‘You Can Count On Us’: When Malian Diplomacy Stratcommed Uncle Sam

Author(s): Pablo de Orellana / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

How did North African states depict their nomadic minorities to the US during the War on Terror in the 2000s? How did this shape American policy in the region?Focusing on Malian-American diplomacy and drawing on post-structuralist analytics of identity-formation, this paper first examines how Malian diplomacy represented nomadic minorities in communication with US diplomatic and military envoys during the period 2002–2010. It is found that Mali consistently branded Saharan nomads as lawless subjects that make territory ungovernable, compromise security, and facilitate terrorism. Second, this paper deploys intertextual analysis to measure the success of these strategic communications efforts. It is found that, despite the advice of some American diplomats on the ground, by the end of 2008 Mali’s depiction of Saharan nomadism had been absorbed into US diplomacy. This subsumed Northern Malian subjects into the categories of the War on Terror, which privileged military control of subjects and territory over development and reconciliation efforts. This policy shift granted Mali influence over US policy and diplomatic support to ignore nomadic grievances. Analysis reveals the key role of identity-making and name-calling in Mali-US relations and in diplomatic communication more broadly, showcasing the potential of textual analysis methods to evaluate strategic communications outcomes.

“A remedy that suits me”: Classification of people and individualization in homeopathic prescribing

Author(s): Alexandra Ciocanel / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2016

In contrast with a conventional medical consultation, a “classical” homeopathic case taking usually ends up with the prescription of a remedy and not with a biomedical diagnostic, reflecting a specific homeopathic conceptualization of the human body, health and disease. This may be seen as one aspect of individualization in homeopathy, the approach through which the patient is not placed into a disease class but in which her/his unique features are taken into account when matching the symptoms with the symptomspicture of a remedy, the “similimum”. In this paper, I examine the double orientation of homeopathic prescribing to individualization and classification. Drawing upon textual analysis of descriptions of remedies, interviews with patients and homeopaths, and observation of consultations and seminars, I show that individualization and classification are counterparts that cannot be meaningfully discussed if considered independently. My approach is based on treatment of the various encounters of patients and homeopaths as rhetorical situations. I argue that during the homeopathic consultation a process of construction and interpellation of the patient happens through various rhetorical moves. By examining them, I show how a sort of literature effect and a specific way of organizing knowledge in homeopathy simultaneously make the general to act on the particular while the particular or a sense of “it is about you” is also accomplished during the homeopathic consultation.

“Ashamed, I’m from Here”. A Few Words on the Escape from Dignity

Author(s): Wioletta Tomala-Kania / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

“Authentic Experience” and Manufactured Entertainment: Holy Land Experience Religious Theme Park

Author(s): Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2017

Holy Land Experience is a religious theme park in Orlando, Florida. The city is home to some of the main theme parks in the United States, however, Holy Land Experience is not a typical one, and in official flyers it claims not to be a theme park at all, its role being, instead, educational. Holy Land Experience is a plaster replica of Jerusalem from the times of Christ, spread on 15 acres of land.At the same time, it is an interesting example of promoting spirituality using tools attributed to entertainment. Inside the theme park Christianity is shown offering a direct, emotional experience using imitations of Biblical places and events. Indeed, according to the visitors, the overwhelming artificiality of the place does not thwart religious feeling. At Holy Land Experience spiritual experience is merged with entertainment and a sense of America's uniqueness.

“Authentic” Rural Depopulation in Bulgaria

Author(s): Nikolay Tsekov / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

The scope and pace of depopulation of Bulgaria’s rural regions have long turned into a major social evil and have undoubtedly been a hampering factor for this nation’s development. The pace of depopulation of villages in Bulgaria throughout the last seven decades stands among the highest in the world and the trend toward its acceleration leads to a growth in the scope of the municipalities and settlement categories affected. Despite the serious damages that rural depopulation has caused to the country and to the chances of its rural areas for positive demographic, social and economic development, of ever larger agricultural regions, there are not many studies by Bulgarian researchers working in areas such as demography, geography of settlements, regional economy, sociology or economic history. The paper below presents a new approach to the study of the real pace experienced by rural depopulation along the period 1946–2011 of rural population between the censuses over the indicated period based on the dynamics found in the number of the “authentic” rural population. The shortest explanation of this term (which has not been used in any scientific research efforts hitherto) is that “authentic” rural population means the village residents who have always been rural for the entire period of the study i.e. localities that have not been administratively affiliated to cities and have never been promoted to the category of townships.

“Believe and tremble”: A Note on Margaret Fuller’s Roman Revolution

Author(s): John Matteson / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

1848, Europe’s year of revolutions, was also a revolutionary moment in the United States, for it witnessed the holding of the Seneca Falls Convention, the first formal gathering for the purpose of discussing the social and civil rights of women in America. A significant step on the road to Seneca Falls had taken place three years earlier when Margaret Fuller, the former editor of Emerson’s literary magazine The Dial, published Woman in the Nineteenth Century, an erudite and impassioned plea for female equality that had no precedent in American letters. Yet when the pioneering band of feminists gathered to ratify its Declarationof Sentiments at Seneca Falls, Fuller was thousands of miles away. The revolutionary movement to which she devoted her heart and toil that year was not the cause of American feminism, but the democratic revolution in Rome.

