Public Life Research Articles

The National and International Legal Framework Related to Family Relations Seen from the Perspective of Gender Equality

Gender-based discrimination is a long-standing problem of society and of the family in particular. While the possibilities of identifying the phenomenon of discrimination in public life are more tangible, discrimination in the family remains mostly in the shadows and not easily evident. It is about the relationships that are built between spouses, children, and other family members. This study aims to analyze the factual and legal situation of the dimensions of (lack of) equality between family members from a gender perspective. Seen through the lens of family relations in particular, this study will reflect in general terms the trend and society's approach to gender equality. This is because of imagining and not only the family as the basic and most important cell of society, the one that transmits values and principles to society. Healthy family and marital relations are an important contribution to the elimination of gender stereotypes not only between family members but also in society in general. Although family relations mainly belong to the sphere and private interest, the legislator has always put a strong emphasis on the special protection of the family and marriage, providing for it in the most important normative acts, such as the Constitution and the Family Code, but also in other acts which indirectly regulate family relations. There are also numerous international legal instruments that mainly protect the institution of the family and mainly the sphere of equality in the rights and obligations of its members. See these in the consideration of equality between men and women in several main directions such as equality and non-discrimination between men and women to the relationship that originates from marriage as an act, equality and non-discrimination of men and women to the rights and obligations towards children, equality, and non-discrimination in the consequences of ending a marriage. The elaboration and legal basis of the situations cited above will be the purpose of this paper, seen from the perspective of domestic and international legislation, as well as judicial practice. Legal reforms in the aspects of legal equality and non-discrimination in family and marital life have been and will remain a dynamic and continuous process as long as the dominant elements is human nature. This is reflected in internal normative acts such as the Family Code, but also in ratified international instruments and the jurisprudence of the ECHR. While the facts and results show that there is still significant gender inequality between family members, this should be taken as an incentive not only for other legal reforms but also for social policies in the future.
 
 Received: 19 February 2024 / Accepted: 21 March 2024 / Published: 23 March 2024

The Evolution and Driving Mechanisms of the Blue-Green Space Publicness Pattern in Changsha, China

Urban blue-green space (UBGS), where public life occurs, is vital for social interaction, social cohesion, public spirit cultivation, and community formation. UBGS publicness reflects whether it supports and facilitates community formation. From the perspective of the man–land relationship, UBGS with high publicness should have three significant characteristics: accessibility of elements, functional selectivity, and structural connectivity and shareability. This study took Changsha as the case study and evaluated its UBGS publicness in 2012, 2016, and 2020. We analyzed the evolution of the UBGS publicness pattern, and the results indicated the following: (1) The elements accessibility indicator showed a decreasing trend year by year and maintained the pattern of low in the city center and high in the suburban area; (2) the functional diversity indicator changed from a monocentric polarized spatial pattern to a polycentric and balanced spatial pattern; (3) the structural connectivity indicator generally improved and showed the core-edge pattern; and (4) the comprehensive indicator showed that the pattern developed from the core edge to the core edge as the primary focus with fan-shaped expansion supplemented. Based on this, combined with Changsha’s urban development history, environmental, policy, economic, and social factors supported, led, promoted, and guided the formation and evolution of the UBGS publicness pattern. This study improved the theoretical foundation of UBGS publicness, provided ideas and methods for the UBGS publicness evaluation on the urban scale, and may provide a reference for the construction of livable and sustainable cities.

მედია როგორც ხელოვნება და ხელოვნება როგორც მედია (ჟურნალები: „თეატრი“, „არილი“, „Art in America“, „ARTFORUM“)

Media and culture, two influential and important spheres of public life, have a long history of coexistence. There is no media art and no art without media. It is especially important to research the forms of impact on the formation of public consciousness in these areas, as well as the results. British media theorist Dennis McQuail in his work Journalism and Society notes that all theories that study the relationship between media, culture, and society, despite conceptual differences, agree that the media can serve to liberate and unify society, as well as to fragment and divide it – both development, advancement and retreat. Despite a kind of indeterminacy, the media, which shapes and reflects society, is the main message about society. (McQuail, 1992) Culture and art are a fundamental part of public life, which creates values, develops and strengthens public relations, together with the media, forms public consciousness. “Political confrontations and wars do not cause a cultural crisis, but, on the contrary, incompatibility, aggression and wars are the result of a cultural crisis” - this conclusion of European researchers is a kind of postulate, which says everything about the role of culture in the process of improving society.

