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This article presents the results of a pilot study on pediatric palliative care needs in Bulgaria consisting of an online questionnaire survey of public opinion, and a series of in-depth interviews with professionals and parents. The results have proved that there is a huge need for further research on this subject. Approximately five to eight thousand children in Bulgaria need palliative care. At the same time, there are vast differences of opinion, including among professionals, as to what pediatric palliative care consists of and how it ought to be organized.
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The aim of this article is to analyse health and ageing in their interdependence and to debate some myths about ‘the significant others’, the people over the age of 65, as the fastest growing group in modern societies. The investigation of the demographic ageing and the health determinants is performed from the position of a medical doctor and a public health researcher. Data from large-scale sociological studies are presented as proof that healthy habits greatly improve health-related quality of life and prolong life. On the other hand, there is age discrimination in healthcare, which, together with poverty, determines the gloomy picture of our ageing society. In the context of the historic political changes after 1989, the term ‘fourth value transition’ is introduced, which unites themes of sustainable societal efforts to achieve a better health-related quality of life in opposition to the banalized and socially demobilizing myths regarding old age and population ageing.
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Interview by Galina Goncharova with Galya Koycheva, parent of a person with multiple disabilities, activist, psychosocial support specialist.
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This article is devoted to parental hesitancy about the mandatory childhood immunization schedule in Bulgaria. The term ‘hesitancy’ describes the growing uncertainty and actions to delay or refuse childhood vaccinations. In the specific analysis based on semi-structured interviews with parents, the issue of vaccine hesitancy is examined through the lens of the doctor-patient interaction framework. The focus is on outlining the types of vaccine hesitancy and the reasons for them. New parenting styles and parental responsibilization, in turn, undermine parents’ trust in GPs; parents are becoming experts on their children. It seems that the doctor-patient relationship has become more horizontal. This kind of parental ‘expertise’ in turn leads to the emergence of a common enemy of the overall construction of the child’s body – ‘terrible chemistry’, unnecessary interventions in the body, where vaccines are among the ‘risky’ and ‘dangerous’ interventions. Thus, vaccination turns out to be a process of balancing between fears – of the disease and of its side effects. Hence, respondents also raised the issues of ‘coercion to vaccinate’ and ‘parents’ right to choose’, which contradict their understanding of parental role and responsibility.
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It is no longer a question today that in many cases employees find themselves in a situation where either they or their environment believe that they have committed a misdemeanor or sin at work. The perception of sin can depend on a number of factors, such as the particular organizational culture, management, employee preferences, the degree of trust in the organization, and so on. There are cases where we judge the same sin differently, making the severity and extent of the penalties involved vary. The present study examines workplace offenses and subsequent employer penalties and their impact. The researchers did not focus on illegal acts, but on those that violate moral standards or affect an employee's professional development and ability to advance in the workplace. The analysis made a distinction between misdemeanors that came to light and those that did not. The test results confirmed the following. The employees are more critical of their own faults than the employer, and this is especially true of moral faults. People experience sin and punishment differently by gender and age.
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The article proposes an original approach to evaluating the effectiveness of the sports management system, which differs from the classical linear and non-linear optimization methods due to its use of quantile regression models. Three main indicators were chosen for creating the quantile regressions: (i) number of participants in the Olympic Games - as a feature of the effectiveness of the high-achievement sports; (ii) total number of people engaged in sports - as a feature of an effective mass sports system, which ensures a healthy lifestyle of the population; and (iii) state expenses on recreational and sports services. The quality of quantile regressions was validated by the Fisher test and the two-factor variance analysis. The research focused on the data of 30 European countries, which officially and publicly provide access to statistical reports on these issues. The countries were divided into two groups with above-average and below-average effectiveness of the sports management system. Two hypotheses were proposed and tested in the study. Hypothesis H1 was that the effectiveness of high-achievement sports depends on the amount of state funding for developing the sports industry. Research results confirmed this hypothesis for countries with an above-average level of sports management system effectiveness, but refuted it for the other group. Hypothesis H2 stated that the more massive the development of sport in a country, i.e., the more people are engaged in sports and lead a healthy lifestyle, the more likely this country is to achieve victories in high-achievement sports. This hypothesis was confirmed for both groups of countries.
