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Although skeptics do not completely accept cyberspace as a modern but natural frame for establishing and maintaining diverse relationships, in the last few years the online environment has become a common and useful social context for those who have embraced the digital reality in their everyday life. If we rely on web sites to search information and data, pay our bills on the Internet, go for an online shopping session, why shouldn`t we search our soul-mate online? The fact that more and more individuals choose to access the Internet in order to find “that special person”, assigns the online environment as a popular way to interconnect with others. Being a relatively new subject of scientific interest on the Romanian sociological stage, the present investigation has an explorative and descriptive specific. The sociological investigation addressed in the present paper was conducted by applying an online questionnaire to individuals who form a couple with partners they have met in cyberspace. We explore and discuss the socio-demographic and cultural criteria that are standing on the basis of partner selection process in cyberspace. In the end, a synthetized model regarding these socio-demographic determinants is generated. Social homogamy, spatial proximity and physical attractiveness are outlined as the most important criteria in the online process of partner selection.

The city of Bologna (Italy) is mainly known for the rich and well-preserved history, the left-wing political opinions of its inhabitants and for the one of the lowest child birth rates in a European city. These aspects, combined with the fact that the city has the largest university in Europe in terms of number of students, shapes the local urban culture in a particular way. This paper investigates the visual manner in which some inhabitants of Bologna, collectively known as “graffers”, express themselves in an attempt to identify the characteristics of their public voice. Such expression is often in contradiction with the way in which the town officials wish to promote a certain image of Bologna based on historical tradition. The methods of visual sociology are used to analyse the graffiti in terms of locations and content, in an attempt to explain the process of socialisation in a stable and prosperous society.

In this paper we review the biases associated with the sense of personal uniqueness: better-than-average effect, illusory superiority, person-positivity bias, leniency error, sense of relative superiority, third-person effect, unrealistic optimism, illusion of control, and Lake Wobegon effect. These biases are encountered in many domains of life such as health behaviours, driving, academic life, media use, personal relationships and happiness. Explanations offered until now are either motivational (the need to increase and maintain self-esteem) or non-motivational (such as informational differences, focalism, naive realism or egocentrism). However the sociological explanations cannot be ignored, parts of these effects being discussed in known theories in the field such as spiral-of-silence (Noelle-Neumann), organic solidarity (Durkheim), social distance (Bogardus) and social systems (Parsons). Likewise, the positive effects of personal uniqueness (self-enhancement, happiness in relationships, and recovery after traumatic events) are socially constructed and the line between functional and dysfunctional is rather thin. The negative effects exist at individual level (lack of strong health prevention measures, permeability to the damaging media messages, and consumerist attitudes). At societal level, the dangers are rather neglected but may be even more serious: exacerbated personal uniqueness may conduce to an erosion of solidarity, of interpersonal and political trust, of individuality and of tolerance. Remedies are in most cases hard to find and implement, giving the complex nature of these biases, the resistance that individuals and organizations oppose to the debiasing strategies.

The paper aims to present instances of political communication during electoral processes carried out with new media tools. The high rate of Internet penetration and the spreading of social networks triggered the response on the part of political candidates, interested to reach their publics wherever possible. In addition, the development of e-democracy, e-governance and e-politics naturally produces effects in electoral processes. The 2012 parliamentary elections in Romania have as distinctive features the breakdown of constituencies into smaller units and the uninominal vote instead of the previously employed party lists. These features placed the burden of communication tasks on individual candidates, who had to resort to at least one web based communication channel during the campaign. The article is structured in five sections, as follows: the first section is dedicated to presenting the context and tools of the study. The second section views the digital communication as the new frontier to conquer for political communicators. The third is dedicated to Romanian politicians and their Internet presence. The fourth section, which is the largest, places the 2012 parliamentary elections in Timis County under the microscope and highlights the choices of communication tools preferred by the candidates coming from the two political alliances that dominated the elections, the Social Liberal Union (USL) and the Right Romania Alliance (ARD). Finally, the concluding sections discusses further research to be carried in understanding how digital technologies shape the pillar of political communication in the years to come

In the past few years, social scientists were talking more and more of an uncontrolled exposure of young people in the virtual environment. The fast development of social networking sites and of instant messaging services had radically changed the way we interact, communicate and socialize. If before you needed time to get to know someone better, to get close to someone, to make new friends, to meet other people who share your interests and beliefs, now everything seems to be just one click away. An environment where there are no socio-cultural and spatial-temporal barriers, like the virtual environment, is an environment that encourages disinhibition and self-disclosure in social relationships. Therefore, we could say that the Internet is offering us an ideal environment for fast self-disclosure. In this context, the present paper proposes to explore the theme of privacy in the virtual environment, its purpose being to identify the type of personal information which young people easily disclose online. Therefore, the present study presents a content analysis of 106 Facebook profiles, based upon a classification scheme for the information provided online. In the end, the study demonstrates that the focus of social researchers should be on the content of the information and not on the amount of information disclosed online. The study offers an overview of what young people are willing to reveal in the virtual environment and represents a first step in the research of this complex phenomenon and its social implications.

