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This paper attempts to provide an overview on the corruption phenomenon as a distinct pathology of power and of development in a “transition country” as is the case of Romania. In the first part of this paper, the author outlines an interpretative model of Romania’s development process, based on the concept of “anomie” that has been frequently used in order to evaluate the situation of the former communist societies in the transition process. From this point of view, the anomie means the insufficiency of regulation (on an economic, political, legal and even moral level) and the insufficient social integration (in the way of a lack of adherence to a set of shared values which could facilitate the convergence of actions). These deficiencies bring about an amplification of the social costs of transition and perverse effects of the development process. In Romania, the transition process brought about, besides a range of important social-economic and political changes, an unprecedented amplification of corruption phenomenon as a true pathology of power and of development. In the second part of this paper, the autor assesses the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of the corruption in Romania and highlights his prevalence in the public administration, justice, and at political level

The present paper aims to present the main findings of a quantitative and qualitative analysis on the suicides in Romania, as they are submitted in media and online news sites. The quantitative analysis provides information on the main factors associated with the increase of the suicides in Romania (gender, age, county, suicide methods, suicide causes and key motivations for suicide). The qualitative analysis, too, offers a classification and evaluation scheme for the essential characteristics of the suicide in Romania. There are set on this occcasion some categories and subcategories such as: the victims numbers, the rational or irrational character of the suicide, its form of the expression (solitary or public suicide), the model followed (e.g. the ,,mimetic” suicide), the suicide methods, the suicide locations etc. The most important part of the paper is devoted to the classification of the causes, motivations and the main triggers of the suicide

Modern literature of the 20th century had provided several “dystopian furcations” in the history of Western literature, represented most typically by G. Orwell, A. Huxley, Y. Zamiatin and R. R. Bradbury. What were the motivating factors behind these lines of dystopia? In this paper, we are going to discuss the phenomenon of dystopia in modern literature, based on the critical heritage of modern social theory and philosophy. Where does appear the differences between utopia and dystopia? Are the fictional worlds of More, Campanella and Bacon entirely different from the dark illustrations imagined by Orwell, Bradbury, Zamiatin and Huxley? Is there something common inside the imaginary “mechanisms” of utopian and dystopian fictions? These are the core questions we will discuss around this paper

1939 marks the culmination of the Bucharest Sociological School (BSS) led by Dimitrie Gusti. In recognition of its achievements, the XIVth International Congress of Sociology has been scheduled to take place in Romania. The foreign papers sent to the organizing committee are published in five volumes (whith five additional ones planned to appear after the Congress). According to documents here published for the first time, over one hundred Romanian papers are in preparation. And then, suddenly, WWII broke out. The Congress had to be postponed. During the war, however, the BSS continues its publishing activities in view of the Congress. Betwen 1946 and 1947 Gusti travels to New York and presents a project for an Social Institute of Nations to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and to colleague sociologists from Columbia University. In 1948 the communist regime will ban sociology from universities and schools and suppress the Romanian Social Institute. Some of the School’s members will be arrested. In 1950, despite organizer’s Corrado Gini insistent and repeated invitations, Gusti will not be allowed to participate in the XIVth International Congress of Sociology finally held in Rome. The last years of the BSS are chronicled in A. Golopenţia’s correspondence and in prison declarations

The social memory phenomenon causes debates nowadays, puts in opposition methodological schools, generates a series of incompatible theoretical positions. Proof that the concept of “social memory” “lived” its first age are the numerous research which regards the phenomenon, studies which led either to new theories of social memory (the theory of the organization of memory according to culture and interests is one of the acknowledged theories from which it starts in the development of the subject), or they certified the ones established until then. The present paper aims to evaluate the factors which led to the readjustment of the social memory of the Romanian people after the events from 1989. I consider that the social memory can be organized under the influence of factors which act as a whole. As a result, I will analyse the connection between the political factor (decision-maker agents that can influence some contents of the collective memory) and the social one (the public opinion of the group that undergoes major alterations regarding the contents of memory). I initiated the investigation approach by remarking certain contents of the social memory resignify themselves through the direct influence of the social group, the power structure having the role of putting into practice the community’s “desire”. The necessity of a unitary co-operation between the community and the decision factor for the achievement of a new mnesic construction is imperative. For that purpose, I will analyse the effects of the non-unitary actions of these factors against the social memory, being known that not always the decision factor and the social factor (the community) have the same attitudes towards certain mnesic contents. One can observe certain patterns concerning the organization of social memory in relation to these two factors, when taking into consideration the intentionality (what the two parts desire) and the purpose (the way in which a certain content “imprints” itself into the collective memory). The differences between the decision of the political factor to impose a certain content of the memory and the public opinions/attitudes concerning that particular content are produced more often that not, by different interests, that generate conflicts. In the present paper I will assess the function of the interests conflicts in the organization of the social memory