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The text starts from the experience of writing the novel Time Shelter and explores why and how the late socialism reactivated the late Revival period. And how today the double memory, or the memory of the second degree – for the Revival period, but through the memory of the Soc – is again propelling the light industry of memory and filling the public space with ersatz-memory. One of the central themes of this text, and of the novel, is this new attraction to the past, not as an enlightened narrative, but as an embodied image, as a life in reenactment.
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The paper explores how people from three different generations in present-day Bulgaria refer to and relate to the common past and history: as narratives, symbols and experience. A particular emphasis is stressed on figures, normative plots and national icons from the revival period. Why ask laymen and women about history? What can we learn from their conceptions and misconceptions, from their representations and – often misrepresentations of the past? We can learn how they/ we relate to ourselves today. This is especially important today when different national-populist actors are trying to shape and mobilize the feelings of historical impass – living in a period of time in the absence of narrative genre (Berlant). What do we find in the 41 semi-structured interviews conducted in the early 2019 with people from three Bulgarian generations – those born in the 90-ies, after the democratization, their parents and their grandparents? First, we find across the generation line a missing connection between the intimate pasts and the collective past. Then, people try different strategies to relate to the common past – a) recollection or rather reciting of the school patriotic cannon; b) a certain ecstatic form of search for authenticity in folklore festivities and mystified notion of tradition shaped partially by globally marketed new-age elements; c) a showcase version of cultural heritage as if exposed before the gaze of a foreign tourist. The first strategy that was once coupled with the national-populist appeal to the sense of victimization as a source of collective pride seems now fading, especially for the youngest generation, which is leaning to the ecstatic search for authenticity in tradition. The revival icons from the dawn of the national history are always mentioned, but they are now re-interpreted in terms of persistence and spirituality.
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In 2019 national populism in North Macedonia is kept in check by the European consensus. Macedonism runs deep, however, and has the potential to erupt. The resumption of the EU accession process is likely to ensure that North Macedonia stays on a democratic course. These are the main findings from a media monitoring of the Macedonian online media (news websites and blogs) in the period between the 1st of February 2010 and the 24th of January 2020. The study is conducted via SENSIKA, an automated system for media monitoring. The system uses semantic dictionaries created by the researchers to detect nationalist-populist discourses and anti-Bulgarian speech.
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This paper presents the findings from a media monitoring of the Macedonian online media (news websites and blogs) in the period between the 1st of January 2020 and the 4th of April 2021. The study is conducted via SENSIKA, an automated system for media monitoring. The system uses semantic dictionaries created by the researchers to detect nationalist-populist discourses and anti-Bulgarian speech. Data from SENSIKA shows a fivefold increase in the frequency of use of the Macedonian nationalist-populist vocabulary during 2020. The majority of articles containing keywords from this vocabulary were published in the last four months of the year. The rise of the Macedonian nationalism is a direct response to the rising Bulgarian political pressure culminating in the last months of 2020 with a veto to the start of the negotiations for the EU accession of North Macedonia. Moreover, being under siege – from both Bulgaria and the internal opposition – Zoran Zaev and his pro-European and pro-liberal government are forced to harden their official position and even quote nationalist talking points such as: “the identity and the language are not negotiable”.
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The study is based on the analysis of list of Wikipedia pages on two different domains – the Bulgarian and the Macedonian ones. As a co-author of the “The Gun Exploded: The Rise of the Macedonian National-Populism After the Bulgarian Veto” a study, which can be found in current journal, I have encountered some interesting models in articulating the historical narrative in both domains. Both, Macedonian and Bulgarian ones, are overflowed with historically unconfirmed information presented to the users as facts, which, as I found, is done in pretty systematic manner. The biggest online encyclopedia works as camouflaged media, in which the historical facts are presented in bias. This depends on the mutual agreements between the editors and administrators of the different domains. These agreements are made in Wikipedia forums, which are open but can be found only after long and deep search on the exact theme. This study is deep dive in some of the problematic themes between the two countries in time of political crisis. After conducting quantitative content analysis (via SENSIKA analytic system), I review some of the most dynamic sites in both domains and their editors.
