Suchergebnisse

The accession of Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV) to government is a turning point in a traditionally democratic and multicultural country. The PVV has thrived on the social identity crisis the Netherlands seems to be undergoing. The difficult integration of Muslim populations, as well as the increasing rift between Dutch and European policy, have only weakened the democratic pact and increased wariness towards the country's traditional political parties. Adapted from the source document.

Economic development results first and foremost in a bigger output of goods and services. Whether it also enhances the rule of law is a classical question in the social sciences and economics. The absolutely remarkable economic progress in East Asia and South East Asia in recent decades has been accompanied by the rule of law in only a few countries. Are we to conclude that economic progress is possible without the rule of law? Adapted from the source document.

The note briefly summarizes the contents of two collective books, on China and India respectively. As China and India have "continental" dimensions, they foster hopes, provoke fear, excite curiosity and encourage closer examination. The two books originate from a scientific research work promoted and coordinated by the Faculty of Political sciences of the University of Pavia, and review some outstanding features of both the political, social and economic systems. Adapted from the source document.

In terms of sheer numbers, major war does not seem to be waning, but a more regionally-specific consideration suggests that the likelihood of major interstate war does appear to be dwindling in the Western hemisphere, Southeast Asia, Africa, & Europe. East Asia, South Asia, & the Middle East hold the greatest risk for major interstate war. Four key shifts in the international system relevant to the waning of major war are here analyzed: ideas, norms, power distribution, & social learning. Tables. K. Coddon

The effect of ethnic division on civil war & the role of political systems in preventing these conflicts are analyzed, using the importance of religious polarization & animist diversity to explain the incidence of ethnic civil war. Findings show that religious differences are a social cleavage more important than linguistic differences in the development of civil war, & being a consociational democracy significantly reduces the incidence of ethnic civil war. 6 Tables, 1 Figure, 29 References. [Copyright 2002 Sage Publications, Inc.]

In this paper we propose a computational approach to empirical optimal taxation. We develop and estimate a microeconometric model that is run to simulate household labour supply decisions and the implied economic, fiscal and welfare effects. The microsimulation is embedded into a numerical optimization routine that identifies the tax-transfer rule that maximizes a social welfare function. We consider the class of tax-transfer rules where net available income is computed as a 4th degree polynomial transformation of taxable income plus a transfer. We present the results for six European countries: Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain and the United Kingdom. For most values of the inequality aversion parameter k that characterizes the social welfare function, the optimized rules provide a higher social welfare than the current rule, with the exception of Luxembourg. The optimized tax-transfer rules are close to a Flat Tax plus a Universal Basic Income (or equivalently a Negative Income Tax).