This paper explores the notion of ‛power’ which is central to the movement initiated by the Zapatistas. By analysing the contradictions within the Zapatistas movement, it argues that the EZLN gradually seized the power of the Mexican State. Consequently, this paper considers three elements central to the EZLN: democracy versus anarchy, Zapatistas’ desire to change the world without taking power and finally the notions of autonomy and inclusion. This paper therefore questions the notion of autonomy within the Zapatistas movement which refers to isolation rather than integration by considering examples from the education and health sectors

The ‛migration problem’ is defined as the migration of people that crosses national borders, by contrasting it to social mobility. This paper considers the transformation of the Keynesian Welfare State by focusing on the notion of social citizenship which is challenged by the presence of immigrants and gives, as a result, birth to welfare chauvinism. This paper then explores the role the EU has in ‘managing’ migration by considering the common EU migration policy and its impact on member states. By analysing the notion of ‘external governance’ and the ‘safe third country’ principle, this article concludes that the current EU migratory policy resembles to a ‘fortress'

The paper analyses the way the workforce migration phenomenon is problematized by non-migrants, more specifically, social actors belonging to various socio-cultural categories, “witnesses” of this phenomenon and of debates in Romanian public space. Starting from positions taken in focus-groups, the analysis highlights discursive mechanisms employed by social actors to appropriate migration as public problem. What meanings of collective identity are negotiated in a debate on workforce migration? This paper, based on Critical Discourse Analysis, first proves that social actors interpret this type of migration by instrumentalizing identitarian discourse: “categories” of migrants are instituted and symbolic inequalities are reproduced in the relationship with “the other”. Secondly, social actors recontextualize discourses and cultural stereotypes routinely employed in the political and media sphere regarding workforce migration in the UE, collective identities or belonging practices

This section contains two important documents here published for the first time. The first is the text of a paper presented by St.C.-G. in 1939 at the Romanian Institute for Social Research and meant to accompany 12 sociological maps on the practices and interdictions concerning confined women in 35 villages of Țara Oltului (Olt county). This paper will allow us to reconstruct the lost maps in the near future. The second document consists of three completed forms of the social inquiry conducted by St.C.-G. concerning the everyday lives of students in an industrial College of Bucharest during World War II. The Report prepared by D. Gusti in view of awarding the Vernescu Academy prize to St.C.-G. for her book The Household in the Beliefs and Magic Rituals of the Women of Drăguș (Făgăraș), an activity report by St.C. and two letters (one by D. Gusti and the other by a former student teaching in her turn) complete the picture of Șt.C.-G. at a professional and a personal level.

From the European research reports on the Future of Europe to the newest fundamental White Paper on a European Communication Policy, a new perception of a transnational identity is crystallized across Europe, as a different multicultural challenge that is no more national and not yet European. That is what we intend to analyze in this study. In this context, the representatives of the European Union have come up with the initiative of some policy and strategy documents with the aim to strengthen communication between EU institutions and EU citizens, in order to clarify the perceptions on citizenship and identity issues across Europe. Thus, the White Paper on a European communication policy issued on 1 February 2006 was the natural sequel to another document published in July 2005 - an Action Plan to Improve Communicating Europe - but also to the involvement of the Commission in the debate regarding the future of Europe, materialised in what would be later called Plan D for Democracy, Dialogue and Debate, a plan launched on 13 October 2005. The link between all these debates and initiatives was the Eurobarometer, an unbiased tool of sociological measurement, which fully confirms the communication breakdown between European citizens and the institutions which represent them, but also the legitimacy of some new perspectives which were opened by those programmatic European documents.

This article first presents reflections on the joint work carried out by Michael Cernea and this paper's author over 8-9 years for gaining "room, recognition and resources" within the CGIAR for sociological and socio-anthropological research on farmers, their practices and needs. The status of social research inside the CGIAR has gone through ups and downs in the uphill battle for expanding social research within this organization. Social scientists have constantly worked to feed their findings into the Centers' biophysical research. The paper documents the contribution of Michael Cernea, the first sociologist who acceded to CGIAR's top science and policy bodies, to strengthening the presence and influence of sociological and anthropological knowledge within CGIAR's institutional architecture and scientific products.The second part of this study presents the high promise of Conservation Agriculture (CA) - a new paradigm for non-tillage agricultural production that offers improved productivity and environmental protection. CA principles are universally applicable. The author offers global data on the impressive advances and distribution of CA, which covers already some 125 million ha distributed across all continents and agro-ecologies. CA is a farmer-driven socio-cultural phenomenon which has expanded at a yearly rate of 7 mil. ha during the past decade.