“Between Us, Animals” Emotional Ties Between Humans and Other Animals

Author(s): Monika Bakke / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

This text is devoted to two most frequent and yet extremely different emotional attitudes of man toward other animals. These include: apparent interspecies approximation, consisting in cramming animals into patterns of specifically inter-human relations; and, a conviction that there occurs a total difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’, which triggers fear, if not aggression, in humans. Both of those positions and the resulting practice appear to be purely anthropocentric, in effect. However, along with changing consciousness and the language we use, such anthropocentrism is weakened and becomes, in many circles, a groundless attitude, if not arrogant and anachronistic indeed.

“Investing in Children: Breaking the cycle of disadvantage” EU Recommendation – some remarks on the situation of Polish adolecents

Author(s): Agnieszka Golczynska-Grondas / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

“Invisible children” – about social situation of prisoners children

Author(s): Sonia Dzierzynska-Bres MA / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

Children of prisoners in Poland are ignored not only by researchers, but also by the practitioners connected with resocialization. There is still lack of research which would diagnosis social situation of prisoners children and institutions which would support and help them. All of this makes children of prisoners “invisible”. That’s why the main aim of my quality researches, which I had conducted in years 2013-2014 was diagnosed the social situation of prisoners families, including their children. I had realized interview both with prisoners wife’s and life partners (32 persons) and their children (12 persons), in the place of their residence. I divided tested families on such which have contact with convicted and such which hadn’t contact with him. Convicted husbands/ life partners and fathers were held in different kinds and types of prisons. The research sample were selected in differential way to capture the variability of the families social situation. Selected families were also in different social position. This allowed me to distinguish and characterize the three types of social situation in which are the families of prisoners, including children: (1) The social situation of the family focused on supporting the resocialization of the prisoners, (2) The social situation of the prisonized, which is in opposite to the process of resocialization, (3) social situation of the family focused on the reconstruction of their own social environment.

“Let Us Make ROBOT in Our Image, According to Our Likeness”. An Examination of Robots in Several Science Fiction Films through the Christian Concept of the “Image of God”

Author(s): Fryderyk Kwiatkowski / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

The paper examines representations of robots in several films: Bicentennial Man (1999), Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) and Chappie (2015) in the light of the Christian concept of imago Dei. According to Victoria Nelson, in the last 50 years artificial intelligence in pop-culture works has frequently been presented as holiness. Her interpretation can be linked with the outcome of research of scholars, who revealed that the Euro-American view on technology is deeply rooted in Christian thought. The author’s main line of argument is embedded in Noreen Herzfeld’s observation, which demonstrated the striking similarities between the relational approach to research into artificial intelligence and the relational interpretation of the notion of imago Dei by Karl Barth. Herzfeld suggests that the robots in the examined films can be viewed through a relational approach to the concept of imago Dei, which entails a relational definition of intelligence.

“Nothing Is Forbidden in My Faith”

The Metamorphoses of Radovan Karadžić

Author(s): Slavoj Žižek / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

When Radovan Karadžić, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs accused of organizing ethnic cleansing, was arrested, it was discovered that in his last years as a fugitive, he was “hiding in plain sight” as a spiritual healer, taking part in forums and lectures that gathered up to several hundred people, and writing as contributor for the Zdrav Život (Healthy life) magazine. Can we then also say that “Radovan Karadžić is Dragan Dabić”? The latter is not merely a mask of the former, but his “inner truth.” In other words, the relationship between the two is that of a genuine parallax.

“Pygmies and Sleeping Giant”: Thomist Personalism in the Social and Political Thought of Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Author(s): Maciej Was / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

The aim of the text is to uncover and describe personalist elements of Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s nationalism and distributism. First part of the text is concerned with clarifying basic notions, so—with explaining the meaning of the terms “personalism” and “Thomist personalism,” and presenting the most basic intellectual framework of Thomist personalist philosophy, which is done by the means of analyzing the thought of Thomist personalist par excellence—Jacques Maritain. The second part of the text concentrates on the analysis of Chesterton’s ideas, proving—consequently—that he was a social thinker, that his notion of nationalism corresponds in a striking manner to Maritain’s concept of social life, and his distributist views—to Maritain’s concept of the common good. The text ends with several general remarks that aim at establishing certain possible advantages this analysis might produce.

“SŁUPSKI CHŁOPCZYK” OBYWATELEM ŚWIATA – TEMATYKA RÓWNOŚCIOWA W PRZESTRZENI SPOŁECZNO-EDUKACYJNEJ NA PRZYKŁADZIE PRZEDSZKOLA MIEJSKIEGO NR 19 „SŁUPSKIEGO CHŁOPCZYKA”

Author(s): Miroslawa Mazurkiewicz / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2017

The article presents the activities of equality education on the example of the Municipal Kindergarten No. 19 “Słupskiego Chłopczyka” in Słupsk. Presented is the concept of work, examples of educational activities and the conditions that favor the implementation of educational activities. An important element in the implementation of equality education issues is to work with the wider environment in which the family occupies a significant place.

