Socio-cultural Spaces Research Articles

A’uwẽ (Xavante) Sacred Food Plants: Maize and Wild Root Vegetables

AbstractIn lowland South America, sacred food plants have taken an ethnographic back seat to psychotropic plants. Yet, such foods are often central to local understandings of mythology, healing, ceremony, and spiritual well‐being. In this article, I elucidate the sacred nature of two kinds of food plants that occupy special sociocultural spaces among the A’uwẽ (Xavante) in Central Brazil: cultivated maize and collected root vegetables. Although these are not the only sacred food plants in A’uwẽ society, they are iconic because they are considered uniquely appropriate gifts during certain ceremonial and ritual events. I also explore how I conducted research about ceremonial ethnobotanical topics in a society that considers most sacred and spiritual knowledge privileged. Both sacred plant foods highlighted here continue to be commonly given as presents expressing gratitude to others during popular ceremonial occasions, thereby maintaining them in the collective consciousness as integral components of contemporary social life.

Refugee-led socio-spatial organization in Al Baqa\u2019a camp, Jordan

The increase in refugee numbers is an increasingly important concern globally. Many countries in different regions have been accommodating refugees by providing temporary shelters made from ineffective and inadequate materials to provide thermal comfort for refugees. However, the shelters provided are often inadequate solutions for shelter and neglect the social and cultural diversity of the refugees. Socio-cultural norms, practices and values are rarely considered in the design of shelters and this has an adverse impact on how refugees live in these spaces. Using insights from the Al Baqa’a refugee camp in Jordan as a case study, this paper uses a mixed-method approach to explore how the challenges of inadequate shelter has consequently led refugees to self-organize and create new socio-cultural spaces to adapt to the place. The findings suggest that historically, Al Baqa’a camp has reorganized by users due to social needs and climate challenges. When the camp was created in 1967, the inadequacy of the housing and infrastructure to provide comfort influenced refugees to self-organize and create adaptive spaces of comfort. However, over the decades, these spaces have evolved into spaces of enterprise, belonging and memory of their homeland. Therefore, this paper argues that refugee shelter design should have an integrated consideration of the climatic elements and the social and cultural aspects of refugees. The paper concludes with lessons learned drawn from the evidence to act as guideline for the consideration of official humanitarian organizations in other camps and local communities.

Which language(s) matter(s) the most? Exploring the ‘schoolscapes’ of rural primary schools in Uganda

This article is an ethnographic investigation into the power and ideological relation between English and Luganda in the sociocultural and pedagogic spaces of rural primary schools in Uganda. This study focuses on the ‘schoolscape’ and examines how teachers choose the languages they use for instruction. The article also examines how signage within and without the classroom space is an extended metaphor of the power dynamics that exist between English and Luganda. The study answers two questions: firstly, what are the signage-making practices in rural Ugandan primary schools and what do these say about the status of local languages? Secondly, what are the teachers’ views regarding the signage-making practices in school? The study data were collected through observation, photography and interviews. The data is qualitatively analysed with the linguistic landscape and nexus analysis approach. The overarching claim made is that ‘schoolscapes’ are in effect microcosmic representations of wider debates foregrounded on the national language policy, which privileges English above indigenous languages. Moreover, teachers believe that indigenous languages such as Luganda hinder learners from acquiring English and therefore limit their use in learners’ interactions at school. This article calls for a rethinking of such a status quo and the deconstruction of the colonial legacy of English so as to accord greater importance to local languages for purposes of teaching and learning.