The present paper is based on the idea according to which the present situation of the Romanian agriculture, its development level and the development of rural area in its most part, are largely determined by Romania's agrarian structure. The paper investigates Romania's current agrarian structure by size classes of agricultural holdings, as well as its evolution in almost one century (1921 - the great agrarian reform - 2011) and its implications upon the population's social situation in the rural area.

Recently attention has focused on the role of social researchers in the processes of construction and transmission of knowledge about global poverty and its reduction. This paper examines some of the formative efforts by pioneering social researchers in development institutions to step into the realm of policy making to construct processes for project preparation and management through social analysis. Before 1970 development planners invoked ‘social' or ‘human' factors only as an excuse to explain away project failures - they designed and implemented development projects in the absence of any strategies or regulatory frameworks for managing their social impacts. Recognizing that project investments represent induced change and constitute a social process in themselves, pioneering social researchers constructed policies and procedures to introduce sociological content and method into the project cycle and so re-order social outcomes. Were such constructs merely policy artefacts? Even as the constructs helped to shift the statements of the development discourse towards ‘people oriented' poverty reduction, new modalities appeared which tested the limits of the agreed methods. Institutions may forget, neglect, contest or re-write the documents if in perceived conflict with the institutional ‘core business'. Yet those pioneering efforts created institutional space for, and understanding of, social analysis, with a measure of flow-on international recognition. Tracking social analysis in several international institutions and in a significant emerging economy, China, this paper highlights not only a history full of lessons to be learned where social analysis is not practiced systematically but also outlines some future challenges.

This paper offers a brief presentation of the resettlement conference entitled "Economics, Social Justice, and Ethics in Development-Caused Involuntary Migration" that took place in the Hague from October 4th to 8th, 2010, as part of the broader 15th Metropolis Conference. The focus of the paper is on the contents of this high-level scientific event as well as on the broader concerns animating the community of resettlement researchers, namely the problems of economics, ethics and social justice in involuntary resettlement processes. In this context, the trailblazing contributions of Professor Michael Cernea as well as his enthusiasm and constant encouragement for young researchers are singled out for special attention.

The Canadian-Romanian gold mining project at Roşia Montanǎ in Romania is known as the largest opencast gold mine being planned now in Europe. It involves the displacement of several thousand inhabitants, mostly former gold miners and a smaller number of farmers. The land and houses of more than three quarters of this population have already been acquired by the project owners, although the project has not yet received its formal environmental clearance. The paper analyzes the risks facing the displaced population of Roşia Montană, employing as analytical methodology the Impoverishment Risks and Reconstruction (IRR) model, developed by Michael M. Cernea. The paper argues for an expansion of the IRR model. By taking into account the macro (extralocal) forces that shape displacement and paying closer attention to the micro (subjective) experience of this process, it becomes possible to understand the effects of uncertainty and vulnerability in displacement. The author's participant observations and in-depth interviews with local families are complemented with secondary analyses of data from several other socio-economic surveys and with the analysis of the Resettlement and Relocation Action Plan of the project owners.

The paper starts from the theoretical perspective opened by the culturalist approach, that introduced the so-called break from the end of '50s in cultural studies, and took into consideration the meaning of the concept popular culture not as opposite to that of elite culture or high culture, but as a term which refers to the cultural products, practices and artefacts produced by and for people, also with a special focus on their complex relationship with the political and economic agenda of the period. The research focuses on the popular culture in the communist Romanian society between 1947-1989. The general objective of this larger study was to outline the main aspects of the popular culture in the communist Romania and to identify the popular culture practices and artefacts and their roots. In this paper there will be presented the results regarding the folk culture as a distinct part of the popular culture. I analyzed both the practices of folk culture (what is included in the term of lived culture) and the products and artefacts of folk culture (as a part of the larger concept of lifestyle). Besides this, because these issues have been little explored from this perspective in Romania, I also paid close attention to unanticipated themes that could arise from the empirical research. The method used for accomplishing the objectives of the research was the social biography (in the form of life histories). More exactly, I used the technique of ‘multiple autobiographies', understanding the term in its classic sense, as subjects' narrations about themselves, about their own lives. This method allowed me to obtain ‘subjective' data about the ‘lived culture', and also about the existence, evolution, appropriation, negotiation, resistance or rejection of the popular culture products, which in the end could lead us to outline the situation of popular culture elements in Romania in the communist epoch.

Within the English common law tradition, there is a principle which prohibits property of the human body. Taking property to be a protean concept, this paper examines how property is defined and applied in recent legal disputes in the United States over "potential life" entities, such as embryos and fetuses. A brief genealogy of theoretical and common law approaches with respect to property of the body highlights an analysis of six U.S. legal cases in which sperm, zygotes, embryos and fetuses have become new legal subjects of property against the background of assisted reproductive technologies. This paper concludes that property can operate not just in order to privatize, commodify and circulate, but in order to bring "potential life" entities closer to people and deeper into relational networks.