The Internet and new media are now part of some broad changes that have occurred lately related to how individuals engage in knowledge assumption and production, interaction and information seeking. While digital media are gaining more visibility and attention, both because their associated benefits and inherent dangers, a generation of youngsters is growing up in an era dominated by technological advances that might produce experiences of different kinds in their developmental processes. Although the higher use of the Internet has been accompanied by numerous hopes related to the positive outcomes it might stand for, feelings of fear and panic have also come into play when referring to the child-virtual environment alchemy. This is particularly true in the case of adults’ and public policy representatives’ perceptions of young people as inexperienced users who might easily become targets of the online dangers. Based on three focus-group discussions and using a child-centered approach, this paper presents the perspectives of 24 school teens aged 9-16 who make use of the Internet at least once a week, and explores how they actually embed this into their daily lives, and how they understand and manage risks by themselves. Comparing the answers of three samples of pupils using a focus-group approach, this analysis allowed capturing various interpretations and perceptions related to the online dangers that might occur while exploring the virtual space, by positioning young people at the center of discussions.

The paper aims to present instances of political communication during electoral processes carried out with new media tools. The high rate of Internet penetration and the spreading of social networks trigge-red the response on the part of political candidates, interested to reach their publics wherever possible. In addition, the development of e-democracy, e-governance and e-politics naturally produces effects in electoral processes. The 2012 parliamentary elections in Romania have as distinctive features the breakdown of constituencies into smaller units and the uninominal vote instead of the previously employed party lists. These features placed the burden of communication tasks on individual candidates, who had to resort to at least one web based communication channel during the campaign. The article is structured in five sections, as follows: the first section is dedicated to presenting the context and tools of the study. The second section views the digital communication as the new frontier to conquer for political communicators. The third is dedicated to Romanian politicians and their Internet presence. The fourth section, which is the largest, places the 2012 parliamentary elections in Timis County under the microscope and highlights the choices of communication tools preferred by the candidates coming from the two political alliances that dominated the elections, the Social Liberal Union (USL) and the Right Romania Alliance (ARD). Finally, the concluding sections discusses further research to be carried in understanding how digital technologies shape the pillar of political communication in the years to come.

In our paper we will briefly present the historical background of the Hungarian Colleges for Advanced Studies. These institutions in the frame of the Hungarian educational system have been for decades identified with the concepts of “elite-training” due to both historical and professional reasons. We will not only mention the foreign examples which led to the expansion of these Colleges in Hungary but we will also present which social and political factors contributed to the appearance and evolution of the colleges. We also present the Colleges for Advanced Studies which recruit students of Roma origin, trying to push forward the Roma community`s social integration through forming young intellectuals. We try to analyze the social role of both the classical and the recently founded Roma colleges, and we demonstrate through qualitative research methods whether such institutions can contribute to the social inclusion of groups multiple disadvantages. We also analyze the possibility of transferring the concept and functioning methods of the colleges to other EU member states, especially to Romania, taking into the consideration all the factors which would theoretically favor the possibility of transferring the best practices but also evaluating the aspects which would make this process more difficult, mainly as result of the various educational traditions and social attitudes towards such institutions in the two countries.

This paper intends to reevaluate the studies of Eugeniu Sperantia, the founder of axiological sociology in Romania. Starting from the importance of values in society, Sperantia analyses the spiritual dimension, the manifestation of the axiological factor in the social logic, a manifestation that creates social realities full of meaning for sociology. We can consider axiological sociology as a response of the Romanian sociology to the phenomenological theory appeared in the German cultural space, and in this line of thought in which prevails the spiritual manifestations we can also include the noological sociology, a view that seeks to understand the spiritual order of the social world. Thus, we can consider phenomenology as the most general theoretical framework, followed at an intermediate level by the axiological sociology focused on the dimension of the spiritual factors considered necessary to establish the specific determinism of sociology, and at a more restricted level, the noological sociology – a view that underlines the religious values in understanding the way society works. This theoretical perspective offers the possibility to gain access to the spiritual foundations of a society, like values or religious faiths, starting from the importance of intersubjectivity and the way that society forms itself and exists.

