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ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE AS COUNTER-CONDUCT: THERAPEUTIC SPACES AND MEDICAL RATIONALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA

Author(s): Corina Rusu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

This study analyses the practice of medical pluralism in contemporary Romania, addressing the phenomenon of alternative medicine through the Foucauldian concept of counter-conduct. Employing in-depth interviews with general and alternative practitioners from two towns in Transylvania, and participant observations in spaces where they practice their knowledge, I describe how certain discursive acts reformulate the body and the subject-patient. Alternative therapists construct their practice in direct opposition to several parameters of biomedicine, such as the logic of diagnosis, treatment, and the praxis of patient’s visit to the general practitioner’s office, discussed in the paper. They define their approach as psychosomatic, and set-up the medical space as a confessional space, envisioning a holistic corporeality and the idea of the “inner doctor” in each patient. This conduct would supposedly make the subject “active” and “empowered”, as opposed to the “passive” patient succumbed to the diagnosis of conventional doctors.

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Musical Interests and Activities in Children’s Leisure Time in Hungary and Bulgaria

Author(s): Milena Stefanowa Velikova / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Beneficial use of leisure time is extremely important as it helps to expand the horizons for intellectual growth, emotional experiences, and personal enrichment. The aim of this study is to establish the interests and needs for music in children’s leisure time. Music is very close to the emotional nature of children and therefore could stimulate and develop their mental and physical abilities. This report focuses on the place of music and art in students’ life and discusses how much of their free time is taken up with these pursuits. It also analyses the needs of such activities. Here the results from a study in which children between 9 to 17 years of age from Bulgaria and Hungary took part are presented. The type of musical activities preferred by the children in their leisure time and the correlation between the activities of choice and cultural differences are also studied. Understanding what music activities children favour in their leisure time is important because learning combined with the arts builds long lasting social skills and educates on tolerance, creativity and discipline. This combination when used in work with children, helps children to develop ability for better self-expression, building up confidence, concentration, integration in the group, developing imagination, recognizing the good and beautiful, and increases their chances for success in life.

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Cultural Dimension of Individualism and Collectivism and its perceptual and cognitive Correlates in cross-cultural Research

Author(s): Jiří Čeněk / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

This paper reviews the current findings on the dimension of individualism/collectivism, which might be a useful tool for the comparison of different cultures and for the investigation of the effect of culture as a psychological concept on individual mental processes. The validity and reliability of the concept of the dimension of individualism/collectivism is discussed. The related theory of analytic and holistic thinking is introduced within a framework of extensive comparative research in the field of cross-cultural psychology. Several interesting research designs on cross-cultural differences in cognition and perception are described. The empirical part contains a short report of research conducted on a sample (N=92) of Czech and Czech Vietnamese university students using a scale of horizontal and vertical individualism / collectivism (Bartoš, 2010). The results do not fully support the traditional view of individualistic Europeans and collectivistic Asians.

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Church and Society. The Role of Religious Journals in the Dissemination of the Biblical Element within the Historical Banat area. 1867-1918

Author(s): Alin Cristian Scridon / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The church press published important documents regarding the religious life of Romanians from Transylvania and Banat. This publication also in-cluded details regarding the religious life of the school from Banat. The Biserica şi Şcoala magazine was published in the western historical Banat, in Arad. This was possible due to the fact that Timişoara, the most im-portant city in Banat, had a Romanian Orthodox Deanery that was de-pendent on the Diocese of Arad, before the establishment of the Diocese of Timişoara in 1939.The Caransebes Diocese’ magazine Foaia Diecezana (The Diocesan Sheet) provided the clergy and the faithful with infor-mation on Christian spirituality. Along the aforementioned magazines, there were a few newspapers which have enriched this field’s literature. Based on those covered by the study, we find that the media made an overwhelming contribution to the dissemination of the biblical infor-mation during that particular period of time.