В статье предложен подход к происхождению общественного сознания, разработанный на основе синтеза философской антропологии, палеоантропологии и палеогенетики. Основой для синтеза явилась концепция индивидуализации Б.Ф. Поршнева, скорректированная с учетом современных научных данных. В работе постулируется тезис о социально-коммуникативной природе происхождения общественного сознания. Оно рождалось на основе предсловесного и словесного сопротивления неоантропов палеоантропам-каннибалам. Общественное сознание есть следствие не столько естественного, сколько искусственного отбора, осуществляемого палеоантропами. Критерием отбора становилась большелобость, поскольку люди с более развитыми лобными долями головного мозга отличались способностью регулировать свои страсти и быть более покорными. Однако большелобость приводила и к развитию речевых центров, что позволило неоантропам сформировать социальные по своей природе группы и восстать против палеоантропов. В процессе длительного противостояния палеоантропов и неоантропов мышление сапиенсов постепенно переходило от коллективных форм (стадное сознание) к индивидуальным. После исчезновения угрозы со стороны палеоантропов, а также в связи с переходом к производящему хозяйству индивидуализация сапиенсов привела к борьбе со стадным мышлением (контрконтрсуггестия) и к оформлению общественного сознания. Показано, что механизм зарождения общественного сознания создавался в процессе дивергенции палеоантропов и неоантропов. Движущей силой этого механизма последовательно выступали интердикция, суггестия, контрсуггестия и контрконтрсуггестия. Историческое предназначение контрконтрсуггестии состояло в создании индивидуализированными социальными субъектами идейных программ (религиозных, политических и т. д.) и запуске механизма борьбы между этими программами. Результатом этой борьбы стало оформление общественного сознания во всей совокупности его проявлений. ; This paper suggests an approach to the origin of social consciousness, based on the synthesis of philosophical anthropology, paleoanthropology and paleogenetics. This synthesis evolved from the concept of individualization by B.F. Porshnev supplemented by new scientific data. The paper postulates a socio-communicative nature of the origin of social consciousness. It was based on the verbal and preverbal opposition of neanthropines to cannibal paleanthropines. Social consciousness is a result of not so much natural as artificial selection by paleanthropines. Large forehead became a selection criterion as people with more developed frontal lobes of the brain were able to control their passions and be more submissive. However, large forehead contributed at the same time to the development of speech centres, allowing neanthropines to form inherently social groups and rebel against paleanthropines. In the course of a long confrontation between paleanthropines and neanthropines, the thinking of Homo sapiens gradually turned from collective forms (gregarious consciousness) to individual ones. When paleanthropines ceased to present any threat, as well as due to the transition to farming, the individualization of Homo sapiens resulted in the struggle with gregarious mentality and in the formation of social consciousness. It is shown here that the mechanism of social consciousness origination was created during the divergence of paleanthropines and neanthropines. The driving forces behind this mechanism were interdiction, suggestion, contra-suggestion and contra-contra-suggestion. The historical purpose of contra-contra-suggestion was that individualized social persons would create ideological programmes (religious, political, etc.) and start a mechanism of struggle between these programmes. This struggle resulted in the formation of public consciousness in the totality of its manifestations.

Предмет. Статья посвящена вопросам развития социальной составляющей одному из основных направлений деятельности органов власти на всех ее уровнях. Потребность в развитии социальной инфраструктуры в российских регионах значительно превышает возможности по их финансированию за счет региональных бюджетных средств. Поэтому э ффективным механизмом для ускорения темпов развития социальной инфраструктуры при разумном уровне бюджетных затрат на данные мероприятия может стать сотрудничество с бизнес-структурами посредством активного внедрения механизма государственно-частного партнерства. Цель статьи исследование аспекта применения механизма государственно-частного партнерства как инструмента развития социальной сферы региона. Метод. На основании проведенного анализа существующего порядка формирования Перечня проектов государственно-частного партнерства в Республике Коми, который является инструментом планирования в данной сфере, в работе произведена оценка текущей ситуации в этой области с использованием методов структурного анализа, оценки документов и сравнительного анализа. Результаты работы. Выделены основные проблемы, возникающие в регионе, к которым относятся структурирование проектов на уровне государственных организаций и низкая привлекательность региональных проектов для потенциальных частных партнеров. Определены ограничения, препятствующие получению максимального положительного эффекта от внедрения в экономическую практику государственно-частного партнерства на уровне отдельно взятого региона, а также отражено возможное направление влияния на изменение ситуации. Выделены основные отрасли социальной сферы деятельности, в которых планируется использование данного механизма в целях улучшения доступности социальных благ для населения региона. Выводы. Полученные результаты могут быть применены при разработке стратегий развития социальной сферы в регионах. ; Importance The article considers the issues of social component development as one of the basic directions of government authorities' activity at all levels. We emphasize that the need for the social infrastructure development in the Russian regions considerably exceeds the capacity of their financing at the expense of regional budgetary funds. Therefore, cooperation with business entities through an active implementation of public-private partnership mechanism may become an effective tool for the development pace acceleration of social infrastructure with reasonable budgetary expenditures for these kind of activities. Objectives The article's goal is to study the application of public-private partnership aspects as an instrument for the region's social development. Methods Based on an analysis of the existing procedure for forming the List of public-private partnership projects in the Republic of Komi, which acts as planning instrument in this area, the paper makes evaluation of the current situation in this area using structural analysis methods, and also evaluation of documents and comparative analysis. The article defines constraints, which hamper obtaining of maximum useful results after introducing public-private partnership to the economic practices at the particular region-level, as well as, to reflect possible directions of the influence aimed at changing the situation. Results The paper identifies the main problems, which occur in the region and which include project structuring at the State-level organizations and low attractiveness of regional projects for the potential partners. Conclusions and Relevance We identify the main sectors of social sphere activity, which plan to use this mechanism in order to improve the accessibility of social benefits for the region's population. The obtained results can be used when developing the growth strategies of the regions' social services.