This article functions as a gender context for women’s participation, work and contribution to some of the sociological research and social interventions during the 1920s and the 1930s in Romania. Women and men that took part in the sociological monographic campaigns, in the royal student teams of the 1934-1938, and in the commanders’ schools within the Social Service in 1938-1939 – all coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti – did not benefit from the same civil provisions, did not have the same political rights, did not share the same social roles, and could not profit from the same professional and personal models and opportunities. In this paper I explore the main aspects concerning the social, legal, and political conditions affecting women’s lives and activities during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. I offer possible answers to such questions as: Which were the dominant gender roles and expectations before and after WWI? What were the parameters of the negotiation space used by women who fit only partially their pre-defined roles? What educational and professional opportunities existed for women? Which were the main attempts at social change and even contestation of the patriarchal order initiated and carried out by women’s organizations? What arguments and strategies did women’s movements mobilized for promoting their civil and political emancipation objectives?

The following paper is an attempt to place and understand Henri H. Stahl's vision on Romania's rural development. Stahl's view, to be found in a series of articles written for the Romanian newspaper "Ecoul" in January-March 1944, links him to a multidimensional context. We follow multiple paths - we trace the history of Stahl's own political and sociological views on rural development and of the rise of a particular political view on rural development - the cooperative movement; then, we trace the attempts to change Romania's external policy and to promote a viable solution to the country's rural development problems that are contemporary to Stahl's articles. We thus find that H. H. Stahl's sociological vision of rural development may be understood only as the result of a complex interaction between personal lifecourse, social networks, political ideologies and action and international relations, all within a certain historical course of events.

This paper, aiming to clarify the Professor Gusti’s position within the government between 1932 and 1933, tries to gather necessary arguments against the belief which emerged in the fifties and still valid until present days, that Dimitrie Gusti was promoted in the government of the Peasantry Party because he was a good specialist and technician, and not because his political choice towards Peasantry Party. Besides the significant antecedents which prove the permanent and powerful connection with the elite of the Peasantry Party since the beginning of the 20s, he also had an interest in the villages. The Professor’s political behavior during governing might be described by loyalty and dedication in order to fulfill the governing programme of the party. More than that, Dimitrie Gusti, even in 1934, when the National Peasantry Party was in opposition, he claimed the accuracy of its political programme and participated in the conception of the Party’s new programme. The clarification of the professor’s position within the Peasantry Party government period is suitable especially for the analysis of his ideological position, which still arises perfectly justified debates. This analysis is legitimate not only for clearing the Professor’s position, but also for the National Peasantry Party.

The fact that the Social Service Law was passed in 1938, when Romania ceased to be a democratic regime, has converted this action into a specific measure for states with a totalitarian regime. This generated the lack of discussions regarding the causes that led to the passing of this law, as well as the label of `utopian` measure. In fact, these two different approaches fail to bring any clarifications in debating the subject. The present paper emphasizes the idea that the compulsory social service represented the final stage in combating the effects of intellectual unemployment in interwar Romania. This phenomenon, which in turn was caused by the ”overcrowding of the universities” both in Romania and Europe, was also debated by Walter Kotsching. In his analysis called Unemployment in Learned Professions, Kotschnig identified three types of measures capable of limiting the negative effects of the intellectual unemployment, being convinced that intellectual unemployment would lead to political radicalization. Kotsching’s classification refers to emergency measures, restrictive and distributive ones. In the author’s opinion, social service is a form of emergency measures, giving the example of Arbeit Camps from Germany and of the Civilian Conservative Corpes from USA. In Romania, the legislative genealogy of the social service is found in Legea muncii pentru interes obştesc [The labor law for community interest], passed in the spring of 1937. It must be stated that the Social Service Law represented a mechanism of recruiting human resources for the Dimitrie Gusti’s project of ”mapping” the 15.000 Romanian villages. But it is equally true that this measure represented a part of the project of social control implemented by King Carol 2nd over the Romanian youth. It was a way of redirecting the Romanian youth out of the legionary movement ideology and making it adhere to the new regime of royal dictatorship.

In this paper, we analyse the way in which positive communication of European knowledge produces a series of perverse effects at the level of Romanian public administration, effects that take the form of an avoidance strategy. In other words, confronted with certain change requirements, Romanian public institutions react by decoupling the structural aspects from their specific activities. This form of resistance is unconscious, passive and continuously interiorized through the relationship and interaction with the elements of change. Instead of dislocating an inertial state of mind which is specific to the ‘iron cage’ of bureaucracy, the positive communication regarding europeanization and the formal embracement of all its components and regulations, does nothing else but consolidate and even resuscitate this state of sufficiency and passive compliance. In order to better understand the Romanian public administration’s reaction to change, we introduce the concept of bureaucratic spleen. This oxymoronic concept points out the apparent paradox of simultaneous acceptance and rejection, change and resistance to change, and that of a cognitive tacit state of mind that is antagonistic to its own explicit dimension, all of these manifested along an emotional background of melancholy and assumed sufficiency, in the context of a major change process, the Europeanization of Romanian public administration.

