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I. General considerations on citizen participation Citizen indifference, rejection of politics and mistrust of the ruling class, seem to be, unfortunately, generalized characteristics of contemporary democracies. For this reason, the representative system, originally conceived as a possible substitute for direct democracy, has ended in its practical application by separating the representatives from the represented. The latter is a strange paradox, in which the representative system has become an enemy of the democratic system. Democracy is, by definition, a participatory system, and can include both the political aspect of human activity and also extend to the economic and social aspects. Participation is additionally an important component of human development, because it allows the self-realization of the abilities, vocations and aptitudes of each person. ; I. Consideraciones generales sobre la participación ciudadana La indiferencia ciudadana, el rechazo hacia la política y la desconfianza hacia la clase dirigente, parecen ser, lamentablemente, características generalizadas de las democracias contemporáneas. Por ello el sistema representativo, concebido originalmente como el sustituto posible de la democracia directa, ha terminado en su aplicación práctica por separar a los representantes de los representados. Extraña paradoja esta última, en que el sistema representativo ha devenido en un enemigo del sistema democrático. La democracia es, por definición, un sistema participativo, y puede comprender tanto el aspecto político de la actividad humana como extenderse también al económico y al social. La participación es adicionalmente un importante componente del desarrollo humano, porque permite la propia realización de las capacidades, vocaciones y aptitudes de cada persona.

In the current research is made an analysis which pretends to evaluate the form and essence of the previous five National Development Plans (NDP), where there are expressed the objectives and projects of the political, legal, economic and social nature of the country. In this study are analyzed the syntactic and semantic macrostructure that only correspond to the education approach, taking a set of variables that allow the potential of argumentative, grammatical, economic and political aspects. In order to understand the whole textual superstructure it is segmented the research and the analysis; this division will be called 'surfaces', concluding with three of them. Each surface was analyzed by different sorts of variables, which have the function of observing specific aspects. ; En la presente investigación se realiza un análisis que pretende evaluar la forma y esencia de los últimos cinco Planes Nacionales de Desarrollo (PND), en donde se plasman los objetivos y proyectos de naturaleza política, jurídica, económica y social del país. En este estudio se analizan las macro-estructuras sintácticas y semánticas que responden al enfoque exclusivo del ítem de la educación. Tomando un conjunto de variables que permiten la potencial relación de aspectos argumentativos, gramaticales, económicos y políticos. Para lograr comprender toda la superestructura textual se segmenta la investigación y el análisis, dicha segmentación responderá al nombre de ´superficies´, completando un total de tres. Cada superficie fue analizada con variables de diferente índole, las cuales responden a la función de observar aspectos específicos.

The study was conducted to find out the impacts of Self Help Groups (SHGs) Approach in the lives of beneficiaries at household level: in case of Hosanna Family Empowerment Program which is part of the development projects of Children's Home Societies and Family Services (CHSFS). Children's Home Society and Family Services (CHSFS) is one of the international not-for profit organizations in Ethiopia which are promoting SHG approach as a model for transformational development. Self-Help Group is an informal association of people in a village, hamlet or urban neighborhood with the principal objective of empowering destitute women economically, socially, politically, institutionally and spiritually. The researcher focused on analyzing the significant impacts of SHGs compared to other developmental endeavors undertaken by the organization under the study with the following specific objectives in mind: To investigate if the economic aspects of the beneficiaries at household level demonstrated improvement. To assess if SHG approach has brought the desired results on the lives of the beneficiaries in the social, political and leadership aspects of their lives. To recommend if SHG could be adopted as a development model for mitigating poverty at the national level. The researcher used questionnaire for educated respondents and scheduled interview for illiterate respondents. In order to enhance the validity of the research, both qualitative and quantitative methods were applied in the research. The analysis of the findings of the research reveals that involvement in SHGs has significant economic and social contributions on the lives of poor women.

Ever since daily activities have been carried into digital, cyberspace have become one of the primary grounds for citizen participation activities such political discourse and activism. Wikileaks documents, the effects of social media in the Arab Spring and global and local hacker movements are great instances for digital political participation with high impact such as the creation and diffusion of new conceptions like cyber security and cyber warfare. Internet's role in this new age activism is crucial; especially hacker movements are using Internet as a tool of resistance. Hacking activity as a political activism or hacktivism is simply an activity that making a system unworkable and acquiring and publishing information with the aim of raising public awareness. Using both mainstream and social media as a communication tool, hacker groups such as Anonymous Chaos Computer Club (CCC) and LulzSec aim to ignite activist protests from online to offline. Just like the global hacker groups, hacker groups in Turkey aim the exact same goal. Turkish hacktivists can be divided into two categories as nationalist groups who hacks websites in other countries in order to leave messages and left-wing hackers who defend the freedom of information. As the most powerful example of hactivism in Turkey, Redhack contain similar aspects. In this study, hactivism will be discussed by its ethical aspects and the center of this academic study will be the Redhack case. Following the review of literature, a quantitative research in university students is shared to observe their perspective on Redhack and hactivism. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p628

