Suchergebnisse

Explores the representation of old age in post-1995 educational literature for the elderly published in the Czech Republic. Educational literature covers handbooks that propose individual strategies & recommend a specific lifestyle for old age. The theoretical framework presents aging as an individual as well as societal experience, which must be understood in a new social & cultural context. The interpretative analysis looks at the themes of general lifestyle, health, & disease, & sexuality on the basis of arguments about the possibility to affect the process of individual aging, emphasizing self-responsibility & health maintenance. Educational literature for elderly people represents a type of social acquisition, which is intended to help people achieve the ideal of a new type of aging.

This article, published in connection with the recent death of Otis Dudley Duncan (16 November 2004), sets out to provide a critical summary of the development - from its beginnings in the 1960s up to its final revision & modification in 1983 - of the socio-psychological model of the status attainment process. The article not only looks at the classic model of the social stratification process of Blau & Duncan, but also examines the influence of one of the founders of the socio-psychological branch of the study of social stratification, W. H. Sewell. Special attention is devoted to the development of the so-called Wisconsin model, primarily the work of William H. Sewell & his student, Robert M. Hauser, who, while as a student of Duncan also, considerably contributed to the use of structural modelling in sociology. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the main critical reactions to the socio-psychological model emphasising the 'allocational' paradigm of interpretation of the reproduction of social inequalities. The article should primarily help students of sociology gain an orientation in the massive amount of often poorly accessible literature on one of the most cited of sociology's 'products'.

This short study provides a comparative analysis of Anglo-Saxon scientific literature (in the form of monographs, articles from reviewed periodicals, Internet sources) in which the phenomenon of coup d'état is the primary subject of research interest. The main goals of this text are (1) to increase awareness of research into coup d'état as an essential phenomenon in the sphere of transitology among Czech political science students, and (2) to present solutions to the terminological problems relating to this political science discipline. To achieve these goals, the text presents a coherent terminological concept of coup d'état based on a semantic analysis of the disparate literature of Anglo-Saxon provenance, in which research into coup d'état has reached an advanced level of knowledge ; This short study provides a comparative analysis of Anglo-Saxon scientific literature (in the form of monographs, articles from reviewed periodicals, Internet sources) in which the phenomenon of coup d'état is the primary subject of research interest. The main goals of this text are (1) to increase awareness of research into coup d'état as an essential phenomenon in the sphere of transitology among Czech political science students, and (2) to present solutions to the terminological problems relating to this political science discipline. To achieve these goals, the text presents a coherent terminological concept of coup d'état based on a semantic analysis of the disparate literature of Anglo-Saxon provenance, in which research into coup d'état has reached an advanced level of knowledge

Yet our understanding of power remains elusive. The Council of the European Union is a body where the main actors, Member States, exercise power in order to influence the decision-making & its outcome. Their basic aim is to defend the national interests. The primary objective of this article is to offer an overview of the Member States' sources of power in the Council, based on a review of the latest literature. We present both structural & procedural sources of power. Then we explain that the exercise of power depends also on concrete sectors & cases in which the actors negotiate. Our text confirms that the results of various research endeavors have often been contradictory & that continuing research is needed in order to deepen the knowledge of Council decision-making. Power as a concept has been at the center of attention of social sciences for a long time. Adapted from the source document.

This paper focuses on "The Philadelphia Negro": a community study that stands at the start of American social research. This somewhat forgotten empirical study from 1899 describes the historical conditions and the economic and social causes and circumstances behind the formation and existence of the "Seventh Ward", a slum neighbourhood in Philadelphia inhabited by African-Americans. The study used survey and other methods of observation and analysis of historical, economic and social data. The study was written by the erudite Harvard University graduate William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American, and an economist, historian and sociologist. Using primary and secondary literature and archive sources this paper shows that Du Bois was the author of the first empirical social research study in the United States. It looks at his life, his research, and his opinions on racial issues. He created a programme of research on the African-American population and from 1898 to 1910 he headed the first school of sociology on the American continent at the University of Atlanta. He published the results of scientific analyses of the lives of African-Americans in the south of the United States in sixteen volumes of the Atlanta University Studies. Racial prejudices among the American sociological elites prevented both Du Bois and his work from receiving the attention they rightly deserve.

The Czech Language Instit provides consulting services, viz, questions about current usage, to a wide audience, from curious laypeople to scholars, in an institutional (ie, academic) setting. The institute, represented by the Prague Linguistic Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences' Instit for the Czech Language, is accessible by phone, mail, & drop-in appointment to any interested speaker of Czech needing information on pronunciation, orthography, semantics, etymology, usage, et al. A staff of linguists is on hand to answer all relevant questions. The requests received & characteristics of those who have contacted the institute are described.

This text inquires into the problem of cadenced step as the disciplinary technique of the body, according to theories of Marcel Mauss and Michel Foucault. Author explores historical core of military body techniques in social context, developed by Dutch army reformers Counts of Nassau during 1590s and refined by the Prussian military in 1740s. Author interprets cadenced step inside framework of shifting paradigm of power, as Foucault analyses the sequence of three stages of power emerging during european Early modernity.

The terms "weak," "failed," & "collapsed," among others, were used to describe the specific condition of a state for the first time rather recently. The research of a state's strength or weakness reacted to the processes of decolonization & the collapse of the bipolar configuration of international relations. The theoretical & methodological settlement of this phenomenon in the context of political science is still a great challenge for academic society. This article aims to conceptualize the problematics of weakening & collapse of state power. The authors don't try to challenge the current conceptions of Rotberg, Zartman, etc., but to categorize these theoretical approaches into three dimensions in the context of the parameters the authors of these conceptions work with. The three dimensions that are introduced are the one of international relations, the economic one & the socio-political one. The article concludes with the presentation of the Fund for Peace tool, which tries to include all these dimensions. Adapted from the source document.

The problem of linking 'explanation' & 'understanding' remains unresolved -- as Weber left it. This paper challenges the view that their reconciliation is impossible, as some theorists have maintained. Their case is that the entities involved -- subjective meanings & objective relationships -- are too ontologically different to be combined. From the stratified ontology of Social Realism, which acknowledges that different properties & powers pertain to different components & levels of social reality, this is no barrier in principle to their combination. However, in practice Realists have not given an adequate account of how 'subjectivity' & 'objectivity' are linked, which also weakens Realism's solution to the 'problem of structure & agency.' This paper offers a refinement: the human power of reflexivity is viewed as mediating between our subjective concerns & our objective social contexts. Reflexive deliberations account for what agents actually do -- and they do not all do the same thing -- under very similar social circumstances. The introduction of reflexivity enables the (socially) objective & the (personally) subjective to be combined into a single account of socially structured & structuring action.

My target in the present text is to discuss the possibilities and pitfalls of the study of international institutions' design. To achieve this goal I critically review the existing literature on the topic and outline three key reasons for which I believe much of the work on institutional design to be theoretically problematic, and for which any meaningful progress of the study of design as a research programme is unlikely. I argue that we can overcome these problems by returning and sticking to the original concept of institutions as mechanisms for transmission of information that was formulated in the institutional theory in international relations. On the basis of this concept we can develop a research programme on institutional design that takes seriously the basic realist findings about the power nature of international politics. Besides this, by focusing on the information transmission function of institutions we open the space for application of the potentially highly relevant findings from the area of the so-called organizational cybernetics to the study of international relations. With their help new methods for diagnosis of the institutions' functions can be developed and important new empirical and theoretical findings can be achieved. Adapted from the source document.