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This article explores the role and place of mad studies within social work theory, education, and practice. This includes a discussion of the role social workers have played in the past and continue to play in the present in relation to oppressive practices within mental health services; a role that includes serving as passive assistants to biogenetic psychiatric expertise and a turning away from the profession’s social expertise, all to the detriment of mad people. The interconnection between racism, colonialism, imperialism and psychiatrization is then discussed as it relates to the current treatment of mad people of colour within European and white settler state contexts. This is followed by a discussion of the potential contribution of mad theory to social work education and practice. Repositioning social workers as embracing their social expertise, a call towards developing a more thorough social justice leadership in mental health is explored. Mad studies, existing at the edges of transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological understandings, offers a potential in social work for fundamentally anti-oppressive, anti-sanist and anti-racist approaches to service provision. In effect, this article engages in the maddening of social work, through the incorporation of mad studies into critical social work theory, education, and practice.
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The article is an attempt to analyze the contemporary results of research on neurodevelopmental disorders in order to advance the search for various diagnostic approaches, predictors of a negative course of development, and changes in the dynamics of symptoms. The authors, based on a literature review, show that different levels of susceptibility to negative events are not a simple consequence of a specific NDD diagnosis [i.e., autism spectrum disorders (ASD) or ADHD] but also depend on the interaction of genetic factors (i.e., the general phenotype of NDD, which depends on spontaneous genetic mutations or changes in the number of copies of DNA fragments) and prenatal and perinatal environmental factors.
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The article analyses Latvian teachers’ opinions regarding the feasibility of a virtue education curriculum for students aged 5–15 years, which they piloted in spring 2021, and identifies the challenges faced when implementing the virtue education curriculum during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings showed that the curriculum could be delivered successfully in both modalities – face-to-face and online – since the teachers’ approaches were creative and transformative in addressing all the challenges identified.
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This article presents the development, current status and contemporary challenges of foster care in Poland and Hungary. Both countries, due to their post-socialist tradition, are characterised by the experience of the development of institutionalised foster care during the socialist era, similar consequences of the socio-political transformation of the 1990s and a converging social policy context resulting from membership of the European Union structures for nearly 20 years. The perspective adopted is in line with the concept, which has been present in EU cohesion policy for many years, of the child-friendly social services. The scope of the analysis is an analysis of existing material consisting of: the scientific literature on the subject in both countries, research reports and legal regulations on foster care. Based on these analyses, the article draws several conclusions: the development of foster care in both countries followed a similar pattern, and that changes have only occurred in recent years due to the increasing role of organisations associated with the Christian Churches in Hungary; despite the undoubted positive importance of foster, growing up in foster care also has negative consequences; these negative consequences are much greater and multidimensional in relation to institutional versus family foster care.
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The article discloses the main original results of the study of children suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in foster families in the territories of Ukraine liberated from the Russian occupiers. The substantiation of the medico-social and psychological model of rehabilitation of children with neurotic disorders who are in foster families under conditions of social stress caused by the war in Russia is given. For the first time, on the basis of the definition of the differential typology of the obsessive-compulsive symptom complex, a program of complex treatment of patients with the mentioned disorders with different nosological affiliations was scientifically substantiated and developed as a combined system of psychopharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. It is the expansion of clinical ideas about the typology and registers of the obsessive-compulsive symptom complex, as well as the expediency of taking them into account in therapy, that made it possible to increase the effectiveness of treatment and rehabilitation measures for patients with this disorder. The comprehensive treatment program, which includes the first developed and implemented focal differentiated psychotherapy depending on the types of obsessive-compulsive symptom complex, is specific and available for the use of psychiatric and psychotherapeutic help, social adaptation of this contingent in foster families, which is very important from the point of view of social policy and the development of its theory.
