Sociologie Românească (Romanian Sociology Review)
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Loïc Wacquant, Punishing the Poor. The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2009, 384 p.
Get PDFLa vache, l'éleveur et l'investisseur. De la tradition à l'industrialisation: une reconfiguration des campagnes? The Cow, the Breeder and the Investor. From Tradition to Industrialization: a Reconfiguration of the Contryside?
No full textOn the field of the breeding, whether in Romania or Belgium, the actors are afraid of disappearing. An ethnographic immersion in the heart of three farms of origin and different types (traditional, conventional and industrial) makes it possible to apprehend these fears. In addition to the weight of a strong competition and heavy economic constraints, it is a form of being in the world. Indeed, if they share an activity of domestication, the stockbreeders do not make the same job: their descriptions are different and their relations to livestock are various. The content of breeder’s job is not confined solely to the production. To produce consumer goods is not sufficient to produce meaning. Domestication appears rich of a reciprocity potentially threatened by the development of the cattle industry, where the animals, production units, are compared to a machine. To tend to make disappear the traditional or conventional farms, promote economic profitability is also to support the instrumentalisation of the animal whose impact will not relate only on the landscape of the campaigns but to our way human being
Legea asistenţei sociale şi riscurile dependenţei populaţiei de sistemul de ajutor social: Law of Social Work and the Risks of Social Support Dependency
No full textThe study presents aspects of the social work policies from the perspective of the new Law of Social Work. From the very beginning, the new law started many controversies, being criticised by many social actors for its claims of reform. Actually, it could not be submitted to a normal public debate, being adopted by an emergency procedure. The basic objection, which encompassed the major dissatisfactions regarding the finality of the new law, refers to the attempt to privatize the public services of social work through their externalization, and to the withdrawal of the state from its social responsibilities. European practices insist increasingly on the introduction of efficient measures of activation on the labour market of the population running the risk of marginalization, as actual support in social service. Active employment policies are those which can ensure in the long run the economic autonomy of the persons depending on social services. In order to notice the progress in this field, social services are the only one which are able to evaluate and monitor this process in time. The measures proposed by the Government through the new law are not at all clear and promising in terms of taking out of dependency the people who are excluded economically from the system of social service. Resources should be shifted massively towards actual job creation, which currently is increasingly doubtful for the vulnerable people. We notice that the results of the governmental programs for job creation are not at all convincing at the level of employment policies through the implementation of a strategy to recover marginalised people. The current program of social support proposed by the Government for this period of austerity is under massive and extremely though political and public attacks, which narrow its chances for sustainability and credibility. Specialists consider, almost unanimously, that the current program of social assistance has no clear direction and strategy of reform, that it has an excessive ambition for continuous change, irrespective of its finality
Foucault, Social Theory and Social Work
Get PDFThe philosopher Michel Foucault’s theoretical work provides fertile ground for an analysis of areas of significant concern in researching of social work through his development of the ideas of discourse, power/knowledge, surveillance and governmentality. His development of these concepts allows an insight into the function of policy not always apparent in mainstream and contemporary social policy analysis which has been based on the sociological triumvirate of social class, gender and ‘race’. In this article, we can explore how and why these conceptual gifts from Foucault are pertinent to understanding how service users are constructed as objects of social work, particularly with respect to contemporary discourses of social welfare and social exclusion. The paper argues that the use of these ideas challenges some of the less obvious assumptions permeating current developments in social policy and social work provision, whilst also enabling an ability to respond more contextually to shifting frameworks of power and knowledge. There is an acknowledgement of power and its potential positive impact on subjective sense of self and social work has a part to play in this. At the same time, the paper concludes with a warning of ‘risk’ and professional surveillance and its restriction in facilitating empowerment of vulnerable groups
Votez, deci exist? Un studiu longitudinal al participării la vot în alegerile parlamentare din România: I vote, therefore I am? A longitudinal study of turnout in the parliamentary elections in Romania
No full textThe paper analyzes the dynamics of electoral participation and its predictors in Romania, using both official data on turnout and post-electoral surveys’ data. Turnout in the Romanian parliamentary elections has declined by over 50% in the last 20 years of democratic reconstruction. However, turnout decline is unevenly distributed, being more dramatic in the last decade especially in the urban areas as well as among younger cohorts of voters. The decline of turnout in parliamentary elections is also accompanied by a shift in the importance of the predictors of voting. The analyses of electoral participation and its predictors suggest that voting in the Romanian parliamentary elections has become the attribute of a minority of citizens who still feel closer to a political party, are interested in politics, trust the political institutions and leaders, ideologically place themselves at the extremes of the left-right axis, and of those who are more exposed to mobilization attempts both because they live in smaller communities in the rural areas which are more easily controlled by local political leaders or because they are part of social networks that are influenced by political parties or politicians. This is the “hard core” of a generally apathetic electorate which is unconfident in the efficacy of elections as a tool for producing social transformations, a public which is becoming less and less demanding with the politicians after the subsequent disappointments with the democratic governance after 1989
