Current Social Values Research Articles

SUCCESSION OF SPOUSE AND PARTNER: AN EXAMPLE OF THE NEED TO UPDATE THE CIVIL CODE

This article, completed in November 2024, investigates the legislative inconsistencies and anachronisms in the inheritance of spouses and partners, with the aim of discussing possible updates to the Civil Code. The methodology includes documentary analysis and case law review, with emphasis on new academic interpretations and decisions of higher courts. The study is current in the context of the establishment of the Senate's committee of jurists, in September 2023, with the preparation of a preliminary draft to update the Civil Code. The result of the study indicates that the current legislation presents uncertainties regarding the inheritance of spouses and partners, generating legal uncertainty. The conclusion reinforces the need for a normative review to ensure greater clarity and normative alignment with current social values, promoting greater predictability in succession situations.

Interpreting post-conflict values: conservation decision-making for Bosnian war-damaged manuscripts from the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The destruction of libraries and archives is not an original tactic in warfare, but the result remains the same: the crippling of enemy morale by sabotaging their cultural achievements. After the Bosnian War (1992–1995), the Sarajevo Oriental Institute’s collection of 200,000+ Ottoman-era manuscripts was reduced to just 105 volumes. In November 2022, conservators at the Gazi Husrev-begova Library began a campaign to conserve the remaining manuscripts. Establishing these objects’ historical and current social, artistic, academic and economic values allows conservators and stakeholders to make ethically based treatment decisions that underpin a collaborative and mutually agreeable reconstruction effort. This article presents the preliminary findings of research into the usefulness of value assessments as a basis for conservation decision-making for war-damaged and war-affected objects. It will focus on the Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency’s system for collection valuation in determining the values associated with one of the 105 surviving volumes from the Oriental Institute.

«Верхний Ларс» в сетевых медиа: механизм формирования социальной солидарности и самоорганизации

The article examines the influence of modern practices of information and communication on the behavioral strategies of youth on the example of the local situation on the Russian-Georgian border in September 2022, after the announcement of partial mobilization during a special military operation. Designated in various media as a “humanitarian catastrophe” and “collapse”, the situation at the Upper Lars checkpoint has become an indi-cator of a number of social problems. The huge flow of young people who decided to leave the country, caused by partial mobilization, created a situation in which fugitives and patriots, volunteers and corrupt officials, non-resident and local, faced. The aim of the article is to identify the content of network media, which manifests the motivations of different groups of young people, their attitude to the current situation, material and social prob-lems, values and priorities. The composition of the “queue” on Upper Lars, the motives of volunteerism and “illegal entrepreneurship”, attitudes toward relocants and corrupt practices were determined. Conclusion dwells upon the fact that social media play a role in shaping social solidarity and self-organization.

A migráció szociológiája 3.0

Aim: The aim of the review of Endre Sik's book "The Sociology of Migration 3.0" is to present new ideas and values summarizing the changes in the research and theoretical approach to migration.Methodology: In preparing the book review, I have endeavoured, through the comparative content analysis carried out, to provide a readable description of the new findings and conclusions that differ from the findings of the previous two books.Findings: The author presented the thematic comparison in his previous books and the book under review as a separate elements, presenting the new elements that can be read as separate novae. With characteristic wisdom and direct simplicity, the author shows that this book is part of a process, a partial reinterpretation of the accelerated global social phenomenon, the antecedents of which were presented in his two previous books. The author has lived up to expectations by updating the processes, events and theoretical approaches he has previously analysed with research findings and references.Value: The global social process of migration, researched and described by the author of the book, is presented with research findings and additions, interviews, which make the book newly identifiable as a seminal work in the literature on migration. It succeeds in describing the phenomenon, the characteristics of its migration patterns in the period following the mass irregular immigration of 2015, in a way that is comprehensible to non-migration researchers, and also presents current social value judgments.