Applied cratology and the political process through the prism of the scientific heritage of E. I. Kozlova

The will of the multinational people of Russia is the basis of the political process of a modern state. The values enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation are a guideline for the political process, legal consolidation of goals and objectives facing the state and civil society; the basis for specific legal regulation and act as a criterion for balancing various interests. The article analyzes the creative heritage of Professor E. I. Kozlova in terms of her study of fundamental issues of the theory of democracy and various forms of its manifestation and mechanisms of implementation. Over the course of many years of her creative life, Ekaterina Ivanovna Kozlova has studied the evolution of the conceptual foundations of democracy in the Russian Federation, the quintessence of which is the will of the people. In light of the constitutional amendments of 2020 and the digitalization of state and public life, ideas, fears and judgments about the significance of the will of the people of the classics of state (constitutional) law take on a new meaning. The institutionalization of the political process and its legal concept is the basis of the modern theory of practical cratology. The author’s vision of the constitutional design of the foundations, tasks and subjects of the political process is proposed.

Unity of physical and military-patriotic education of pupils of basic and senior schools

The article examines the content of the unity of physical and military-patriotic education of primary and high school students. It is noted that the relevance of the study is due to the need of society for a decisive, self- sufficient, self-confident, responsible personality who is able to participate in public life and is ready to defend Ukraine with arms. It is noted that general secondary education institutions do not pay enough attention to the physical and military-patriotic education of primary and high school students under martial law. In many general secondary education institutions, military-patriotic and physical education is organized and conducted at a low scientific and methodological level. In the course of the study, we found out that, given the age characteristics of primary and high school students, teachers should develop their physical fitness and foster readiness to defend Ukraine as a value and motivational fitness for military and patriotic activities.We believe that teachers should adhere to the following tasks and recommendations during educational activities: to conduct lectures, trainings on physical and military-patriotic education aimed at forming the basic components of patriotism, physical and military-patriotic education in students; to involve students in intellectual competitions; to involve students in physical education and sports activities, sports competitions with military- patriotic themes; to involve students in creative games-quests aimed at physical and military-patriotic education. Based on the generalization of the achievements of scientists and practitioners on the problem of physical and military-patriotic education of students, we have identified criteria and indicators of physical and military-patriotic education of primary and high school students, which should be used to determine the levels and more.

‘An elegant and able practitioner’. Marian Mason and the rise of women’s calisthenics in nineteenth century Britain

ABSTRACT In 1826 Marian Mason was introduced to British society as a callisthenic instructor. Trained by P.H. Clias, a gymnast who oversaw physical training in the military and navy, Mason is the first high profile female fitness coach in British history. Despite her importance as a landmark figure, Mason's contributions, and indeed life, remain relatively obscured from the historical record. Studying Mason's heyday in public life from 1826 to the early 1830s, this article provides the first substantive examination of Mason's life, her social networks and wealth and, critically, the monograph she published in 1826. While acknowledging Mason's role as an early female fitness coach, the article provides a deep reading of Mason's successes, focusing on her class and relationship advantages, her ability to court medical favour and shrewdness in addressing broader societal concerns. This article is less a biography and more an examination of the broader social and medical trends in early nineteenth century England, which created a space for people like Mason. The article presents a simple argument – Marian Mason was an early female fitness coach who, drawing on broader societal concerns about the body, created a niche for her career by leveraging her expertise and familial connections.