Vulnerabilități și riscuri în exploatarea noilor tehnologii de informare și comunicare de către tineri: Vulnerabilities and Risks in Youth's Use of New Information and ComunicationTechnologies
No full textAbstract: The article is an extended essay on the subject of the impact of the new information and communication technologies (ICTs) over important partitions ofeveryday life, stressing the influences on youth, considered the “digital generation” as they integrated ICTs in their lives and are now continuously connected to the computer-mediated communication as their main or secondary socializing option.The paper underscores the vulnerabilities of youth behaviour when using the ICTsand the virtual space that can generate risks to their personal safety or can have abad influence on the development of their identities or personalities. The article alsoillustrates how the interest for these topics is reflected both in theoretical papers and in empirical researches in the field of sociology, psychology or socialpsychology, and emphasizes the negative effects of ICTs on youth, considering the mentioned variables. The essay approach is inspired by the work of Ulrich Beck, in that it will include general references to the effects of the ICTs on the entire society, but it will underscore the negative ones and their influence over youth, especiallythe risks that cannot be isolated as in real life (Beck, 1992, 2), as they originate inan uncontrollable space, the virtual one. The essay represents the point of view of an adult that did not experimented a childhood or an adolescence connected to the digital technologies (Weber and Mitchell, in Buckingham, 2008, 26), and the opinion of a novice researcher that tried to familiarize first with the previous theoretical and empirical background on the subject of the vulnerabilities of theonline behaviour of children before starting his own research project on a similar topic
Constructing Border Ethnic Identities along the Frontier of Central and Eastern Europe - A Research Note
Get PDFThis paper is based on the results of the cross-cultural comparative ENRI-EAST project, and aims to explore the various aspects of people's national and ethnic affiliations and the social psychological characteristics of national and diaspora identity among ethnic minorities living along the Eastern border of the EU. The goal of our approach is to reconstruct the image of the national identity, which is created through everyday observations, attitudes and value judgments in the individual's mind, as well as the image, which is organized into a coherent identity as some sort of collective stock of knowledge at societal level. Also, we can learn what kind of broader political consequences, value dilemmas, or perhaps tensions may accompany the mechanism of how ethnic diasporas and migrant groups create their own national identity in the context of their home and host nation. Our analyses include four ethnic dyads in the border region of Europe: Lithuanians in Russia, and Russians in Lithuania, Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine, Belarusians in Poland and Poles in Byelorussia, Slovaks in Hungary and Hungarians in Slovakia
Self-transcendence Values in Hungary and Romania. A preliminary Analysis of Benevolence and Universalism
Get PDFThe European Social Survey (ESS) uses an adapted and shortened version of the Schwartz’s Value Survey in order to reveal individuals’ value orientations, that is the Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ). The PVQ module of the ESS comprises 21 items, which sketch the portrait of other people in terms of their important goals, wishes and aspirations. Respondents are then asked to compare each portrait to themselves and rate their similarity to the portraits on a 6-point scale (from‘very much like me’ to ‘ not at all like me’).The PVQ module studies ten types of values ,corresponding to the broader value orientations of self-enhancement ,self-transcendence,openness to change and conservation.Our analysis is based on the fourth wave (2008 )of the ESS and deals only with self-transcendence values, that is the valuation of others’well-being. The approachis comparative and preliminary:empiric alanalyses are used to reveal the theoretica lvs .empirical structure of the selftranscendence values in Hungary and Romania to model the profile of individuals for whom the well-being of others is important. Results sugget that while self-transcendence values are the most important values in both countries, Hungarians ares ignificantly more in favor of thes evalues than Romanians. Women and upper level educated respondents are in both countries significantly more in favor of self-transcendence values, but age is not significantly decisive in this regard
Globalisation with local flavour? Transformation of spatial values and the ‘new localism’ trend in Slovenia
Get PDFNew communication and transport technologies importantly influence the understanding of time-space relations in the micro context of local communities. These influences, usually placed under the common denominator of globalization, seem to affect i.e. transform spatial values and challenge the established interpretations of what is perceived to be traditional, authentic, genuine and local. The paper gives a small insight into the processes of socio-spatial transformation in Slovenia and shows the extensiveness of globalization process on the case of ‘new localism’. Although new localism at the first glance resembles i.e. mimics ‘localism’, it profoundly differs from it on the value basis. Localism can be best described as a relation between place, understood as a space, which is relatively small and limited, and social phenomena that occur in it. This relationship is valorised (ideologised) from the point of observer or actor and becomes a part of his identity. New localism is in this sense more open that localism but still emphasizes the necessity of certain special values, which should be present on the locality. These special values often include aspirations for the transformation of current localities that deny some of the inevitable influences of globalisation process. In fact, a great number of present localities in Slovenia try to reinforce the feeling of community and use different spatial techniques to obtain these objectives. Some of these spatial techniques are much disputable as they are exclusive towards specific cultural representations, groups of people and may even on the long-term scale negatively effect the socio-economic development of Slovenia. This shift from old to new localism in Slovenia is analysed through data from various research projects that were carried out at the Centre for Spatial Sociology in Ljubljana