Studia Universitatis Babeş-Bolyai
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MUSIC AS SILENCE: SCHÖNBERG, NONO, AND THE POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE
Get PDFArnold Schönberg and Luigi Nono stand as emblems for a certain sort of difficulty in music, a difficulty charted by Schönberg himself in his essay, “How One Becomes Lonely.”[1] But this “difficulty” may have a purpose for us, at this time, either intended or unintended. Here I approach the “difficult” music of these two composers through the concept of experience, as described and discussed by Giorgio Agamben. Agamben’s thesis concerning the formation of human subjects through a process of infancy is outlined, and related to the work of these two specific composers, in order to think about the place and function of music in a noisy world: what possibilities does this particular, “difficult” music hold for us, now, in the middle of multiple and ongoing, existential and planetary crises?
[1] Schönberg, Arnold. “How One Becomes Lonely (1937).” In Style and Idea, ed. by Leonard Stein, trans. by Leo Black, Faber and Faber, London, 1975, pp. 30-52
FROM CROP TO CUP: THE ECONOMICS BEHIND RISING GREEN COFFEE PRICES
Get PDFSpecialty coffee is more than a beverage. It is a sensory and cultural experience that reflects the passion of roasters, farmers and consumers. However, behind each cup is a complex and volatile global market, which is affected by variations such as climate, logistics costs and international market pressures. This volatility has an impact on both small roasters and coffee shops, and on consumers, who face price increases and changes in the availability of certain varieties or origins. In these circumstances, specialty coffee becomes more than a product: it becomes an indicator of how consumers’ everyday experience is reflected in global market dynamics. The study explores the reasons behind the recent sudden price changes in specialty green coffee and their effects on Romanian customers. Primary data, collected through semi-structured interviews with a sample of thirty specialty coffee consumers or enthusiasts, were combined with secondary data analysis from specialized literature and academic reports. The results show that demand for quality products has not radically decreased despite the price increase, and optimizing the supply chain through customer education is essential for the sustainability of small roasters.
JEL classification: M31, E31, E32, D12, L66, Q13.
Article History: Received: August 14, 2025; Reviewed: September 10, 2025; Accepted: September 20, 2025; Available online: September 29, 2025
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN ROMANIA. OUTCOMES OF TWO STRIKES IN A WOOD MANUFACTURE FURNITURE FACTORY FROM CLUJ COUNTY (2017)
Get PDFIn the case of Romanian state, the dependent developments under neoliberalism shapes local dynamics of labour. On a local level, having a main investor a foreign firm will shape the standards, quotas, competitiveness between workers. I will focus on two strikes inside a manufactory firm and what their components illustrate about industrial relations. One outcome shows that dynamics between union, workers and employers regarding financial disagreements can have a positive result and the other shows how organizational dynamics that questions specifically the status quo relation between workers and supervisors/ management can have a negative result. Because of organisational environment and macroeconomic context of a post socialist state involved in accommodating foreign investment firms while under developing collective bargaining trough labour legislation, workers have diverse interpretations of these two specific labour movements inside their factory
“WHAT IS THE TRUTH?” THE PROBLEM OF FAKE NEWS
Get PDFThe study examines the issues and problems associated with fake news, so common today. After defining the term, it discusses the role of the media in the creation and dissemination of fake news, and assesses it from an ethical and moral perspective, before considering what readers can do when they encounter fake news and how the state and EU legislation can regulate media content. The study concludes with a discussion of the content and teaching of three documents of the Catholic Church that examine the role of the media in the context of the truthfulness of information.
Article History: Received 03.05.2025; Revised 05.05.205; Accepted 15.05.2025.Available online: 26.06.2025. Available print: 30.07.202
MARTIN SCORSESE – ANTONIO SPADARO, “DIALOGHI SULLA FEDE” [“CONVERSATIONS ON FAITH”], MILANO: LA NAVE DI TESEO, 2024, ISBN 9788834617311
Get PDFIn 2024, the transcript of conversations between the world-famous Italian- American film director Martin Scorsese and Antonio Spadaro SJ, a Jesuit priest and theologian, was published. These conversations took place over nearly eight years, between March 2016 and January 2024, and were compiled into this small interview volume titled “Conversations on Faith”.
