A worrying trend of autocratization that has been spreading globally in recent years, has thrust forward a new wave of appeals for deliberative and participatory democracy as a remedy for the crisis. With a few exceptions, the majority of participatory and deliberative institutions were implemented in stable democracies. The efforts to institutionalize participatory and deliberative models are almost completely absent in Serbia and other Western Balkan countries. Yet, there has been a trend of citizen mobilization in the form of social (...) movements and local civic initiatives, which are both a symptom of unresponsive and quite openly authoritarian institutions, as well as a potential pathway to democratization. The pace and scope of these developments in the undemocratic societies of the Western Balkan region, in terms of both bottom up and top-down democratic experimentation, call for a better understanding of their internal dynamics, and their social and political impact. Responding to this need, the articles in the special issue focus on social movement mobilizations and deliberative experimentation. To begin with, our introductory article focuses particularly on understanding the possible role deliberative institutions could have in hybrid regimes. It looks at the first two cases of deliberative mini publics (DMPs) ever organized in Serbia, analyzing their rationale, specific design, implementation, as well as considering the possible role deliberative institutions could play in the hybrid regime of Serbia. (shrink)

Whilst hermeneutics had been traditionally associated with the interpretation of texts, Martin Heidegger gave it a new meaning, associating it with the interpretation of the existence of Dasein. This paper will explain the Heideggerian understanding of hermeneutics, based on the early work of Heidegger which focuses on the analysis of the being of Dasein. His main contribution was a shift of focus from the interpretation of an unknown object to the interpretation of the human being, which Heidegger sees as primary, (...) since it is on the basis of Dasein’s understanding that other things and beings are interpreted. Firstly, the paper discusses hermeneutics in relation to human being, with a brief introduction to the main characteristics of Dasein, showing the place of hermeneutics within Dasein’s existence, together with Heidegger’s re-interpretation of the hermeneutic circle. Secondly, this understanding is applied to sport, focusing on the experience of athletes and on the possibilities for interpretations towards authentic existence, including its ethical aspect. (shrink)

As has been shown by several studies, teaching is a highly stressful occupation (Johnson et al., 2005), and most teachers experience work stress. Long-term stress decreases job satisfaction and can result in chronic exhaustion which can develop into burnout syndrome. Implications of burnout syndrome are strongly negative both for the personal and professional life of teachers. As burnout syndrome puts teachers’ well-being, quality of the teaching process and relationships with students at risk, it is important to seek ways to avoid (...) teachersÉ’ burnout. Many studies have confirmed the protective role that coping strategies play in managing stressful situations, teacher’s self-efficacy or social support. In previous studies, a negative connection was found between burnout syndrome and job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is a crucial element in the definition of wellbeing. We find wellbeing rather not as a resource for burnout prevention but as an opposite state to burnout syndrome. The paper presents a quantitative survey on burnout syndrome and related variables among Czech elementary school teachers (n = 2,394). According to burnout score, two subgroups were selected – teachers with no burnout manifestations and teachers with developing/developed burnout syndrome. Through the statistical analysis, these two groups were compared in job satisfaction, self-efficacy, coping strategies, and social support. The study shows significant differences between the two groups of teachers... (shrink)

This article reconsiders the presence and value of danger in outdoor and adventurous activities and sports in safety-conscious societies, especially in relation to the education of children and youth. Based on an original analysis of the relation between the concepts of ‘risk’ and ‘danger’, we offer an account of the relation between challenge, adventure, risk and danger, and emphasise the importance of teaching risk recognition, risk assessment, risk management and risk avoidance to children and youth, without the necessity of exposing (...) them to jeopardy in dangerous situations. Our conclusion is that ‘Safe Danger’ describes what educators should seek, namely: the educational benefits of the challenges set by risk-taking and the demands of risk-facing, including those in adventurous situations, which are obtainable in the absence of significant danger, and which contribute to risk education. The educational value of adventurous and outdoor pursuits lies elsewhere than in the opportunities that they present for danger-facing, for example in their promotion of self-reliance, confidence, ability to team-work, and especially in their promotion of risk education, as an integral aspect of everyday life planning, as preparation for the day’s adventurous challenges, and as an instrument of task completion. (shrink)

In this essay I use the term “whistleblowing” and its various forms to apply to unauthorized disclosures of information by employees or people in some category of labor relationship to an organizat...