The aim of this paper was to separate the social and behavioral profile of the young population from the eight development regions of Romania. Poll data and statistic methods of variation comparison and factorial analysis allowed us to describe in comparable terms the young population from the development regions. The most differentiating dimensions between the eight regions are those related to the endowment of the young people with ITC goods and to their behavior in their spare time. The paper presents social and behavioral "portraits" of young people in each region.

This paper was presented at a conference organized by Conférence Permanente Européenne de la Probation (CEP) together with the Ministry of Justice of Estonia which took place in Tallinn, on September 27th-29th this year. The title of this conference was 'Unity and Diversity in probation.' This was the reason and the angle of this article: to propose a matrix for the assessment of probation which is relevant to most of the EU countries. The model starts with an assessment focusing on the mission statement. According to these criteria, EU countries could be divided into four main categories: probation services based on promoting alternatives to incarceration model, probation services based on the model of assisting the courts in giving the best sentences, probation services based on the rehabilitation model, probation services based on the public protection model. Evaluating probation services according to these criteria has its strengths and weaknesses. Some of these are presented in this paper.

This section contains two important documents here published for the first time. The first is the text of a paper presented by St.C.-G. in 1939 at the Romanian Institute for Social Research and meant to accompany 12 sociological maps on the practices and interdictions concerning confined women in 35 villages of Țara Oltului (Olt county). This paper will allow us to reconstruct the lost maps in the near future. The second document consists of three completed forms of the social inquiry conducted by Șt. C.-G. concerning the everyday lives of students in an industrial College of Bucharest during World War II. The Report prepared by D. Gusti in view of awarding the Vernescu Academy prize to Șt. C.-G. for her book The Household in the Beliefs and Magic Rituals of the Women of Drăguș (Făgăraș), an activity report by Șt. C. and two letters (one by D. Gusti and the other by a former student teaching in her turn) complete the picture of Șt. C.-G. at a professional and a personal level.

This section contains two important documents here published for the first time. The first is the text of a paper presented by Şt. C.-G. in 1939 at the Romanian Institute for Social Research and meant to accompany 12 sociological maps on the practices and interdictions concerning confined women in 35 villages of Țara Oltului (Olt county). This paper will allow us to reconstruct the lost maps in the near future. The second document consists of three completed forms of the social inquiry conducted by Şt. C.-G. concerning the everyday lives of students in an industrial College of Bucharest during World War II. The Report prepared by D. Gusti in view of awarding the Vernescu Academy prize to Şt. C.-G. for her book The Household in the Beliefs and Magic Rituals of the Women of Drăguş (Făgăraş), an activity report by Şt. C. and two letters (one by D. Gusti and the other by a former student teaching in her turn) complete the picture of Şt. C.-G. at a professional and a personal level.

The paper analyzes the development of the sociology of mass culture in 1960s– 1970s Socialist Romania from a newly formed discipline meant to provide scientific guidance for the formulation and implementation of cultural policies (producing hegemony), into an instrument for the criticism of the cultural basis for consent. First, it addresses the broader context of the discipline’s configuration, and the initial debates about the sociologist’s relationship to his object of study. Second, it analyzes two versions of the “systemic” approach in the sociology of mass culture and mass communication, with a focus on the ways in which they conceptualized consent/coercion. Third, it details how several empirical studies reflected on the issue of hegemony in 1970s Socialist Romania.

Imprisonment is one of the main strategies of crime control and prevention. Yet, its specific aims and ends have generated numerous debates among philosophers, moralists, sociologists, penologists etc. These debates revealed that confinement in closed institutions is conducive to various forms of “deculturation” (Goffman, 2004) as well as to the reiteration of criminal behaviour. In the same time, imprisonment has raised vast concerns among citizens about public safety and the “humanization” of prison conditions. The current paper attempts to radiograph the attitudes, the opinions and the evaluations of the Romanian public towards prison and imprisonment and to identify solutions for optimizing its functionality

This study presents a general overview of Roman Catholic demonology and exorcism traditions. The cultural aspects, traditions, and belief structures comprising the collective mentality of early and then Catholic Christianity are examined. In approaching the phenomena this paper sets out to address, it is deemed necessary to demythologize demonology and exorcisms utilizing a qualitatively grounded research method that reflects upon and reveals, by way of comparison, the central aspects of these twin phenomena within the Roman Catholic doctrine