The University of Texas's “Racial Geography Tour,” designed by Dr. Edmund Gordon

The University of Texas's “Racial Geography Tour,” designed by Dr. Edmund Gordon

Influence Factors in the Effectiveness of National Defense Anti-Corruption Governance

Armed forces are currently in the environment with moral ambiguity and multiple cultures. In face of the chaos, corruption, and wasteful trend in current social value system, continuous conflict is bothering the cultivation and atmosphere of military character. Under the situation, officers and soldiers could easily fall into bad belief and become indifferent to surrounding affairs with apathy. Various military discipline events appear in domestic armed forces in past years; besides, the exaggeration and report of print media and electronic media, and even some officers and soldiers spilling, smearing, and slandering each other to defile others’ innocence destroy the image of armed forces. Military character presents close relations with integrity building action. Aiming at military personnel in Ministry of National Defense, total 420 copies of questionnaire are distributed, and 347 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 83%. The research results are summarized as below. Factors in the effectiveness of armed forces personnel’s anti-corruption governance contain micro aspects of lack of legal and disciplinary ideas and value deviation of armed forces personnel as well as macro aspect of complicated approval operation and rules resulting in lobbying interfering businesses. The effectiveness of armed forces personnel’s anti-corruption governance not being affirmed by the society is related to the engagement of supervisors at all levels in anti-corruption work, as armed forces personnel are restricted to the political environment and aging senior customs personnel that the director’s engagement in anti-corruption work is not manifested. Armed forces personnel involving in internal anti-corruption problems are minimized to largely reduce the effectiveness of anti-corruption governance. According to the results, suggestions are proposed, expecting to improve problems resulted from military discipline and to promote the armed forces’ image of integrity, being close to the people, and loving the people.

Ecological wisdom, a social–ecological approach to environmental planning with an emphasis on water resources: the case of Qanat Hydraulic Structure (QHS) in a desert city of Iran

Improper exploitation of water resources has caused a water crisis and a challenge for water resource management around the world, especially in desert cities with vulnerable landscapes. Ecological wisdom is evident in the ancient desert cities of Iran, based on Qanat Hydraulic Structures (QHS). For long, QHS has been the main water transmission system from long-distance resources to cities in hot-arid regions. This study aimed to explore the ecological wisdom of ancient QHS and to empower it with the current social values, which may be applied as a rational normative approach to create balance between the landscape ecological integrity and development processes. We first investigated scientific databases to extract the principles of ecological wisdom and the theoretical framework. In the next stage, we conducted field studies to extract the social and ecological principles and rules, governing the workable pattern of structure and function of QHS in the desert city of Yazd, Iran, as a case study. Next, the comparative–deductive method was used for comparing the principles of ecological wisdom with the rules governing the corridor networks of QHS. Finally, we compared the compatibility of ecological wisdom principles governing QHS with the criteria and sub-criteria of landscape sustainability in Yazd. The results revealed that ecological wisdom can provide a framework to integrate the traditional knowledge of QHS in scientific ecological knowledge and social system of cities toward sustainable water resource planning and sustainable landscaping.

Adolescents and values portrayed in music nowadays

Nowadays, the close relationship between adolescents and music is a fact reinforced by new technology. Music, in general, reflects values and attitudes in society and serves different purposes in life, however the crisis of values is a constant threat that may be eased by using music as a tool to engage with young people and reinforced ethical values. This work aimed at assessing perceptions of explicit content in pop music by 16-year-old adolescents by means of a questionnaire with a series of short-open questions. The results confirmed a relaxed attitude towards current social values but yet a robust self-claimed personality in young people.

Multi-Sided Platform Strategy, Taxation, and Regulation: A Quantitative Model and Application to Facebook