Urban development is determined not only by geographical and demographic factors, but also by economic, social, systemic, and legal ones. The process of granting town statutes and privileges in the Middle Ages and implementation of the Magdeburg rights were crucial for the foundation of cities in Poland. Cities were distinguished from settlement units by having borough rights. The modern age was a period of decline in the political importance of cities and then their destruction, especially during the Swedish Deluge. The restoration, which began in the mid-18th century, was interrupted by the partitions of Poland. During the partitions period, Polish cities were only provincial city centres of other foreign countries, but in Lodz, for example, industry flourished. Interwar Poland is a period when new ties developed between existing urban units, but after the Second World War the borders were moved westward. The socialist system did not enable establishing strong functional links between regions, but it was a period of industrialisation and urbanisation. The administrative reform of 1975 created a unique polycentric arrangement of 49 cities as capitals of voivodeships (provinces). The political transformation after 1989 and the economic and social changes led to a crisis in small and medium-sized cities. The costly reform of 1999 exacerbated this problem by favouring metropolitan areas and the capital city of Warsaw. Currently, it is estimated that 122 small and medium-sized towns and cities in Poland are at risk of depopulation. The solution to this structural collapse could be extensive deglomeration.

This article examines the interrelationship between lawmaking and learning in the context of Poland. Drawing from social sciences, particularly political science, administrative sciences, and legal sciences, it investigates how various aspects of the lawmaking process can be seen as a learning process. The study emphasizes the importance of lawmakers' ability to learn from societal developments and to adapt legislation accordingly. In the introduction the article highlights the dynamic nature of lawmaking as a continuous learning process. It examines the formal lawmaking process in Poland, including the role of political parties and the influence of European law. Furthermore, the author argues that lawmaking is essentially a learning process, and deals with how lawmakers identify social problems, create rules to address them, and modify legislation based on observations and societal impact. The article also explores the importance of learning from European integration, changes in technology, society, economy, and security issues. By analyzing the findings and arguments presented, the study links theoretical concepts with practical examples from Polish lawmaking and the impact of European law. It emphasizes the importance of lawmakers' ability to learn from societal developments and to modify legislation to effectively address new challenges. The research contributes to a comprehensive understanding of lawmaking in Poland and highlights the importance of learning for the advancement of legislative processes. The findings gained from this study are of importance to policymakers, legal practitioners, and researchers in the fields of public administration, safety, and legal sciences.

Dans les Départements français d'Amérique, les questions du genre et de la sexualité présentent des aspects hérités de l'histoire coloniale, d'autres façonnés par les politiques publiques depuis la départementalisation (1946) et d'autres encore, propres à la créolisation du monde caribéen. Cet article rend compte de recherches anthropologiques conduites entre 2008 et 2012 en Guadeloupe et en Guyane où nous avons étudié la construction des normes de genre au cours de travaux portant sur la prévention du VIH. Nous soulignerons les relations et les paradoxes à l'œuvre, qui, découlant de ces constructions socio-historiques, ont créé un « dispositif de sexe et genre créolisé ». L'analyse des paradoxes permet de mettre en lumière les constructions idéologiques qui ramènent la sexualité sur la scène du politique. Les récits et analyses de l'histoire, comme l'application des politiques publiques métropolitaines associées au nationalisme créole révèlent également les contraintes sociales, économiques et politiques qui contribuent à façonner les rapports sociaux de sexe. Comment s'organisent, ou se « créolisent », les normes occidentales de la famille nucléaire et du couple monogame, et celles, définies comme caribéennes de la matrifocalité et du multipartenariat ? Que nous révèlent les paradoxes et les tensions des rapports sociaux de sexe contemporains ? Comment les femmes caribéennes s'affranchissent-elles du poids de la « respectabilité » qu'elles doivent endosser ? Comment les hommes gèrent-ils leur position sociale ambiguë ? Autant de questions que cet article tente d'explorer en mobilisant une grille de lecture inspirée des études postcoloniales ainsi qu'une perspective articulant les rapports de genre, de « race » et de classe (intersectionnalité).