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The article presents the point of view of social pedagogues about the possibilities of social pedagogical assistance for children of younger school age who have experienced parental divorce, and provides insights into the development of assistance opportunities. A qualitative study (semistructured interview) was conducted with the participation of social pedagogues who work in a general education school and have experience working with children of younger school age who have experienced parental divorce. The content analysis of the research data highlighted the following essential findings: based on the point of view of social pedagogues, the following options for social pedagogical assistance are distinguished: individual counseling of children, extracurricular clubs, organized group activities, child monitoring, games, cooperation with other specialists, psychologist consultations, creation of a safe environment. To enhance the quality of social pedagogical assistance for children coping with parental divorce, social pedagogues emphasize the importance of collaborating with the child’s family, fostering positive relationships with the child, incorporating educational sessions during class meetings, closely monitoring the child’s well-being, educating parents, and ensuring a sufficient number of specialist positions. Instead of social pedagogues, in order to provide better quality social pedagogical assistance to children who have experienced parental divorce, offer to cooperate with the child’s family, to create a positive relationship with the child, to educate children during class meetings, to monitor children’s condition, to educate parents, to ensure a sufficient number of specialist positions.
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Pension systems based on an insurance model were originally designed for male breadwinners who worked under permanent contracts without career breaks. Since their inception, women’s participation in the workforce has increased significantly, but on average, their employment career paths are still shorter and less linear compared to those that men enjoy. Demographic changes have prompted many countries to reform their pension systems to ensure long-term financial sustainability. And to varying degrees, such reforms also have looked to address the issue of short careers. In Poland, reforms introduced in 1999 brought about significant changes to the rules governing pension entitlement. That led to the emergence of a new category of retirees—those who had contributed to the pension system for a short period and consequently received very low pensions. This article provides an overview of an exploratory qualitative pilot study conducted in 2018 with nine women who were in receipt of benefits from the Polish universal pension system, which amounted to less than the so-called ‘lowest retirement pension’ being granted at that time. The analysis makes recourse to the concept of employment career and its connection to retirement to identify various life-course determinants that contributed to their situation. These factors include childhood and adolescent adversities that affected educational attainment; domestic and caregiving responsibilities coupled with cultural expectations and insufficient institutional support; the labor market situation, and the inability to document certain employment periods. The research material indicates that a significant portion of the work performed by the interviewees throughout their lives did not translate into a pension benefit, as it either involved unpaid domestic and caregiving duties; or work performed without formal contracts.
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The objective of this paper is to analyse the double-layered diversification of the European integration system represented by the countries of Central Europe (CE). Here exemplified by the Visegrad Four (V4) states (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Czechia), the region offers a unique laboratory of European differentiated integration (DI). The V4 positions itself on the outer-core of the European Union hemispheres. At the same time, the bloc itself is internally diversified in various, important aspects of integration (conflicting trajectories with Brussels, monetary integration, energy policy, relations with Russia, etc.). Unpacking this intra-V4 diversity will be accompanied by an exploration of the economic and institutional factors possibly affecting it. The political-economy perspective allows us to capture the determinants intersecting at the crossroads of economic and political dimensions. The authors will explore the selected building blocks of the system of differentiation inside the V4 group.
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The paper examines the (technically reproducible) „atrocious image“ within discourses commenting on the tendency of such visuals to affect the viewers’ imagination and memory and their ability to make sense of and retain in their minds (representations of) „exceptional events“ such as war. The text analyses the theoretical circumstance that the affective potential of the „atrocious“ gives rise to many „iconoclastic“ debates about the ethical risk involved in the production, dissemination and consumption of technical images representing „transgressive moments“ – those „imagining“ death, torture and all manner of other ‘atrocities’. The aim is to discern what these debates miss, namely that the locus of misunderstanding is conditioned by the premise that photography and cinema have a disproportionate (compared to other media) power over people’s imaginations, and thus over the social as such. This power is tied to the uses of and prejudices about the apparent ability of a medium in a particular historical period to capture the truth of events and reality in general. In this sense, the article attempts to show that as contemporary audiovisual culture changes, the boundaries of old arguments about the affective potential of technical images must be reconsidered, as they have begun to lose their power and verisimilitude because they are easily falsifiable and increasingly function as a form „image speech“ for private individuals.The key idea of this article is the understanding that in the contemporary societies of supermodern capitalism of singularities and virtual effects, historical and geopolitical images play a substantial role in the transformations of power situations both within the separate state formations and on the regional and global scale, mediating the power transformations themselves towards new kinds of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Historical and geopolitical imaginations, however, despite being closely related, should be distinguished as forms of social imagination working at different levels – the levels of independent and dependent, individual and collective consciousness, respectively the biographical and the historical unconscious in the translations-transitions from private to public form, reminiscent of the work of dreams. Today, more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall (and of socialist heterotopia), a new Iron Curtain seems to be coming down, the spectres of the Cold War seem to return. And seemingly familiar historical and geopolitical images invade from the past – but are they the same? Don’t they have quite a different role of hyper-precision weapons of mass destruction? The main thesis is this: the war in Ukraine, maybe like any other war, is mediated by mirror images constructing the identities of the warring sides. A war of mirror images. One in which they, the warring sides, without noticing or being aware of it, see in the enemy their own reversed image.
