Contemporary Attitudes Research Articles

Проект Г.Р. Державина о реформировании третейского суда: между прошлым и будущим

In the article the content of the draft reform of the arbitration court, prepared on behalf of Emperor Alexander I G.R. Derzhavin is analyzed in detail. As sources, both published and archival materials were used. The attitude of contemporaries and descendants to this project was ambiguous. Lawyers controversially evaluated the project of the Minister of Justice and the Attorney General of the Senate. Many of them drew attention to the complexity of the proposed methods of arbitration of legal disputes. It is noted that for the beginning of the XIX century this project of reorganization of the arbitration court was rather bold, as it allowed publicity, wordlessness, openness of legal proceedings. In many ways Derzhavin’s proposals were ahead of time. The conclusion is drawn about the relevance of the project in the context of modern court reform and the expansion of the practice of alternative dispute resolution methods.

Sorciers et philosophes : la duplicité des Gitans dans le théâtre italien de la Renaissance

Cet article entend analyser la description qui est faite des Gitans dans le théâtre italien de la Renaissance. En représentant les Gitans, les dramaturges dévoilent — consciemment ou inconsciem­ment — dans leurs pièces les attitudes et les préjugés de l’époque à leur égard. Ils exposent aussi leurs propres insécurités : les Gitans re­présentés sont incapables d’interagir honnêtement avec les popula­tions natives, alors que, pour leur part, les Italiens semblent eux aussi incapables d’assimiler la diversité des Gitans. À l’époque, on ne peut pas accepter la violation de certains tabous anthropologiques concer­nant le sédentarisme, le travail et l’homogénéité ethnique, ce que les Gitans semblent faire. Ainsi, ce peuple devient le symbole de tous les vagabonds qui, en raison de leur vie itinérante, sont perçus comme des éléments dangereux et menaçant la stabilité sociale, politique et religieuse des populations locales.

Ravenna on the Grand Tour: A View of Late Antiquity in the Eighteenth Century

AbstractRavenna, the former grand capital of the late Roman and early Byzantine Empires and a popular modern UNESCO World Heritage site, is a city rarely included in major historical surveys of Italy during the Grand Tour. An exploration of period sources may reveal why: it was, for many centuries between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century, a rundown parish town that was incredibly difficult to reach by conventional transportation. This article collates and deconstructs a number of Grand Tour sources in order to gain an understanding of Ravenna in the eighteenth century, and, further, an understanding of the contemporary attitudes towards post-Classical monuments and artwork. This exploration allows us to ask broader questions about Ravenna’s place on the Grand Tour. As a city with very little to offer in the way of Classical monuments, it slightly complicates our idea of classical reception on the Grand Tour and shows us how travellers navigated a place replete with late antique basilicas and Byzantine mosaics instead of marble sculptures and tombs.

Balancing Conscience: A Response to Fernandes & Ecret

There are many lessons that bioethics can learn from the Holocaust. Forefront are the lessons from the Nuremberg trials and the formation of research ethics. An often-overlooked lesson is how the Nazi regime was able to construct a hierarchy in such a way that influenced people to act in horrendous ways. Fernandes & Ecret, writing in Conatus – Journal of Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2019), highlight the influence of hierarchy on the moral silence of nurses and physicians within the Nazi regime. While we greatly enjoyed the paper, and think it is an important contribution, we find several misrepresentations of current bioethical discourse. There is not a global acceptance of euthanasia or medical aid in dying, the contemporary position in bioethics does not favor removal of conscience-based protections, and the lack of personal conscience-based protections was not the main factor in the analysis of Nazi medical hierarchy. The authors’ overall conclusion that their analysis suggests the importance of strengthening personal conscience-based objections to prevent medical hierarchy from influencing immoral behavior misses the more significant issue of institutional behavior. Instead, we argue, that the lessons from the analysis of Nazi nurses and physicians speak to the importance of protecting patients from institutional conscience-based objections that violate patient rights of access to legal medical services. This paper will respond to the misrepresentations. We highlight the growing threats to health care access from religious affiliated institutions, the threats to professional ethics and physician and nurse scope of practice. We conclude that the analysis by Fernandes & Ecret does point out an important lesson, but rather than showing the importance of individual conscience protections, it speaks to the importance of protecting patient rights.

When Caliban writes back: Alameddine’s appropriation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest

ABSTRACT Arab American Rabih Alameddine’s novel The Angel of History appropriates Shakespeare’s The Tempest to comment on its representation of Caliban and his mother, Sycorax, and show how distorted images of Arabs and Muslims have been disseminated in US popular culture in the post-9/11 era. Alameddine’s novel, like Shakespeare’s romance, is populated by spirits, demons, and angels, and his protagonist, Jacob, is referred to at one point as “Caliban” due to his dark skin colour. He shares Caliban’s “bastard” origins and his status as the “devil’s son”. Both Caliban and Jacob learn a new language to relate their versions of history: Alameddine’s protagonist uses English to narrate his mother’s story – one suppressed in The Tempest. Through its innovative narration and use of the language of the colonizer, the novel subverts dominant stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, exposing both contemporary US consumerist attitudes and 17th-century European prejudice towards “the other”.