"This book examines the renewed interest and commitment that countries across the world have shown in recent decades towards adopting models of decentralizing, or "downsizing" the state, and moving towards more participatory models of government. It examines systems of decentralized development such as self-managing cooperatives from a global and comparative perspective with a focus on developing countries. Drawing on examples from Kerala and a few other states in India, as well as Cuba, Bangladesh and South Africa among other countries, the book offers critical perspectives on the positive impacts of these experiments and the promises these offer for the future. It discusses the challenges of implementing these models, how well these work in coordination with the civil society and the state, issues of transparency and democratic oversight as well as corruption and capture of power due to entrenched structures of inequality. The volume analyses welfare and development models and self-management interventions in countering the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. It also looks at the merits and demerits of decentralization in countering the global socioeconomic and environmental crisis and the rise of authoritarian populism in many countries. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of development studies, political science, business, community development, social justice as well as of cooperative management programs. It will also appeal to students of political economy as well as development professionals, think tanks and policy makers"--

Introduction: a plea for a "vicious turn'' in global history /Jessica R. Pliley, Robert Kramm, and Harald Fischer-Tine --Modernity, vice, and the problem of nakedness /Philippa Levine --"Godless Edens": surveillance, eroticized anarchy, and "depraved communities" in Britain and the wider world, 1890-1930 /Antony Taylor --Physical culture as "natural healing": Eugen Sandow's campaign against the vices of civilization c. 1890-1920 /Carey A. Watt --The specter of degeneration: alcohol and race in West Africa in the early twentieth century /Charles Ambler --A question of social medicine or racial hygiene? The Bulgarian temperance discourse and eugenics in the interwar period, 1920-1940 /Nikolay Kamenov --Threats to empire: illicit distillation, venereal diseases, and colonial disorder in British West Africa, 1930-1948 /Emmanuel Akyeampong --Medical and criminological constructions of drug addiction in late Imperial and early Soviet Russia /Pavel Vasilyev --Cigarette smoking in modern Buenos Aires: the sudden change in a century-old continuity /DiegoArmus --The FBI's White Slave Division: the creation of a national regulatory regime to police prostitutes in the United States, 1910-1918 /Jessica R. Pliley --Anti-vice lives: peopling the archives of prostitution in interwar India /Stephen Legg --China's prostitution regulation system in an international context, 1900-19 /Elizabeth J. Remick --"Hey, GI, want pretty flower girl?": venereal disease, sanitation, and geopolitics in US-occupied Japan and Korea, 1945-1948 /Robert Kramm --Global anti-vice activism: a postmortem /David T. Courtwright

