THE ROLE OF ENDOGENOUS AND EXOGENOUS FACTORS IN UKRAINIAN MODERNIZATION

Author(s): A. A. Lavrinjenko / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2014

In this article, the author examines the problems of Ukrainian modernization policy, in the context of which the author has analyzed the correlation of endogenous and exogenous factors, with specific reference to the socio-cultural component in the modernization process. The problem of rebirth of national cultural traditions has been foregrounded, with particular emphasis on the retraditionalization of state political system playing the key role in the process of further reformation of all spheres of public life. On the basis of retrospective analysis, the author discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the Ukrainian modernization process.

Book review of Cultures of Mediatization by Andreas Hepp

Author(s): Saiona Stoian / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Book review of Cultures of Mediatization by Andreas Hepp, Cambridge, Malden: Polity Press, 2012, 180 pages

Justice, Sympathy and the Command of our Esteem

Author(s): Jacqueline Taylor / Language(s): English Issue: 44/2015

I have shown here the different roles that sympathy plays in the accounts of justice in the Treatise and Enquiry. In the former work, a redirected sympathy naturally extends our concern, and subsequently our moral approval or blame, to all those included within the scope of the rules of justice. In the Enquiry, we find this same progress of sentiments, but Hume’s introduction of the sentiment of humanity allows him to make a stronger case for the importance of those virtues that are useful, particularly the virtues of justice. The command of our esteem and our moral approval of justice secure a place for justice at the heart of Hume’s ethics. This does not entail, however, that other useful virtues are not also essential. Benevolence and the care of children, friendship, and gratitude not only help to sustain sociability, but they are essential for living a properly human life.

Новосадска неоавангарда и Отворено писмо југословенској јавности

Author(s): Radina Vučetić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/2015

Przestrzenne oddziaływanie łódzkich instytucji kultury

Author(s): Bartosz Bartosiewicz,Iwona Pielesiak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 62/2015

The paper discusses research results regarding the influence area of cultural institutions located in Łódź. The analysis includes data collected from nine biggest museums and theatres. In order to gather the information, customers were asked for their zip-codes. This method allows for surveying a large group of people and at the same time it does not interfere much with current activity of the institution. During the spring of 2012, the information about places of residence of 35 thousand customers who visited cultural institutions in Łódź was gathered.

CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AS OBSTACLES IN THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC INTEGRATION PROCESS - A LABOUR MARKET PERSPECTIVE

Author(s): Horațiu Sorin Dan / Language(s): English Issue: 15/2015

In the context of the European Monetary Union, the efficient functioning of the EU labour market is a key factor to the Union’s economic health. Consequently, after bringing relevant arguments that support the absence of such an efficient labour market and the presence of economically inefficient intra-EU migration patterns, the paper proceeds in investigating the potential cultural elements that constitute obstacles to labour market efficiency by looking at how differences exhibited along several cultural dimensions affect both the decision whether or not to emigrate and the emigration destination.

REFLECTED BODIES: WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVES ON THE MARITAL EXPERIENCE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MATERNAL BODY. A CASE STUDY OF MIDDLE-CLASS WOMEN IN SUBURBAN ROMANIA

Author(s): Silvia Butean / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Even if concepts of marriage and motherhood are subject to continuous changes and reinterpretations, women and men still marry and have children following more traditional or more unconventional patterns. My major interest in this research was to unveil Romanian middle-class women’s narratives regarding their perceptions over their own bodies and identities, by focusing my analysis on lived experiences, intimate scenes, daily practices and activities within marriage and motherhood. Qualitative empirical work was conducted in 2012 and 2015 in a post-socialist suburban neighbourhood, known as a place mostly inhabited by young, middle-class families. The analysis unfolds women’s class affinities and dispositions, their perception of the marital experience, identity and corporeal transformations, and their reflections on maternity as a transformative stage in terms of subjectivity, agency and body.

POSTSOCIALISM OR WHEN ‘HAVING’ IS ANOTHER WAY OF ‘BEING’. THE RECONFIGURING OF IDENTITY THROUGH LAND RESTITUTION AND THE NARRATIVES OF THE PAST

Author(s): Elena Chiorean / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

In this paper I examine the consequences of the 1989 political overturn in Romania on the selfhood. To this purpose, I initiate a twofold analysis: the official discourse of both socio-political systems, socialism and liberalism, and the individual’s quotidian discourse. The first one will enable a comparative view, over the ’bottom-up’ constructed realities, and the second will account for the degree of pervasiveness and naturalization of ideological views and, in this way, of a “top-down” identity construction and its configurations. One of the most apprehensible provisions through which liberalism endeavoured to institutionalize its own way of setting out reality is land restitution. Thereafter, I will discuss the way re-appropriation was experienced and its various subjectivization trajectories, but also the wider frame of the postsocialist economic transformations: rethinking work, money, the state and the interrelations between them. This particular angle of sight will disclose the mechanisms through which liberalism has deconstructed the system of socialist meaning and representation, at the same time replacing it with a socio-political order which reconfigured these meanings.

