Democracy In Society Research Articles

Peculiarities of migration processes in Ukraine

After disintegration of the USSR there were created fifteen sovereign states on post-Soviet space. Therefore after proclamation of the independence of Ukraine, scales of migratory processes became significant, what caused spread of massive flows of refugees, repatriates, seekers of asylum etc. Contemporary migratory tendencies make a considerable influence on formation of national politics. Thus, under the conditions of globalization the main tendency in international relationships became migration of labour force. It is caused by different reasons, which become widely-spread both in Ukraine and in the world. Significant growth of intensity of international migration of labour resources on the whole territory of our state makes a great influence on its economic and social development. This causes the necessity to make a profound research of migratory processes in Ukraine. Every person and citizen has a right for freedom of movement. Given right is a basis of migratory law. External migration from Ukraine increased significantly from the moment of proclamation of independence of our state. Among its main reasons are considerable reduction of the level and quality of life of population at the beginning of 1990s, appearance of massive unemployment and herewith simplification of the procedure of exit abroad and change of the place of residence, which became a consequence of democratization of society. At present a big quantity of the citizens of Ukraine works abroad, what is first of all connected with the following important problems in Ukraine: absence of available market of housing, real possibilities of employment, high level of social protection, what leads to growth of unemployment, ineffective politics of employment. Ukrainians often move abroad primarily because of low profits, condition of quality of life, absence of employment. The main for today is provision of free movement for everyone, who is legally on the territory of Ukraine, and promotion to follow of other rights and freedoms of person and citizen.

Participation in Social Research: "Quijotism" or Construction of a World View?

Abstract Participation has become a buzzword and lost much of its impact. Nevertheless, there are enough arguments to revisit the concept and its use in social research. One of them is that it is part of a tradition of action and participatory research which acquired specific features in different parts of the world. In Latin America it was, and still is, very much integrated with the idea of social transformation and democratisation of society. The question posed is how to avoid the pitfalls of either a romantic view of participation or a demagogical one. The article deals with some of the reasons to revisit participation, as well as some understandings, conditions and strategies for participation. Keywords: participation, social research, participatory utopia, dialogue

Влияние средств массовой коммуникации на развитие социальной модернизации в России

В статье рассматриваются проблемы социальной модернизации России. Особое внимание уделяется анализу российского менталитета, объективной необходимости его трансформации, раскрывается первостепенное значение средств массовой коммуникации в решении этих актуальных задач.

Religion, state and ‘sovereign democracy’ in Putin’s Russia

AbstractThis article explores the role of the dominant Russian Orthodox Church in the evolution of the post-communist Russian Federation. This is not a classic case where religion may have contributed to the democratisation of society because this has not been a primary goal of political elites, and the regime that has emerged might best be described as ‘hybrid’ with growing authoritarian tendencies. Having played little role in the ending of communism, having little historical experience of working within a democracy, suspicious of liberal-individualist visions of public life and committed to a vision of its role as the hegemonic religious institution, the promotion of democratic governance has not been a priority of church leaders. At the same time the political structures created by the Kremlin encourage a degree of conformity and support for the regime by key social actors, and in the wake of the political crisis of 2011–2012 there have been further incentives for church and state to work more closely...

The local cultural sector : Reinvigorating its public functions and foundations

In the Nordic tradition, public cultural policy has been endowed with an enlightening and welfarepolitical aim. Nordic cultural policies are based on an overall socio-political objective of furthering the empowerment of the individual, universal enlightenment ("Bildung") and the continued democratisation of society (Nielsen 2003). Locally, an important actor is a municipal cultural sector that is one specialized sector in a municipality's administration. Cultural and art institutions (such as libraries, museums, theatres) are working under the cultural sector administration, although they might sometimes have their own separate administration. According to Gray (2002, pp. 82-83) the arts as a coherent policy sector within local government is weak because of low political salience and a fragmented field of activity, with many actors having a role to play in the provision of services and development of arts policies.