The economic culture of the polish countryside in the process of 9. changes – an outline of the issues

The paper The Economic culture of the Polish countryside in the Process of Changes – an outline of issues sets up a thesis that the transformation process has a multidimensional character and that its final effect is decided by an interaction between the organizational-institutional and mental-cultural level. Drawing attention to the cultural aspect increases the accuracy of the formulated diagnoses, explanations and prognoses. The author’s arguments are based on three elements. Firstly, she indicates the theoretical aspects of understanding the economic culture – the ways of defining and operation; secondly, she discusses the essential components of the traditional economic culture of the countryside, indicating the impact that the traditional value system has on contemporary economic attitudes and mentality. Thirdly, she points out how the changes connected with the transformation process exert an influence on modification of the crucial elements of this culture, adapting it to the requirements of contemporary world.

Christian Ethics, Lutheran Tradition, and Pluralistic Society

Summary In the Lutheran tradition, the particular aspects of theological ethics have often been overlooked, if not outright denied. Thus, it is not uncommon for Lutheran theologians to emphasize the universal aspects of theological ethics and to downplay its particular aspects, even to the point of arguing that a Christian ethics does not exist. Against this background, the article gives several arguments for drawing Lutheran ethics in a direction that will allow its particular aspects to be more clearly articulated. It also presents certain features of Luther’s ethical position that might foster an understanding of the particular aspects of Lutheran ethics. Building on this, the article points to a contemporary Lutheran position of relevance to a pluralistic society.

“Castaways of the White Pleasure”: Six Decades of Hungarian Discourse on Narcotics

In 1924 Hungary ratified and codified the 1912 Hague International Opium Convention, the first international drug control treaty. However, the new law that regulated and later criminalized the usage of narcotics in Hungary was not the result of internal debate and had no real domestic political will behind it. In contrary, this law was the result of external demands as Article 230 of the post-World War I Trianon Treaty required Hungary to join the Hague Convention. This paper examines what the contemporary Hungarian attitude towards drugs and drug users was. In order to answer how this attitude developed and changed, the following study examines how the contemporary media, artists and intellectuals and various governmental and non-governmental organizations discussed and represented the issue of narcotics.

Refleksja nad koncepcją folwarcznych korzeni polskiej kultury gospodarczej Janusza Hryniewicza

The main aim of the article is to examine Janusz Hryniewicz’s concept of Polish economic culture. According to the discussed author, a lot of elements present in contemporary Polish companies and organizations (economic practices) are the result of participation in an East-Central Europe economic and social system based on agriculture. Processes of long duration led to a division of the European space in the 16th century: in Western Europe we can see the development of capitalism and its institutions; in East-Central Europe, the rise of a social and economic system based on the manorial-serf economy (called new serfdom). Hryniewicz tries to show the link between rules of misconduct in the 16th century manor farm and the contemporary attitude to the job of workers and managers alike. The paper is an attempt to show the discussed concept from an anthropological and cultural studies perspective.

The Armenians of Los Angeles: Rethinking “Americanization”

The existing scholarship typically measures “Americanization” along structural lines—such as knowledge of public policies, percentage of life spent in the U.S., or proficiency in the English language. While these variables are certainly important, they overlook another important dimension of newcomers’ post-migration experiences—namely, immigrants’ psychological attachment and sense of belonging to the American social, political, and economic fabric. This article therefore reevaluates what it means to Americanize by exploring the psychological (or symbolic) dimensions of multigenerational immigrants’ evolving political beliefs toward the polity. In rethinking the process of Americanization, we rely on a largely understudied immigrant population—that is, the Los Angeles Armenians (or Armenian Angelenos)—and an original public opinion survey—the Armenian Angeleno Survey (AAS). This study demonstrates that symbolic (rather than merely structural) Americanization is a useful framework in studying how contemporary immigrant groups position themselves in relation to the polity and understand important political outcomes. This article thus introduces an expanded model based on how multigenerational immigrants cultivate their ethnic communities while becoming ideological members of American society.