The Normans in the Mediterranean ed. by Emily A. Winkler and Liam Fitzgerald

Reviewed by: The Normans in the Mediterranean ed. by Emily A. Winkler and Liam Fitzgerald Lindsay Diggelmann Winkler, Emily A., and Liam Fitzgerald, eds, The Normans in the Mediterranean (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, 9), Turnhout, Brepols, 2021; hardback; pp. 268; 11 b/w, 5 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €75.00; ISBN 9782503590578. Examinations of Norman activity in Italy and the wider Mediterranean region are numerous, but this volume of essays has much to add to our understanding of the effect of the northerners' arrival in the south. From their first appearance as [End Page 176] missionaries and pilgrims in the early eleventh century, through to the creation of Roger II's multicultural kingdom in the twelfth, Norman immigrants and their descendants conquered, reshaped, and amalgamated with the existing Latin, Greek, and Islamic societies in Italy and Sicily. The introduction provides a useful thematic overview, placing the narrowly focused individual essays within the broader context of scholarship on the Mediterranean going back to Braudel. The general aim is to provide micro-studies, often dealing with evidence at the local or personal level, which can balance the well-known 'grand narrative' of Norman expansion. Above all, the editors and authors are keen to demonstrate how the changing circumstances brought by new Norman ruling powers affected prevailing social conditions. Essays are grouped into three parts with individual contributions loosely connected around the themes of 'Motivations', 'Implications', and 'Perceptions'. While the subjects and sources are diverse, there is a pleasing coherence to the collection, perhaps more than is often the case in volumes of this nature. Part I on 'Motivations and Strategies' opens with Matthew Bennett's survey of the current state of the field and key narrative sources for the idea of normanitas and Norman relations with those peoples they encountered in Italy. Aurélie Thomas looks at marriage strategies, discerning variance in the success of Norman newcomers in marrying into established powerful families. Differing outcomes, she argues, can be linked to the differing inheritance practices of Italian elites, thus placing agency in the decisions on whether to pursue dynastic alliances back on to local families, rather than seeing it all rest with ambitious Norman lords. In the final chapter of the section, Lucas Villegas-Aristizábal broadens our horizons by examining Norman incursions into Iberia up until the time of the Third Crusade. Themes of Norman expansion and ambition played out equally in Iberia, although geographically distant from the areas looked at by other contributions, adding a valuable comparative element to the collection. Five chapters in Part II deal with social realities and the 'Implications of Conquest' in the wake of the Normans' arrival in Italy. Architectural, archaeological, and documentary evidence sits alongside investigation of the more familiar narrative sources. Sandro Carocci argues for the importance of 'micro-lordships', suggesting that these were much more influential in determining the outcome of local affairs compared with the efforts of the great territorial lords. Graham Loud uses charter evidence to establish the role of Norman kin groups in the nobility of southern Italy between 1085 and 1127, a period for which the narrative sources are extremely sparse. By focusing on the specific example of Salerno, Maddalena Vaccaro shows how a deliberate ecclesiastical building programme could promote Norman integration into a city they now ruled. Theresa Jäckh also undertakes the case study of a single city, Roger II's capital Palermo in Sicily, to question the nature of the transition from Islamic to Norman rule. Using Latin texts and Arabic documents, Jäckh contests the consensus view that the city's importance had significantly weakened under Islamic authority in the [End Page 177] period before the Normans' conquest of the island. Finally in Part II, Nicole Mölk examines material evidence from a hilltop village in Sicily which suggests the possibility of Christian and Muslim communities living side by side. Despite this positive conclusion, the archaeological record also indicates the difficulties which ordinary members of Sicilian society faced in their day-to-day lives. Two excellent essays on 'Perceptions and Memories' round out the collection in the shorter Part III. Matt King discusses Roger II's temporary conquest of Africa (roughly equivalent...