Traditions of maghrebi-saheli statehood and islamic radicalism in Early XXI Century

The significance of this research topic is due to the relevance of the problems of modern state-building in the public and political life of North and West Africa. The purpose of the research project is to analyze the causes and consequences of the emergence of radical movements of political Islam in the Maghreb and Sahel at the junction of the XX and XXI centuries and their connection with the shortcomings of national statehood inherent in both African regions. At the same time, the author focuses on the incompleteness of the state-building process, the weakness of institutions and the low level of justification for drawing state borders as concrete examples of such shortcomings that affected the socio-political climate in the Islamized areas adjacent to the Sahara. Based on the materials of sources and the theoretical model of regional security complexes (RSC), the author identified contradictions and diversity in the ideological and value views of the North African ruling circles, analyzed the methodological and spiritual and political foundations of the deeply rooted relationship between criminal and Islamist groups on the example of the activities of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) (аn organization included in the list of terrorist organizations in theRussian Federation is mentioned) and its leaders - Abd al-Malik Drukdel, Mukhtar Belmukhtar, etc. It is proved that “Islamist internationalism” in the Maghreb and Sahel of the 2000s began to take ethnocultural forms, which was caused by the ‘network’ and ‘umbrell’a nature of the AQIM (аn organization included in the list of terrorist organizations in theRussian Federation is mentioned) structure, in which there was no centralized administrative-territorial management scheme. In addition, the distinctive features of the security policy of modern Algeria are shown and the importance of studying interregional contradictions for characterizing the geopolitical and economic reasons for the strengthening of Islamic radicalism in Africa is revealed.

Model of sociology training introduced by the fourthgeneration Federal State Educational Standard

Today a new level-system of higher education is formed in Russia through significant changes that meet the new requirements for specialists in economics, social sectors, and all spheres of public life. The new system is to incorporate the developments of the Soviet educational model and the experience of recent decades. The article considers a new model of sociological training implied in the reform of the higher education system and in the fourthgeneration Federal State Educational Standard (FSES). One of the central ideas of the new system is to provide students with the opportunity to choose a field of study not upon entering a university, but at the third year of study, which would increase the awareness of professional choice, help graduates to more successfully integrate into the labor market due to a broader educational base and ensure the flexibility of educational programs, preserving the “fundamental core” in each. Thus, the first two years are for general (for the enlarged group of areas) training, and then specialized (sociological) training starts. However, the draft of the new standard proposed by the Ministry of Education and Science, which is based on updated, enlarged groups of areas, would not improve the professional training of sociologists. The mandatory general part for all areas in the group would inevitably reduce the professional part of training, thus, depriving the higher sociological education of connections with practice and destroying the focused training of specialists, which contradicts the demands of society and the labor market, and the goals of the country’s social-economic development. There are also other problems: an unpredictable extension of the time to enter the labor market; not identified mechanisms for distributing student quotas between areas within the group, for funding an extended period of study (20 %-40 % increase in cost) and an increased teaching load. The current pilot project designed for three years would not allow to make valid conclusions about the suggested changes as students will not even complete the basic level of higher education. Therefore, it is necessary to return to the FSES for each area of training, to further develop regulatory and legal grounds for the transition from the Bologna system with a focus on the values and goals of the Russian higher education, and to ensure a broad public-p rofessional discussion about the planned reforms.

The Role of the Healthcare System in the Issues of Human Potential Reproduction and National Security of the State

The healthcare system plays an undisputed role in the issues of human potential reproduction and is an integral part of ensuring national security. A key and important factor for ensuring sustainable development of the country and its future is investment in the health of citizens. The purpose of the study is to explore the healthcare system as one of the most important spheres, which is one of the primary components of public life. The methodological basis of the study consists of an analysis of statistical indicators of morbidity in Russia from 2020 to 2023, as well as an analysis of the total number of medical workers over the past two years. This allowed to identify the main problems in the healthcare system that can be addressed through the national project “Healthcare”. The implementation of the national project “Healthcare” in Russia will significantly improve the healthcare system in the future, increase access and quality of medical care for citizens, and reduce the level of morbidity and mortality from various diseases. This is an important step towards creating a healthy nation and developing the country as a whole.