Digital platforms such as Facebook create value by connecting users, vendors, and contractors. Their strong supply and demand economies of scale can give them market power, and have led to increasing calls for special regulations and taxes. We construct and illustrate an approach for structural modeling of digital platforms. The model allows for heterogeneity in demand elasticity, disutility from advertising, and network effects across users. We paramaterize our model using a survey of over 57,000 US internet users on their demand for Facebook's eponymous application. Facebook creates $14 billion in social value per month, with consumer surplus concentrated among female and older users of Facebook. The most valuable friendships on Facebook are worth in excess of 50 cents per month, but most are worth far less, with connections to men more valuable on a per-friend basis. We find that Facebook has too low a level of advertising relative to their short-term profit maximizing strategy. Imputing their shadow value from maintaining a large user base, we estimate that the welfare lost from Facebook's market power, compared to the first best of a social welfare maximizing Facebook, is 9.6% of current social value, or $1.3 Billion per month. We then simulate six proposed policies for government management of digital platforms, taking Facebook's optimal response into account. Taxes are mostly incident on Facebook profit and properly targeted taxes can even raise consumer surplus. Achieving perfect competition in social media would raise social surplus from Facebook by 4.8% of current value. But a botched regulation that left the US with two smaller, non-competitive social media monopolies would decrease social surplus by 84.7%.

Thoroughbred Racehorse Welfare through the Lens of ‘Social License to Operate—With an Emphasis on a U.S. Perspective

This review addresses the question of whether Thoroughbred horse racing is sustainable in the context of current social values. A recently acknowledged framework, known as ‘Social License to Operate’ (SLO), provides us with a lens through which to view and assess racehorse welfare. In multiple surveys of the general public, the horse owning public, and university students, the primary topics of concern regarding Thoroughbred racing show considerable concordance: concern about catastrophic injuries—particularly as related to track surfaces, concern over the racing of two-year-olds, whip use by jockeys, drug/medication policies, and aftercare opportunities for retired Thoroughbred racehorses. Legitimacy of an industry, consent from industry stakeholders, and trust between the community players, are all essential to have and maintain SLO. In the current era of 24/7 global media access, and the proliferation of social media providing an interactive platform for all interested parties, a dramatic change has occurred in commentary related to racehorse welfare concerns. The situation at Santa Anita (California, USA) from late December 2018 through mid-November 2019 demonstrated just how tenuous the SLO for horse racing is. This article will provide a brief review of what ‘Social License to Operate’ is, along with a brief literature review of five of the areas of primary concern voiced by stakeholders.

Defining and evaluating the social value of regional water resources in terms of emergy

Abstract The social value of water resources must be considered when reforming water prices, improving water policy, protecting water resources and devising allocation methods. However, current social value theories for water resources are often unsound. The social value of water resources is defined here based on social system theory. Energy flow within a combined social–ecological system is analyzed, and an emergy analysis method for ecological economics is introduced for unified quantification and to improve the accounting method of the social value of water resources. Taking Zhengzhou in east-central China as an example, the social value of water resources is calculated for 2015. The water resources' total social emergy was 6.04 × 1021 solar equivalent joules (sej) and the unit value was 6.58 × 1012 sej/m3. This corresponds to 3.88$/m3, indicating that the social value of water resources is enormous. This paper proposes that the social value of water is an important component of its ecological economic value, and its social value should therefore be considered by water policy makers. Research of this type can be effective in helping to protect water resources and encourage efficient water use.

Identifying the ecological and societal consequences of a decline in Buxus forests in Europe and the Caucasus

The potential impact of new invasive tree pests and diseases is usually quantified in economic terms. The ecological and social impacts are less often assessed. Using a comprehensive literature review we assess the potential ecological and social impact of two non-native invasive species (the box tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis and the fungus Calonectria pseudonaviculata) that threaten the survival of box tree, Buxus spp. in forests in Europe and the Caucasus. A total of 132 fungi, 12 chromista (algae), 98 invertebrate and 44 lichens were found to use Buxus spp. Of these, 43 fungi, 3 chromista and 18 invertebrate species have only been recorded on Buxus spp., suggesting that these species are obligate on Buxus spp. and are most at risk from in the loss of Buxus spp. due to these invasive pest and disease species. Buxus spp. was shown to be important for soil stability and water quality but there was no information on other ecosystem functions provided by Buxus spp. Buxus was found to be of considerable historical cultural importance but there was very limited information on current social values and uses. Buxus trees, wood and leaves are associated with different folklore and sacred rites which are still particularly important in the Caucasus. While we could not find any assessment of the economic value of Buxus forests the biodiversity, cultural and social values of Buxus identified here indicate that its loss could have major indirect and non-market economic effects. This work highlights the importance of studying the ecological and societal implications of biological invasions.