Complexity Theory in sociological theorizing and metamodern culture — the contours of mutual legitimation

The focus of the article is on two large-scale transformation processes that are currently taking place in the Western scientific and socio-cultural spaces. On the one hand, it is the emergence on the cultural horizon of a new macrocultural era, called Metamodern, on the other hand — the transformation in the paradigm field of Western science and the emergence of a paradigm of complexity (complexity theory). The statement is argued, that they are the different manifestations of the general large-scale socio-cultural and scientific tectonics and can serve as contours for mutual legitimacy and justification. The metamodern project captures the emergence of a new worldview in Western culture, which is characterized by a new sincerity, openness, holism in contrast to postmodern alienation, irony and sсepticism. In terms of experiencing the I-World relationship, the logic of cultural progress from Tradition to Metamodern can be described as a movement from complete immersion of the Self in the World (Tradition), through confrontation and struggle between the Self and the World (Modern), chaos of the I (multiple identity) and the World (current modernity) in the postmodern era, to a new dialectical combination of the I and the World in the Metamodern era. Complexity Theory in its sociological theoretical proposals can offer a parallel view on the process of changing cultural epochs, but through the prism of transforming the dominant mechanism of change and maintenance of social order, emphasizing the existence of two such mechanisms — organizational one and self-organizational one. The logic of changes in this dominance leads us from Tradition (self-organization), through Modern (organization), and Postmodern (chaos, no domination, the mutual distancing) to Metamodern — dialectics, tense unity of organization and self-organization. In socio-cultural terms, it looks like a dialectic of modernity (rationality, purposefulness, result, organization) and tradition (myth, game, process, self-organization), and at the level of basic experience of the world as a dialectic of acute experience of one's self combined with the experience of its unity with the world. It is at this point that the metamodern project and the paradigm of complexity in its sociological interpretation do meet. Here, they can give each other legitimizing support.

Les Eglises à Libreville face aux défis urbains

This contribution is an interpellation to the churches in the City of Libreville to take concrete action in response to acute present urban problems that face the city. Currently, the Church pays little or no attention to urban issues that affect the City of Libreville. Many evangelicals in Libreville perceive giving attention to these urban challenges such as pollution, absence of waste management, heat waves, etc to be a distraction to the core business of ministry which is the salvation of souls. Against this backfrop, this contribution argue that this attitute amount to neglecting God’s mandate to be stewards of creation. These problems pose serious challenges to the City of Libreville including churches and they therefore deserve theological/missiological attention. The Church should participate towards identification of root-causes for these urban challenges and in the process open the Church to flourish in socio-political, socioeconomic and socio-cultural spaces as she works towards solving these issues.

Roger II of Sicily. Family, faith, and empire in the medieval Mediterranean world. By Dawn Marie Hayes. (Medieval Identities: Socio-cultural Spaces, 7.) Pp. 221 incl. 18 figs, 4 tables and 2 maps. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. €75. 978 2 503 58140 8

Roger II of Sicily. Family, faith, and empire in the medieval Mediterranean world. By Dawn Marie Hayes. (Medieval Identities: Socio-cultural Spaces, 7.) Pp. 221 incl. 18 figs, 4 tables and 2 maps. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020. €75. 978 2 503 58140 8 - Volume 73 Issue 1

Політичний простір угорської нації: ресурс споріднених діаспор

The article presents the process of reformatting the practices of national development through an expanded interpretation of the endogenous political space of the national community. It is noted that the EU spatial strategies have a significant impact on the revision of the priorities of regional development of modern states, which, seeking to ensure the sustainable development of their own political systems, turn to the socio-political capital of related foreign diasporas and border regions. In the context of the spatial revolution and the recognition of the actual political space as a constructed system, the nationalpolitical space acquires the characteristics of a flexible network system where new practices of national cohesion are formed, which are not limited by the sovereign borders of the state. An example of the transformation of the process of national cohesion in Hungary is presented, which involves the incorporation of related foreign diasporas of Southern Slovakia, Transylvania, Vojvodina and Transcarpathia into a single socio-political system without revision of state borders. The socio-political development of Hungarian diasporas abroad is managed centrally through state institutions and programs. On the example of the creation of an extensive network of Hungarian political parties and NGOs within the socio-cultural spaces of the Hungarian diasporas, the process of building a system of autonomous projects along the perimeter of the borders of Hungary is shown, through which it seeks to modernize its own national doctrine by providing it with a transnational component. Hungarian policy considers Hungarian communities as a resource that can provide a political transit for the national doctrine, which provides a modern component of the ethno-national idea, and makes it possible to respond to the spatial transformations of the EU.