Thirty years ago, in 1983, Harold Berman's Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition was first published. His work had an enormous impact on legal scholarship all over the world. Many aspects of his central thesis – that there was something akin to a "papal revolution" in eleventh century Europe; that this "revolution" set a pattern for future epochs of transformation; that the special relation between Religion and Law was a distinct feature of the "Western Legal Tradition" – were largely discussed by legal historians, historians and social scientists. Others, like his "Social Theory of Law", received less attention. Although there had been strong criticism by scholars, especially medievalists, on some aspects of Berman's work, it has become a standard reference in scholarly writings, not least outside of Europe. Since its appearance in 1983, Law and Revolution has been translated into German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Lithuanian. Twenty years later, in 2003, with his project entitled Law and Revolution II: The Impact of the Protestant Reformations on the Western Legal Tradition, Berman presented the second volume of what was thought to be a trilogy. Twenty years had gone by, the political world order had changed, but Berman's main point, the importance of analyzing the role of Religion and Law, and the specific constellation of these two modes of normative thought, had gained new currency. In 2007, Harold J. Berman passed away, but not without having opened his historical and legal thought to the challenges of a globalized world. .

Recently a range of relational approaches have established themselves in many arenas of geographical thought. Insights have been drawn in from poststructural philosophy and social theory to decentre the human subject and consider agency in a more distributed way. Within such work, amongst references to networks, rhizomes, assemblages, and the like, the term 'ecology' has at times been employed to refer to such relationalty. However, the implications of its use and the specific value of the term in thinking about relationality have not yet been fully considered. Therefore, this paper articulates an 'ecological approach' to the study of the embodied practices. The significance of such an approach is expressed in terms of its ability to pay attention to the co-constitutive relatedness of practices and the social—cultural—material environments in which they take place. This is articulated in the paper in three main ways: (1) by drawing attention to the sheer complexity and singularity of relatedness; (2) by reflecting on connections with, and the status of, human and nonhuman entities in the playing out of practices; and (3) by considering the structuring of affective relations and the context in which practices take place. This is illustrated in the paper in relation to the practice of street performance and the intertwining both of the more concrete 'material' aspects of the street space (architecture, benches, people), and of its less concrete, but still materially significant, aspects (meteorological-atmospheres, felt-ambiences, not physically present regulative formations), with the performer in the playing out of this practice.

This article discusses particular aspects of current Canadian teacher training that seem healthy practice to an experienced school-teacher from the United Kingdom. With the UK government increasingly interested, some would say determined, in moving the funding of initial teacher training away from universities and to schools, my visit to Canada, and specifically to Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at The University of Toronto, focuses on those practices that appear supportive of deep learning for beginning teachers in helping them to develop their own sense of the purposes of education and ways in which they might become agents of change.Keywords : comparative initial teacher training programmes, social justice, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, United Kingdom and Canada ; Cet article traite certains aspects de la formation actuelle des enseignants au Canada qui semblent être une pratique salutaire selon un enseignant expérimenté du Royaume-Uni. Avec le gouvernement britannique de plus en plus intéressé, certains diraient déterminé, en déplaçant le financement de la formation initiale des enseignants loin des universités et des écoles, ma visite au Canada, et plus particulièrement à l'OISE de l'université de Toronto, se concentre sur les pratiques qui semblent favorables à un apprentissage en profondeur pour les enseignants débutants, afin de les aider à développer leur propre sens des objectifs de l'éducation et les façons dont ils pourraient devenir des agents du changement.Mots-clés: comparaison des programmes de formation initiale des enseignants, justice sociale, Centre de recherche en éducation de l'université de Toronto (OISE : Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), Royaume-Uni et Canada

This Article looks at aspects of the relationship between privatization in education and educational justice, examining these relationships from normative and empirical points of view. It explores different meanings of privatization in the realm of education and assesses underlying reasons for certain aspects of privatization in light of two educational justice: the adequacy approach and the fair equality of opportunity approach. The Article argues that given the competitive nature of the sphere of education, considerations of fairness, as well as utility, solidarity, and democracy supply strong reasons for rejecting various arguments that support the existence of private schools. In the last thirty years, vouchers and school choice schemes have constituted the main modes of privatization, importing market mechanisms and the logic of competition into the realm of education. Empirical evidence suggests that vouchers and school choice schemes have not fulfilled the promise of reducing educational inequalities, partly due to the political, social, economic and ideological background in which they were implemented. The introduction of competition in the realm of education has created a reality that encourages schools to prefer "low cost" students—students from middle and upper classes families—over "high cost" disadvantaged students—who come mainly from the lower class, and students with special needs. Not only have marketization and privatization changed the way that society distributes educational services, they promote a social ethos that emphasizes self-interest over the advancement of the public good and erodes democratic public forums in which collective societal decisions should be resolved.