Între multiculturalism și pluralism cultural. Nevoia unei fundamentări logico-filosofice

Author(s): Ioan Biriș / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1-2/2015

Our study makes an analysis of Charles Taylor’s conception about multiculturalism and an analysis of Giovanni Sartori’s conception about cultural pluralism. Our conclusion is that the term of cultural pluralism is more appropriate to express a certain degree of cultural integration, not only the cultural diversity.

THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURAL ELEMENTS ON FISCAL BEHAVIOUR IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Author(s): Horațiu Sorin Dan / Language(s): English Issue: 16/2015

The paper aims at identifying and describing potential ways in which cultural elements are influencing fiscal behaviour within the European Union, in an attempt to find some of the structural causes underlying the fiscal issues that Member States are confronting. In an European economic environment characterized by highly heterogeneous fiscal behaviours on a national level, doubled by the membership (present or aimed) in the monetary union, understanding why Member States tend to adopt certain fiscal approaches (which sometimes are inconsistent with the Maastricht Criteria) represents a key requirement for the efficient continuation of the European economic integration process. By matching fiscal behaviour exhibited at both government and private sector levels with a set of national cultural dimensions, the study analyses the cultural / fiscal relationship, understanding its role in improving the European economic context by fostering a stronger European cultural identity that may lead to a more fiscally integrated EU.

Re-Inventing the Centre-periphery Relation by the European Capitals of Culture. Case-studies: Marseille-Provence 2013 and Pecs 2010

Author(s): Corina Turșie / Language(s): English Issue: 19/2015

The European Capital of Culture (ECoC) Program was initiated in mid 80’s, as a modality to promote the richness and diversity of European cultures. It soon became evident that the Program’s impact went beyond the cultural and political aspects and that the designation was a marketing opportunity for cities to improve image on a national and European scale, a regeneration tool in itself. ECoC is today about cities re-inventing their identities, re-narrating their history in a European context. The peripheral position, the unwanted heritage of the cities’ past, soon became elements to be exploited and re-invented. The study is focused on two border cities that won the ECoC title and their ability to use the title as a regenerative tool, in order to foster their European identity, to favourably reorient their geography and to reposition themselves on Europe’s map: Marseille-Provence 2013 (a Western Europe big city/region with an ex-colonial past and a peripheral position complex) and Pecs 2010 (a small Eastern peripheral city with a communist past). Applying qualitative content analysis on three types of documents: Application (Bid) books, official web pages and ex-post European Commission’s evaluations, the article intends to identify the narratives used by these border cities to comply with the European dimension of the ECoC project.

CROSSING THE OCEAN: IDENTITY, TEACHING, AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES FOR AN EUROPEAN SCHOLAR IN U.S. UNIVERSITIES

Author(s): Alexandru Balas / Language(s): English Issue: 17/2015

Crossing the Ocean to ‘play’ in the ‘first’ academic league in the world can have a powerful impact on a foreign academic’s personal identity, teaching styles and approaches, writing in a non-native language, and ability to conduct research on topics that are not directly linked to ethnic/national background. In this paper I explore some of these issues from three personal perspectives: that of a Romanian undergraduate student who studied abroad for one year in the U.S.; that of a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and finally, that of a professor of inter-disciplinary International Studies at a small liberal arts college in rural New York State. The paper will also tackle identity shifts as well as teaching and research challenges as an international scholar in U.S. universities. These are merely my reflections about a Romanian scholar’s (self)-discovery journey through U.S. academia.

THE "CULTURALIZATION" OF THE BODY THROUGH EXTREME MANIPULATION

Author(s): BAN Lavinia / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

Fashion addresses the body, wraps it up and articulates it into culture. Through clothing designers adjust and reshape the body, potentiate or disguise it, falsify or distort it, following the evolution of esthetic ideals. Polarizing its discourses on areas of erotic interest, fashion manipulates volumes, angles and silhouettes. Radical fashion goes even further, reviewing anatomical contours and reinventing "the human creature." But fashion isn’t simply limited to clothes. Fashion is the industry that produces body images, imprints gestures and poses, cultivates tastes, shapes attitudes and lifestyles. Extreme manipulations are not only found in clothing, but beyond, enciphered in the anatomy of the contemporary body.