PROBLEMS & PROSPECTS FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND LEADERSHIP OF PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION: REGIONAL ASPECTS

The ideas of stability and leadership of national education, based on high socio-cultural significance in the life of the country and the individual, more than ever before, require close attention and promotion at the regional level due to the rapid changes in the nature of the life of the individual and society itself. The purpose of the study is seen in the search and justification, theory, methodology and practice, of effective means of introducing meaningful humanistic oriented technologies and learning activities to create the polyphony of the regional educational space based on stabilization processes, and leadership principles as leading and promising characteristics of education. As a result, a complex of current approaches, i.e. the environmental approach focused on culture and axiology is considered in modern philosophical, theoretical, methodological and psychological-pedagogical discourse as an integral component of educational practice, opens up the opportunity to expand the boundaries of the study of its various aspects in terms of sustainability leadership of professional education of a pedagogue via the design parameters of the system dominants of a multi-facet sociocultural spaces of the Region, Novosibirsk Destination. In conclusion, there given a number of recommendations what to design for sustainability and leadership in the times of uncertainty of value orientations in the society and in the world of pragma in education.

The Place of Chinese Doramas in the Russian Socio-Cultural Landscape

The increasing interest of people around the world towards the popular cultures of China, Korea and Japan leads researchers to question how these countries influence the socio-cultural spaces of other countries through the export of their mass culture products.
 This study focuses on the analysis of Chinese doramas in the Russian sociocultural space. The increasing number of online fan communities, the activity of translators and dubbers of Chinese TV series, and the widespread use of the Internet in Russia make Chinese dramas easily accessible to a wide audience. Using quantitative methods, the author of the study came to the conclusion that people in Russia are very interested in Asian cultures, and audiences of Asian TV series are growing at a tremendous rate every year. While Korean dramas remain the most popular in Russia, Chinese serials have great competitive potential against their Korean and Japanese counterparts.
 This article may be useful to all researchers of mass and popular culture and television series.

Understanding students as hosts: moving beyond sightseeing

PurposeNeither visitors of visiting friends and relatives (VFR) travel nor hosts are homogeneous segments (Griffin & Guttenberg, 2020). For this reason, this study aims to address students as hosts of VFR travel and analyzes differences in the visitor and the host segment. As a result, marketing implications for destination marketing organizations that seek to realize the potential of the student VFR segment arise.Design/methodology/approachThis research project adopts a multi-method approach to derive a deeper empirical understanding of visitors’ behaviors and the role of students hosting friends and relatives (SHFR). The quantitative study aims to reveal the relevance and differences between visits to friends (VF) and visits to relatives (VR), whereas the qualitative study elaborates on the findings of the quantitative study and seeks to understand the role and experiences of students as hosts.FindingsThe findings reveal that VR and VF travelers vary in terms of their expenditure. Hosts’ spending depends on visitors’ budgets; in general, both their direct and indirect (when relatives pay) spending increases when they have visitors. Furthermore, the data identify two distinct hosting styles: functional hosting is concerned with providing outstanding hospitality based on a more traditional, guest-oriented understanding of the role, whereas integrative hosting blurs the lines between hospitality and lifestyle based on a more modern, host-oriented understanding of the role.Research limitations/implicationsRegarding limitations, this study did not differentiate between students who were simultaneously locals and students who resided in the city only for study purposes. In a similar vein, the cultural background of the students was not considered in the research. Finally, the differences between VF and VR could further be explored in a quantitative follow-up study and in testing for significant differences in SHFR spending behaviors. Further research could examine whether domestic travelers, travelers with cultural proximity and/or short-distance VFR travelers are more likely to visit after COVID-19 as suggested by Backer and Ritchie (2017) in the case of crises and disaster.Practical implicationsStudents as hosts differ from other hosts in VFR travel in their reluctance to embrace conventional tourism products. This study found that place attachment makes hosts of VFR travelers passionate ambassadors and advertisers for the destinations; destination marketing organizations (DMOs) could support this already positive image by providing and supporting students with more detailed information about their cities and the opportunities they offer. Results are of particular relevance because the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing DMOs to develop destination strategies that incorporate social-distancing and avoid crowded places.Social implicationsWhen students take their friends out to events and nightclubs, they contribute significantly to experiences that go beyond typical tourism activities such as sightseeing and shopping. By offering special discounts to visitors who come with their hosts, DMOs could help visitors delve more deeply into city life and thereby reduce the likeliness of crowded city centers. Considering the findings relating to the social and emotional qualities of VFR travel, DMO marketing to VFR travelers could benefit from promoting socio-cultural spaces and offerings that value groups’ social ties (e.g. family prices for families with adult children) or alumni status.Originality/valueAccording to the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first which analyzes both, visitors and hosts of VFR travel using a two methods approach. Very recently, Griffin and Guttenberg (2020) miss VFR research focusing on the heterogeneity of the segment, and Backer et al. (2020) claim for more VFR research on the role of hosts carried out outside of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the USA. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study is the first which delivers empirical insights on SHFR in Central Europe.