E-Government Systems in Romania

Information technologies public services = E-Government. Using information technologies, the possibility of changing the quality of services provided by Public Administration to the citizens and social entities is growing. Reducing time to access the public resources is starting from eliminating the papers, it is know that e-documents have a better speed in the system then those in hard copy. So the E-Government applications are gaining the population trust and also those applications come with a growing efficiency for the public services, contributing major to the democratization of society as a whole. If the civil servant is not prepared to use computers in their work, than the citizens will not be able to come closer to the Public Administration. In my paper I’ll try to present the citizen interaction with Public Administration. In this moment in Romania in most cases the clients of public services must go from an office to another one, staying there long enough waiting in line to personal give to the public servant a series of documents and then he must wait another couple of days (even weeks) for another document needed for another office, were he will find another line…and…after long time of waiting, the problem is finally resolved (probably).

Ombudsman decentralized in the EU: experience for Ukraine

The article analyses the actual theme of the ombudsman institution in terms of decen­tralization of public power. The features of formation and functioning of the ombudsman in Sweden, Finland, of Denmark, Austria and the Netherlands. It is noted that it is the best ombudsman protects the rights of people in decentralized EU. Ombudsman makes a significant contribution to the democratization of society, public power closer to the peo­ple, ensuring fairness, legitimacy and willingness to meet the needs of citizens and con­tributes to greater transparency, efficiency and quality in the work of public authorities. Today, most decentralized European countries the post of local / regional ombudsman, which successfully handles control of public authorities. The conclusions emphasized that the activities of the institute of local / regional ombudsman investigated in the EU was an important step for the further development of democratic society; strengthening the rule of law key components (growth status of the individual, guaranteeing the rights and freedoms of man and citizen); providing better control over the activities of authori­ties and officials; realization of the main goal of the policy of decentralization of public power – the power to approach people. The recommendations for change Ukrainian om­budsman as a decentralized public power.

Women in politics: The case of Serbia

After a short introduction, this paper deals with women?s activities and participation in social and especially political institutions nowadays, but in the country with deeply rooted idea about traditional role that women should play. Additionally, it takes into account their personal experiences and opinions, impressions about being members of parliament, their motivation, obstacles and their (women?s) contribution to politics (through decision making). The paper is based on the theoretical discussion about under what conditions women?s participation in political institutions can be influential, about ?descriptive representation?, ?substantive representation? and the possibility of their contribution to the democratization of society. The elaboration is based on the research of public opinion polls of the representative sample of Serbian population, sociological study of female members of the Serbian parliament, as well as on the results of women?s university education and their scientific achievements.

Demokratie als Politischer Strategiekern

"Democracy" is a political term and controversial as such. It is in the nature of political con-cepts that they are not only descriptive but that they are also connected to options of agency. The concept of democracy is associated with a number of widely diverging political strategies. The most diverse political currents, movements, governments refer to themselves as "democratic"; widely different political systems are called "democratic". And especially in the context of Western "democracies" the description "democratic" is supposed to translate as "most valuable". The contribution departures from concrete rhetorical classifications as "democratic" or "undemocratic" and focuses primarily on two antagonistic strategies: While concepts of "social democracy" conceptualize democracy as an unfinished process and de-mand the democratization of society (including the economic realm), concepts of liberal de-mocracy seek to restrict the democratic principle to the realm of institutionalized politics.

Introduction to the EERJ dossier

After the Second World War, the OECD promoted the idea – which had begun to emerge between the wars in various European countries – that the creation of a comprehensive school system, bringing together all children from age 6 to 15 or 16, was the precondition for the democratisation of society and economic progress. This model was implemented very differently from one country to another. The ideal has now ended in disenchantment. Almost everywhere, the schooling of 11 to 15-year-olds is seen as the weak link in educational systems, a site of violence and suffering for pupils and teachers. A new system is being put in place, which some call post-comprehensive. Without abandoning the concern for equality, the international organisations are foregrounding a new system of reference based on performance obligations: skills standards, international comparisons through which each country’s performance can be judged in a context of competition. The debate has moved on: the American New Right places its hopes in the market; the European texts propose several readjustments of the social-democratic compromise: an equality of performances which takes the form of the definition of key skills; an attempt at compromise between the ideal of redistribution, the imperatives of performance and the creation of a collective consciousness in pluriethnic and pluricultural societies which takes the form of the idea of inclusive societies. The comprehensive school and the debates surrounding it are liable to be overtaken before being analysed. A retrospective analysis seems necessary to do justice to the efforts that have been made. The way societies organise their educational system is a key element in the production and transformation of the social. This special double issue of the European Educational Research Journal examines the current state of the comprehensive model in Europe and formulates the hypothesis of a post-comprehensive era; in so doing, it addresses the fundamental problem area of the relationship between education and society(ies). It was this aim of retrospective analysis that inspired the organisation, at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Porto in 2014, of a symposium on “The emergence of a post-comprehensive school in Europe? The role of social science journals in constructing a reflexive and critical analysis”. This was followed by a call for contributions for this EERJ dossier, “Re-examining the comprehensive school project in Europe.” The aim of that invitation and of this ensuing double issue is to offer a European perspective on the question of the comprehensive school. There were 21 responses to the call; ten articles were selected after review. Together they provide a wide-ranging view of the situation.

