Rhythms Of Social Life Research Articles

Fish Canning Industry and The Rhythm of Social Life in the Northeastern Adriatic

The article discusses the social world formed around canneries in small coastal and insular towns in the northeastern Adriatic. Although associated with hard, unpleasant labor and demanding work conditions, the fish canning industry, particularly in the period of late socialism, offered a framework in which a meaningful social life was organized and lived. In this way, the local impact of canneries reached much beyond providing financial means to its employees. To understand the social meaning of fish canning in the Yugoslav Adriatic, the article focuses on the relationship between the now largely vanished local fish canning industry and tourism that is increasingly becoming the dominant (and the only) source of income for local communities. Lefebvre’s concept of rhythmanalysis proves to be a productive lens to view the complex and often ambiguous relationship between the two industries, and to narrate the history of fish canning through the senses – what was seen, heard, smelled, felt. These intense, embodied, sensorial memories caution us that the dominant claims and narratives which interpret the replacement of industry with tourism (and other tertiary sector activities) as a necessary, inevitable and desirable developmental step should not be taken for granted.

Upbringing to culture of communication with the use of new media. General introduction

Internet, mobile phone are certainly not new interpersonal medium of communication because they have been effectively adopted on a huge scale to practice of everyday interaction for years. Style of virtual discussion and internet manners that can be found not only in colloquial conversation and behaviour but also in formal language due to its level causes specialists’ concern of many scientific disciplines. What is more availability of electronic medium, anytime and everywhere, causes losing track of time and generally accepted rules that regulate rhythm of social life. That is why the article is to remind these rules and to appeal to teachers, form teachers, and above all to parents in order to pay attention to culture of communication using mass media which for the younger generation is an essential part of their life not only communicative life.

Refugee migrants as agents of change: Strategies for improved livelihoods and self-reliance

Although many refugees leave their home countries with a certain level of uncertainty concerning their survival in the host country, they are hopeful of improving their livelihood and thus being self-reliant. They seize available opportunities in order to start a new life. In doing so, refugees move beyond solely depending on charity actions, having devised survival mechanisms in their new setting by means of self-reliant strategies. This article, therefore, looks at the refugee migrants as agents of change in view of the self-reliance strategies they use for survival. Furthermore, the article points to the courage of the refugees in the host country by presenting qualitative evidence on how refugees’ livelihood strategies have contributed to the improvement of their own well-being in general and, in particular, that of some locals. The data for this study were gathered using in-depth interviews with refugees living in Cape Town, South Africa. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This paper is transdisciplinary in that it presents an ecclesial response to the global challenges facing the refugee community. This is because it aims at transforming the painful experiences of the refugees into opportunities for improved livelihoods and holistic well-being. The paper further depicts how practical theology informs understandings of the phenomenological techniques in an attempt to explore the rhythms of social life from the perspective of the issue under investigation. The article is, therefore, a theological underpinning that informs development practitioners and practical theologians on how to efficiently respond to the pressing needs of refugees using hope as an available resource. In this manner, the article presents strategies that would assist policy-makers in devising sustainable policies and programmes that aim at improving refugees’ livelihoods.

Suicide Bombings: Homicidal Killing or a Weapon of War?

AbstractAfter an overview of the explanatory schemas of suicide bombing, the fastest growing form of terrorism in the world, this paper addresses a neglected but important question of whether the casualties of suicide bombings are homicidal killing or a weapon of war. The paper critically examines the distinction between war and terrorism and argues that both kill civilians and insert the coerciveness of precaution in the daily rhythm of social life. Using evidence from ethnographic studies on the nature of war and homicide, the paper concludes that suicide bombing attacks, because of the principle of substitutability which characterise war killing, could be regarded as a weapon of war. However, given that they are characterised by the wilful killing of civilians they could be regarded as ‘War Crimes’ under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The palaeolithic societies of Europe

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements Preface 1. Pulling aside the Palaeolithic curtain 2. The individual, society and networks 3. A Palaeolithic framework: locales, rhythms and regions 4. The first European societies 500,000-300,000 years ago 5. Neanderthal societies 300,000 to 60,000 years ago 6. The rhythms of social life 60,000-21,000 years ago: the transition from the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic in Europe 7. The extension of social life 60,000-21,000 years ago: regions and locales, networks and landscapes 8. The Palaeolithic societies of Europe Notes Bibliography Site index General index.

Cadências escolares, ritmos docentes

O artigo analisa alguns dos eixos que estruturam os ritmos cotidianos dos professores, próprios às temporalidades da vida social na escola. Parte do pressuposto de que o tempo é uma "categoria do pensamento lógico", originada no ritmo da vida social (Dukheim), e que essa rítmica é uma "modalidade concreta do tempo social" (Lefebvre e Régulier). O estudo é parte de uma pesquisa que busca tematizar a experiência do tempo de sujeitos que se encontram na condição de professores - docentes de quinta à oitava séries do ensino fundamental e do ensino médio -, levando em conta seus vínculos com a construção de identidades docentes. O texto se desenvolve em torno de três eixos: as cadências das interações entre educandos e educadores, os ritmos dos calendários e os compassos dos horários escolares. Conclui-se que os ritmos docentes, embora circunscritos à rítmica da vida moderna, têm particularidades associadas às cadências da escola, aos processos pedagógicos e àqueles relacionados à formação humana. Trata-se, pois, de analisar a polirritmia dos tempos da escola em sua complexidade e peculiaridades, de forma a se compreenderem as modulações e significações da experiência do tempo na condição de professor, vivência constitutiva das identidades docentes.

The City of Everyday Life

My argument in this paper is of crucial importance for the micro-spaces of the city, for the conduct of everyday life, social reproduction, and the construction of social meanings. Meanings are created wherever the built environment and the rhythms of social life coincide. In the perspective of its inhabitants, then, the city may be thought of as a dense, complex, and often contradictory web of meanings that, however difficult to disentangle, are yet essential to the good life. Unfortunately, these meanings are difficult to represent persuasively at the points of strategic decisions. And so they remain largely invisible to the planners of state and private capital as they endeavor to shape (and reshape) the city through comprehensive plans and large-scale projects. Given this lack of representation, dynamic change occasioned by planned interventions that are conceived at macro- and meso-scales frequently leads to the alienation of the city's lived spaces, causing widespread anomie, destroying individual as well as social meanings as well as community bonds, and deepening an already pervasive sense of powerlessness on the part of local inhabitants. Over time, the anti-city of drugs, crime, and violence becomes a preferred way of life particularly for many of the young people of disempowered groups whose life spaces are repeatedly targeted to absorb unwanted environmental, social, and aesthetic impacts from projects sponsored by the partnership of state and private capital. The answer to this problem, which will grow in severity during the coming decades in both the economically developed and less developed countries, must begin with an acknowledgment on the part of city planners of the importance of small urban spaces for the conduct of everyday life. Concerned populations must be brought into all phases of a planning process that is open to serious negotiation from the beginning. Even so, given the relative powerlessness of ordinary citizens, direct action by mobilized sectors of civil society, ranging from street protests and dramatic media events to counter-planning, may be necessary to compel the partnerships of state and capital to negotiate in good faith. The object is not preservation of the status quo but a social process of urban change that will minimize the alienation of small urban spaces and the tearing apart of the web of meanings that any city is for its inhabitants.