The individual career, defined by all positions, strategies and changes that occurr in a lifetime, depends heavily on educational and social experiences that are preceding it or accompaning it. Career planning is particularly important for both the individual and the organization. A realistic career plan makes the individual perceive opportunities in relation to his own possibilities; he will be more motivated and the likelyhood to be satisfied will be much higher. In this context, the paper presents the results of a study carried out on successive series of students enrolled in the last year of study of a masters program in tourism at the Faculty of Commerce, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest. The research examined over two academic years (2011-2013) the extent to which students were aware of themselves in terms of a career in tourism. Three dimensions of awareness were followed: the self, the strategy required to manage a successful career and the opportunity to develop a career in tourism. The results are of interest not only to students and universities that offer such programs, but also to employers. One important conclusion is that professional counseling centers should receive more attention. It could be a joint project of universities and business.

The present study wants to bring a new approach of studying the Roma community based on a shift of perception which will end up depicting a completely new image of this population. We hoped that this survey of the upper social segment of the Roma – intellectuals, community leaders, and businessmen – would make a contribution to changing the negative perception of the Roma by the majority population. The objectives of my paper are closed related with some more important reasons of my previous survey approach of the Roma population: First, we wanted to create a more balanced and complete (self-) image of the Roma population and to change the perception of the majority population on the Roma people. This survey produced a more realistic and comprehensive image of different life situations present in the Roma community. Second, we wanted to create more optimism regarding the possibility to improve the life of the Roma and to motivate their actions towards overcoming underdevelopment using the power of their elite group. According to the C. Wright Mills ‘definition for the power elite, the success stories can become social models for the rest of the Roma community, proving the actual possibility of social mobility and success among Roma population. In this way, C. Wright Mills pointed out: “The power elite is composed of men whose positions enable them to transcend the ordinary environments of ordinary men and women; they are in positions to make decisions having major consequences” (Grusky and Szelenyi, 2007, 87). The success life stories can become social models for the rest of the Roma community, proving that social mobility and success are possible among the Roma. Third, the strategy of success by modernisation might consolidate the Roma's educational and professional outcomes, an important predictor of personal success in their professional career towards a highly desirable social status.

The aim of the paper is to show how the variety of approaches to study social change may result in a challenging complexity for the social scientist, starting from the difficulty of defining the concept of “change” itself and managing it through observed data. This is particularly true in presence of complex phenomena, such as those defining and composing the quality of life. What should be pointed out is that quality of life studies not only are focused on the present time but have also long term perspectives. This represents the link between studies on quality of life and forecasting. When applied to the field of quality of life, the typical logical approach to forecasts, based upon inferential statistics, could reveal its limits. Those limits are related to different aspects: e.g., the forms of relationships between different aspects of the phenomenon, which can be linear and non-linear; the dimensionality of phenomenon, which can turn out to be very complex; the causality, which could be direct or indirect; the entity of change, which implies the idea that also small change can have great impact; the perspective of observation, which can be internal or external and local or global. Consequently, the study of change related to quality of life needs, in addition to the traditional statistical tools as well as the tradition of social indicators, a different approach. Although the Futures Studies are not a proper science, nevertheless their approach to social research may ensure the requested accuracy of a scientific forecasting process.

Over the two decades post-Revolution, the evolution of juvenile delinquency in Romania was influenced both by the emergence of new "risk" factors, such as: lack of jobs, poverty of the population, increasing families with 'problems' and the number of abandoned children, intensification of destructuring of traditional families, changing family model promoted by society, decresing the role of social institutions involved in the formation of young personality, and as well the ineffective system for reintegrating juvenile offenders, through the abolition of institutions included in this system. In this paper, we intend to make a diagnosis of the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency, in the county Caras-Severin, focused mainly on crimes of theft, and identifying the most effective measures for the prevention of this phenomenon. In this sense, after we make a brief review of the main explanatory paradigm of juvenile delinquency, we first identify criminogenic individual factors, family and relational involved in juvenile delinquency identified in the county Caras-Severin, then based on analyzes and statistical correlations, we establish relations between criminal elements identified, and then finally we try to develop a predictive model of risk factors in committing acts of theft. Based on the findings, we identify several intervention measures that can be applied in the county Caras-Severin, to prevent and reduce juvenile delinquency.