The paper offers a brief re-study of funerary rituals in a village inhabited by Hungarian Roman Catholics in Romania. Since the completion of long-term fieldwork there in 2003 and 2004, the construction of a funeral home and the emergence of local companies, offering full service for funeral receptions, have led to considerable changes in the course of funerary rituals. Rites that were traditionally carried out in the home have been moved to the public sphere, and tasks traditionally fulfilled by people nurturing social ties to the family of the deceased have largely been taken over by the service sector. Since funeral rites are intricately intertwined with cultural beliefs and values and with the management of social relations, these changes are more than technical. By focusing on how people reacted to the changes imposed on them, this study emphasizes their agency in constructing the ritual dimensions of their lives

In this paper, the author aims to apply the theoretical model of anomie (developed by É. Durkheim and R. K. Merton) for the assessment of the social, economic and political situation in the former communist societies. In the most of these countries, the normative regulation is insufficient or precarious and the actions of individuals are subscribed to the areas of deviance and „loss of determination” of their scope and human aspirations. With specific reference to Romania, the author mentions the main contributing factors that have conditioned or determined the increasing in the anomic suicide rates, in the post-communist period: the low performance and economic benefits, the deterioration of health and standards of living, increased consumption of alcohol and drugs, depression, stress, the spreading of illnesses, physical but moreover mental, the incapacity to adapt to the changes, to the new normative and cultural models, to find solutions for the new life problems, unemployment, poverty, dissolution of numerous family groups, immigration of the heads of the families, decreasing in the number of children, aging of the population etc

This article presents the significant changes on sanctions and non-custodial measures applicable under the new codes (criminal and criminal procedure). These changes have as consequences, on the one hand, the expansion of alternatives to custodial sentences, on the other hand, the increasing workload at the level of some probation services. So, the author wants to highlight the effects of these changes in the probation system from our country, by conducting an empirical research. The main instruments to investigate this new reality were questionnaires and semistructured interviews. Therefore, are presented and analyzed the opinions of probation counselors from Bucharest and Ilfov, opinions that reflect the main legislative and administrative difficulties generated by the new legislative framework, and solutions found to overcome them. The paper ends with some conclusions that emphasize the need for action in this matter

This paper looks at how the British press frames the issue of Romanian immigrants in Great Britain, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in the UK. The study insists on the frames employed by the British journalists in constructing anti-immigration discourses in the newspapers. In doing so, it focuses on the stereotypes about Romanian people employed in quality and tabloid newspapers (“beggars”, “murderers”, “criminals”, “fraudsters”, “corrupt”) and on how they affect Romania’s image overseas. By using a mixed research approach, i.e. by combining framing analysis (Entman, 1993) with the critical discourse analysis, this article investigates 271 news items out of three of the most read newspapers in UK (The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Independent), which were published online during January 2013–March 2014. As a conclusion, the results show that the British press uses frames such as economic, political, and also pertaining to employment and national security in the coverage of Romanian immigration. The media also infer the polarization between “Us” (the British citizens) and “Them” (the Romanian migrants)

The present article, signed by one prominent Romanian scholar specialized in oral and maxillo-facial surgery, evaluates the main reference points (benchmarks) of the “medicine for healthy people” – as an alternative medicine set in contrast with conventional medicine. The medicine for healthy people is a more recent approach to medicine, which emphasizes health habits that prevent disease, including eating a healthier diet, getting adequate exercise, and insuring a safe environment. In this respect, there is a special connection between medicine and society as far as social life has an impact on morbidity and mortality rate, and vice versa. Medicine is indisputably an extremely complex science, but it is, also, an “art” of healing. The quality of medical performance depends upon the scientific and human quality of the practitioner. Technology is only secondary. The very large quantity of graduates of medical studies is surely at the expense of the quality of the art of healing (a clear sign that we stray from this desiderate). Sociological studies regarding the evolution of the human being prove undoubtedly that we are in obvious regression. What is the cause? Man as a self-destructing being! The solution? The return to nature and to the “medicine for healthy people”. The conditions needed to meet this goal are disclosed throughout the present paper

This paper analyses the social field of sports within the general frame of social dramaturgy, by using three metaphors that are grounded on Goffman’s conceptual field: sport as play, sport as game and sport as ritual. After discussing “what”, “how” and “to what extent” can Goffman’s concepts be re-contextualized in understanding the dynamics of the sport acts, I went further and integrated the three metaphors into a more comprehensive analytic model. The multidimensional model of sport dramaturgy that I have built around Goffman’s hard-core concepts covers: the dramaturgical dimension, the strategic dimension and the ritual dimension of sport acting as complementary elements that can provide an integrative perspective upon the sport dynamics. Every dimension of this interactional model implies a specific definition for the competitive situation, for the sport actor and for his dispositional orientation when faced with a competitive situation

