Search results

In Lithuania, the main element of the minimum income (MI) scheme is the Law on Cash Social Assistance for Low-Income Residents, which provides the legal basis for offering social assistance benefits (SAB). The MI scheme is centralised in terms of eligibility criteria, conditionality rules and the formula for calculating benefits. In Lithuania, SAB as an MI scheme does not include any specific components. However, for protection from poverty, the following means-tested benefits are also important: compensation for housing costs, social assistance for pupils, child benefits and lump-sum benefits. Despite legal requirements, local authorities have an opportunity to exercise discretion when making decisions concerning an individual applicant. Local authorities also have the right to channel planned but unused allocations for SAB to other purposes. This provides a strong financial incentive for local governments to reduce their expenditure on SAB. Data from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) demonstrate the low level of SAB take-up.

Lithuanian legislation (a) does not treat arduous or hazardous jobs as a separate issue of social policy; and (b) has no special pension schemes or special provisions for people involved in arduous or hazardous jobs. Arduous or hazardous jobs are treated as jobs with higher occupational risk, where the probability of injury is greater due to hazardous aspects of the job environment. In 2002, the Government of Lithuania approved the classification of arduous or hazardous jobs: there are now 20 categories. There is no statistical information on how many workers are employed in the different categories of arduous or hazardous jobs. The working time of people who are exposed to occupational risk factors must not exceed 36 hours per week, and the workers must undergo a pre-entry medical examination, followed by further periodic medical examinations. Those under 18 years of age, and pregnant and breast-feeding women are prohibited from working in dangerous or hazardous conditions. From the Soviet past, the Lithuanian pension system inherited a special working conditions scheme. Under this scheme, compensation is paid to people who worked under conditions regarded as arduous or hazardous. However, this compensation is paid only for work before 1995. Lithuania offers the possibility for people to take an early retirement social insurance pension up to five years before the statutory retirement age. However, in that case the pension may be reduced by up to 24%, and that reduced pension is paid for the remaining period of retirement. There are no data on the proportion of early retirees who were in arduous or hazardous jobs, but the experience of the economic crisis shows that the main reason for claiming early retirement pension was unemployment. The only social protection scheme that is indirectly related to risks at work is a lump sum and periodic compensation for loss of work capacity. The periodic compensation is paid to insured individuals if an accident at work or an occupational disease means that they lose at least 30% of their capacity for work.

In Lithuania, the main element of the minimum income (MI) scheme is the Law on Cash Social Assistance for Low-Income Residents, which provides the legal basis for offering social assistance benefits (SAB). The MI scheme is centralised in terms of eligibility criteria, conditionality rules and the formula for calculating benefits. In Lithuania, SAB as an MI scheme does not include any specific components. However, for protection from poverty, the following means-tested benefits are also important: compensation for housing costs, social assistance for pupils, child benefits and lump-sum benefits. Despite legal requirements, local authorities have an opportunity to exercise discretion when making decisions concerning an individual applicant. Local authorities also have the right to channel planned but unused allocations for SAB to other purposes. This provides a strong financial incentive for local governments to reduce their expenditure on SAB. Data from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) demonstrate the low level of SAB take-up.

Lithuanian legislation (a) does not treat arduous or hazardous jobs as a separate issue of social policy; and (b) has no special pension schemes or special provisions for people involved in arduous or hazardous jobs. Arduous or hazardous jobs are treated as jobs with higher occupational risk, where the probability of injury is greater due to hazardous aspects of the job environment. In 2002, the Government of Lithuania approved the classification of arduous or hazardous jobs: there are now 20 categories. There is no statistical information on how many workers are employed in the different categories of arduous or hazardous jobs. The working time of people who are exposed to occupational risk factors must not exceed 36 hours per week, and the workers must undergo a pre-entry medical examination, followed by further periodic medical examinations. Those under 18 years of age, and pregnant and breast-feeding women are prohibited from working in dangerous or hazardous conditions. From the Soviet past, the Lithuanian pension system inherited a special working conditions scheme. Under this scheme, compensation is paid to people who worked under conditions regarded as arduous or hazardous. However, this compensation is paid only for work before 1995. Lithuania offers the possibility for people to take an early retirement social insurance pension up to five years before the statutory retirement age. However, in that case the pension may be reduced by up to 24%, and that reduced pension is paid for the remaining period of retirement. There are no data on the proportion of early retirees who were in arduous or hazardous jobs, but the experience of the economic crisis shows that the main reason for claiming early retirement pension was unemployment. The only social protection scheme that is indirectly related to risks at work is a lump sum and periodic compensation for loss of work capacity. The periodic compensation is paid to insured individuals if an accident at work or an occupational disease means that they lose at least 30% of their capacity for work.

For centuries understood as a micro-level caring profession, recently social work is dramatically changing its goals due to structural changes in societies, climate change, migration and political instability. The article employs cross-cultural comparisons that aim to reveal the invariant structure of the social work field, which is realized through the unique manifestations of social work practices in different cultural contexts in Lithuania, Japan, and the United States. The research identifies four social work practices in the professional fields and presents them based on the concepts of field, habitus, and capital, highlighting the similarities and differences between countries in the application of rules of the social field.

This article further develops the ideas expressed in our previous publication – On the Attempt to Unlock the Black Boxes of Science (1) – and presents a sociological experiment that aims to break the conventional routine of the research activities of both sociology and life sciences. The article consists of two parts. The first part discusses the concept of "the new scientific spirit," elaborated by French scientist and philosopher G. Bachelard, and introduces H. White's theory of tropes, which provides a novel interpretative framework for "the new scientific spirit." The second part of this article describes a didactic experiment comprised of two discussion groups with PhD students working in the field of life sciences. The first discussion group attempted to realize the principles of the sociology of the social, whereas the second one attempted to break the limits of the sociology of the social and to induce an epistemological rupture in order to realize the principles of the sociology of translation in the second discussion. This article also includes the authors' reflections regarding the formation of their own sociological habitus.