Received 03.05.2025; Revised 05.05.2025; Accepted 15.05.2025. Available online: 26.06.2025. Available print: 30.07.202
Az érzelemszabályozás interperszonális aspektusai felnőtteknél – egy feltörekvő kutatási irány három modelljének bemutatása
Get PDFInterpersonal Aspects of Emotion Regulation in Adults – A Presentation of Three Models of an Emerging Research Direction. Emotion regulation is closely intertwined with the fact that we are social beings, experiencing, expressing, and regulating emotions with and through others. Although prevailing approaches to emotion regulation emphasize the importance, even centrality, of interpersonal processes, in the absence of models and measurement tools, the wave of emotion regulation research in the 1990s and 2000s has focused predominantly on intrapersonal processes. Recent efforts to delineate the framework of interpersonal emotion regulation have set the stage for studies in this area. In the present paper, three such frameworks are presented with their associated measurement tools
Ecclesiastics as the Physiology of the Reformed Church in the Perception of László Ravasz
Get PDFLászló Ravasz (1882–1975), former professor of practical theology (1907–1921) at the Transylvanian Reformed Faculty, Cluj, as a young professor introduced a new subject in the preparation and education of prospective Reformed pastors. Ecclesiastics appears in his works in the early 20th century and persists over the decades in the scientific discussions of Reformed theologists. In this paper, I examine László Ravasz’s perception of ecclesiastics and Reformed practical theology. In its early years, the subject struggles with the lack of proper terminology and needs to clarify several issues. László Ravasz proves and justifies that practical theology needs ecclesiastics as a prolegomenon. The most important questions, such as how? what? why? who? where?, can only be answered through a theoretical clarification by ecclesiastics. With the help of mostly Dutch practical theological literature, I also examine how relevant László Ravasz’s thoughts are nowadays, and my conclusion is that by pioneering the issue of ecclesiastics László Ravasz formed generations of pastors in their profession
Charting the academic output on cyanobacterial exopolysaccharides and their industrial applications
Get PDFCyanobacterial exopolysaccharides (EPS) are diverse biopolymers with significant ecological roles and growing industrial potential due to their biocompatibility, biodegradability, and functional versatility. This study presents a bibliometric and patent analysis of cyanobacterial EPS research between 2004 and 2023, exploring academic and industrial advancements. The bibliometric analysis of 1,022 articles identified pharmaceuticals and environmental applications as dominant research themes, while the food, agriculture, and energy sectors showed emerging interest. A manually curated subset of 79 articles focusing on industrial applications highlighted EPS’s potential in pollutant removal, drug development, and biofertilization. Patent analysis, with data from 618 entries, revealed a surge in filings post-2014, predominantly in the USA, reflecting growing industrial interest. While healthcare and environmental sectors lead in EPS applications, translational gaps between academic research and industrial adoption persist, particularly in underdeveloped domains. This study presents the multidisciplinary appeal of cyanobacterial EPS, striving to offer insights into future research directions and their potential for sustainable innovation across diverse sectors.
Article history: Received 4 February 2025; Revised 17 March 2025; Accepted 17 March 2025; Available online 25 June 202
Hunger-induced convergence of personality traits towards ambush-predatory behavior in ball pythons (Python regius, Shaw 1802)
Get PDFPersonality traits have been shown to be influenced by environmental and internal factors, hunger being one of the most important. The resulting behavior fluctuates greatly depending on the feeding ecology of the different species and intraspecific individual variation.
In this study, we used eight captive-born juvenile ball pythons to examine the relationship between personality traits, namely shyness and exploratory tendencies, and the chronological postprandial-induced psychobiological effects on a seven-day interval that concluded with the installation of hunger.
We found a strong correlation between shyness and hunger. Regarding exploratory predispositions, we found high individual variation at the beginning and middle of the postprandial cycle that evened out as hunger\u27s influence started to be perceived.