TRADITION AND CONTINUITY OF THE BULGARIAN COMMUNITIES IN DÂMBOVIŢA COUNTY

Author(s): Maria TUFEANU / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2013

The folk ensemble carries on its activities at the “Matei Voievod” Cultural Centre, branch of the Târgovişte House of Culture. The group is present at events organized by the House of Culture and represents the Cultural Association of Bulgarians in Târgovişte.

За потребностите, потреблението и консумацията при социализма

Author(s): Iskra Velinova / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2004

The article discusses the use of the terms "consumption" and "needs" in official documents, literature influenced by party ideology, and in everyday life during socialism. The language at the time employed two terms for consumption: "konsumazia" - of Latin origin, and "potreblenie" - of Bulgarian. The two terms, being perfect synonyms in their literal meaning, suggested differences in different social and ideological contexts. Consumption as "potreblenie" was used as a general term for satisfying the basic needs of the population in official documents. "Konsumazia" implied an ideological nuance in texts criticizing capitalist consumerism.The article argues that the practice of socialism did not promote stable market behavior of consuming goods and services but rather hazardous buying or acquiring things or receiving favors. Thus everyday language avoided the term "consumption" in its most immediate sense as utilization of economic goods for satisfying needs. Instead, economic terms turned into euphemisms pointing out the way products were acquired.

Self-fashioning in Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: A Bourdieusian Reading

Author(s): Ebrahim Zarei,Hossein Pirnajmuddin / Language(s): English Issue: 40/2014

The aim of the present article is to investigate Alexander Pope’s self-fashioning in the light of Pierre Bourdieu’s socio-cultural notion of capitals, specifically the symbolic form. Pope endeavors a lot to gain such a prominent status as the most representative poet of his age. He garners all his artistry, eloquence, savoir-faire, family and social milieu to move towards the center of the canon throughout his life. This upward movement comprises a self-fashioning by Pope which sometimes is the means to facilitate his canonization and sometimes it turns into a goal and an end in itself for him. As the highly acclaimed French philosopher, Pierre Bourdieu highlights the importance of symbolic capital in an individual’s social status. Therefore this paper aims at shedding light on Pope’s sophisticated act of self-fashioning and its relevance to Pierre Bourdieu’s symbolic capital. For this reason, this article discusses Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, an exemplar of his self-fashioning and accumulation of symbolic capital

Popularna geopolitika: apologija imperijalne moći filmskim sredstvima

Author(s): Dražen Barbarić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 4/2015

The author analyzes the specific field of popular culture - the film industry, from the perspective of critical geopolitics, and the impact of the latter on the constitution of spatial imagination. Within the framework of the popular geopolitics cinematography occupies an important place, hence the focus on the latter appears as an important attempt to deconstruct the mechanisms of creation and implementation of geographic discourse. is paper examines the status of cinematography, exclusively American, within the geopolitical power networks, while the analysis of films is reduced to three dimensions: narrative, visual and personal (psychological). Moreover, the films are not seen as passive products, but as an active and flexible execution elements of geopolitical power, hence the films are processed as a part of a broader narrative of the war against terrorism, as well as subversive forces, i.e. those questioning the mentioned narrative.

Managing Religious Consciousness and Creeds in the Modern Era

Author(s): Alexey G. Chernyshov / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

This article will present some historical cases, some ancient, some very recent of how the processes of globalization, resulting in the endless subconscious movement of the people, put on the agenda not only the issues of ethnic and religious identification of a particular ethnic group, but also the impact of waves of migration on the existing local societies. For many countries, this was not just a test of strength, but also on survival, to retain their original start. Therefore, it is important to understand the role of religion in the modern world. The question is what the “substance” of this process is, how to understand the religious consciousness and how to manage it.

Локус и „съживена“ традиция: един възможен поглед към традиционната култура в съвременността

Author(s): Michel Rottenberg / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 1/2002

The author discusses the issue of locality in traditional cultures. The first example he gives is of the St. Bess cult in the Italian Alps, analysed from the point of view of the oral/written relation. Next comes his example of French rural architecture, which invariably reveals the power of tradition in constructing local culture. In conclusion, the author states his inference about imaginary tradition as part of the process of turning an idealised past into a heritage.

Tko ovo čita? Identitet čitatelja i chick-lit

Author(s): Selma Veseljević Jerković / Language(s): Bosnian,Croatian Issue: 9/2012