etc., the question of the very concept of revolution is in question. Thetheoretical views on the phenomenon of revolution with their division into methodological approaches, fromMarxist to synergetic, focusing on the search for objective truths, based on a solid source ground and adequatemethods of scientific cognition are analyzed in the article. However, the efforts of Ukrainian experts to studythe phenomenon of revolution cause many questions and criticism. Of particular concern in this sense is thepoint of view of the leading experts, whose position becomes almost official and is contained in textbooks,encyclopedias, and is being widely used. Obviously, the Soviet past has created a powerful myth about thephenomenon of revolution, made it as the value of top level it in the public consciousness. Even a largenumber of scholars are convinced that it is only way to reach new quality and radical social change. In fact,today there are scientific-research which refute the myth of the modernization significance of revolutions. It isnot revolutions, but radical reforms accelerate the development of the state in an unfriendly environment, whenthere is a need to defend the independence or to catch up with someone or even overtake.

"We are hope, you are the eternal khan.” Authoritarian regimes and protest opportunities in Central Asia

Author(s): Nartsiss Shukuralieva / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

The aim of this text is to analyze the political determinants deciding the functioning of the opposition and contentious practices in undemocratic regimes of Central Asia. The analysis is based on five countries with varying degrees of authoritarianism and allows us to trace the relations between the political context and protest activities, which in the different forms depending on the local structure of power, have taken place in all five of the countries in the region. The example of Central Asian countries supports the ideas about the patterns of protest being dependent on the type of political regime. Moreover, one may observe the growing role of Internet activism in informing and mobilizing public opinion, encouraging the expression of opinion, collecting various resources, provoking support, and building a network of relations within the civil society. Finally, the research shows that the more repressive the regime is, the smaller the opportunity for using traditional forms of protest, and in extreme cases contestation is limited to the Internet.

"Wyobraźnia i "balsam" miłosierdzia

Author(s): Marek Chmielewski / Language(s): English,Polish / Issue: 1/2017

Two metaphors: “creativity of mercy” and “balm of mercy” represent twopopes who are keenly interested in the Divine and human mercy – St John Paul II and Francis. John Paul II used his characteristic expression “creativity of mercy” for the first time in his letter Novo millennio ineunte. Then, Pope Francis, proclaiming the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy as a special time for the Church, expressed his desire: “May the balm of mercy reach everyone, both believers and those far away, as a sign that the Kingdom of God is already present in our midst!” (Misericordiae vultus, n. 5).

"Подмината от историята": Юлия Свечникова-Белковска и проблемът за маргиналността на жените в изкуството

Author(s): Milena Georgieva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 4/2003

In terms of gender studies and the history of women in art the author reproduces the biography of the entirely forgotten Russian artist Yulia Svechnikova-Belkovska (1874 - 1960) who came to Bulgaria with her husband Asen Belkovsky, her fellow-student from the Art School in Kazan, Russia, who was later to become a prominent artist. The article presents a thorough study of her life in Russia, Munich and Paris (1905 - 1906) until she finally settled down in Bulgaria (1907), as well as her life in the latter. Her life is closely related to her husband’s except for the academic schools attended by him only. Her artistic style is quite close to his, too: they share the same parallel development and eventually establish the style to be later named “Belkovsky". It contributes to the portrait and landscape painting, plenary sessions included, as well as the use of some impressionistic methods and a new modern approach to the sketch. The better use of the style, however, ​would be rather made by Asen Belkovsky as the more active and obliged one in a man’s world; Yulia Svechnikova would always remain in his shade. Still underdeveloped, the Bulgarian art marks the appearance of other women of artistic training; they were also married to Bulgarian artists, yet, in general, they didn’t aim at promotion and career in sacrifice to their husband's personal progress in a native environment. These women’s abandon of the ego and the neglect of talent could be characterized as the syndrome of the “echo-wife”, i.e., to deliberately mute one’s creativity and fully adopt the creative approach of the paragon as a man, husband and teacher, no matter of the equal good start of them both. This attitude isolates women and puts them in a marginal position at the beginning of XX century when women’s active creativity struggled for the recognition of not “essentially feminine art” only but rather to gain emancipation through the professional attributes of women’s art.

#oscarssowhite. Problematyka rasy we współczesnym Hollywood

Author(s): Patrycja Wlodek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2015

Hashtag #oscarssowhite appeared early on in 2015 as a response to whitewashing and lack of diversity apparent in Oscar nominations. History of discrimination of minorities – racial, ethnical, gender and sexual – in American mainstream cinema is a long one. Article begins with a short introduction to the history of representation of black Americans in old Hollywood and then focuses on contemporary tendencies and strategies of racial representation prevalent in movies and television.

(auto)biografie męskości / mężczyźni i autobiografie

Author(s): Maciej Duda / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2016

The author of the text asks about locality of masculinity categories. He refers to the framework theories of Raewyn Connell, Pierre Bourdieu and Franco La Cecla and postulates attempt to create local model/local models of masculinity – similarly to glocal use of Edward Said’s theory (e.g. balkanization and postdependence). Autobiographical subjectivity, research of biographies of Polish men supporting emancipatory movements and attempts to write autobiographies and biographies of masculinity included in 19th and 20th-century intimate writing and fiction texts can be the grounds for such a masculinity model.

(Auto)mapowane queeru

Author(s): Tomasz Dalasinski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 5/2016

Review: P. Sobolczyk Queerowe subwersje: Polska literatura homotekstualna i zmiana społeczna [Queer Subversions: Polish Homotextual Literature and Social Change], Wydawnictwo IBL, Warsaw 2015

(In)Communication chronophage : esquisse d’une microdystopie de l'accélération en réseaux

Author(s): Antonio Fernández Vicente / Language(s): French / Issue: 02/2016

This paper studies the techno culture of acceleration from a sociological and genealogical perspective. It is a question of micro-power that transforms the social network Utopia into an autorestrainted Dystopia. The synchronisation with the others leads us to a communication flux 24/7. Therefore, the right to communicate throughout the social network becomes a horizontal implied must in order to join in the multiples conversations in real time. The permanent actualisation becomes a necessity and the user a time consumer. In a society where time is accelerated, communication turns structurally into incommunication.

(Nie)obecne granice. Ramy konceptualizacji badań granic i pograniczy

Author(s): Marcin Debicki,Kamilla Dolinska,Justyna Kajta,Julita Makaro,Natalia Niedzwiecka-Iwanczak,Elzbieta Opilowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2017

For several years, border(lands) studies have been developing intensively in many disciplines, resulting in numerous publications and research projects as well as in a wide range of concepts and methods. Thus, borders are no longer perceived only as geographical lines separating states and communities, but also as polysemous spaces constructed in discourses, narratives around “us” and “them” and in everyday practices. Traditions of the Polish sociology of borderland can be dated back to the interwar period (Znaniecki, Chałasiński). Moreover, despite the fact that borders belonged to politically sensitive issues in the period of the People’s Republic of Poland, border research was conducted at that time. Recent socio-political events such as the migration crisis, Brexit, the rise of the right-wing conservative parties have triggered a newdebate on borders and their functions. This article aims to discuss the results of the scientifc debate on the issues of border and borderlands research and to develop a new research agenda in the light of contemporary socio-political and cultural changes.