No existen casi estudios sobre las producciones de los diversos departamentos de Mendoza. Ello es más notorio aún a medida que nos alejamos en el tiempo. Un periodo notablemente interesante de la historia económica local es el de fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX. En él se genera el denominado boom vitivinícola mendocino. Para conocer su verdadera magnitud, se evalúan sus producciones con relación al conjunto global de todas las actividades a nivel tanto provincial como departamental. Se examinan no sólo la vitivinicultura sino además otras actividades como la ganadería, la industria en general y el comercio, y se introducen aspectos cualitativos relevantes no sólo relativos a lo económico sino también a lo social, político y aún a lo deportivo y sus protagonistas. ; There are very few studies about the production of the different counties of Mendoza. This is more notorious as we go back in time. At the end of the XIX century and begining of the XXth, there was a very interesting period in the local economic history. Here is where the so called boom of the wine industry makes its appereance. To know its real magnitude, its productions are evaluated in relation to all provincial as well as county's activities. Not only grape raising and wine making are analized but also cattle raising, commerce and industries in general and also there's been introduced qualitative aspects, not only related to economics but to social, political and sportive aspects and to its actors.

En este breve ensayo se referirán los acontecimientos relacionados con el asignado, el papel moneda creado por los revolucionarios franceses. Los siete años de la atormentada existencia del asignado revolvieron Francia, más allá de los eventos políticos y sociales que caracterizan desde entonces a la cultura occidental. El rito de pasaje entre viejo y nuevo mundo (Régime) está aquí interpretado a la luz de un caracter particular de la política de los gobiernos revolucionarios, el de la política económica y monetaria, de la cual incluso hoy en día nunca se discute y nada se aprende, prefiriendo evocar el mito de la Revolución y olvidando que la reconstrucción histórica no deberia utilizarle, para no quedar sumisa a su vez. ; In this short essay the fortunes of the assignats are depicted, the paper money created by the French revolutionaries. The seven years of turbulent existence of the assignats had disrupted France, even more than the political and social events which characterize Western culture since then. The ritual passage from the old to the new world (Régime) here is interpreted in the light of the economic and monetary policy, a particular aspect of the politics of revolutionary governments. Today there still exist just a few discussions on this aspect. It seems that we do not want to improve anything from it, prefering to evoke the myth of the Revolution and forgetting that historical reconstruction should not make use of it, for non to remain subjugated by the same.

What kind of society does Islamic architecture reflect? What are the basic units and forms of Islamic society associated with Islamic architecture, and what kinds of relationships existed among its individuals? Is Islamic society a 'uniform society' or a 'multi-layered society'? These fundamental questions are at the centre of this study. This paper explores the basic intellectual, social and environmental aspects that have shaped Islamic architecture. It explores these aspects as reflected in the building forms of Muslim societies. Functionalism and interactionism are two major schools of modern sociology. As a social phenomenon, Islamic architecture is examined in the light of these two schools. The urban fabric of the traditional Islamic city as an example of functionalism in architecture is examined with reference to the ruined city of Sāmarrāʾ, in Iraq; and examples of Ottoman architecture are considered as models of interactionism in city planning and architecture. The works of three major figures in contemporary Arab thought, Muḥammad Abed Al-Jabri and ʿAbdullah Al-ʿArawī from Morocco, and Mohammad Al-Anṣārī from Bahrain, are considered in this paper. Their thoughts and views are used as vehicles to test some innate features of Islamic architecture. The influence of language and the desert, two exceptionally important factors that have shaped the culture of Muslim societies and its manifestation in architecture, is also explored. The findings of this paper, although still at a preliminary stage, reiterate the major concepts of the medieval Arab scholar Ibn Khaldūn, in his Muqaddimah, in an architectural context.