Social exclusion affects not only some social groups, that belongs to this category, but also the society as a whole. Hence, in order to ensure the community welfare, it is desirable to fight against social exclusion. In the first part of the paper, I have put forward the theoretical framework of the social exclusion. Next, I have illustrated a general overview of Romanians incomes after 1989, since their relevance is emphasized in most of the studies on social exclusion. I have examined the dynamics of incomes and I have pointed out the fluctuation of real incomes, as well as the magnitude of social groups confronted with this problem. I have continued with an analysis of the legal framework of social protection, in order to grasp the approach used to solve the lack of financial resources of the vulnerable groups. In the last part of the study, I have focused on the empirical analysis of the social exclusion determinants, in order to circumscribe from the social body the vulnerable parts. After I described the independent variables and operationalized the dependent variable, I have analyzed the available databases, by logistic regression analyses, and I have set forth the determinants of social exclusion, amongst the most important being families living in households with children, that increase the social exclusion, and a high level of education, that helps fight the social exclusion. Therefore, the paradigm of the social exclusion, which emphasizes the influence of the social and demographic characteristics of the individuals, it is proven to have a considerable explicative power.

The paper „The impact of social media on political communication” aims to emphasize the changes brought by new technologies, via social media, to political communication, as an unprecedented transformation of the communication between a politician and the ordinary potential elector. Following the rise of the internet and the success of social networks, political communication adapted to the web structure by means of the online interaction of the two actors in the public scene. Social media is a relatively new concept, used rather than defined in the specialised literature. Therefore, after a brief definition and a diachronic presentation of the concept, we intend to describe the new features of political communication used by politicians by means of new communication techniques, providing examples wherever possible. New media, a form of mass communication, was a constant topic of our concern, and, therefore, approaching the social media phenomenon is nothing but a natural consequence of our previous studies. The article is structured into two chapters, as follows: The first chapter deals with the social media phenomenon and the changes it brought to political communication. The second chapter concerns the social media – political communication which will highlight the reviving of political communication through social media, leading us to assert that, through social media, political communication tends to become – in Dominique Boullier’s terms – net-politique (internet politics). The bibliographic references we made use of in describing this theme come from the Anglofrancophone research area, but also from the Romanian specialised literature.

Abstract: The article discusses issues connected with current multiculturalism. The paper is divided into several, general sections including discussion about the presence of multiculturalism in a modern world. The terms of multiculturalism and interculturalism are explained. Also, focusing on problems, occuring due to misunderstanding or different understanding of concept, with defying these phenomen. Considerations are based on attempt to answer questions that are usually asked by intercultural education: ?Who are we?? , ?How we live together?? , ?how we cooperate together?? Further parts of article contain definition of basic terms and determination of their ranges. Highlighting the relation between multiculturalism and identity while taking into consideration different perceptions of muliticultural and intercultural education. Including experiences from other countries in multicultural area. Thus, while introducing this issues various sources of multicultularism are presented. FromCanada,United States andAustralia to European experiences. Remembering about directions and trends of multiculturalism occuring inEurope as well as to paying attention to a contemporary problem, that one can see different response to otherness. Including current phenomenon like development of of separatist movements, politicization of cultural identity or increasing social, cultural and political role of all minorities. Finally, reference was made to occurrence of national and ethnic minorities inPoland and to local experiences fromLubuszLand.

We often discuss divorce and migration because of the social, economical or psychological effects. When children are involved the issue becomes even more sensitive. The recent theories and research underline the importance of intrafamilial processes, more than that of divorce or migration per se. The present paper focuses on the statistical connections between the family type (intact or separated because of migration or divorce), the quality of parent-child relationship as independent variables and the possible effects on children: self esteem, smoking, alcohol consumption and school adjustment as dependent variables. The responders are students in the schools of Cluj County, Romania. The results showed rather small or no effect of family type, but significant effects of the parent-child relationship on child outcome. The relationship with the mother holds the most important statistical effect on children’s self esteem, alcohol consumption and school adjustment; and I also find to be interesting that almost 25% of the responders ignored at least one of the questions regarding the relationship with their father. Parents can learn from the results the importance of a good relationship with their children, and it is also important for the policy makers to consider that the absence of a parent, regardless of the cause, holds a negative effect on children’s school grades.