Straipsnyje keliamas klausimas, ar globalios migracijos sąlygotus procesus Lietuvoje tikslinga nagrinėti naujo socialinio reiškinio, apibrėžiamo kaip prekariatas, aspektu? Remiantis ankstesnėmis publikacijomis ir reprezentatyviu Lietuvos gyventojų tyrimu parodoma, jog migraciją patiriantys asmenys yra socialinė grupė, turinti šiam reiškiniui būdingų bruožų. Jo esminė charakteristika – nesaugumas – laikomas pagrindine empirinių duomenų organizavimo kategorija. Nesaugumą siūloma analizuoti skiriant tris raiškos lygmenis – nesaugumą „stūmos“ priežasčių, socialinių reikšmių kilmės šalyje ir problemų, kylančių migracijos tikslo šalyje, požiūriais. Vadovaujantis migracijos pokyčių tyrimams pritaikytu R. Hillo modeliu (...) ir integruojant A. H. Richmondo, J. Trosto, R. S. Parrenas, V. L. Bengtsono, R. Milardo ir B. Wellmano teorines koncepcijas atlikta migraciją patiriančių žmonių nesaugumo įveikos resursų ir repertuarų sociologinė analizė. (shrink)

The Nova Scotia Participatory Food Costing Project uses participatory action research to collect data on the cost and affordability of food and involves those who are directly affected by food insecurity. More than a decade of this work has also yielded qualitative evaluation data that illustrates the project participants' experience with the project and with food security more generally. The data are characterized by ample evidence of participants' perceived powerlessness related to government and social structures. At the same time, that (...) data indicate that playing a role in participatory processes seems to have served as an empowering experience for the participants. We highlight some of the findings here and situate them within critical literature on citizens' discourse. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article examine la formalisation sémiotique de la traduction, proposée par Alexandre Ljudskanov, à travers la confrontation de son modèle avec celui de l’École de Leipzig. Alors que les allemands Kade et Neubert ne quittent pas le champ de la Translationslinguistik, le traductologue bulgare s’applique à mettre en œuvre une sémiotique du processus traductif. En partant de la prémisse que toute information n’existe que sous forme de code, il définit la traduction comme un échange communicatif entre deux systèmes sémiotiques, (...) qui demande forcément une médiation sémiotique de nature cognitive. Le modèle de Ljudskanov implique le décodage et l’encodage. Ces deux phases supposent la transformation des signes d’un code à l’autre de sorte à préserver l’information portée par le message. L’information invariante est transmise par des équivalents fonctionnels dont la pertinence et le principe de fonctionnement seront illustrés par des exemples de proverbes, d’aphorismes, d’expressions idiomatiques et leur traduction en plusieurs langues. (shrink)

Zygmunt Zawirski (1882-1948), an eminent and original Polish philosopher, belonged to the Lwow-Warsaw School (LWS) which left an indelible trace in logic, semiotics and philosophy of science. LWS was founded in 1895 by K. Twardowski, a disciple of Brentano, in the spirit of clarity, realism and analytic philosophy. LWS was more than 25 years older than the Vienna Circle (VC). This belies, inter alia, the not infrequently repeated statement that LWS was one of the many centres initiated by VC.