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The aim of this article was to study the mechanisms of the “production of history” in the film The Legend of Paisius (1963) which was released to commemorate 200 years the writing of Slav-Bulgarian history in 1762, a text traditionally associated with the beginning of the Bulgarian National Revival. In the beginning, I studied the institutionalization of this anniversary in Bulgaria as a socialist state. Afterwards, I examined the filmmakers’ perception of “the new Paisius” who was integrated in the new communist mythology. At the end, I illustrated the state’s care of the so-called historical framework through the presentation of extracts from the filmmaking file to serve as evidence. The focus of attention was the presentation of the Turkish and the Greek in the context of the relation between communism and nationalism.
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This paper raises a discussion on innovation, nature of knowledge and the growing significance of skills in contemporary society. We propose the argument that knowledge is commonly perceived in terms of skills only, as a result of an applicability logic rule in knowledge based social orders. Moreover, innovation is recognized as yet another central issue of our times that is strongly interrelated to technological developments and the realm of science. Creativity as a specific human feature, on the other hand, is widely accepted as a critical precondition for generating innovative products and ideas. The essential problem lies in the oversight of the role humanities and arts play in nurturing humanistic values, whereas means are commonly mistaken for an end.
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From the very beginning of the immunisation process against Covid-19 in Bulgaria the vaccine acceptance is very low. The fact that Bulgaria is one of the countries with the highest mortality from the virus has no impact whatsoever. The article investigates the factors that made Bulgaria the least vaccinated country in Europe. The period it encompasses is from the beginning of the so called mass vaccination in February to the 15th of May. The vaccination trend is not moving upwards in spite of the fact that there are more than enough vaccines. The AstraZeneca side effects scandal added to the mistrust of the medicine. In the given period the antivax conspiracy groups had a solid campaign against immunisation. The health authorities on the other hand did not react with a good enough pro-vaccine campaign.
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This article attempts to trace the tension between two visions of education in Bulgaria, namely education as a right and as a competitive resource. The article begins with an analysis of the relevant legislation and goes on to discuss its practical effects, reconstructed through fieldwork conducted under the project Educational Inequalities and Social Opportunities. Strategic Objectives of the Reforms in Bulgarian Secondary Education and Practical Results, financed by the Bulgarian National Science Fund at the Ministry of Education and Science. The author’s main thesis is that the two visions of education are in practice mutually contradictory. The analysis shows how certain social groups employ education as a distinctive and competitive resource and succeed in imposing their own interests on public policies. By responsibilizing families and fomenting ‘moral panic’ about ‘difficult children’, these groups legitimize educational inequalities, gradually undermine the idea of education as a mechanism for ensuring equal opportunities, and minimize the chances of implementing public policies oriented towards education as a right in Bulgaria.
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Book review: Ivana Seletković (auth.). Društvena fenomenologija opera. (Social Phenomenology of Opera). Academia Analitica, Sarajevo, 2021, p./str.254.
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This article compares the normative visions of quality of education (of the World Bank, OECD, UNICEF, UNESCO, and Bulgaria’s Pre-school and School Education Act – PSEA) with the everyday perceptions of respondents working in Bulgarian education, and with their assessment of the quality of education in different types of schools in Bulgaria. The study’s (qualitative research conducted in 2018) conclusion is that there is no connection between the declared objectives of the PSEA, which unite the modern and humanist visions of international documents, and actual practice. This is due to two reasons. The first reason has to do with the fact that while the normative visions are informed by the humanist-holistic notion of education, the practical view of education is driven solely by economic considerations. The second reason comes from the actual state of affairs in Bulgaria: quality education is thought of and implemented as ‘special profile’ education that takes into consideration pupils’ family and social environment (the ethnic group and social status of parents, the place of residence, ‘the street’). Respondents shared the following views on the relationship between school education and pupils’ subsequent life trajectories: Pupils attending a rural (often Roma) primary school (or a school in a poor neighbourhood) go on to vocational high schools and low-skilled jobs on the local market. Pupils attending an elite primary school have private tuition and go on to elite high schools, higher education and high-skilled jobs on the national or global market. These two extreme varieties of educational and life trajectories presuppose social homogenization of pupils because they attend schools that are determined by and conform to their social environment. The social environment predetermines the school and the future life trajectory of children, and the school is just a tool for reproducing social inequalities. This situation inherently blocks the normative vision of children’s equal access to quality education in Bulgaria.
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