The unprecedented development of the Internet in contemporary world and its increasing influence in people’s life produce, inevitably, an impact on religious practice. This paper is interested to analyze the manners Internet and web-based religious communication affects New Religious Movements’ public discourses and the manner these groups’ construct their own religious messages to atract more adherents, via Internet. We intend to demonstrate that communication through Internet positively influences the way NRMs construct their own religious messages to atract new adherents, that NRMs’ public discourse is influenced by their self-positioning as cultural and religious alternatives, and also by extensive Internet usage in disseminating and constructing their religious discourse. As Internet impacts most religious groups’ communication we want to underline those elements specific to NRMs’ communication. To depict the specificity of Internet’s impact on NRMs’ discourse we’ll first underline some general transformations within religious life and practice induced by longterm social changes, like modernization or globalization. These generate deep cultural transformation on people’s mentality, and religion become, in Western societies, rather a cultural product (Beckford), a projects of the autonomous self (Hoover) dominated by a turn to subjective-life (Woodhead). Mediatization of religion (Hjarvard) generates interesting phenomenons, like “banal religion” (Hjarvard), “hyper-religion” (Possamai) or “cultural religion” (Albanese), while the Internet creates many posibilities of action on religious field for any individual. From challenging traditional religious authorities to creation of a new churchless religion, the Internet allows, especially to New Religious Movements, to attract more followers using the Internet. After these demarcations we’ll underline the specific effects of Internet on NRMs’ discourse. As these groups are much interested in attracting new followers and being more persuasive to outsiders, their public discourses become less traditional, less theological and more flexible, more marketized and follower-oriented.

In describing folk cultures, documentary resources such as the oral traditions and craft artifacts appear generally to be forms of „saying” and, respectively, „making” one’s ethnic identity. Thus, the hypothesis according to which vernacular evocations could contribute to the restoring of some specific community origins (either legendary, or historical ones) is accompanied by the assumption that artifacts would reflect certain cycles of events responsible for cultural developments and trajectories of the ethnic groups, once the founding of them – mythical or historical – would have occurred. Narratives and the material culture are obviously interdependent with each other, within either historical or ethnographic contextualization, since the legends and the life histories come to be „illustrated” in the ornamental artisanship, while the techniques of traditional arts are learned and passed on by „word of mouth” and by an ethno-folkloric recognition of past craftsmen’s contributions. In my paper, ethno-cultural belongingness has, therefore, to be validated based on the local coherence and substantiation of ethnicity, first in the framework of several minority groups that have been investigated in the course of our current research (the Căldărars, the Lipovans, the Rudars, the Saxons, the Szeklers, the Tatars, and the Turks), and then in the cross-cultural interpretation of them.

In this paper I will try to reconstitute some aspects of the everyday reality in the collectivized village in the seventh and eighth decades of the last century. I will focus on Aluniş village from the Benesat commune, Sălaj County, a village situated on Someş Valley, on the railway connecting cities Jibou and Baia Mare. The reconstruction is based on the memories, written almost daily, of a villager, Paşca Alexa, who was a former political prisoner. Beyond the inevitable subjectivity of such notes, they point to the daily fight for survival of the villagers, the strategies used to meet the challenges of the communist regime, and also they capture the acuity end of the peasantry, against the background of major social processes of the communist period. Using a contextual-localist methodological perspective based on everyday life testimonies, I tried to show that the communist regime cannot be catalogued in a reductionist and abstract way. It is, like any social structure, a builder of historicity, even if it implied a great human drama. Within the proposed approach I have tried to restore fragments of everyday life during the communist regime. I followed both relations of population with the authority and interpersonal relationships within the rural communities, which constitute the subjects of the diaries.

In this article I address the pluralistic ideological and political format of an intellectual and research group active in interwar Romania, and the difficulties raised by this characteristic in situating the group in one fixed and monolithic ideological or political cluster. After World War I and the Paris Peace Treaty, the provinces of Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina were annexed to the Old Kingdom, and “Greater” Romania came into existence, bringing about difficult and complex problems of nation building and social reform. Sociological research and social action seemed one possible way of addressing the crisis of Romanian society. Thus, during the late 1920s and especially in the 1930s, a large social and national research and action program emerged. In this paper I argue that the Bucharest Sociological School functioned as an intellectual and sociological research group whose ideological and political development and orientation mirrored the Romanian public sphere, thus ensuring the School a pluralistic format. The primary research method is analysis of the some of the oral history documents provided by Zoltán Rostás’ broad project of interviewing the members of the School mostly during the 1980s. I compare the discourses of the first and the second generations of monographers as recorded in oral history interviews with the goal to provide an alternate reading of the ideological and political orientations of the Sociological School founded and coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti.

The study presents a public awareness campaign, part of a World Bank financed Project to support the social and economic regeneration of the mining areas, severely affected by the restructuring – practically, disappearance – of the extractive industry in Romania. The paper presents the key theoretical models used for a campaign on a community based project but which has also used dissemination and social marketing techniques. The communication strategy is based on a very extensive quantitative and qualitative research at the level of the mining areas of the country. Key groups (active and passive from an informational point of view) are identified and their attributes and informational needs and key communication vectors are detailed. The objectives of the campaign are to raise awareness on the Project components, the opportunities for the individuals and aims to change the behavior of the passive population to become an active seeker of information regarding available opportunities. The communication strategy presented is supported by a national and local media campaign, blended with the setting up and functioning of a network of over 110 Public Information Points (PIP) located mainly in Mayors’ offices. PIPs provide easily accessible data and guidance on social assistance measures and other information aimed at improving their livelihoods, including job opportunities. The results of the campaign, estimated based on end of project evaluations, appear to have had a positive impact on the population in view of the results of the project and the impact on attitudes regarding civic participation, competition, social capital.