A Study on the Temporal and Spatial Values of University Values in the New

Value education is the core of moral education and ideological and political education in colleges and universities. In the process of integrating the socialist core value system into the national education, we must follow the new development of the society in the new period and the new characteristics of the development of the current social values, and aim at the goal of "educating people first and moral education first" , To study the value of college students in colleges and universities facing the subject of education, to strengthen the effectiveness of value education strategy research, and constantly explore ways to enhance the effectiveness of education in colleges and universities to implement the values of education goals.

Principles and Values as Essential Elements that Shape Social Policy

Dealing with social policy as a meaning, but also as an applied practice in social sector interventions, presupposes knowledge of the basic principles and values on which the philosophy of its existence and operation is based. Besides the historical reasons of the socioeconomic environment behind the development of social policy, the guiding principles and social values that govern it are also very important. More specifically, the anthropo-philosophical and Christian principles – other than being structural elements of human behaviour – serve as collective values as well as guiding principles for the harmonious working together of social life and state intervention when social policy is applied at the macro level. In any case, the effectiveness of each decision to intervene, and the accomplishment of its objectives, is highly dependent on its ideological background, which exists in relation to the current social values. The existence of social equality and justice, the reduction of social problems, as well as the reallocation of goods and services, presuppose the smooth operation of the value system and the preservation of its fidelity. The value system encompasses the local government and normative/regulatory conformity as foundations of the systemic operation of society's subsystems; in regard to the value system solidarity, subsidiarity and personal responsibility constitute the foundations of human behaviour. The presentation of the principles and value system on which the operation of social policy is based within the framework of the EU are the basic prerequisites for comprehending its operation. Moreover, this step as the new challenge of human reaction against to the monetarism of the economy. It is obvious that together with the neoliberal concept a very close cooperation with the human values is necessary.

Updating the Vinaya: Formulating Buddhist Monastic Laws and Pure Rules in Contemporary Korea

Contemporary Buddhist monastic communities often find some of the traditional Vinaya regulations to be outdated, insufficient, difficult to follow and counterproductive to the practice and propagation of the religion in the modern world. Focusing on the Korean Chogye Order, this paper will illustrate the manner in which monastics today negotiate between their historical disciplinary codes and current social values to formulate new Vinaya-related literature. It will demonstrate how the Order’s emerging legal system democratizes the monastic bureaucracy, objectifies financials and establishes a neutral punishment-based judicial system in line with the political values of secular society. In addition, it will introduce the recent creation of new Chogye Order Pure Rules, which update the Vinaya with original codification of modern consumerism, environmental ethics and technological use. Particular attention will be given to the way this new Vinaya construction represents explicit attempts to improve the reputation of the sangha in face of social critique.

Status, values and present threats in Heraklion harbour (Crete, Greece)

Heraklion harbour is located on the northern coast of Crete and it is one of the most important and active national ports in the Eastern Mediterranean basin. This review aims to provide an insight on the history of the Heraklion harbour, as well as on its current biological, social and economic values and threats. An overview of the present management strategy of the port describing the involved stakeholders, as well as their role in the operation, development, control and conflict solving processes, is provided.

King Abdullah Economic City: Engineering Saudi Arabia’s post-oil future

King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) is a $100 billion master-planned city under construction along Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast. As part of a quartet of new planned ‘economic’ cities in the desert kingdom, the city’s goal is to provide 1 million jobs for the kingdom’s rapidly growing, youthful population and to diversify the Saudi economy away from the oil industry. The city is illustrative of a recent trend of mega-projects on the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf designed for a post-oil era and fits into broader global trends of economic development strategies. Designed to accommodate 2 million people, KAEC aims to be a global logistics and manufacturing hub that will feature an education zone, ‘industrial valley’, business district, resort area, sea port, and residential areas for various income brackets. Conceptualized as a modern, international, and socially progressive city, KAEC represents a departure from current Saudi social values and governance and a shift in the ruling elite’s priorities. In this paper we examine how the Saudi state seeks to re-invent itself through the construction of new cities and the recent pivot towards economic liberalism. We position the national and international ambitions manifested in KAEC within broader transnational trends in entrepreneurial urbanism and new master-planned cities. Though KAEC is still in the early construction phase, this paper offers a preliminary analysis of the master plan and potential challenges relating to governance.