The Views of Representatives of the Party and Political Activists of the Kursk Province on the Change in the Social Structure of the Urban Population (1918–1921)

Relevance. At the present stage of development of the Russian Federation, the preservation of historical truth is one of the main directions of state policy. Statements about the need to return the state ideology allow us to judge the relevance of referring to the experience of the early Soviet period, when communist doctrine became the basis for the formation of a new model of the state, which subsequently achieved considerable success on the world stage in various fields. The urban population has become a pillar for revolutionary transformations, which arouses interest in studying the views of representatives of regional authorities on the problems of the development of the social structure of society.The purpose – to reveal the specifics of the evolution of the public views of the party and political activists of the region on the social composition of the urban population of the Kursk province from 1918 to 1921.Objectives: based on the analysis of archival documents, to identify general trends in the formation of the social structure of the urban population of the Kursk province.Methodology. In the process of working on the research, the basic principles of historical science were used: historicism, objectivity and consistency. General scientific methods were also applied (analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction, analytical method), special historical methods: historical-genetic, comparative-historical.Results. Based on the analysis of archival documents, the peculiarities of the formation of views on the image of the social composition of the Kursk province in the views of the Kursk communists of the first years of Soviet power are revealed.Conclusion. The political basis of the social structure of the urban population of the region was recognized by the proletarians, who were the mainstay in the revolutionary transformations of all spheres of public life. The party activists of the Kursk province perceived the provisions of the communist teachings as a key model for the formation of an urban community. The semi-proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, in the opinion of party leaders, should become part of the working people as the sole bearer of power. For the first time, women were considered as an equal part of the urban community in the field of state building.

Application of Indigenous Knowledge in Agriculture in Pandemic Situation

This article highlights the social, economic and daily life conditions of the global public during the terrible epidemic of Corona virus that started in Wuhan province of China in December 2019. What kind of problems common people had to face in their daily life during this terrible life-destroying and social-disconnecting epidemic situation that has come down abnormally in the lives of common people all over the world has been highlighted here. Food, drink and shelter are one of the three pillars of people’s lives, one of the problems of people during the corona virus was food and what kind of problems arose in the field of farmers and agriculture producing these crops are highlighted here. In this article, the farmers were temporarily deprived of various uses of science and technology in the field of agriculture during the corona period, so the contribution of the indigenous technology and knowledge that the farmers maintained equally in the agricultural field and crop production by using indigenous technology and knowledge as an alternative How it was used in agriculture is presented here. During the Corona period, the public life was disturbed and the common people did not have the supply of various types of chemical substances used daily to maintain the food supply and the prosperity of the crops. However, the advantages and disadvantages faced by farmers in crop production using traditional indigenous methods and knowledge are presented here. The way farmers and their crops did not deprive the common people of food in the quarantine situation during the corona period despite multiple problems is considered as one of the feats to disrupt the public life then and now.

‘Bottom-up securitization’: A visual turn in security studies

In the digital age, images have pervaded almost all spheres of public life and politics. International relations are no exception. The visual dimension of world politics attracts increasing attention which resulted in the emergence of the so-called visual turn in the theory of international relations. It gained particular prominence within the framework of constructivism and particularly within one of the central and most widespread constructivist theories, i.e. the securitization theory. The first section of the paper examines the concept of ‘visual turn’. The second section considers the current state of art of the securitization theory. The third section outlines key features and possible implications of ‘visual securitization’ to the study of international relations. To this end, the authors refer to a resonant case of a Syrian migrant boy Aylan Kurdi, who died in 2015 while trying to immigrate to Europe. The fourth section examines some limitations of the ‘visual securitization’ theory. The authors conclude that the ‘visual turn’ has led to a certain democratization of securitization practices by opening up new opportunities for the ‘bottom-up securitization’, or ‘people’s securitization’. Thus, it questions the traditional monopoly of political elites on the molding of a security narrative. At the same time, the ‘visual turn’ extends the list of possible reference objects of securitization, which comes to include not only domestic audiences, but also other communities. As a result, ‘visual securitization’ raises a number of new issues. In contrast to a traditional ‘speech act’, an image can be open to various interpretations and as such would make the process of interaction with the audience too complicated and inconsistent. The possibility of incorrect interpretation places increased demands on the communicative context and hinders the use of an image as an independent securitization tool. The authors argue that the key to addressing these issues lies in a more active use of artificial intelligence technologies and social networks.

