The objective of this article is to show how issues concerning women in science and the problem of gendered science, often treated separately, are interconnected. To examine how research on women in science and research on gender and science relate to each other, some feminist epistemological perspectives, mainly feminist contextual empiricism, are used in order to show how the feminist philosophical conceptual framework may be useful for understanding the problems currently faced by women in science. After reflecting and elaborating on the very thesis of gendered science, the author analyses in more detail the concept of epistemic communities and the concept of trust as an epistemic factor. Through these concepts the author argues that philosophical/epistemological considerations are fruitful for studying the experience of individual women in science. Both of these interrelated concepts are considered highly relevant in the search for an epistemological framework facilitating the thematic study of women in science on a theoretical level and research on the current situation of women in the academic world in Slovakia.
"The aim of this paper is to introduce one of the classical sociological research conducted by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Elihu Katz in the city of Decatur (Illinois) in the Midwest of United States in 1955. The subject of the research was nonformal everyday interpersonal influence in areas of marketing, fashion, public affairs and movie going and the object was the population of women older 16 years (n = 718). By means of indicators of life cycle, social status and gregariousness the research report describes the profiles of opinion leaders in given areas and provides an answer to question if the two step flow of communication hypotheses is applicable in mentioned spheres of social life." (author's abstract)
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Socio-ecological boundaries delineate landscapes containing natural resources that are differentially accessed and managed by stakeholders. These boundaries may be human-demarcated and biophysical serving as tangible and intangible features delineating landscapes. Our purpose is to explore Mongolian herders' perceptions of their pasture and boundaries through participatory mapping processes. Our research questions include: 1) what boundaries are depicted on herders' participatory maps? and 2) how are boundaries discussed through herders' participatory mapping narratives? We conducted participatory mapping and informal interviews (n= 35) with herder groups and district officials in Arkhangai, Tuv, Dornod, and Dornogovi. We qualitatively coded participatory mapping narratives and applied visual grounded theory. Tangible features on participatory maps included economic, hydroclimatic, geomorphological, and ecological boundaries portrayed as springs, landforms, vegetation types, seasonal camps, wells, and roads. Non-physical intangible boundaries such as governance arrangements were evident in participatory mapping narratives and served as human demarcated boundaries for accessing seasonal camps, markets, government assistance, and resources for herder migration. The relationships among herder mobility, governance boundaries, and biophysical pasture boundaries are coupled and dynamic, resulting in multi-dimensional outcomes of herder livelihoods.
The aim of this article is to explore the various ways in which people represent social groups. The author shows that a prominent role in such processes is played by psychological essentialism. People represent some of their social identities as inherent qualities that are based on the sharing of a presumed 'essence': something unobservable, diffi cult to remove, irreversible, and causally responsible for overt behaviours. Empirical evidence suggests that no particular causal process of essence acquisition is constitutive for essentialism in folk models of society. Some authors believe that folk essentialism is necessarily connected with the presumed innateness of an essence (its biological transmission across generations). Innate potential and biological inheritance, however powerful they may be for the human cognitive mind in the domain of folk models for biology, are far from necessary in essentialist folksociological classifications. Essentialism in folk sociology is not defined by any particular causal process of essence acquisition. Even when it is possible to detect that a given group of people claim the innate essence of a particular folk sociology, it is always necessary to look for other features of essentialism (inherence, sharp boundaries, the immutability of identity, etc.). The article reviews some influential cognitive proposals concerning folk models of society (Astuti, Gil-White, Hirschfeld) and ethnicity, and provides arguments and empirical evidence collected in Western Ukraine in support of the claim that presumed innateness is not the constitutive part of folk models of society, let alone of psychological essentialism.
The survey consists of two parts: 1. Post-election survey within the international comparative study which has been working for several decades under the title Comparative Studies of Electoral Systems (CSES, www.cses.org). In 2016, it was the implementation of Module 4 focused - in addition to standard electoral questions - on issues of redistribution. 2) survey within the frame of the International Social Research Program (ISSP, www.issp.org http://www.issp.org), namely module Role of the Government, implemented in Slovakia for the second time, the first one was in 2008. Both parts have joint socio-demographic identification variables. Post-election survey is focused on broad variety of factors related to electoral decision - the perception of political parties and their leaders, the satisfaction with democracy, evaluation of economic development, and aspects of election campaign. The Role of Government survey is focused on attitudes to government's competences, in general and specifically in relation to other actors - NGOs, private sector, church organizations and alike. Several questions deal with the public views on corruption, responsiveness, tax policies, interest in politics and other. The survey also includes several questions that in the form of "split ballot" experimentally verify the validity of questions frequently used in the surveys, as well as scales and responses´ alternatives. These so-called "methodological experiments" are included in all data collections conducted within the APVV-14-0527 project, their results will be elaborated in a separate study.