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The Importance of Religion in America Today

Author(s): Bruce A. Little / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

The following text represents the content of a lecture delivered at “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, on April 22, 2013, by professor Bruce A. Little, Southeastern Baptist Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, United States of America. In a clear and concise manner, he emphasises the key concepts which define the American model of the relation between religion and state, as well as the extremely important social role the churches play in the American society. The author emphasises the importance of the so-called “faith based organizations” and the support they enjoyed from some presidents, such as George W. Bush.

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Festivali folklorik kombëtar dhe çështja e klasifikimit dhe paraqitjes së »vlerave më të mira«

Author(s): Ardian Ahmedaja / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 44/2014

Broad public presentation of the local music and local dance in Albania, in the first half of the twentieth century, has been relied more on private initiatives and on the interest of the most prominent international companies of time, in order to trade them. After World War II it became a central issue of cultural policies, directing greater attention to the National Folk Festival. Totalitarianism in its organization appeared, among others, in the selection of the work for two years for each edition, in the participation of several ministries in the organization, in the "scientific criteria" and "the platform" of the Festival, in the detailed instructions for the program composition, as well as in strict controls until the morning of the day of performances. To the ideologization of this extraordinary undertaking, for which were being mobilized great human resources and materials, were added backstage and personal preferences of the organizers, who made impossible the participation of a part of popular artists. Despite the changes after 1990, phenomena and problems of the monistic period were continuing to exist. The fact that participants are not still considered as equivalent partners, but only as executants of the organizers, specialists and juries’ ideas, has not been thematized on public and scientific debate, yet. The changing of this attitude, will help to find more appropriate forms of public presentation of local traditions, treating them not as consumption of goods, but as an important part of daily life and to encourage more individuals to practice them.

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Trashëgimia Kulturore në Kontekstin Shoqëror të Aktualitetit sot

Author(s): Drita Halimi-Statovci / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 44/2014

The cultural heritage is displayed and treated as an anthropological phenomenon, which holds together people and society in general. It gives to them identity, whether to an individual, community, a nation and a whole country. Cultural heritage appears to be different natured and in the today's actuality it is estimated and treated in different ways. The power of cultural heritage, as yesterday as well as today, comes precisely from the culture, so the human culture should be recognized and valued correctly. In the paper there is analyzed the work and activity, respectively the legislation and the conventions of the United Nations Organization, known as UNESCO, the Law of the Republic of Kosova for cultural heritage, as well as the relations established between institutions, individuals and cultural heritage in modern times. In these analyzes it is included the material, spiritual, social and artistic heritage, while referencing concrete examples and investigating disparities in designations and categorizations within the heritage.

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Zadowolenie z życia a zaufanie społeczne mieszkańców miast postprzemysłowych

Author(s): Agnieszka Michalska-Żyła / Language(s): Polish Issue: 52/2015

The quality of life, from some time, is the most popular issues discussed on the social sciences ground. It is also the category which is increasingly used as one of the main elements of evaluation and comparison among countries, regions and cities. The study of life satisfaction is one of the main elements of the assessment of subjective quality of life. Analysis of the relationship between life satisfaction and categories such as bonds and social relationships, participation and trust indicate the priority of these variables on economic factors. The purpose of this article is to present the role of social trust in shaping the subjective quality of life which is understood as a generalized satisfaction with life. The main element of discussed issues is to analized the relationship between life satisfaction and the level and forms of social trust of urban residents from post-industial cities located in Poland, Russia, Turkey, Lithuania and Hungary. The interest has focused on the existed similarities and differences between cities in relation to the presented issues.

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Urban Culture, Religious Conversion, and Crossing Ethnic Fluidity among the Bulgarian Muslims (“Pomaks”)

Author(s): Milena Benovska-Sabkova / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

As a field of culture, the family enterprise shows that in the current European societies the economic opera-tion does not proceed only from a purely rational point of view and that notwithstanding the common speaking of globalization, the local may be a prerequisite for successful economic development. My objective has been to show, proceeding from an example from a small Bulgarian town, that the family enterprise is a field of culture in which the observed phenomena are strongly influenced by the social inclusion of the en-terprise and by its tie-up with the context of the urban environment. I shall investigate in what way local social and cultural resources are intensively used in the process of setting up and functioning of a family enterprise from the sphere of hoteldom and tourism in the town of Belogradchik. I intend to study whether these resources are conducive to the economic prosperity of the firm. Another research objective is to estab-lish the manner of identification of the enterprise with the town, with the region and the local culture by way of the services provided (tourist and restaurant). I shall look for an answer to the question of how the enterprise’ working realm fits in the concrete cultural, historical and social context of the town.