Designing Noxologically Oriented Teachers’ Training

Democratization of society is directly related to building the rule of law. Factors contributing to emerging social risk undermine democratic principles. Professional training in a higher educational institution is focused on activity under certain politico-social conditions. Teaching in higher institutions should become a transformational stage for professional activity under conditions of social risk. Training to professional activity under conditions of social risk should be carried out through studying risk factors, integration of risk-oriented training in the course of teaching process, search for and implementation of effective form of teaching, issues of legal and noxological culture of teachers and students. Formation of noxological culture in the process of professional training in higher institution becomes a condition of social risk minimization. Designing and realization of noxologically oriented teachers’ training is a necessity imposed by society development. Higher education institutions’ graduates’ competitiveness should be mainly provided by its focus on conservation of their pupils’ life and health, i.e. future generation of the country. Given this, the teacher using innovations will develop learners’ innovation thinking, fulfilling of their abilities. The methodological framework of the research consists of conception of educating life safety (Antyukhin E., Sulla M.); education methodology (Gmurman V.E., Danilov M.A., Schedrovitsky G.P., etc.); formation of base personal culture in the integral pedagogical process (Gazman O.S., Ledned V.S., etc.). The objective is to theoretically study the possibility of designing noxologically oriented teachers’ training – the necessity imposed by relevant social problems and its need in development. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3s3p175

Perspectives on the West in the Orthodox Church press of Kyiv diocese, 1900–1914

As Russian Orthodoxy in the late imperial period faced new pressures for freedom and democratization in society, the state, and the Church, Orthodox churchmen sometimes looked to the West – its culture and its religious confessions – as either cautionary tale or inspiration. This article examines how clergy and ecclesiastical academy scholars in the borderland diocese of Kyiv analyzed the West in the diocesan press. Their views of the West and of Russia helped to shape the Church’s varied responses to modern culture, political change, and calls for Church reform. Some contributors praised Western political freedom and law, but many experienced a fraught relationship with modernity. The Slavophile ideal of communal wholeness, which contrasted with Western impersonal legalism and atomization, and a reluctance to cede authority constrained the Orthodox response to modernity’s pressures. Retaining the Church’s role in society while addressing Western material vitality, modernist influences, and demands for freedom of conscience proved challenging. Some cautiously welcomed the Duma as a brake against bureaucracy but only as a consultative body, lest it curtail the tsar’s autocratic power. Rejecting the divisive individualism of Protestantism, they sought to soften Church hierarchy through conciliarism but stopped short of radically laicizing authority in the parish.

A new view on the sociosanitary characteristics of pregnant women with epilepsy

Objective : to assess the sociosanitary characteristics of pregnant women with epilepsy at the present stage of public health development, by using the Krasnoyarsk Territory as an example. Patients and methods. Delivery records were retrospectively analyzed in 99 women with different forms of epilepsy who had delivered at Krasnoyarsk Maternity Hospital Five specializing in care for women with CNS disease and in 100 non-epileptic women (in the period 2005–2012). Results . A present-day pregnant epileptic woman is an urban resident aged 25.57 ± 4.64 years who has secondary or secondary vocational education, is married, unemployed, a smoker, and has Disability Group II or III due to the underlying disease. Conclusion . At the present stage of health care development, the portrait of an epileptic woman has changed due to the democratization of society, the reduced stigmatization of the disease, and the emergence of new antiepileptic drugs with low teratogenic effects.