Issues related to globalization are central to most contemporary works in sociology, no matter the specialization. During the past two decades, sociologists have investigated the effects of globalization on most aspects of social life and the extent and variety of the research and literature on the subject have been widely commented upon. This special issue of the Canadian Journal of Sociology represents a modest attempt to stimulate a discussion of the relation sociology itself has with globalization. These papers examine the contemporary transformations of the organization of sociological work and the production of sociological research and discourse in the context of the growing interaction of local, national, regional, and global networks.

Résumé. Les questions liées à la globalisation sont centrales dans la plupart des travaux contemporains en sociologie et ce, peu importe la branche de spécialisation. Durant les deux dernières décennies, les sociologues ont examiné les effets de la mondialisation sur la majorité des aspects de la vie sociale. Le nombre et la variété de la recherche et de la littérature sur le sujet ont été abondamment commentés. Ce numéro spécial des Cahiers canadiens de sociologie est une modeste tentative visant à susciter une discussion à propos de la relation entre la sociologie et la globalisation. Les articles de ce numéro examinent les transformations contemporaines dans l'organisation du travail sociologique, mais aussi dans la production de la recherche sociologique et de son discours dans le contexte d'une augmentation des interactions entre réseaux locaux, nationaux, régionaux et globaux.

International audience ; This study aims at creating a holistic conceptual approach systematizing the interrelation of (natural) hazards, vulnerability and risk. A general hierarchical risk meta-framework presents potentially affected components of a given system, such as its physical, demographic, social, economic, political or ecological spheres, depending on the particular hazard. Based on this general meta-framework, measurable indicators are specified for the system "urban area" as an example. This framework is used as an outline to identify the capabilities of remote sensing to contribute to the assessment of risk. Various indicators contributing to the outline utilizing diverse remote sensing data and methods are presented. Examples such as built-up density, main infrastructure or population distribution identify the capabilities of remote sensing within the holistic perspective of the framework. It is shown how indexing enables a multilayer analysis of the complex and small-scale urban landscape to take different types of spatial indicators into account to simulate concurrence. The result is an assessment of the spatial distribution of risks within an urban area in the case of an earthquake and its secondary threats, using an inductive method. The results show the principal capabilities of remote sensing to contribute to the identification of physical and demographic aspects of vulnerability, as well as provide indicators for the spatial distribution of natural hazards. Aspects of social, economic or political indicators represent limitations of remote sensing for an assessment complying with the holistic risk framework.

The body's inflextion: a study of stress in everyday life

Stress is a common term in our langu¬a¬ge of everyday life. This article discus¬ses the results of an empirical investiga¬tion of stress experiences in everyday life. Data were collected by means of interviews with 36 employees of a public organization. The analysis of the data was conducted in two phases: a pheno¬menological analysis of the qualitative dimensions of stress and an analysis of social and cultural aspects structuring these stress experiences. The results presented here concern the first phase whereas the second phase only is indi¬cated by an example. The phenomeno¬logical analysis yielded a distinction be¬tween three phenomenological struc¬tures, metaphorically termed, 'fight', 'blocking' and 'boiling over'. These re¬sults are discussed in relation to such phenomenological concepts as intentio¬nality, time, subjectivity and moods. The analysis of the social and cultural aspects structuring the experiences of stress illustrates that actor's interpreta¬tion of stress experiences is structured by the dominant discourse of stress, but resistance towards this discourse is found. In conclusion, the results of the two analytical approaches are latched together: the results of the phenomeno¬logical analysis suggest a base for the construction of a new discourse of stress in everyday life; the results of the soci¬al and cultural analysis suggest that ac¬tors might be receptive for other dis¬courses than the available discourses of stress.These results taken together urge us to develop new discourses of stress in everyday life.

Although a decade and a half has passed, Hungary's transition from state socialísm to capitalism and the switchover to market economy and democracy are far from being a closed issue for anyone striving to understand economic, social, political and spatial processes in the early years of the 21st century and place them in the current global processes of transformation. How long will it take for a society that is, with respect to its operation, ridden with all the problems of transition to produce spatial forms that are not simply different from their former socialist counterparts, but expressly capitalistic, i.e. for spatial processes to pass through the stage of transition, in a new system of parliamentary democracy and under the conditions of market economy? If there exists `postsocialist' production of space, what are its characteristics and what are the characteristics of its end-products? Seeking an answer to these and similar questions, this book, adopting two approaches, provides an outline of a few aspects of the spatial context of transition, while offering a new dimension to contemporary politological, sociological and economic research in Hungary and, in part, East Central Europe: 20 chapters in the first three parts are devoted to some spatial aspects, the geography and direct and indirect spatial impacts of (regfonal) political, economic and social transitions, 13 chapters in the next two parts focus on spatial processes themselves, taking stock of new changing patterns of spaces, places and uneven development in Hungary.