Notably, this study\u27s outcomes have the potential to enhance our understanding of captive animal management techniques and contribute to improving zoo animal welfare.
Article history: Received 13 January 2025; Revised 25 March 2025; Accepted 03 April 2025; Available online 25 June 202
ÉCRIRE LE SOI À L’ÂGE DE LA POST-VÉRITÉ. DE LA COGNITION « 5 E » À LA SOLIDARITÉ DÉMOCRATIQUE : UNE GRILLE CONCEPTUELLE POUR THÉORISER L’AUTOTHÉORIE
Get PDFWriting the Self in the Age of Post-Truth. From “5 E” Cognition to democratic Solidarity: A Conceptual Framework for Theorising Autotheory. The notion of autotheory raises numerous conceptual questions regarding not only the epistemic shift it claims, whereby lived experience becomes a source of theorisation, but also about its roots and intellectual history, its characteristics and ambiguous status, and its apparent rejection of the notion of literary genre. This article proposes a conceptual framework for theorising autotheory, based on an autotheoretical corpus coming from French, as well as Spanish, Italian, Romanian and Québec Indigenous literatures. We suggest that it is necessary to analyse autotheory in its relation to the post-truth era, and to examine its cultural history and cognitive dimensions. Taking a step beyond Fournier’s assertion that the history of autotheory merges with the history of feminism, we show that autotheory and post-truth have a common intellectual root, namely postmodern thought, which they nevertheless revive in diametrically opposed ways, with notably antithetical projects in terms of their relationship to democracy. We then show that the autotheoretical “self” corresponds to the “5 E” model of the mind theorised by the cognitive sciences (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended, and emotive or, according to another model, ecological). Finally, we propose an enactivist account of autotheory, showing that its inherent goal is to act upon the world, thus revisiting the notion of phronesis in order to elicit actions leading to democratic regeneration. We conclude by proposing a preliminary but more nuanced definition of autotheory as a literary genre.
Keywords: autotheory, post-truth, enactivism, postmodernism, 5 E cognition, phronesis
REZUMAT. A scrie despre sine în epoca post-adevărului. De la modelul „5 E” al minții umane la solidaritatea democratică: un cadru conceptual pentru teoretizarea autoteoriei. Noțiunea de autoteorie ridică numeroase întrebări conceptuale cu privire nu numai la mutația epistemică pe care o presupune, și prin care experiența trăită devine o sursă de teoretizare, ci și la rădăcinile și istoria ei intelectuală, la caracteristicile și statutul său ambiguu și la aparenta ei respingere a noțiunii de gen literar. Acest articol propune un cadru conceptual preliminar pentru teoretizarea autoteoriei, bazat pe un corpus autoteoretic provenind din literatura franceză, dar și spaniolă, italiană, română și autohtonă din Québec. Sugerăm că este necesar să analizăm autoteoria în relația sa cu epoca post-adevărului, precum și să-i examinăm istoria culturală și dimensiunile cognitive. Făcând un pas dincolo de afirmația lui Fournier conform căreia istoria autoteoriei se contopește cu istoria feminismului, arătăm că autoteoria și post-adevărul au o rădăcină intelectuală comună, și anume gândirea postmodernă, pe care totuși o readuc în actualitate în moduri diametral opuse, cu proiecte antitetice în ceea ce privește relația lor cu democrația. Arătăm apoi că „sinele” autoteoretic corespunde modelului „5 E” al minții umane teoretizat de științele cognitive (în engleză, embodied, embedded, enactive, extended și emotive sau, conform unui alt model, ecological). Oferim în cele din urmă o descriere enactivistă a autoteoriei, arătând că scopul său inerent este de a acționa asupra lumii, actualizând astfel noțiunea de phronesis pentru a suscita regenerare și solidaritate democratică. Propunem în concluzie o definiție preliminară însă nuanțată a autoteoriei ca gen literar.
Cuvinte-cheie: autoteorie, post-adevăr, enactivism, postmodernism, cogniție „5 E”, phronesis
Article history: Received 2 November 2024; Revised 25 February 2025; Accepted 6 March 2025; Available online 25 March 2025; Available print 30 April 2025