COVID-19 and the Americans with Disabilities Act: Implications for employment and higher education.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a federal law that protects individuals with disabilities from discrimination in all areas of public life. The ADA contributes to equal opportunity across policy areas, including the interconnected domains of higher education and employment. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, emerging research has begun to document the disparities in impact on people with disabilities, among other marginalized groups. However, no research to date has reviewed and synthesized literature that addresses disability discrimination related to COVID-19 that has implications for application of the ADA. This rapid evidence review aims to increase understanding about how COVID-19 has resulted in challenges for people with disabilities in the domains of employment and higher education that may be resolved through application of the ADA. Keyword searches were conducted in five electronic databases. Title, abstract, and full text screening was conducted followed by a thematic analysis of key ADA themes. Twelve final articles were included in this review, eight categorized within higher education and four within employment. In relation to the ADA and COVID-19, five studies revealed findings related to web accessibility, eight related to effective communication, and four related to reasonable accommodations. The findings provide a broad overview of the current research on how COVID-19 has affected accessibility, communications and accommodations in employment and higher education and identify gaps in the literature within these policy domains.

Neoliberal logic in the United States and Turkey: The role of Right‐Wing Authoritarianism and personal wherewithal

AbstractNeoliberalism is based on the dogma that free‐market capitalism serves the public better than governmental programs (e.g., public universities). In this research, we first asked what psychological orientations and beliefs predict support for one of the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism: the belief that government interferes with the smooth functioning of public life and the free market. Second, we examined how these predictors function across economic contexts and political regimes by collecting data in the United States and Turkey. We find that in two U.S. samples, high levels of Right‐Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and the belief in personal wherewithal (i.e., anybody can move ahead if they work hard enough) predicted people's support for neoliberalism. In the Turkish sample, we found that RWA and personal wherewithal significantly predicted support for neoliberalism, but unlike the US, in Turkey, higher levels of RWA were related to the rejection of neoliberalism. Our research highlights the flexible relationship authoritarianism has with neoliberalism and the importance of a belief in personal wherewithal in justifying neoliberalism. This research illuminates differences between US neoliberal logic and populist neoliberalism in Turkey.

Periscoping E-Governance in Nigeria: Matters Arising

The technological trends of our changing world, has changed the world into a global village where every nation including Nigeria is striving to attain a high level of electronic governance, which revolves around the use of information and communication technology to deliver technology market in Africa, yet in spite of this, the country is still ranked low in the provision of e-government services to its citizens. The paper is adopted content analysis technique. The study also evaluated the parameter of E-governancebased on the laid down guidelines by the United Nations Global E-government Readiness Report. The paper identified and addressed the obstacles and benefit of e-governance. The paper therefore recommends that Nigeria government should create enabling environment where maintenance culture will be an accepted ethic or norm in public life; there should be effective implementation of ICT at all levels of education in both urban and rural areas and Principle of the rule of law must be upheld to promote equality before the law.

Managing digital transport infrastructure of a region

The socio-economic situation in the world and the Russian Federation in particular is characterized by increasing mobility in all spheres of public life and the expansion of economic ties. To maintain its competitive advantages, a territory should ensure effective communication lines and a highly developed transport system. The paper investigates the issues of transport infrastructure management in Russia at regional level. The theoretical framework includes the concepts of public management and digital transformation, as well as spatial development theory. The methods of synthesis, expert assessment, and min-max normalization were used. Statistical data were retrieved from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) for 2016–2021. It was found that the current methodologies for assessing transport infrastructure are not in line with the global trends in the social development, including digital transformation. In the paper, we come up with a new methodology for assessing digital transport infrastructure (DTI) which suggests calculating a composite index of the region’s DTI based on four subindices: transport, education, information and communication, and innovation. The study provides composite indices for Russia’s all federal districts for the period from 2016 to 2021 indicating that the regions are seriously lagging behind the center, and the development level of innovation, ICT and education is insufficient.