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Književnost i društveno-humanističke znanosti: sociologija, antropologija i historija između čitanja i pisanja

Author(s): Petar Odak / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2016

This paper analyzes relation between theoretical register of social sciences and humanities with that of literature and literary criticism, using examples from sociology (Nisbet's concept of sociology as an art form), anthropology (Geertz's interpretive anthropology) and history (White and LaCapra's critique of positivist historiography mainstream). Literature and social sciences and humanities, although dealing with material of different nature, share, to a large extent, a process of imagination: that is a category of writing. With literary theory, we are dealing with category of reading – reading that is not confined to text, but is also a reading of context: culture or society. Social sciences and humanities should not abhor these bonds; on the contrary, they should accept and use them, without fear that these connections will annihilate delimitation between the two mentioned registers, literary and scientific.

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“Turbo folk rules!”

Author(s): Irena Šentevska / Language(s): English Issue: 02/2015

This paper addresses the role of (neo) folk music industry in the symbolic divisions and identity ‘reshaping’ (national and cultural) of the post-socialist Balkans, with an emphasis on official policies and popular attitudes in two countries, Serbia and Bulgaria. Turbo-folk and chalga, both colloquial but widely adopted terms for ‘modernized folk music’, may be perceived as two names of (more or less) the same phenomenon, which has many counterparts and local varieties throughout the world. The field of popular culture in its ‘post-socialist’ discursive framework is all too often excluded from academic considerations, in spite of its power and efficiency in forging, adopting and disseminating the ideological stereotypes underlying the deep social divisions and ethnic conflicts (not only) in the Balkans. This paper argues that both for its overwhelming presence in the lives of ‘ordinary people’, and for its associations with the national culture and identity, folk music is subject to exceptionally intense processes of manipulation, according to the ideological, cultural and economic (political) interests of the current elites – thus becoming a powerful and malignant vehicle of symbolic divisions on both national and international scales – in spite of (or perhaps due to) its festive and Dyonisian veneer, probably nowhere so eagerly exploited as in the Balkans.

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Имя собственное "Иван" как национально прецедентный феномен

Author(s): Tat'jana Michajlovna Gorškova / Language(s): Russian Issue: 2/2014

The article presents the results of the analysis of the system-structural organization of the precedent name Ivan included into the cognitive base of Russian lingvo-cultural community (according to the data of the chain associative experiment). The precedence of anthroponym is caused by its multidimensional connections with phenomena of Russian culture, first of all with works of folklore.

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Representations of sexuality in the Slovak media – the case of politics and violence

Author(s): Gabriel Bianchi,Jana Fúsková / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2015

The media form just one of the main discursive arenas in which normative forms of sexuality, including scripts, are constructed. This article reports on the results of an analysis of sexual themes in the Slovak media focusing particularly on the political and violent contexts in which they occur. The research was conducted on electronic media (public service television and Markíza, the most popular commercial channel in Slovakia) and also print media (Nový čas and SME, the most widely-read tabloid and non-tabloid daily newspapers respectively). The period monitored was the years 2005/2006 and 2012/2013. Quantitative and qualitative research was performed on the media items. The results show that discussions of sexuality underwent marked differences in the seven-year gap and that there are differences in the electronic and print media as well. Media type is also important with differences evident in public service vs. commercial and tabloid vs. non-tabloid. The findings are discussed in relation to the potential consequences for quality of intimate and sexual life, sexual health and intimate citizenship.