“Temor de Dios”. ¿Un modo de hablar o una autentica experiencia teresiana? En torno a la “Exclamación” 14

Author(s): Lidia Wrona / Language(s): English,Spanish / Issue: 1/2017

One of the most frequently explored dimensions of the spiritual life of St Teresa of Jesus is the complex theme of her prayer: the vibrant friendship with God. Most publications focus primarily on what constitutes an inestimable wealth for the Church, which is the mystical phase of Teresa’s prayer. But in this article the research area is the first period of the Spanish mystic’s life of faith, which is a common ground for all believers. The present analysis refers to the rarely discussed aspect of her spiritual life: the fear of God.

“The Fear of Small Numbers”? (Re)constructing Identities of American and European Muslims

Author(s): Izabela Handzlik / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

“Things Change but the Amerecano Is Here to Stay”: America in Italian Popular Movies of the 1980s

Author(s): Sostene M. Zangari / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

The article focuses on a number of film comedies of the early 1980s. In different ways, the movies rearticulate the relationship between Italy and the United States. In showing how Italians can beat Americans at sports, how they can indulge in conspicuous consumption and finally how even the United States are not alien to provincialism and backwardness, these movies express a new mood of confidence that was widely felt in Italian society at the time. However, these movies came at a moment when the Italian film industry was on the verge of its decline. Starting from the 1980s, in fact, American movies and distributors would colonizethe Italian movie market and depress the Italian movie industry.

“This Town Is Against Gender”: Bending Gender in Italian Culture

Author(s): Valeria Gennero / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

This essay describes the misrepresentation of gender theory in Italian culture and politics, arguing that the violence of the attacks unleashed against gender in Italy constitutes a paradoxical example of the importance of a category of analysis that in today’s United States has come to be represented as tame (and even tedious).

„[ ... ] tym wspaniałym Mercedesom i BMW‐uszkom trochę tu ciasno”. Reprezentacje samochodu w miesięczniku „Sukces” u progu lat 90. XX wieku

Author(s): Agata Ludzis-Todorov / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 02/2016

This article is an attempt to find out and define the role and meaning of cars in Polish society just after transformation time. The relationship between human being (user) and machine (car) is very strong, significant and changeable in time and context. Additionally, this specific type of bond appears as even more meaningful on the ground of self‑presentation and process of communication in / with the society. As we can read in Wernick, the car is a marker of identity and one of the elements, which design the sense of social status. Basing on the articles and photographs from the Sukces magazines (issues from1990 and 1991) we can observe that car was one of the most important sign, which creates media image of people who were not only successful, but also felt comfortable in the new economic, political and social conditions.This article is an attempt to find out and define the role and meaning of cars in Polish society just after transformation time. The relationship between human being (user) and machine (car) is very strong, significant and changeable in time and context. Additionally, this specific type of bond appears as even more meaningful on the ground of self presentation and process of communication in / with the society. As we can read in Wernick, the car is a marker of identity and one of the elements, which design the sense of social status. Basing on the articles and photographs from the Sukces magazines (issues from1990 and 1991) we can observe that car was one of the most important sign, which creates media image of people who were not only successful, but also felt comfortable in the new economic, political and social conditions.

„Amoralny familizm”, czyli o dezintegracji społecznej w Polsce lat osiemdziesiątych

Author(s): Elzbieta Tarkowska,Jacek Tarkowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2016

In this article the authors reflect on human relations phenomena that were characteristic of Polish society in the second half of the 1980s. These phenomena were not new nor have they been observed solely in this society. They appear everywhere and are strengthened in times of scarcity. In Poland they were made more severe by the breakdown of the communist system and the crisis connected with the systemic transformation. This was characterized by a strong dualism involving: (1) the division of the social sphere into public and private; (2) the narrowing of the social sphere to the family, a network of friends, and informal ties—a division into ‘own’ and ‘other’; (3) a concentration on the present and on immediacy, with a dislike and inability to plan, think, or act in categories of the future; and (4) disintegrational, competitive, aggressive attitudes and behaviors, with a climate of distrust and enmity in human relations, and the application of a dual ethic—one for one’s ‘own’ people and another for ‘others.’ This amoral familism, which characterizes a society composed of a collection of extended small groups built around the family and enlarged by friends, neighbors, and colleagues, is opposed to the world of institutions and is conditioned by both history and culture. The authors consider it to be factor in social anomy.

„Are you in?” – nowe formy promocji w przestrzeni miejskiej

Author(s): Blanka Brzozowska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2010

The article aims at examining new marketing solutions (“dark marketing”, buzz marketing, viral marketing) which are based on advertising campaigns in different media and the real urban space at the same time. The analysis of selected examples is based on the Henry Jenkins' concept of media convergence and the problem of negotiations between consumers and producers. New marketing solutions may become an element of an interesting game with the audience, especially if the audience can be emotionally involved in the plot. Two categories“non-place” and “out of place” create a context for this game in the urban space.