Suchergebnisse

This volume describes the "Swedish part" (WP4) of the EU project COMPLEX, which has been dealing with pathways to a low carbon society with the Stockholm-Mälar region in focus. COMPLEX started on 1 October 2012 and ended after four years, on 30 September 2016. The central theme of the WP4 research has been to use the Stockholm-Mälar region as a sort of a "laboratory" for modelling and stakeholder interactions, but also for providing backgrounds, perspectives, tools and suggested policy outlines.

Ecological challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss lead to a need for change, but the radical changes that are required seem not to come about. One hot issue debated is who has the power and responsibility to change. This discussion has many different dimensions (e.g., between countries, or technological fixes vs radical system change) but here I base my study on the discussion of agency or structure. To put it simply, do we need to focus on structural political changes or rather on the level of the individuals and their consumerist lifestyles. This thesis aims to contribute to this debate by providing a better understanding of the (im)possibilities of individual lifestyle changes in a society that is largely organized to accommodate consumerist lifestyles. It does so by focusing on the example of Voluntary Simplicity, a lifestyle movement that advocates for a post-consumerist lifestyle. With the help of practice theory, which is especially fit to analyze everyday practices and change, and a qualitative interview study with seven voluntary simplifiers living in Sweden, I answer the following research questions: What are the motivations and drivers for having a voluntary simplicity lifestyle?, what are the challenges and obstacles that voluntary simplifiers need to overcome?, and does life, in consequence, get more complicated by striving for a "simpler" life because it is against the grain of society? The analysis demonstrates a motivation among the simplifiers to live sustainably and to reduce material possessions, working hours and stress. Impediments include the struggle of wanting to be part of a community but at the same time being different from the mainstream society, inflexible work structures and time and labor-intensive activities such as self-sufficiency. The question if life got simpler could not satisfactorily be answered and is connected to considerations on what life is about. In the discussion, I argue to consider social norms and values because they seem to exacerbate change both for politics and individuals. Future avenues for study could be based on participatory observation, autoethnography or doing research in non-capitalist-consumerist societies. This study is relevant because it opened up and contributed to the debate about change by acknowledging the entanglement of social structures and individuals.

In this article the author attempts to analyse the power relationships in the Yugoslav society, in post-war historical perspective of development. He is using the difference between power and meta-power as the conceptual framework. The whole development can be demonstrated as the creation of a system by actors who have meta-power and who want to negate their own meta-power by development of self-management. However, the spontaneous developments lead to such social structuring which challenges the established structure of meta^power. The dilemma with which those having meta-power are faced is whether to intervene into the development of the system and thus »come to surface« as the one having meta-power, or leave the development to remain spontaneous and in such a manner endanger their meta-power. Particular attention has been paid to the relationship between an enterprise and the political system as that sphere of the social system where the processes described in this article are shown with great clarity.

In recent decades structural changes in the forestry sector have changed forest owners' characteristics and thus the member base of forest owners' associations. More general social trends have also changed how individuals and organizations interact with each other. A major challenge for the forest owners' associations is thus to adapt their service offers and organizational structures to fit the needs of current and future members. The objective of the project this thesis is based upon was to examine processes that are shaping the future membership of forest owners' associations in Sweden and identify elements that are likely to affect their relationships with members and (hence) their cooperative nature. To meet this objective, the issue was addressed from different angles and organizational levels in studies reported in four appended papers. Paper I showed that renewal of district councils is a slow process in which election committees play a central role. However, they were found to act passively and select candidates from narrow pools, which restrict the councils' representativeness and raises risks of strategic misalignment with members' interests as it severely limits inputs from several user groups in decision-making processes. Paper II showed that in order to meet the changing member needs the organizations are currently focusing their strategic efforts on developing new services to support members' management activities and ownership issues, improve education offers, and become strong political actors. Paper III showed that members who had traded timber with the association displayed significantly higher affective commitment, but not calculative commitment, than both non-members and members who had traded with other organizations. Thus, the findings suggest that the associations should focus on communicating their core values and strengthening members' identification with the organization, as this will have stronger effects on their loyalty than fostering calculative relationships. Paper IV provides support for the findings in Paper II, showing that young adults generally have limited familiarity with forestry activities. Further they rarely discussed forest issues with their parents. Thus they did not feel comfortable in discussing their own future as potential forest owners since they lacked understanding of the personal implications for them in practice. A key highlighted finding is that the main challenges for the organizations are connected to their democratic governance processes.

The author analyzes the latest developments in liberal democracy & the capitalist economy based on the examples of the works of Erich Weede & Klaus von Beyme. The tendency of alleviating economic & political competition is corroborated by means of an analysis of the phenomenon of a multiparty state & today's capitalist economy, which has been increasingly relying on rent-generated income rather than market competition. The author highlights the new strategies for the legitimation of liberal democracy by means of justice, as developed by John Rawls. Adapted from the source document.

Autor polazi od stava da je za kritičko razumijevanje postsocijalizma (kojeg uvjetno određuje kao stanje i proturiječni procesi u Istočnoj Europi nakon demokratske revolucije) i njegovih razvojnih perspektiva upravo primjeren koncept civilnog društva. Upućuje na tri različite društvene struje koje su doprinjele obnovi problematike civilnog društva: neoliberalizam, postmarksizam i disidentski građanski otpor totalitarizmu. Zatim utvrđuje pojam civilnog društva, u smislu koji je dobio u novovjekovnim teorijama prirodnog prava. Na tom tragu precizira vlastito određenje ovog pojma kao analitičkog oruđa za analizu socijalizma i postsocijalizma. Kad je riječ o socijalizmu ukazuje na stalnu napetost između države i neautonomnog ali »realnog socijalističkog društva«, u kome se uvijek iznova javljaju klice autonomne civilne sfere. Na kraju raspravlja o (ne)ispunjenju tri temeljne pretpostavke civilnog društva u aktualnim postsocijalističkim procesima na europskom Istoku, uključujući Hrvatsku i Jugoslaviju. ; The author expresses the opinion that for a critical understanding of postsocialism (which he conditionally defines as the situation and contradictory processes in Eastern Europe after the democratic revolution) and its development perspectives, the most adequate is the concept of civil society. He indicates three different social currents which contributed to the renewal of the civil society issue: neoliberalism, post-Marxism and the dissident civil opposition to totalitarianism. He then determines the concept of civil society within the meaning it had obtained in the modem theories of natural law. Following this line of thought he specifies his own definition of this concept as an analytical means for studying socialism and postsocialism. When it is a question of socialism, he indicates the constant tension between the state and unautonomous but »real socialist society«, in which new seeds of the autonomous civil sphere keep appearing over and over again. Finally, he discusses the non-fulfilment of the three fundamental pre-suppositions for civil society in contemporary postsocialist processes in the European East, including Croatia and Yugoslavia.