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Temeljne značajke teorije potrošnje u djelima Jeana Baudrillarda, Pierrea Bourdieua i Georgea Ritzera

Author(s): Sanja Stanić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2016

The paper presents elements of the theories of J. Baudrillard, P. Bourdieu, and G. Ritzer that are relevant for the context of the development of social thought on the phenomenon of consumption. Although the three authors held different perspectives on consumption, they shared the notion of an increasingly important role of consumption in the time and society in which they acted. In their work, consumption was analysed as a salient determinant of social life. The theories of those authors are presented here as dominant within the given periods of the development of social theory on consumption. Baudrillard recognised consumption as a new and important issue, and his criticism of the consumer society was far ahead of the time in which he wrote. In his view, consumer goods are signs and consumption is a type of language. In analogy with Marx's concept of means of production, Baudrillard proposed the concept of means of consumption as consumer sites that are a synthesis of abundance and calculation. Bourdieu constructed a class theory of consumption based on cultural practices. He considered consumer behaviour to be an expression of class position. Class is determined by its position in the system of differences or distinctions from other classes based on cultural practices, objects, and taste. In Ritzer's work, consumption becomes a powerful driving force of contemporary society, with the ultimate purpose of profit-making. He explained changes in contemporary society by the process of McDonaldization that has been increasingly spreading to various areas of social life. Transformations in the structures and interpersonal relationships in contemporary society were explained by Ritzer as a change from the old to the new means of consumption. The concluding part of the paper provides an overview of the three authors' theories in the context of consumer society, emphasising their contribution to the body of theoretical analyses of the phenomenon of consumption.

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What Goes on Behind Mason and Dixon’s Backs in Pynchon’s Novel?

Author(s): Stipe Grgas / Language(s): English Issue: 3-4/2015

The departure point of this article is the author’s opinion that every new encounter with a previously read text provides an occasion on which to re-think the act of reading, and to question disciplinary knowledge. After a brief description of his earlier reading of Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon, which was focused on the issue of territoriality, the author begins his description of his latest encounter with the text by indicating the context in which it occurs, and concludes that in his first reception of the book he failed to note what he now recognizes as the novel’s core theme. Designating Pynchon’s economic thematics as that core, he analyzes it and shows how it produces a number of epiphanic moments in the text. In his conclusion, the author argues that the description of these epiphanic moments, or of what takes place behind the backs of Pynchon’s protagonists, can be articulated if one incorporates certain discursive procedures from Karl Marx’s writings into the analysis.

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Negotiating the Past: Some Issues of Transmission of Memories among Estonian Young People

Author(s): Raili Nugin / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2016

All across Europe, the past has always played a significant role in youth activism and continues to do so, though in different countries the extent of this role may vary. This particular article deals with the question of how the issues of the past resonate in the lives of young people in Estonia. During recent decades, the tensions between hegemonic and alternative pasts have been a source of discursive as well as physical combats among the different socio-cultural groups in Estonia and are often loaded with a political and ideological burden. In 2007, these different understandings peaked with street riots, mostly dominated by young people. Thus, understanding the mechanisms of how young people make sense of the complicated past can tell us also a lot about the reasons behind their political activism (or lack thereof). The article is especially keen on exploring the questions of mechanisms of transmission of memory — how the past is socialised in different contexts (schools, museums, home), and how difficult pasts are dealt with and negotiated in groups of different ethnic and cultural background. By doing so, it will contribute to the theoretical discussions on relations of hegemonic past and communicative memory, how in different cultural contexts the hegemonic past is moulded or contested. It will be argued that young people actively contextualise and rework the matters of the complicated past in their everyday contexts. Neither hegemonic discourse nor the communicative past is absorbed without questions but constantly negotiated.The dataset of this article consists of in-depth individual (84) and group interviews (5) predominantly with young people, but also other meaningful adults in the youngsters’ lives: their parents and grandparents, teachers and the like. In addition, participant observations are used as background data. The sample involves both ethnic Estonians and Russian-speaking minorities.