In this paper, the author assesses the spreading of suicides in Romania, on the basis of the (contradictory) information provided by the National Institute of Statistics, the Regional Offices for Public Health and the National Institute of Forensics. In this context, mention is made of the suicide rates specific to the 2000–2013 period of time, and of the main variables available in the official statistic registrations (sex, age, residence, county, development region). On the other hand, the author analyses the reliability of the information conveyed by the National Institutte of Forensics and estimates that many Romanian institutes handle official statistic data that are not accurate and are not consistent with the international standards in this field

The emergence of the opportunities opened by the internet raises also questions of interest for research regarding the extent to which these have an impact on the formations of non heterosexual life and on the experience of marginalised sexual identities. There have been different approaches in this regard and answers vary from optimistic and utopian appraisals concerning cyberspace in the early 90s to the more moderate and sceptic visions in the 2000s. Starting from this framework of debates, the present paper aims to explore the meaning of the term “cyberqueer”, including the theoretical context of its occurrence, to briefly highlight some critical considerations relating to cyberqueer research and to look over the main recurrent themes linked up with this concept, such as queer and cyberqueer identity, body and (dis)embodied practices and the forthcoming process of blurring the dividing boundaries between real/virtual, online/offline and public/private

In recent years, an ongoing debate is taking place in International Relations theory (IR), contesting the centrality of the state and pointing out to the increasingly problematic nature of the foundational categories of the state and the domestic/international boundary upon which the modern scholarly discipline of IR depends. One of the most powerful critique of the mainstream of IR theory comes from poststructuralism. Based on the domestic/international dichotomy, this paper examines how certain traditional concepts like security, state, sovereignty are addressed by the poststructuralist approach, and also the implications this approach has on our own understanding of the political in the contemporary international context

Justice is the fundamental institution that ensures and protects the rights of the individuals and their equality before the law, for the functioning of the state of law and social justice. This is the reason why any misconduct of the staff of the institutions of justice has negative consequences on its image. This paper – outcome of the analysis and processing of the results of a concrete research on the public image of the justice system in Romania – focuses on how the institution is perceived by the citizens at this moment, highlighting some aspects of the difficulties in achieving a fair and lawful act of justice, as they are perceived by the public

This paper focuses on discourse analysis of a comprehensive corpus which consists of ten speeches presented by foreign guests in the plenum of Romanian Parliament, between 2007 and 2013. We talk about European officials and representatives of other States or international organizations, other than the EU, which emphasize the democratic ideal thesis in argumentative discourses of authority, oscillating between representations on values and principles of democracy in Europe and their concrete manifestations in today`s Romania. The theoretical and methodological framework is provided by the argumentation theory and new rhetoric perspective on deliberative discourse, with focus on the current practice of public diplomacy at the European central level

The tenth volume of The Ritual Year series reunites papers presented at the 10th annual conference of the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF) Working Group on The Ritual Year, that took place in Innsbruck (Austria), 25–27 September 2014. The imposing volume brings together fifty-seven studies dealing with the conception of magic and magical rituals performed throughout the year and their correlation with religious ceremonies. It also presents articles dealing with contemporary magical practices represented in the year cycle and in the everyday life of practitioners of magic

In this paper I shall analyze – using data from the EU Kids Online II project – the spread and the impact of online and offline bullying among children and teenagers (9 to 16 year old). I will start with an overview of what cyber bullying and online bullying are in the context of, on one hand, the risks of the Internet and on the other, of the aggressive behavior in general, regardless its channel of manifestation. In the second half, I analyze the online bullying data for Romania. Upon the theoretical set from the first part, the goal of the empirical data analysis is to sketch of victims and aggressors in terms of age, gender and socioeconomic status, complemented with some psychological and behavioral features. Some of the key questions I sought an answer were: are the kids involved in such phenomena “prone” to a certain role (victim or aggressor) or the roles can be reversed? Is there a connection between their Internet user features (length of daily time online, variety of activities, level of digital literacy) and their involvement in bullying (online and offline) as victim and/or aggressor?

Confronted with more than two decades of fertility decline, the Romanian government decided to take actions to help the population to accept the new tide of expenses due to a new child in the family. In the actual socio-economic context, the new supplements of both income and time, influence the decision-making process regarding the potential increase of family members. Without stopping the decline of natural increase of the Romanian population, the implementation of new policies altered the mechanism of live-births and their structure which made up a new pattern of live-births in Romania. This paper reveals the characteristics of the new mechanism of live-births and their structure as well as the new features of fertility in Romania under the auspices of these new laws. The unexpected effects upon the structure of society will influence the management of future society issues. Pointing the attention on the becoming structure of society with which it has to cope for the first time in its history has a social, economic and political value