Talanoa moe vā: Pacific knowledge-sharing and changing sociocultural spaces during COVID-19

This paper is a consideration of how the method/methodology of talanoa and vā, can be used online by Pacific researchers to respond to the current pandemic’s effect on the traditional face-to-face physical spaces used for knowledge-sharing. The following discussion examines and explores the two concepts: talanoa and vā. It is important to understand how these research approaches work in a multi-sited research context, particularly when travel regulations and social distancing rules require Pacific researchers and their informants to keep physically apart. Virtual sociocultural spaces have become increasingly important to Pacific knowledge-sharing. As a Pacific researcher, I share my thoughts on talanoa and vā and how these concepts have been transferred online in previous research (2015–2019) and more recently, during COVID-19.

Poetics and Politics of Literary Cartography: Secular Allahabad in Neelum Saran Gour’s Invisible Ink and Requiem in Raga Janki

This article intends to critique the poetics of “literary cartography” and politics behind it through close analysis of Neelum Saran Gour’s representation of the city of Allahabad (recently renamed Prayagraj) in Invisible Ink (2015) and Requiem in Raga Janki (2018). Mapping of spatio-religious experiences in Gour’s fiction connotes that literary cartography is an emerging alternative field that can generate topographical knowledge visualizing intangible spatial ethos. Therefore, place becomes an important interdisciplinary construct to examine sociocultural and religious spaces through literary imagination. The preamble of the Indian constitution emphasizes secular ethics, which is currently debated as in a state of crisis. Rereading Gour’s narratives within and beyond the adaption of a topographic and figurative framework of literary cartography infers that such “mapping” of spatiocultural experiences can help in establishing and sensitizing a secular ethos across genres and geographies.

Conflicting trajectories of landscape transformation in the humid tropical agricultural plantations of the Western Ghats, India