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Gyvenimo kokybė kaip žmogiškojo kapitalo paradigmų visuma

Author(s): Rita Aleknaitė-Bieliauskienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2015

This article presents one component of quality of life – public cultural, spiritual and moral values-dimensional survey. His goal – to reveal the paradigm of human capital as a major qualitative dimensions, creating quality of life of the whole. Problem: The quality of life is not improving, because it is not linked with personal values and dimensions. The object of research – the cultural indices objective and subjective test. The results confirm a low human potential of equity securities, which do not provide a higher quality of life parameters.

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Teorijska konceptualizacija kolektivnih sjećanja u sociologiji i srodnim društvenim znanostima

Author(s): Andriana Benčić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2016

Collective memory is a trans-disciplinary concept and scholars have approached it from the fields of sociology, history, political science, psychology, among other disciplines. Thus, social memory studies are an intellectually far-reaching field, but nevertheless, or perhaps as a result, also an evasive field without clear focus and efficient analytical evaluation of research problems as well as research subjects and approaches. The aim of this paper is to examine the conceptualisation of collective memories in relation to sociology and related social sciences. Therefore, the goal is to explain and sharpen collective memory theoretical tools for their further use in theory and research. Accordingly, we will examine definitions offered by J. Olick (Olick, 1999; Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi, & Levy, 2011b), A. Confino (1997) and B. French (2012). Collective memories, therefore, could be seen as changeable and dynamic images of the past, mediated through concerns of the present, in response to various social and political factors. Besides, collective memories are a social construction constituted through a multiplicity of circulating sign forms, with interpretations shared by some social actors and contested by others in response to heterogeneous positions in a hierarchical social field. In the so-called memory battlefield political elites often play a predominant role, while others confront difficulties in articulating their voices.

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ДА ЛИ ФРАНКОФОНИЈА ПОДРЖАВА КУЛТУРНУ РАЗНОЛИКОСТ?

Author(s): Ana M. Vujović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2016

Accepting reality of cultural diversity represents the basis for accepting the right of cultural identity, of individuality and selfness in expressing the culture of each human community. In this paper, we are presenting the basic features of the concept of cultural diversity, which has encountered positive reactions in a greater part of humankind and has become one of the reasons why some countries decided to become members of the International Organization of la Francophonie (OIF), which successfully illustrates the respect of these values. OIF is definitely one of the best examples of diversity, and this is in every sense: lingual, cultural and economic (according to the level of development and economic status), political (there are all forms of managing the country), religious, etc. We are talking about globalization, which, apart from economy and politics, includes culture, which can be understood as a guard and challenge for Francophony, because it is closely connected with the meaning of globalization, which refers to the relation between identity, culture and communication (and this is in the domain of basic activities of International Organization of la Francophonie). OIF has become a well-structured institution with operators whose activities have been precisely defined and with clear aims grouped into four missions: promoting French language and lingual and cultural diversity, promoting peace, democracy and human rights, supporting education, higher education and research work, developing solidarity and cooperation for sustainable development. Considering the fact that accepting the values on which this organization is based and its basic aims is not opposite to the ones our society, at least declaratively, stands for, we should carefully be focused on the advantages our country would have from a stronger connection with it.

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Literary and Cultural Exchange: translation trends in the Nordic and Baltic countries

Author(s): Kathleen Easlick / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2014

Translation practices in countries where the national language makes up a small percentage of the total languages in the world reveal an interesting literary-cultural relation between the source and target language communities. Increasingly, English has become the world language of translation, often used as both the main source and target language. Within the Nordic and Baltic countries, we find a literary field that provides a fitting environment for translations between the national languages. This paper aims to investigate the translation practices occurring between Estonia and the Nordic and Baltic countries and its correlation to the sharing of cultural solidarity. Translation practices between Estonian and the other Baltic and Nordic languages will be the primary focus of this paper, with a secondary focus on the use of English as a major language of translation. This paper presents the translation trends from 2006-2008 based on the data collected from UNESCO’s Index Translationum. Overall, this paper aims to investigate what these translation trends reveal about the current socio-cultural relations between the source and target culture.

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