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Jonathan Littell’s novel The Kindly Ones places literature in a very unusual position ‒ that of a witness to the truth. The unexpected status of literature turns out to be justified because neither the victims nor the executioners can describe the terrible events of the Holocaust during World War II. The victims are subjected to the extermination, the executioners try to conceal their guilt. Then we need a third point of view – that of the fictional narrative. Because the executioners survive, unlike the victims, Littell’s novel sets out to present the Holocaust from their perspective. However, to what extent can we trust the main character, the Nazi officer Maximilian Aue? Does his seemingly objective narrative in fact not leads us towards belittling of the events he describes?
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The focus of this article is the development of Volodymyr Zelensky as an actor with a career spanning over 20 years, mainly concentrated in the field of comedy genres, before he was elected President of Ukraine. As a key to the understanding of Zelensky’s performance style, Mikhail Chekhov’s theory of acting is drawn, insofar as, on the one hand, it is particularly relevant in the context of the post-Soviet artistic scene, and on the other hand, it offers tools for building a stage and screen image, whose effects are visible precisely in the realm of comedy. Zelensky’s on-screen presence from the end of the 1990s and the evolution of his team from Studio Kvartal 95 are traced in the context of the question of whether the TV shows and the series „Servant of the People“ can be commented on as a political project, especially after the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The role of satire in the process of forming civic consciousness in the audience and even in the process of forming national identity is considered. Ultimately, the observations stress the political functionality of the image of the actor-comedian, who will eventually face the tragedy of war.
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The article zooms onto the relation between the movement of labor power and capitalist modes of production and social reproduction that form vis-à-vis the taming, slowing down, and accelerating the speed of that same movement. I coin the notion of moving labor power which allows me to analyse the moments that arise between the transformation of body power into labor power (social reproduction) and labor power into labor (production). Marx’s conception of labor power as an „elastic potential“ and Foucault’s understanding that labor power must be first tamed in order to be fixed to production apparatuses allow me to think through the development of capitalist relations as continuously going through a double dynamic of fixing and freeing of labor power spatially. The combination between these approaches enables me to analyse the ways in which the capacity of the body to move is being entangled in differentiated regimes of movement and relations that arise between labor and migration apparatuses. I use two cases: the refugee and the freely moving pauperized.
More...(Как стареем в България? Първи резултати за България от Изследване на здравето, стареенето и пенсионирането в Европа (SHARE 2020/2021), Вълна 7 & 8, E. Маркова, Г. Йорданова, Р. Димитрова и М. Дробенова, НАЙС АН, 2022)
More...Urban Agriculture for Improving the Quality of Life. Examples from Bulgaria, D. Pickard, (Ed.), M. Draganova, G. Koleva, Z. Stoyanova, A. Nakova, E. Chengelova, N. Toleva-Nowak, P. Tzvetkov, I. Dedov, S. Beshkov and P. Shurulinkov, Springer, 2022
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It is crucial to examine the alignment of different exam results conducted by various organizations to improve the quality of assessment. The research used a document analysis method with recent, publicly available national and international reports addressing the research question. The following main question was examined through the document analysis: What exams have the highest correlation and are more trustworthy in Azerbaijan for short and long-term outcomes? The data were analyzed to discover any statistical comparisons of university admission exams with the 9th and 11th grade SEC exams, school grades, and other assessments. Research shows that the State Examination Center’s exams align with its own evaluations and international assessment (OECD). They can be considered methodologically rigorous, providing a more valid yardstick for measuring student knowledge and achievement. Overall, exams by the SEC had a high correlation coefficient compared to Higher Education Institutions’ assessments. As more and more international students want to pursue their education in Azerbaijan, these findings can be valuable for their decision-making and tertiary level.
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