In this paper I aim to discuss the role played by public intellectuals in interwar Romania starting from a series of recent analyses relative to this period, analyses which state that these intellectuals were „ensnared” by the fascination of totalitarianism. I do not intend to claim that the stances against the democratic political system – manifested by the most representative intellectuals of interwar Romania – are specific only to the Romanian area but on the contrary, I aim to include them in a populist trend which became manifest in the interwar period, either in the form of fascism or in that of bolshevism. Such an approach, which subscribes to the above mentioned analyses, takes a position „against” a particular contemporary intellectual trend, which projects retrospectively, a „romantic” perspective on the Romanian interwar period. A possible explanation for this state of affairs stems from the fact that, in post-communism, the axiological recovery of the interwar period has been an attempt to make a historical compensation for the totalitarian-based social engineering of the communist age. Although understandable from a symbolical perspective, this vision does not annul the fact that the interwar itself was a period which encompassed totalitarian political and social attitudes, even if the latter did not have the impact of those specific to the communist dictatorship. In any case, by positionning themselves against the democratic organisation of society and by conveying the idea of a „historical necessity” which claimed „another type of politics”, the most important intellectuals of the interwar period supported and, in some cases, even justified totalitarian attitudes and political decisions.

In this article I will seek to bring to the fore a current which, until now, escaped the attention of those who study the problem of the young interwar generation: the monographist current or the one inspired by the Sociological School founded by Dimitrie Gusti. The question is to what extent such current can be identified. This research will provide just a few clues on a possible answer, not a full-fledged investigation. Also, this research is not one on the history of sociological ideas, being framed within the social history approaches of the Gustian School inspired by Zoltan Rostás. I show in this paper that the monographist current is originated in the early twenties of the interwar period, as an alternative to the radical student’s movement witch later will be dominated by the legionaries. The main feature of the monographists is their non-ideological and analytical approach of the realities of the time, as opposed to the highly ideological and radical legionaries, and their action-oriented stance, as opposed to the theoretical „essayists”(Eliade, Cioran, Noica). The monographist current is also much more institutionalized, being a public extension of the Gustian School, not merely a cultural or a political fashion. An important notice is that the Gustian monography as such begins with the youth problem of the interwar Romania, before it will return to the villages.

Artykuł przedstawia niektóre aspekty współczesnej, toczonej w naukach społecznych, dyskusji na temat komunikacji. W powszechnym przekonaniu mamy do czynienia z głębokimi przemianami komunikacji nie tylko względem intensywności, tempa i skali komunikacji. Pojawiły się także nowe formy komunikacji i nowe media. Ich konsekwencje społeczne, o których twierdzi się, że są równie głębokie jak te, które kiedyś spowodowało upowszechnienie się pisma i druku, są jednym z najważniejszych tematów badań nauk społecznych. Rozwój nowych mediów sprawia, że w teorii komunikacji następuje odejście od klasycznego rozumienia komunikacji, w którym oznacza ona relację interpersonalną – porozumiewanie się świadomych podmiotów, osób. Komunikacja bezpośrednia pozostaje jednak niezbywalnym wymiarem ludzkiego życia, a dyscypliny takie jak pedagogika nie mogą zrezygnować z rozumienia jej jako relacji interpersonalnej. Komunikacja jest także coraz ważniejszą areną rywalizacji o władzę i środkiem jej sprawowania. Aby być skutecznym w polityce, trzeba umieć się komunikować zarówno z własnym społeczeństwem, jak i umieć oddziaływać na inne społeczeństwa. Także w stosunkach międzynarodowych komunikacja odgrywa coraz istotniejszą rolę i staje się świadomie stosowanym narzędziem politycznym. This paper presents some aspects of the contemporary discussion on communication in social sciences. According to the prevailing opinion we experience a profound change in the intensity, pace and scale of communication. Moreover, new forms of communication and new media have emerged. Their social consequences, which – as it is claimed – pare as profound as those which had resulted after the diffusion of writing and print, are one of the most important research topics in contemporary social sciences. The development of new media is one of the reasons why communication theory often breaks with the classical understanding of communication, which based on interpersonal relationships – the communication of conscious subjects, persons. Yet direct communication remains an indispensable dimension of human life, and disciplines such as pedagogy cannot resign to refer to the understanding of communication as interpersonal relationship. Communication is also an increasingly important arena of power competition and a tool of exercising it. To be effective in politics one must be able to communicate both with their own society, and be able to interact with other societies. Also in international relations, communication plays an increasingly important role and becomes a political tool consciously used.