Background: The development of society and science, especially medical science, gives rise to new moral and ethical challenges in healthcare. Research question/objectives/hypothesis: In order to respond to the contemporary challenges that require autonomous decision-making in different work contexts, a pedagogical experiment was conducted to identify the readiness and responsiveness of current organisation of nursing higher education in Slovenia. It compared the successfulness of active learning methods online (experimental group) and in the traditional classroom (control group) and their impact on the (...) ethical competences of nursing students. The hypothesis set in the experiment, hypothesis 1 (the experimental group will be successful and will have good achievements in comprehension and application of ethical principles) was confirmed based on pre-tests and post-tests. The hypothesis tested by the questionnaire, hypothesis 2 (according to the students, the active learning methods online in the experimental group have a positive impact on the development of ethical competences) was confirmed. Research design: The pedagogical experiment was supported by a multiple-case study that enabled the in-depth analysis of the students’ attitudes towards the active learning methods in both settings. Participants and research context: The study included Slovenian first-year nursing students (N = 211) of all the enrolled students (N = 225) at the University of Ljubljana and University of Primorska in the academic year 2010/2011. Ethical considerations: Before the study ethical permission was obtained from the managements of both participating faculties. The students were given all the necessary information of the experiment before the tutorials. Findings: No significant difference was found between the two learning settings and both had a positive impact upon learning. The results of the content analysis show that the students’ active engagement with the active learning methods in the group enables the development of ethical competences and the related communicative competences, interpersonal skills, collaboration and critical thinking. Discussion: Active learning methods in the settings compared, online and the traditional classroom, enabled the development of a higher level of knowledge defined by the ability of critical thinking and reflective response, the core of ethical competences. Students develop ethical competence through active engagement in a group work, role play and discussion, and there is no difference between online or traditional learning settings. Conclusion: In the healthcare, it is crucial for providers to be capable of making autonomous decisions and managing various communication situations and contexts in which the moral attitudes and ethical sensibility are essential. (shrink)

Irena Štěpánová in this book explores Isaac Newton’s engagement with ancient wisdom, the Hexameral tradition, Hermeticism, theology, alchemy as well as natural philosophy. In so doing, she brings together the established historiography with her own new insights. Štěpánová’s study is more than a study of Newton’s thought, for it contains a good deal of background on ancient (e.g., Hermeticism) and early modern thought (e.g., the Cambridge Platonists). She also uses the interpretative lenses of several contemporary Newton and non-Newton scholars (...) in her work. Moreover, provides helpful summaries of Newton’s thought (e.g., his theology). Štěpánová has provided Newton scholarship a great service in this book, not only by making her Czech-language work available in English, but bringing to the English-language reader learning on Hebraic thought, philosophy of life and Hermeticism originally published in Czech. (Abstract from the review by Stephen David Snobelen Associate Professor, History of Science and Technology Programme, University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and Director of Newton Project Canada). (shrink)

This paper offers a discussion of the rationale for the creation of sports categorization criteria based on sporting genealogy and the gendered body, as proposed by Torres et al. in their article ‘Beyond Physiology: Embodied Experience, Embodied Advantage, and the Inclusion of Transgender Athletes in Competitive Sport’. The strength of their ‘phenomenological’ account lies in its complex account of human experience; but this is also what makes it impractical and difficult to operationalize. Categorization rather requires simplicity and practicability, if it (...) is to be applied to all athletes (and not exceptionally to transgender athletes). This discussion helps us to formulate three general principles for the process of categorization of athletes, relating to fairness, verifiability and practicability. (shrink)

Farming is undergoing a digital revolution. Our existing review of current Big Data applications in the agri-food sector has revealed several collection and analytics tools that may have implications for relationships of power between players in the food system. For example, Who retains ownership of the data generated by applications like Monsanto Corproation's Weed I.D. “app”? Are there privacy implications with the data gathered by John Deere's precision agricultural equipment? Systematically tracing the digital revolution in agriculture, and charting the affordances (...) as well as the limitations of Big Data applied to food and agriculture, should be a broad research goal for Big Data scholarship. Such a goal brings data scholarship into conversation with food studies and it allows for a focus on the material consequences of big data in society. (shrink)

Jane English, a pioneer in feminist sport philosophy, mentioned one simple idea that has received insufficient attention, but its consequences are of great importance for decreasing discrimination...