Romanian democracy, newly born after the 1989 events, has a rather short electoral confrontation tradition. In this context, the media coverage of the 2009 presidential election has a conflict specificity never expressed to this extent. One of the main actors of the public sphere, the media, seems to have changed election patterns, in terms of emotionality and partisanship. This paper presents a content analysis of the main newscasts of five Romanian TV channels: the public television, TVR1, and the most viewed private channels, ProTV and Antena 1, plus the two most viewed private channels specialized in news broadcasting, Realitatea TV and Antena 3, throughout the entire election campaign in October−December 2009. The theoretical background of the research is the agenda setting function of the media, with a focus on the framing and priming effects. Even though these effects have been long studied before, little is known about them in election campaigns in emergent European democracies. We analyze three types of frames, conflict, economic consequences and morality in political news, and we argue for a priming effect related to the character of each of the three main candidates, from two distinct perspectives: competence and integrity. We show a prominence of the conflict frame, even though the economic global context would argue for a dominant economic frame. The construction of priming effect premises is investigated by presenting the visibility of the attributes of the three main candidates in what concerns their competence and integrity. Research has showed that such attributes are under-represented in political news, in the general context of an emotional, irrational election campaign

At the meeting of European ministers responsible with higher education, which took place in Berlin in September 2003, a series of important measures were initiated; research activity and the quality assessment were declared as major priorities. Those decisions also concerned academic institutions with artistic profile, a field for which quality evaluation poses specific problems, particularly concerning the creative process. This paper presents an analytic study on the legislative and methodological documents concerning the quality assessment of the higher education institutions with artistic profile in Romania. The research aims at identifying the measure in which the specific aspects of the creative activity developed in this academic field are captured. The conclusions of the investigation are linked with some elements of Pierre Bourdieu's theory on social environment: recognition (reconnaissance) and misrecognition (méconnaissance), symbolic violence, allodoxia, autonomy, effective variables

This research examines the importance of the 1932-1934 Paris scholarship of Ştefania Cristescu (one of the most important monographists of the Gustian School), viewed both as a personal strategic choice meant to consolidate her status as an academic researcher and as an occasion for us to learn about the daily life of the interwar Romanian students in Western Europe. I discuss in this paper why it is important to develop a social history of the academic formation of the intellectual elites of modern Romania through scholarships in foreign countries.

În the last years, rational choice theory (RCT) took over a lot of the social sciences, almost polarizing discussions in sociology, such that I was able to hear questions like: are there any other theories in sociology, besides rational choice theory? Although the answer to this question is clearly yes, what seems to be important to avoid is that the moment when this theory monopolizes behavioural explanations in a multi-paradigmatic discipline should not come from partial or incomplete knowledge of it. Consequently, I decided to write this article with two goals in mind: one, to make a review of what rational choice theory is and means to sociology and secondly, to shortly present a research which questioned the structuring of social events according to this theory[1]. In the first part of this paper, I will present the main aspects of rational choice theory, such that I can argue for choosing one of its variants in the second section. In the last part I will present the methodology I used to explore the closeness of the Volunteer's Dilemma (as Diekmann (1985, 1993) proposed it) to the volunteering situation in Romania. I shall do this by aid of institutional analysis and interview analysis. The results of the research will be briefly described, such that, in the end, the conclusions can summarize the main ideas about rational choice theory emerging from this article.

This research examines the importance of the 1932–1934 Paris scholarship of Ştefania Cristescu (one of the most important monographists of the Gustian School), viewed both as a personal strategic choice meant to consolidate her status as an academic researcher and as an occasion for us to learn about the daily life of the interwar Romanian students in Western Europe. I discuss in this paper why it is important to develop a social history of the academic formation of the intellectual elites of modern Romania through scholarships in foreign countries

This study describes the structure of Traian Brăileanu’s work, Introducere însociologie (Introduction in Sociology), but also the ideas that the Romaniansociologist put forward in this work. He structured his paper into four parts: the notionof sociology, the object of sociology, sociology and the other sciences and thesociological method. In the second part of his study, he focused his interest on therelation between the human being and society, between the structure and functioningof the system in the community. The sociologist from Bucovina seeks to understandthe relation between element and system. He attempts to explain the relation betweenhuman being and system, stating that humans are involved in a multitude of relationsin their world. In this context, the Romanian professor considers that social reality,which is the object of the sociology study, is born out of the contact betweencommunities.