The aim of this work was to develop knowledge about and awareness of fatness stigmatization from a systemic perspective. The stigmatization of fat people was located as a social problem in a second-order reality in which human fatness is observed and responded to, in turn providing it with negative meaning. Four separate studies of processes involved in this systemic stigmatization were performed. In study I, the association between weight and psychological distress was investigated. When controlling for an age-gender variable, this association was almost erased, questioning the certainty by which a higher weight in general is approached as a medical issue. In study II, the focus was on stigma internalization where negative and positive responses combined were connected to fat individuals' distress. We found that both responses seemed to have a larger impact on fat individuals, suggesting that the embodied stigma of being fat sensitizes them to responses in general. In study III, justifications of fatness stigmatization was explored by a content analysis of a reality TV weight-loss show. The analysis showed how explicit bullying of a fat partner could be justified by animating the thin Self as violated by the fat Other, thus downplaying the evils of the bullying act in favor of highlighting the ideological value of thinness. The implications of these studies were related and seated in a context comprising a historical aversion toward the fat body, a declared obesity epidemic, a new public health ideology, a documented failure to reverse this obesity epidemic, and a market of weight-loss stakeholders who thrive on keeping the negative meanings of being fat alive. The stigmatization of fat people was intelligible from a systemic perspective, where processes of structural ignorance, internalized self-discrimination, and applied prejudice reinforce each other to form a larger stigmatizing process. In paper IV, it was argued that viewing fatness stigmatization as oppression rather than misrecognition could hold transformative keys to social change. ; There are social groups in society that are categorically connected, for example by their physical, cultural or psychological markers. For political, or moral, reasons, some of these groups seem to trigger special attention in form of forceful response processes at several societal levels. This is the case with the contemporary 'obesity epidemic' phenomenon; postulated by the World Health Organization as one of the most severe threats to the health of future mankind. One of the downsides with such special attention is that the fat individuals find themselves caught up in seemingly unavoidable processes of devaluation. Instead of investigating the catastrophic (well-known) psycho-social consequences of these individuals, this work focuses on connecting the devaluing processes that form a systemic stigmatization of fat individuals. From this critical perspective, it is argued that the pervasive stigmatization of fat people is not an unfortunate consequence of structural norms that passively exclude its 'non-fits', but an intelligible outcome of a highly active set of processes that continuously construct and re-construct a historical aversion towards fat people.

Social and political problems were accentuated in the colonies American in the late eighteenth century, certainly impacted the ideas illustrated; In the creole sectors, independence was conceived; in Mexico and Uruguay enthusiastic authors are identified with the ideas of freedom, equality and justice, is the case of Fernández de Lizardi and Bartolomé Hidalgo, who chose dialogue and circumstantial poetry to express your ideals; a first reading of his works reveals certain elements in common. In that sense, a comparative analysis of his writings becomes pertinent, since they lived through the political situation in the colonies American. The analysis will start from what Zavala exposes in relation to the comparative reading, according to which it consists of the comparison of the texts, from the same perspective of analysis. They will be studied the ideas of each author separately and then proceed to see the elements in common. The methodology is to consider the circumstances historical and socio-political in the colonies; second, they will be studied the patriotic and independence ideas of Hidalgo, and those of Fernández de Lizardi; third, the ideas of both will be confronted, their affinities and differences. These are spatially distant contemporary authors, who had no communication, but their writings reveal the commitment to the homeland, criticism of the monarchy, and eagerness to fight in for equality and social justice. It is remarkable that they used the same genres to express their ideological leanings. ; Las problemáticas sociales y políticas se acentuaron en las colonias americanas a finales del siglo XVIII, sin duda impactaron las ideas ilustradas; en los sectores criollos se concibió la independencia; en México y Uruguay se identifican autores entusiastas con las ideas de libertad, igualdad y justicia, es el caso de Fernández de Lizardi y Bartolomé Hidalgo, quienes eligieron el diálogo y la poesía de circunstancia para expresar sus ideales; una primera lectura de sus obras revela ciertos elementos en común. En ese sentido, un análisis comparativo de sus escritos se vuelve pertinente, ya que vivieron la coyuntura política en las colonias americanas. En el análisis se partirá de lo que expone Zavala en relación a la lectura comparativa, según la cual consiste en la comparación de los textos, desde una misma perspectiva de análisis. Se estudiarán las ideas de cada autor por separado y después se procederá a ver los elementos en común. La metodología consiste en considerar las circunstancias históricas y socio-políticas en las colonias; segundo, se estudiarán las ideas patrióticas e independentistas de Hidalgo, y las de Fernández de Lizardi; tercero, se confrontarán las ideas de ambos, sus afinidades y diferencias. Se trata de autores contemporáneos lejanos espacialmente, que no tuvieron comunicación, pero sus escritos revelan el compromiso con la patria, la crítica a la monarquía, y afán de lucha en pro de la igualdad y la justicia social. Es destacable que utilizaron los mismos géneros para expresar sus inclinaciones ideológicas.