Polish society has found itself at a very important point in its history. The transformation from a traditional to a postmodern pluralistic society involves changes in many spheres of social life. These trends give rise to the question of which way the younger generation of Polish nurses will be going. The main objective of this research was to elucidate the opinions of nurses on life and health as basic values, and on their ethical and religious background regarding their nursing care. (...) The study made use of a questionnaire for collection and interpretation of the data. Although this article shows some lack of consistency, and even contradictions, it is possible to conclude that life and health are cherished with affection by the great majority of nurses as positive factors of human existence. (shrink)

The concept of the digital-facial-image as employed by Mark N. Hansen offers a new paradigm of our approach to digital media. The article aims at exploring the category of affect , which is understood not as a quality inherent to the image , but as a potential of human body, which thus achieves a privileged position. Affection can be conceived a necessary bodily response to digital information. To experience it as an information unit the data flux have to be sifted (...) through our corporeal being and transformed into images that have a meaning for us. Hansen argues that the digital image as such is inseparable from perceiving it since the former is not a fixed representation of reality. The notion of “digital image” is then used in its broader, not only visual sense, as a term that encompasses the entire process in which information is made perceivable. (shrink)

Mit dem Werk des österreichischen Dichters kam Witold Hulewicz ziemlich früh in Berührung. Fasziniert von dessen Dichtkunst, nahm er mit Rilke Briefkontakte auf. Die Korrespondenz belebte sich wesentlich, als Hulewicz an den ersten Üb ertragungen ins Polnische arbeitete. Im vorliegenden Artikel bemüht sich die Autorin nicht nur die freundschaftlichen Kontakte darzustellen, sondern auf die Rolle Hulewiczs als Übersetzer und Verbreiter des Rilkschen Werkes in Polen hinzu weisen.

In this paper we discuss differing discourses of research ethics committees and the clinical research field. Reflections on our experience of conducting research in a nursing home are used to highlight the tensions and inconsistencies that arise from these discourses and the need to behave ethically in the field. While accepting the need for adherence to guiding principles of duty based ethics, we have found that practical moral decisions in the field required that, as individual researchers, we needed to exercise (...) discretionary judgement, informed by the ethic of care and the concern for the well‐being of research participants. (shrink)

Este artículo se centra en dos cuestiones: por un lado, la presunción de libertad en el «período literario» (desde el s. VIII en adelante); y, por otro, la cuestión de la esclavización, venta o servidumbre ¿voluntaria o no¿ de personas libres en la «época preliteraria» (ss. VII y VIII). Asumiendo de partida la idea de que la práctica legal en la Antigüedad Tardía influyó en las discusiones de los primeros juristas musulmanes, trataré de reconstruir el discurso legal de los siglos (...) I/VII y II/VIII y de mostrar que ese discurso contenía interesantes opiniones legales en relación a la venta de niños, servidumbre por deudas y la situación legal de los huérfanos. En la literatura legal que emergió desde el s. II/VIII los juristas, al contrario de lo que se hubiese esperado, no trataron estas cuestiones intensamente. Tal y como se muestra, existe una cierta inconsistencia entre el discurso ameno y controvertido sobre el tema del «período preliterario», que se reconstruye en este artículo, y la marginalización del tema en la literatura legal posterior. (shrink)

Recenzja książki Eduardo Kohna, How Forests Think. Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human, University of California Press, London, 2013, s. 267.