Wpływ wahabizmu na pozycję społeczno-polityczną Arabii Saudyjskiej

<p>Celem artykułu jest określenie roli wahabizmu dla współczesnej pozycji Arabii Saudyjskiej w wymiarach społecznym oraz politycznym. W związku z powyższym, weryfikacji poddano trzy hipotezy badawcze. Pierwsza z nich zakłada, że słabnąca pozycja Imperium Osmańskiego na przełomie XIX i XX wieku oraz sojusz z rodziną Saudów były głównymi elementami, które wpłynęły na rozwój ruchu wahabickiego w A rabii Saudyjskiej. Po drugie, w wyniku bliskich powiązań z rodziną Saudów, ruch wahabicki odgrywa współcześnie decydującą rolę w kreowaniu społeczno-politycznej pozycji Arabii Saudyjskiej. Po trzecie, wahabizm wspiera rozwój organizacji terrorystycznych o charakterze salafickim z powodu bliskości religijno-politycznej.</p><p>Główny wniosek niniejszej pracy zawiera się w stwierdzeniu, że ruch wahabistyczny odgrywa decydującą rolę w kreowaniu życia społecznego Arabii Saudyjskiej oraz dąży do religijnej ekspansji w regionie Bliskiego Wschodu, między innymi za pośrednictwem powiązań z salafickimi organizacjami terrorystycznymi. W artykule przedstawiono ponadto genezę wahabizmu oraz główne założenia doktrynalne. </p><p>Chcąc zilustrować wykorzystany warsztat metodologiczny, należy wymienić metodę case study, za pomocą której scharakteryzowano powiązania arabskiego wahabizmu z salafickimi organizacjami terrorystycznymi (w odniesieniu do Al-Kaidy oraz Państwa Islamskiego). W celu właściwego przedstawienia wpływu wahabizmu na pozycję społeczno-polityczną Arabii Saudyjskiej, w pracy wykorzystano też założenia wywodzące się z nurtu realizmu neoklasycznego.</p>

The Trouble with Rubbers: A History of Condoms in Modern China

Abstract In recent years, public health officials and scholars have voiced their concerns about comparatively low condom use in China, citing high rates of abortion and the growing HIV/AIDS crisis. By examining condom use through the lenses of gender and the history of medicine, this article traces heterosexual condom consumption in China from the early twentieth century to the present and situates contemporary attitudes toward condoms within long-term contraceptive patterns. Rather than simply taking for granted the role that men play in family planning decisions, this research takes men and masculinity as a central focus. An eye to the past reveals numerous historical obstacles to condom use, as well as an enduring aversion to condoms grounded in fears of reduced male sexual pleasure, and the gendered assumption that birth control is the sole responsibility of women. Analyzing evolving perceptions of condoms sheds light on constructions of sexuality, gender relations, and the roles of the state, society, and the individual in contraceptive decision-making in China.

'This country is OURS': The exclusionary potential of collective psychological ownership.

Political campaign slogans, such as ‘Take back control of our country’ (United Kingdom Independence Party) and ‘The Netherlands ours again’ (Dutch Party for Freedom), indicate that right‐wing populism appeals to the belief that the country is ‘ours’, and therefore, ‘we’ have the exclusive right to determine what happens. We examined this sense of ownership of the country (i.e. collective psychological ownership [CPO]) with the related determination right in relation to exclusionary attitudes and voting behaviour. Among Dutch (Study 1, N = 572) and British (Study 2, N = 495) participants, we found that CPO explained anti‐immigrant and anti‐EU attitudes, and these attitudes in turn accounted for voting ‘leave’ in the 2016 Brexit referendum in the British sample (Study 2). Additionally, CPO was more strongly related to negative immigrant attitudes among right‐wing Dutch participants, whereas it was more strongly related to negative EU attitudes and voting ‘leave’ among left‐wing British participants. CPO contributes to the understanding of critical contemporary social attitudes and political behaviour.

Contemporary attitudes to women’s football in Israel

ABSTRACT The development in women’s sports in general, and women’s football in particular, has attracted extensive research due to, among other things, the high popularity of football, which functioned as an exclusively male domain for many years. This article examines attitudes towards women’s football in Israel, reflected in readers’ comments to related sport news items. Analysis of the responses to all the items related to women’s football posted in 2019 on sports and news websites, reveals mechanisms of fierce resistance manifested in disparaging and degrading attitudes towards women’s football and all factors involved in this sport. Some commenters emphasised women’s anomalous presence in football by restricting women to roles in the domestic and sexual spheres, while others explained women’s presence on football pitches by obliterating the gendered nature of women’s football, even to the point of equating the women with animals and beasts. Yet others blamed women players for the discrimination they experience on the football pitches, identifying the cause as ‘feminist terror.’

Diversity and Perceptions of Immigration: How the Past Influences the Present

The question of whether high immigration produces anti-immigration hostility has vexed researchers across multiple disciplines for decades. And yet, understanding this relationship is crucial for countries dependant on immigrant labour but concerned about its impact on social cohesion. Absent from most of this research are theories about the impact of early-years socialisation conditions on contemporary attitudes. Using the British sample of the European Social Survey (2002–2017) and two innovative approaches to modelling generational differences – generalised additive models and hierarchical age‒period‒cohort models – this paper shows that rather than producing hostility to immigration, being socialised in a context of high immigrant-origin diversity is likely to result in more positive attitudes to immigration later in life. This implies that through generational replacement, countries like the UK are likely to become increasingly tolerant of immigration over time. Importantly, however, a context of high-income inequality may diminish this effect.