The forest-agricultural landscapes of the humid tropics are transforming in their physical and socio-cultural spaces. Even though the processes of landscape transformation are highly contextual, their drivers, impacts and implications fan out across multiple scales from the local to the global. In the present study, the processes of landscape change, their multi-scalar actors and trajectories are examined in the agricultural plantations of tea, coffee and cardamom within a humid tropical forest of the Western Ghats, India. It employs an integrated multiple-source analysis of data collected through household surveys and interviews, secondary datasets, satellite imageries and litigation documents. The landscape change processes identified in the physical, social and cultural spaces include confiscation of plantations by the state, simplification of agricultural practices or abandonment of cultivation altogether, casualisation and feminisation of labour and non-agricultural diversions such as land speculation and tourism, driven by the global plantation crisis and changes in national and state forest policies. Post-globalisation, there was a high out-migration of labour and a significant decline (43%) of the population in the region. The prominent institutional actors of the state, the planters and the judiciary make these forest-enclosed plantations a highly contested space, with 75% of the area under various conflicts of tenure. These processes and actors had resulted in contrasting trajectories of incipient forest regeneration on the one hand and increased degradation on the other. A contextualized analysis of these trajectories of landscape change in these globally important humid tropical landscapes can valuably inform sustainable natural resource management frameworks.

Humor in multimodal language use: Students’ Response to a dialogic, social-networking online assignment

The focus of this study was on how students created and shared humor in an online multimodal learning environment. Across two semesters of a graduate course on psycholinguistics in education, 28 students posted 1006 pins on a social-networking webpage (Pinterest) that were subjected to a multimodal content analysis. The Pinterest boards provided a dialogic space for students to engage in on-going collaborative exploration of notable ways of using language in authentic sociocultural spaces. Many examples of humorous uses of language attested to students’ playful and creative application of course concepts. Through participants’ comments on pins and multimodal aspects of pins that transformed the nature of student-shared examples, some pins, originally not intended to be funny, came to represent examples of humor. Students took risks in pinning what they envisioned as possibly misconceived or even provocative content in pursuit of refining their understanding of psycholinguistic concepts.

Mexican women’s emotions to resist gender stereotypes in rural tourism work

Understandings of emotions and their role in ordering social life has been a fruitful feminist contribution to cultural and social studies. Under this theoretical perspective, affective or emotional responses illustrate women’s strategies to cope with or resist productive and spatial limitations produced by traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Since the 2000s, tourism and gender researchers have turned their attention to emotions, although their intersection of gender stereotypes in rural tourism has been limited. We rely on Ahmed’s framework on emotions and other theoretical contributions on socio-cultural spaces, embodied emotions, affective practices and gendered work to investigate gender roles, stereotypes and tourism productive and spatial relations in Mexican rural contexts. This context shed light on roles and gender stereotypes and their connections with the affective spatial practices experienced by women. A total of 49 Mexican women were interviewed from 2015 to 2018. Qualitative content analysis is employed to examine interview data, using inductive and deductive approaches. In addition, non-participant observation, document review, and field notes enrich and complement the interview data. Emotions are shown to mediate women’s lived experiences of gendered rural tourism work and the potential of emotional responses to contest social norms in opening new paths to surpass women’s relatively weaker positions in rural societies and to negotiate inequalities. Women continue to experience contradictory messages and tensions generated in both the family and the community, even with the growth in gender mainstreaming strategies; we propose a framework to contest traditional gender roles and to improve women’s affective spatial practices in rural contexts.

Roger II of Sicily: Family, Faith, and Empire in the Medieval Mediterranean World by Dawn Marie Hayes