Prevention of Student Youth’s Victim Behavior

New times put forward new tasks for teachers, psychologists, social workers. Prevention of student youth’s victim behavior is determined by social and practical importance of society democratization and humanization; by the necessity to develop physically and spiritually healthy, actively creating and socially adapted personality, by the increased demand for victimologic prevention and correction. The article substantiates the essence and motives of student youth’s victim behavior; it also reveals specific characteristics of student age: emotional immaturity, insufficient ability to control own behavior and other factors that increase the risk of becoming “a victim” due to adverse conditions of socialization. The research has resulted in defining pedagogical conditions aimed to prevent victim behavior: diagnostics to identify victim behavior among students; development and introduction of comprehensive prevention program “Life out of danger!”. The conducted research allowed to draw a conclusion that the approved program due to included various forms and methods offers an effective way to prevent student youth’s victim behavior.

Ethical competence: A concept analysis.

Exploring the concept of ethical competence in the context of healthcare is essential as it pertains to better quality of care. The concept still lacks a comprehensive definition covering the aspects of ethical expertise, ethical knowledge and action of a health professional. This article aims to report an analysis of the concept of ethical competence. A modified strategy suggested by Walker and Avant was used to analyse the concept. As a result, the concept of ethical competence can be defined in terms of character strength, ethical awareness, moral judgement skills and willingness to do good. Virtuous professional, experience of a professional, human communication, ethical knowledge and supporting surroundings in the organisation can be seen as prerequisites for ethical competence. Ethical competence results in the best possible solutions for the patient, reduced moral distress at work and development and democratisation of society. The results of the analysis establish a basis for an instrument to evaluate health professionals' ethical competence. It will guide educators, as well as managers in healthcare, to support the development of ethical conduct in healthcare.

Captivation and the Work of Art. A review of Rey Chow, Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture

Captivation and the Work of Art. A review of Rey Chow, Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture Emilio Sauri (bio) Chow, Rey. Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture. Durham: Duke UP, 2012. In the introduction to Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture, Rey Chow draws our attention to two senses of the word “entanglement.” While the “most obvious sense” is that of a “relativization” or blurring of conceptual boundaries and “stable categories of origination and causation such as author, owner, actor, mind, intention, and motive” (10), “entanglement,” Chow reminds us, also “carries the more familiar connotation of being emotionally tied to a person or an object, from whom or from which one cannot extricate oneself” (11). These two senses, then, speak to two distinct and, in many ways, contradictory tendencies: one toward a “democratization of society” and “elimination of elitist distinctions” and another toward an “affective or aesthetic form of capture and captivation” that “bear the persistent constitutive markings of hierarchical distinctions (such as domination and submission)” (11). Each of the essays gathered in Entanglements stages and attempts to think through this double-movement within and across an extraordinarily wide range of discourses, disciplines, and media to illustrate the extent to which each of these tendencies often entails its opposite. At the same time, it may not be too much to say that Chow’s book most often calls on the affective dimension of this same double-movement in order to question more conventional accounts of the “democratization, indistinction, and liberalization of social boundaries,” as well as of capture and captivation themselves (11). Ranging over a wide array of media (including film, literature, photography, and digital work) and theory from several traditions and periods, Entanglements also suggests that focusing attention on the subject’s experience of captivation—as prey, as audience, and even as object of representation—would play an important role in the transformation of concepts like art, freedom, sacrifice, and visibility. Chow’s essays regularly return to a set of overlapping issues that create what she describes as a “topological looping” or “loops” woven into and between individual essays (1, 2). Thus, the operation of “enmeshing,” to which “entanglement” also refers, not only appears on the level of content but structures the relationship among the concepts, sections, and chapters that comprise the book on the whole (1).Recurrent questions concerning the relationship between mediality and reflexivity, capture and captivation, mimesis and its relation to violence, victimization and forgiveness, and the role of East Asian cultural production in the globalized Western academy today are brought to bear on each other in order to modify the reader’s engagement with concepts as they move between discourses and across medial forms. Importantly, however, “entanglement” does not refer to the effort to think sameness, but on the contrary, to “linkages and enmeshments that keep things apart” and “the voidings and uncoverings that hold things together” (12). Entanglement, in this sense, becomes a refusal to read these issues as expressions of the logic of a unifying whole. The significance for Chow of transmedial thinking is already apparent in the opening essay, where Chow’s primary interest is reflexivity, or the “process in which thought becomes aware of its own activity,” and the manner in which thinking through (rather than simply about) medium has long been central to the staging of any reflexivity as such on the part of the artwork (18). Of course, as Clement Greenberg suggested long ago, modernism may just be another name for the moment when medium emerges both as the artwork’s central concern, and as a means to stage its reflexivity, though the point here will be to underscore the extent to which such staging “materializes as an intermedial event” (18).1 Thus, in a perceptive discussion of Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect [Verfremdungseffekt], Chow not only shows that, in his hands, reflexivity is a “conscious form of staging” that “far exceed[s] the genre of drama,” but that the aims of such reflexivity—what Walter Benjamin described as the “uncovering (making strange, or alienating) of conditions”—are no less at the heart of the enterprise known as “theory” (18, 13). Accordingly, if Brecht’s theater asks how...