This essay investigates how Leibniz and Daniel Ernst Jablonski handled the ironing out of intra-protestant religious differences, notably on predestination in the years ca. 1697-1702. I shall be focusing on the recently published union document between the Lutherans of Hanover and the Calvinists of Brandenburg, entitled the Unvorgreiffliches Bedencken (hereafter UB) and on the equally recently published and hitherto practically unknown Meditationes pacatae de praedestinatione et gratia, fato et libero arbitrio of 1701-ca. 1706 2. This is a series of Leibniz’s (...) annotations on Jablonski’s Latin translation of article 17 (predestination) of the bishop of Salisbury, Gilbert Burnet’s Exposition of the 39 Articles of the Church of England. I shall try to show how the issue of predestination is handled in the UB by Leibniz and how his notes on the Meditationes complement and modify Jablonski’s Latin edition of the 17th article of Burnet’s Exposition the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. This will enable us to isolate the set of theological problems faced by the Lutheran and Calvinist participants in the negotium irenicum of 1697 -1702 and to point to the specific nature of the solutions proposed by Leibniz which were philosophical rather than theological. The underlying issue here is that of coexistence of philosophy and theology in Leibniz’s system. Indeed, one of the persistent questions about this philosopher concerns the exact relationship between his metaphysics (including physics and mathematics) and his theological views: which determined which? I hope to take the debate further here by analysing Leibniz’s contribution to the specifically theological issue of predestination, which, it will emerge, has direct bearing on Leibniz’s Essais de théodicée of 1710. (shrink)

Exposure to bullying at work is a serious social stressor, having important consequences for the victim, the co-workers, and the whole organization. Bullying can be understood as a multi-causal phenomenon: the result of individual differences between workers, deficiencies in the work environment or an interaction between individual and situational factors. The results of the previous studies confirmed that some characteristics within an individual may predispose to bullying others and/or being bullied. In the present study, we intend to clarify the relationships (...) between workplace bullying considered from the victim’s and the perpetrator’s points of view, the employee Machiavellianism as a personality factor and the perceptions of organizational culture as depicted by Cameron and Quinn. The sample consisted of 117 workers, employed in different organizations in Poland. The empirical data regarding both being exposed to bullying as well as being a perpetrator of bullying were obtained by the use of self-reports from participants. According to the expectations, Machiavellianism predicted involvement in bullying others. The groups of bullies and bully-victims had a higher Machiavellianism level compared to the groups of victims and persons non-involved in bullying. The results showed that being bullied was negatively related to the perceptions of clan and adhocracy cultures and positively related to the perceptions of hierarchy culture. The results of a moderated regression analysis demonstrated that Machiavellianism was a significant moderator of the relationships between the perceptions of adhocracy and hierarchy cultures and being bullied. Theoretical and practical implications of the results were discussed. (shrink)

Before the pandemic, our life was often described as fast, since in globalised society speed has been generally understood as a marker of efficiency, productivity and diligence; and so many people...

This paper addresses some problems arising with respect to the male/female binary division that has traditionally been central to most sports. One strategy for dealing with this problem is to remov...

It is difficult to develop good arguments when the central terms of the discussion are unclear – as with the current confused state of sex and gender terminology. Sports organisations and sports re...

In the literature related to the study of sport, the idea of phenomenology appears with various meanings. The aim of this paper is to sketch the nature, methods and central concepts of phenomenology, and thereby to distinguish philosophical phenomenology from its empirical applications. We shall begin by providing an overview of what we think phenomenology is and is not, by introducing the following points: we distinguish phenomenology from phenomenalism; the ontological from the ontic; transcendental subjectivity from subjectivity; phenomenology from phenomenography; (...) and phenomenology from other kinds of empirical qualitative methodology. Next, we examine the two most important British studies to include overviews of phenomenological work in relation to sociology of sport. We then take a critical view of the work of one research paper that gives a particularly clear description of the method of ?empirical phenomenology?. Throughout, we insist on the simple basics: that phenomenology is not simply the study of empirical phenomena, is not a form of subjectivism, is not about someone's personal experience or personal perspective, and that it is not to be confused with ?qualitative research methods?. We further insist that, if a researcher wishes to use the name ?phenomenology? for his or her research, he or she should explain just what it is (about the method or the concepts, or the outcomes) that informs or results from the research programme, in order to justify the name. (shrink)