“The Wayfarer” (“The Pedlar”) by Hieronymus Bosch as an Archetypal Image of an ‘Other-Stranger’

One of the most important contemporary experiences of European societies is undoubtedly the migration crisis. The resulting social fears of ‘strangers,’ which have been activated, show how important the archetypical ‘other-stranger’ pattern still is, and that it can be treated as an example of an ‘anthropological constant.’ The aim of the article is to try to look at the painting “The Wayfarer” by Hieronymus Bosch as an illustration of the archetypical ‘other-stranger’ pattern. It seems that such a reading of this work, rich in symbolic content, on the one hand perfectly justifies the thesis of the archetypical sources of contemporary attitudes towards ‘strangers’ and, on the other hand, allows one to better understand and explain the current reactions and behaviors of Europeans. This becomes particularly evident when juxtaposing the image of Hieronymus Bosch with the contemporary media images of migrants.

Factors affecting attitudes toward migrants-An evolutionary approach.

ObjectiveTo understand migration from an evolutionary perspective, this phenomenon has so far been mainly investigated in animal species. We therefore aim to investigate the potential evolutionary roots of attitudes toward migrants in humans.MethodsWe used data from the European Social Survey (n = 83 734), analyzing attitudes toward migrants by performing ordinal mixed models.ResultsWe found that men have a more restrictive attitude toward migration than women, which increases with age and is stronger with a child in the household. Attitude toward migrants is also more skeptical if migrants have a different ethnicity and are from poorer countries. Increasing education and religiousness are associated with a more positive attitude toward migrants, particularly toward migrants of different ethnicity and from poorer countries.DiscussionAlthough migration flows are a hallmark of the human species, previous findings suggest that (pre‐)historic migration flows were at times accompanied by conflict and violence, while at the same time, they insured survival by allowing cultural exchange and the avoidance of inbreeding. Accordingly, we assume that contemporary attitudes toward migration are rooted in our evolutionary past. We discuss the respective behavioral patterns from an evolutionary perspective, arguing that both—a negative attitude as well as openness—make sense.

To Collect and to Order: the Siku quanshu 四庫全書 and its Organization

Abstract Collecting and hoarding are distinguished by order. An agglomeration of objects is defined by chaos while a collection comes into being through its organization. The largest collection of texts undertaken in Chinese dynastic history, the Complete Writings of the Four Repositories (Siku quanshu 四庫全書), is the high point of late imperial compilation projects (congshu 叢書). While much scholarship has been devoted to explaining the criteria of inclusion, the question of order remains largely unexplored. In this article, I investigate the link between the collection of knowledge and its organization in the high Qing. Specifically, I explore the poetic understanding of knowledge, the intellectual, non-political purposes behind the collection and its fundamental principle of order. I end this essay offering some remarks on the nature of the Complete Writings, high Qing scholarship, and contemporary attitudes towards classification.

ISLAM AND MUSLIMS IN AUSTRALIA: THE SOCIAL EXPERIENCES OF EARLY SETTLEMENT AND THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY RACE RELATIONS

“Hello, brother” were the last words uttered by Haji-Daoud Nabi, an elderly man who opened the doors of a Christchurch mosque in New Zealand in March 2019. Moments later, he was shot down and killed in a brutal terrorist attack carried out by an Australian white supremacist. This recent tragedy captures the increasingly precarious position that Muslims in the West presently occupy that is no longer confined to discursive racialization and verbal abuse, but is now starting to become a life and death challenge, quite literally. The Christchurch mosque attacks occurred in a local and global context of persisting Islamophobia and rising far-right nationalist fringe groups entering the mainstream in Australia and elsewhere. This paper discusses contemporary attitudes towards Islam and Muslim Australians through an examination of the historical context for the settlement of Muslims communities in Australia from the early days of the nineteenth century to the contemporary era, which has seen a more diversified migration from many parts of the Muslim world. The paper discusses the critical factors that shaped this migration and examines the contemporary social experiences of Muslim Australians in a global context of hyper-securitized agendas often connecting Islam and Muslims to extreme violent ideologies.

On Ernst Bloch’s Moral Theory

This article describes the origin of Bloch’s moral theory, which was formulated partly as a response to Simmel’s moral relativism. It also shows that Bloch’s theory is a coherent example of what Charles Taylor calls “expressivism,” a contemporary philosophical attitude which emphasizes the creation of values, with its transgressive character. Finally, the article addresses some shortcomings of Bloch’s expressivist moral theory, and emphasizes the necessity this author felt to complete it with norms ensuring human dignity.