The importance of electoral political culture of developing and maintaining a minimum level of democracy: A case study of the Republic of Tunisia

In this paper, we will apply the theoretical framework of the minimal definition of democracy (electoral democracy) to the example of the Republic of Tunisia after the changes that have occurred after The Arab Spring. We wish to illustrate the hypothesis that democratic political culture, which has a permanent character, can play an important role in maintaining the nucleus of democracy - the electoral process. Also, we will try to show that specific (liberal and tolerant) cultural - historical heritage and political practice in Tunisia are important factors for the formation and maintenance of democracy in that country (at the minimum level). Our goal is to try to give a general evaluation of whether Tunisia, a few years after The Arab Spring, can rate as electoral democracy. Indirectly, we will discuss how Islam can be barrier to the democratization of society.

Social Studies Teachers’ Perspective of Religion Education in Turkey

Article History: Received 03.08.2014 Received in revised form 28.09.2014 Accepted 17.10.2014 Available online 01.03.2015 The dispute over religion education within the education system in Turkey is about a process of compulsory and elective religion classes although it emerged upon exclusion from school curricula. The increasing democratization of society in Turkey led to the critique of society’s own religious values and some reorganization. Social change brings along particular perspectives and innovations. Religion education, with the purpose of positively influencing man’s life and making people happy as long as they live, by establishing a life style based on the individual’s powers of belief, contributes in co-existence of various religious values in the society and in prevention of religious class differences to occur. The current research aims to define and evaluate social studies teachers’ views of religion education in middle schools. For this purpose, data from social studies teachers employed in various middle schools in Aydin, Nevsehir, Elazig, Bingol, Mardin, Diyarbakir, and Siirt were obtained through a semi-structured interview, a qualitative research method. The obtained data were analyzed with a qualitative data analysis technique. Research results showed that social studies teachers’ views on religion education varied and this variation stemmed from different factors involved in different processes within religion education. © 2016 IOJES. All rights reserved

GRAĐANSKO VASPITANJE I SOCIJALNI KAPITAL

In introduction the causal relationship between different (formal and informal) areas of civil education and the process of society democratization is established. Next follows deliberation about the function of civil education in context of dynamics of the civil and political society in transition. In order to 'direct' the conception of civil education towards specific aims, the specific form 'minimum of social capital which is necessary for the balanced civil and political society in transition, has been considered, that is, the form of social capital that corresponds with the idea of citizen education in society in transition. Finally is analysed the syllabus of the school subject Civil education, that is, its consistence with desired form of social capital, which is meant to be achieved by citizens' education.

Contributing to Nation Building: Reflections on Teaching at a Muslim Faith-Based School in South Africa

This article is a personal reflection and a self-study of my experience as an educator at a Muslim faith-based school. After teaching at this school for over two decades, I share my reflections on how a faith-based school contributes to the democratisation of society and contributes to nation building. This article provides a perspective from an educator’s position using self-reflexivity and documentary evidence as research methodology. My conclusion supports the notion that a faith-based educational institution can contribute positively towards the realisation of a greater good to all and promotes a cohesiveness that is much needed in an ideal democratic society. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p557