Reviewed by: Roger II of Sicily: Family, Faith, and Empire in the Medieval Mediterranean World by Dawn Marie Hayes Lindsay Diggelmann Hayes, Dawn Marie, Roger II of Sicily: Family, Faith, and Empire in the Medieval Mediterranean World (Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces, 7), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; hardback; pp. 221; 18 b/w illustrations, 4 b/w tables; R.R.P. €75.00; ISBN 9782503581408. One of the enduring fascinations of the twelfth century is the way in which Roger II of Sicily managed to carve out for himself a kingdom of enormous wealth and influence despite the fact that his father and uncles had been part of the first generation of Norman warriors to arrive in Italy as penniless mercenaries. Roger's achievements and the key narrative and administrative sources have been thoroughly studied, notably in the works of Graham Loud, and yet the glittering brilliance of Roger's court continues to draw new acolytes. Dawn Marie Hayes is among their number, as attested by the admiring yet thoughtful and perceptive tone of this recent addition to the Brepols series 'Medieval Identities: Socio-Cultural Spaces'. The themes listed in the book's subtitle indicate the division of the work into three parts (of two chapters each). While there are plentiful cross-references between sections, the study does have the feel of a collection of separate essays on a broadly similar theme and perhaps lacks a strong sense of overall coherence or coordinated argument from one section to the next. The introduction and conclusion are both brief for a work of this nature and neither offers more than a fairly superficial attempt to connect the major themes and arguments of the book's individual chapters. This impression is reinforced when it becomes apparent that three of the six substantive chapters are essentially reprints of the author's recent journal articles. A cross-check of Chapter 5 with the original version—which appeared in Viator in 2013—reveals that any 'revisions' are minor and cosmetic to help the article fit more comfortably into the current work. While this is disappointing, it is not to say that the book lacks scholarly value. Part I, 'Family', is where the bulk of the author's new work is found. Two chapters examine the marriages of Roger II and the possible motivations behind them. Roger was first married to the Spanish princess Elvira, daughter of Alfonso VI of León-Castile. Hayes argues persuasively for the political benefits of this marriage, considering that Roger, like Alfonso before him, ruled a peripheral region of the Christian world that involved dealing with Muslim neighbours. The king's brief [End Page 226] second and third marriages late in his life, necessitated in part by the death of male children and the desperate need to ensure dynastic continuity, were both to French noblewomen, one a descendant of Charlemagne. Here Hayes makes the case, also pursued in Chapter 5, of closer connections between Roger and the French monarchy and nobility than some scholars have previously allowed for. Roger's tantalizing connections with the Arabic and Byzantine worlds may have blinded previous critics to the more prosaic connections with the culture of Roger's own ancestors. Through an in-depth consideration of what we know about the careers and family backgrounds of each of Roger's wives, Hayes builds a careful argument about the potential diplomatic and dynastic benefits that may have led Roger to choose the brides he did. Part II, 'Faith', considers Norman connections to the cult of St Nicholas in Bari. Roger is a very distant figure in Chapter 3, one of the reprinted articles, which assesses the importance of Nicholas for earlier Normans active in Italy in the eleventh century. While the chapter is valuable in its own right, its inclusion in this collection must be questionable. Furthermore, the connection to Chapter 4 feels forced. The latter includes new work that makes a case for Roger's devotion to Nicholas but focuses more on the difficulties of creating a maritime state, over which Nicholas, the 'Christian Poseidon' (p. 126), might be considered a protector. Finally, Section 3, 'Empire', contains two essays examining the famous mosaic portrait of Roger...

ДИАГНОСТИКА ЛИЧНОСТНЫХ РЕСУРСОВ У ЛИЦ, ЗАНИМАЮЩИХСЯ СПОРТОМ

The theoretical part of the article is aimed at the study of personal resources. In psychological science, the problem of personal resources is widely discussed in various fields of psychological science, both domestic and foreign. Personal resources are considered as the most important factor of resilience, allowing the individual to face the challenges of the time, they expand the capabilities of a person and make him more productive and successful. Each of the fields of psychological science focuses on the significance of the effect of personal resource mobilization. The empirical part of the article presents a study of personal resources in people involved in sports. Psychological theory and practice contain contradictions that indicate a lack of knowledge of personal resources as a complex psychological phenomenon that remains problematic and in demand in personal and socio-cultural spaces. The relevance of the study lies in the lack of development of the problem of personal resources in the field of sports. The hypothesis of the study was the assumption about the existing features in the specifics of personal resources in people involved in sports, development of the problem of personal resources in the field of sports. The hypothesis of the study was the assumption about the existing features in the specifics of personal resources in people involved in sports. The study involved 86 people, including 64 girls and 22 men, using the following methods: F. D. Zimbardo's Time Perspective Questionnaire, S. Maddy's Resilience Test, and the «Motivation for Success» method.»T. Ehlers, «Motivation to avoiding failures» T. Ehlers, the Level of claims personality by V. K. Gerbachevsky. The results of the study showed that people who are engaged in sports tend to think for the future, can enjoy work; they have developed the ability to reduce and withstand existential anxiety, are able to maintain internal balance, are open to new experiences, can set themselves more difficult tasks. People who do not play sports are more likely todepend on the opinions of others, turn to past experience, and an emotional component is needed to implement their plans.