The evolutionary diagnosis of mental disorder.

Medicalization of human behavioral diversity is a recurrent theme in the history of psychiatry, and the problem of defining what is a genuine mental disorder is an unresolved question since the origins of clinical psychopathology. Darwinian psychiatry can formulate a definition of mental disorder that is value free and based on factual criteria. From an evolutionary perspective, genuine mental disorders are maladaptive conditions. The ultimate function of an adaptation is gene propagation via maximization of survival and reproduction. It follows that a distressing and/or disabling psychological or behavioral syndrome is a psychiatric disorder only if it impacts negatively on the individual's inclusive fitness. However, in many cases, an evolutionary definition of disorder cannot be reconciled with current social values. Thus, clinicians adopting the evolutionary approach should conform to the prevailing trend of contemporary medicine and accept that their task is to be healers of the distressed, not watchdogs of biological adaptation. These pragmatic considerations do not minimize the scientific validity of the Darwinian definition of mental disorders. Probably, its major contribution to psychiatric theory is the elimination of the necessity to find a brain lesion or dysfunctional mechanism to validate the distinction between disorders and non-disorders.

Secondary school as a context for expressing and developing creativity

The paper presents the results of a research on the views of teachers about expressing and developing creativity of students at the secondary educational level. The analysis of the discussion with ten grammar school teachers allocated as the most important the teachers' views of the nature of creativity, the capacity of the school to stimulate creativity in students and the conditions for stimulating creativity in school. The majority of teachers saw creativity as a complex phenomenon for whose understanding a multi-perspective approach is needed. Although only few teachers believe in distributivity of creativity, the majority agreed that school should stimulate students' creativity, but that it does not do it sufficiently. Among the factors which support creativity they singled out the teacher's engagement, specificities of certain school subjects, the application of certain teaching techniques and the image of the school. Among the factors that obstruct creativity they stated curricular requirements, selection of students, characteristics of young generations and current social values.

The social scholar: re-interpreting scholarship in the shifting university

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a re-envisioning of traditional conceptualizations of scholarship informed by knowledge assets theory, trends shaping the modern university and technological advancements. We introduce social scholarship, a set of scholarly practices being envisioned within the conventional four domains of scholarship (i.e. discovery, integration, teaching and application). This paper provides concrete examples of the benefits and challenges of enacting social scholarly practices in light of Boisot’s theory of information flows, proprietary knowledge and the social learning cycle. Design/methodology/approach – This article is a cross-disciplinary conceptual exploration. Findings – In the model of social scholarship, access to knowledge is spreading faster than ever before; information flows are bi-directional in each domain (discovery, teaching, integration and application) where previously knowledge resided with the institution, flowing out to the public. Relationships between scholars and their university as well as between government, university, researchers and the public are being re-negotiated. Research limitations/implications – Certain limitations may exist, such as the conceptual alignment of a business model of knowledge generation to the university, which has particular cultures, service-orientations and power structures that are unique to academia. Practical implications – The alternative model for scholarship outlined in this paper has implications for those in higher education concerned with faculty recruitment, retention, professional development and performance review. The insights in this paper are also relevant for those concerned with the induction and training of doctoral students and preparation of future faculty programs. Social implications – The conceptualization of scholarship outlined in this paper has implications for a broad, non-specialist audience who seeks to access, critique and provide input on basic, interdisciplinary or applied research as well as teaching in higher education. Originality/value – Using a business model of knowledge generation, this paper introduces how current social media affordances and societal values can and are transforming conceptions of “the scholar,” “scholarship” and the university as knowledge-purveyor.