This study describes the structure of Traian Brăileanu’s work, Introducere în sociologie (Introduction in Sociology), but also the ideas that the Romanian sociologist put forward in this work. He structured his paper into four parts: the notion of sociology, the object of sociology, sociology and the other sciences and the sociological method. In the second part of his study, he focused his interest on the relation between the human being and society, between the structure and functioning of the system in the community. The sociologist from Bucovina seeks to understand the relation between element and system. He attempts to explain the relation between human being and system, stating that humans are involved in a multitude of relations in their world. In this context, the Romanian professor considers that social reality, which is the object of the sociology study, is born out of the contact between communities

În the last years, rational choice theory (RCT) took over a lot of the social sciences, almost polarizing discussions in sociology, such that I was able to hear questions like: are there any other theories in sociology, besides rational choice theory? Although the answer to this question is clearly yes, what seems to be important to avoid is that the moment when this theory monopolizes behavioural explanations in a multi-paradigmatic discipline should not come from partial or incomplete knowledge of it. Consequently, I decided to write this article with two goals in mind: one, to make a review of what rational choice theory is and means to sociology and secondly, to shortly present a research which questioned the structuring of social events according to this theory2. In the first part of this paper, I will present the main aspects of rational choice theory, such that I can argue for choosing one of its variants in the second section. In the last part I will present the methodology I used to explore the closeness of the Volunteer’s Dilemma (as Diekmann (1985, 1993) proposed it) to the volunteering situation in Romania. I shall do this by aid of institutional analysis and interview analysis. The results of the research will be briefly described, such that, in the end, the conclusions can summarize the main ideas about rational choice theory emerging from this article

Romanians are one of the native people from this part of Europe, the only heirs of the eastern Roman Empire. Romanians were born, as showed in historical and linguistic studies, on both sides of the Danube River, an ethnical continuity on both banks of the river, until the Slav people arrived in the 6th and 7th centuries AD. The political situation created after the First World War caused serious problems for the Aromanians in the newly created Balkan states. There were substantial population exchanges among the Balkanic countries (Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria). This situation led to the change of the ethnic composition in these countries There were three main emigration centers: Meglenia, Veria and Vodena. The idea of the Macedo-Romanians' migration to Cadrilater represents a consequence of the demographic pressure put on the Aromanian population living in Greece. The difficulties, which appeared, caused the migration to Cadrilater of an important Aromanian segment (more than 25 000), between 1925 and 1933. But these circumstances did not mean the end of their tragedy because they were displaced to Constanţa and Tulcea when territory in Cadrilater was ceded to Bulgaria (September 1940). In Dobrudja, the Macedo-Romanians are a linguistic and cultural community, but, at the same time, south-Danubian Romanians, due to hostile historical events, were forced to settle here. In their native lands, they were in contact with other Balkan people, being separated from the body of Carpathian and Danubian Romanianhood. Looking after sheep, carrying merchandise and trading were the main issues that shaped the common ethnic and linguistic aspects of survival on both sides of the Danube River. The paper is focused upon the situation and specific problems of the Aromanians living in contemporary Romania.

The issue of the various interconnections between the discourses on national self and leftist ideologies has long been an important part of the theoretical preoccupations regarding Central and Eastern Europe. The argument of Anton Allahar's paper is developed in terms of class consciousness and false consciousness and explores their role in the creation of ethnic entrepreneurs and, implicitly, of ethno-nationalism. However, what is missing is the coupling of the analysis of the formation of subjectivities - ethnic and national - with the analysis of the context they are built in.

The present paper aims to propose a schema for analysing the contemporary politics of national and ethnic identity in post-colonial and post-socialist states. To this end it will seek: (a) to provide a comprehensive operational definition of nationalism, (b) to qualify that definition by the addition of the adjective ‘ethnic,' (c) to assess the extent to which the concept ‘ethnic nationalism' can help us to understand some of the politics of ethnicity and national identity in a post-independence setting, and (d) to problematize the notion of ‘false consciousness' in ethno-national political appeals. My argument will be situated within the broad theoretical framework of a non-reductionist, neo-Marxist class analysis, for it is my conviction that ethno-national consciousness and politics are better understood if we are able to trace the concrete class interests and motives of their promoters. In other words, whether as sentiment or as movement, nationalism cannot be divorced from the class interests of its leading promoters. But one must be cautious when absolutizing the class claim, for in the specific case of ethnic nationalism, for example, Robin Williams has noted that "to dismiss ethnicity as false consciousness ignores the clear evidence that ethnies often sacrifice economic interests in favour of symbolic gains" (1994:64-65), and even beyond this, as Ronaldo Munck reminds us, "nationalism matters because people die for it" (1986:2)..

This study aims at identifying if and to what extent we can speak of the existence of gender imbalances in the field of scientific research in the European Union as a whole, but also comparatively between different countries, including the situation in Romania. After a short overview of the context in which this preoccupation appeared in European gender studies and of the possible causes which can determine this imbalance, the paper continues with a presentation of the general situation of the female/male workforce in the member states, followed by a analysis of the educational levels of women compared with men, with respect to stages of education. The study also analyzes the data on the participation of women in the field of scientific research from the point of view of share of the total, broken down by sectors of activity and scientific fields. A related focus is the participation of women in the field of higher education, according to hierarchical levels, from the perspective of access to research financing, of expenses per researchers, etc., focusing on the gender imbalances pointed out earlier and on the specificity of former communist countries.