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Property and its allocation are key elements of resilience within socio-ecological systems. This presentation compares ethnographic and survey data on shifting ideas of property from 2008 to similar data gathered in 2014 in a district of southern Khentii aimag. The data illustrate how these attitudes emerged, their underlying logics, and how they articulate with broader historical and political economic conditions. The findings raise concern that dzud events could serve as a possible trigger for formal legal transformations in land rights given the increased political rhetoric and calls for land privatization following dzud events. This paper argues that crossing such property thresholds would pose considerable problems for both rangelands and livelihoods and suggests some future avenues for strengthening pastoral systems.
The survey Values and Society During the Covid-19 Pandemic (HODYSE 2020) was designed and conducted by researchers at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences to obtain up-to-date data on public opinion in six thematic areas: social trust, politics and democracy, conspiracy theories, vaccination, environment and leisure. The year 2020 was a year of significant socio-political changes. Since the beginning of the year, the most important topic in the public debate and in the media has been the global pandemic of COVID-19 disease. The pandemic became a central issue of both the ending and the new government after the parliamentary elections in February 2020. Findings from opinion polls have allowed us to capture how a pandemic has changed the traditional view of values, and how traditionally examined values have taken on new meanings. The data also document the severity of the pandemic situation during which the research was conducted (November 2020). In this context, the topics that resonated most in the public debate on COVID-19 were addressed - questions about vaccination, health concerns and the economic situation of respondents, or compliance with the measures.
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; Mongolia's socio-ecological rangeland systems face a number of critical, contemporary challenges. Climatic change, persistent poverty and growing land use conflicts, especially around mining, pose complex problems both for herders and policy-makers. Furthermore, there is renewed emphasis on meeting Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and Aichi targets, following the publication of Mongolia's 5th National CBD report in March 2014, and the development of a new National Biodiversity Strategic Action Plan. (E)valuation of the contributions of rangeland ecosystem services (ES) to biodiversity and livelihoods/wellbeing are highlighted as priorities for future planning therein. ES thinking, valuation and commodification are becoming increasingly influential in other contemporary policy initiatives, not least through the development of the national REDD+ roadmap, Business and Biodiversity offset programmes and Government commitments to the 'Green Economy'. Nonetheless critical questions remain about the ES paradigm itself, values/ valuation of ES and how these may be enacted and supported through policy. Here we report on a three year Darwin-Initiative funded project, which aimed to 'generate policy and practice relevant knowledge of values of ecosystem services (ES) in Mongolia, and test the efficacy of Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, in order to enhance biodiversity and livelihoods'. Aims were realised through i) participatory mapping and analysis of ES, including cultural ES, with 300 herder households across four case study sites, and the development of innovative methods for non-economic valuation; ii) co-development and implementation of a novel rangeland payment for ES (PES) scheme at the four sites, through the Plan Vivo standard; iii) analysis of the impacts ES and of the PES scheme on biodiversity and livelihoods. Methods used included deliberative valuation approaches, mapping, ranking and choice modelling to examine group and individual values and trade-offs between ES across ecologically contrasting areas. We also applied the SOLVES (Social Values of ES) GIS model to highlight spatial, place-specific dimensions of ES values, as part of a series of wider biodiversity, livelihoods and ES assessments. Results highlight spatial and temporal diversities in ES values, importance of cultural ES for wellbeing, and the potential of carefully designed PES schemes to contribute to more resilient socio-ecological rangeland systems in the future.
Includes bibliographical references. ; Presented at the Building resilience of Mongolian rangelands: a trans-disciplinary research conference held on June 9-10, 2015 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. ; This paper reviews the problems of livestock production in Mongolia and proposes an agent-based meat distribution network composed of multiple players. Agents sell and buy products and services, equipped with intelligent capacity of knowledge and physical capacity of freezing meat stock, livestock, and forage stock. Local governments and communities are the key for enhancing food security. The network, as a whole, is green, clean and resilient to climatic and market disturbance.
