Suchergebnisse

Along with the fast growing economy, the term 'BRICs' was coined to represent the newly emerging countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The enhanced economy in these countries has largely improved people's lives; at the same time, it has also strongly influenced the transformation of social structure, norms and values. This book examines specifically the changes in each society from the perspective of social stratification, with topics covering the main social classes, the inequality of education and income, the different styles of consumption as well as the class consciousness and values

In the research traditions of social and political science two central answers are being sought. The first is, what is the relationship between the specific con-figurations of the proponents of social changes and the particular outcomes of their activity? The other is, which changes in the configuration of the proponents lead to better results than the existing ones relative to th value criteria such as peace, feasible development, or social justice? This makes the reference frame-work of contemporary discussions on institutional shaping of the relations between the state and the society. In this work, the author first mentions three dominant dimensions of social change to which all of us are exposed. Second, by changing perspective, he goes over from a passive to an active approach in order to observe the actors (citizens) and the forms of their activity (civilness) that might challenge th forces of change and transform them into tolerable or even desirable outcomes. And third, he contributes to the discussion about civilness and depicts in bigger detail six fallacies that must be avoided if one wants to attain a competent configuration of activity. (SOI : SOEU: S. 37)

The context ot the development of the Croatian society after the decay of the socialist structures is burdened not only by the processes specific for all postsocialist countries such as the loss of the traditional securities or the renaissance of the "desintegrating capitalism" (Beck, 1994, 479), but with the specific post war processes. Since it results with the complex mediation between the individual and collective behaviours the young people of the nineties in Croatia have found themselves in an ambivalent situation. Finding themselves in the gap between the wish for security and the possibilities for development they can hardly develop self-functioning ways of achieving the material, cultural and biographical resources. Sceptical towards their own future they primarily tend to provide for their everyday basic needs and declare themselves as nonpolitical, interested only in themselves, their private sphere and free time. (SOI : PM: S. 193)