Background separation network for video anomaly detection

Video anomaly detection refers to the automatic identification of abnormal behaviors, objects, or events in videos. However, current methods for anomaly detection based on original frames lack a comprehensive understanding of the importance of foreground information, making it challenging to efficiently address video anomaly detection in the presence of complex background interference. In this paper, we propose a video anomaly detection algorithm based on Background Separation Network (BSN) to address this issue. Firstly, we utilize a video stabilization algorithm to reduce video jitter and enhance the quality of input video frames. Secondly, BSN shifts the focus from the entire frame to the foreground region with higher anomaly detection value. BSN utilizes the motion pixel distribution of the video as the basis for foreground extraction, enabling pixel-level background separation to obtain more accurate and complete foreground targets. Lastly, a certain proportion of foreground targets in the foreground image are masked as background, reducing the interference caused by redundant targets on the detection results. The proposed method achieves an accuracy of 96.2% on the UCSD ped2 dataset, demonstrating its effectiveness. This method contributes to accurately detecting abnormal behaviors in real-world surveillance videos to protect the safety of public lives and assets.

“Ikwekwe yinja1 (a Boy is a Dog)”

In contemporary society, the status of children as fully human is often contested and/or not accepted. The idea that children are not fully human has resulted in a plethora of abuses, including the denial of children’s rights, voices, and agency both in biblical texts and in contemporary society. Notwithstanding, scholars like Marcia Bunge acknowledge that in the Judeo-Christian bible “infants and children are also whole and complete human beings made in the image of God” (2012:65). Many times, the ways in which children are treated in biblical texts (in so far as adults make decisions without their (children) approval, e.g., Abraham’s decision to sacrifice Isaac, Jephthah’s decision to kill her daughter in honour of his agreement with Yahweh, the killing of the boy children during the time of Pharoah and King Herod exhibit the idea that children are not fully human. Since Christians rely on the Bible for inspiration and conduct in both private and public life, it is necessary to study the ways in which children were treated in biblical times. Until recently, biblical scholars did not have much of a deliberate focus on studying children and how they are treated in the Bible.

The image of the Chechen War on the pages of the American daily newspaper The New York Times: headline review

The subject of the research in the article is the image of the First and Second Chechen Wars, created by journalists of The New York Times newspaper in the 1990s and reflecting the views of the American democratic public. The subject of the study is the headlines of articles related to this topic in the American daily newspaper The New York Times. At the end of the 20th century, the periodical press continued to play a significant role in public life, including shaping the news agenda and creating the image of certain events. Often, journalists sought to impose their vision of Russian politics on the reader. Reputable publications, avoiding the techniques of the "yellow press", used more subtle and unobvious manipulative forms. Such manipulations include the newspaper's choice of lexical units with a certain connotation and the frequency of their use. In this study, the author attempts to explicate the hidden information that is embedded in the headlines of The New York Times. To analyze the information identified by the author in the headlines of The New York Times newspaper, the article used methods such as historical, comparative and quantitative content analysis. The novelty of the study lies in the fact that the headlines of The New York Times newspaper of this period were first considered as a source of analysis of the transforming view of the American democratic press on the events of the First and Second Chechen Wars. According to the results of the study, the following conclusions were drawn: the image of the Chechen conflict of the 1990s in the American press has undergone significant changes. If the First Chechen War in The New York Times appears as a legitimate struggle of the Russian authorities against the separatist movement in Chechnya, albeit with a number of critical remarks, then the image of the Second Chechen War is radically different from the previous campaign. The newspaper presents the events of the Second Chechen Campaign as a new colonial war, while the emphasis was shifted towards criticizing the Russian leadership for violating human rights and freedoms in the Chechen Republic, as well as a direct impact on destabilization in the North Caucasus region.

Denormalizing smoking, a public health issue for society and hospitals alike

Since the industrialization of tobacco production in the last century, tobacco has been a popular product in all walks of life. Its harmful effects, now well recognized, have led to the implementation of increasingly active health policies. Its place in public life is increasingly controlled. This approach aims to prevent the continuation of risky behaviours associated with its use. Hospitals are becoming a model for the denormalization of smoking.