Социокультурные аспекты изучения московского метрополитена как феномена архитектуры экстремальных сред

The subject of the research is the essence and specificity of socio-cultural aspects of the first stages of construction of the Moscow metro as phenomena of architecture in extreme environments. The object of research is the socio-cultural aspects of the architecture in extreme environments. The study provides their classification. The author relies on the principles of heterotopy research proposed by Paul-Michel Foucault while drawing upon a number of research methods, such as micro-urbanism, the study of the city in its “details”; visual sociology (visual anthropology); a systematic approach for collecting and analyzing materials, as well as thesaurus analysis of culture, allowing to systematize the results obtained by other methods. The paper identifies the features of creating socio-cultural spaces in an extreme environment on the example of the Moscow metro. The author focuses on the methods of creating a psychologically comfortable environment in the metro, as well as the possibility of architectural and artistic components of underground stations as translators of values and meanings. For the first time this paper examines the socio-cultural component of Moscow metro stations in the context of studying the essence and specifics of socio-cultural aspects of the architecture in extreme environments. The author's personal contribution is that, basing on the principles of research of socio-cultural spaces and the methodology of her own, she managed to detect specific features of creating the socio-cultural space of the Moscow metro first stations.

Тюремная субкультура в контексте диалектической триады

The article contains the experience of socio-philosophical analysis of the prison subculture phenomenon. The relevance of this study is due to the transformation of the basic culture of society traditional values under the influence of the criminal subculture, the development of its new socio-cultural spaces, observed in recent decades. The aim of the work is to analyze the evolution of the prison subculture from the perspective of its interaction with the culture of society in the context of the dialectical triad «thesis-antithesis-synthesis». The definition and the main characteristic features of the prison subculture are given. The main stages of its evolution are considered in the context of interaction with the basic culture of Russian society. It is shown that the main factors influencing the metamorphosis of the prison subculture are: the high number of convicts, the presence of passionarity in the Soviet penitentiary system, the detachment system of containing convicts, the unsuccessful results of the experiment carried out in the 60s of the twentieth century to reform the penal system, negative consequences economic and social reforms of the 90s. It is noted that as a result of long-term cultural genesis, the prison subculture has the following characteristics : 1) a rigid hierarchy of the social structure of the prison community with the existence of strata of «outcasts» 2) the presence of a developed system of prison mythology, customs, symbols and taboos 3) the presence of a «control center» as the group «Thieves in law», as well as channels of information transmission 4) high adaptability of the penitentiary subculture to external conditions 5) the presence of a catchy and attractive «thieves ‘ro¬mance» and «thieves’ ideology» 6) the ability of the prison subculture to reproduce itself 7) a high degree of cohesion of prison carriers subcultures 8) the spread of the norms of the prison subculture to the majority of the population of correctional institutions. In the development of the prison subculture, the authors have identified two cycles («big» and «small»). The «big cycle» describes the global relationship between the prison subculture and the basic culture of Russian society, «small» – the interaction of collectives of convicts and staff of correctional institutions influenced by the prison subculture. In both cycles, three stages of development are distinguished, characteristic of the dialec¬tical triad. The practical significance of the work lies in comprehending the ongoing changes with the subsequent adoption of managerial decisions aimed at leveling the spread of the norms of the prison subculture in society.