The first objective of this paper is to shed light on the advantages of a naturalistic approach for social sciences and to show that Laurence Kaufmann and Laurent Cordonier cannot be accused of reductionism. However, if a form of compatibilism between social and cognitive sciences is necessary, there are certain characteristics of social sciences that cannot be tackled by a strict experimental approach. On the one hand, the role of the social sciences is to give meaning to complex historical realities that cannot be enclosed in a laboratory. One the other hand, experimental results have to be completed with field observations. And last but not least, understanding human forms of life involves an existential involvement from the observer who cannot reduce what s/he is studying to a mere « object » of inquiry. To understand « what it is like » to be a Bororo or a bewitched, the scientist has to be personally affected by the form of life s/he is studying.

The paper aims to describe the results of a research project on green consumption conducted in Bucharest, Romania, and Minsk, Belarus, in 2010 and 2011. A total of 30 structured interviews were carried out in the two cities. Using the theoretical framework of Beck’s risk society concept and Inglehart’s theory on the cultural value shift in advanced societies, the authors found that, regardless of their important political and economic differences, some of the individuals in the two Eastern European cities tend to display a level of risk awareness and risk avoidance behavior similar to the risk society pattern. Rather than being the effect of a post-materialist value orientation associated with material wealth, the observed regional model of green consumption suggests a form of precautionary consumption that appears to be more than a passing fad. This finding has to be further researched in other countries of Eastern Europe before any broader conclusions about risk society-related behavior can be formulated.

Artykuł opowiada się za wysoką pozycją sztuki tanecznej w naukach humanistycznych. Jako, że taniec jest zakorzeniony w ludzkim ciele, tworzenie tańca oznacza tworzenie istoty ludzkiej. Składa się to na autentyczną sferę antropologicznej twórczości. Można zatem powiedzieć, że taniec jest antropologiczny i antropocentryczny. Stanowisko to znajduje swoje korzenie w tradycji helleńskiej, gdzie paideutyczna formacja społeczeństwa wolnych ludzi uwzględniała ćwiczenia fizyczne, głównie taniec zjednoczony z muzyką i słowem. Ludzkie ciało było tam postrzegane jako boska świątynia najszlachetniejszych ludzkich zdolności, które poddawane były ciągłemu szkolenia i doskonaleniu. Przedstawiono listę współczesnych dłużników Greków na tym polu w celu wykazania nieśmiertelności helleńskich idei wychowawczych przez tysiąclecia. Innym aspektem rozprawy są wzajemne relacje pomiędzy estetyką i etyką poprzez proces szkolenia w tańcu. The paper advocates the high position of the art of dance in the humanities. Since the dance is embedded in the human body, creating dance stands for creating human being. This makes up an authentic realm of the anthropological creativity. Thus one can say that dance is anthropological and anthropocentric. The stand is rooted in the Hellenic tradition, where paideutic formation of the society of free men included physical exercises, predominantly dance united with music and word. In this the human body was perceived as a god-like temple of the noblest human faculties that were the subject of constant training and melioration. The list of modern “debtors” to the Greeks in this field is presented to instantiate the immortality of Hellenic educational ideas across millennia. Another aspect of the discourse is the interrelation between aesthetics and ethics through the training process in dance.

Celem recenzji jest zaprezentowanie znanego naukowego czasopisma – jego dziewięciu ostatnich numerów opublikowanych od 2002 roku w Polsce. Temat omawianych artykułów zawartych w każdym numerze półrocznika „Horyzonty Wychowania” był analizowany na dwa sposoby. Pierwszym była analiza ilościowa, czyli zastosowano ocenę treści najbardziej popularnych krajowych i społecznych czasopism pedagogicznych; a drugim – z punktu widzenia kilku tematów, utożsamionych w każdym z wybranych numerów z powszechnymi naukowymi europejskimi problemami pedagogicznymi oraz ich pochodnymi wówczas, gdy zajmowały kluczowe miejsce w danym artykule. Autor podejmuje próbę zwrócenia uwagi czytelnika na unikatowy i naukowo uzasadniony charakter recenzowanego czasopisma. Wszystkie numery stanowią obszerne opracowania w zakresie próby określenia procesów i ich odrębności dla teoretycznych implikacji w okresie anomii, anomalii, nieprawidłowości i zmiany społecznej. The purpose of this review article is to present a comparative analysis of a well-known scientific journal – its last nine issues published since 2002 inPoland. The subject of the discussed papers included in each issue of the semi-annual journal “Horizons of Education” was analyzed in two ways. The first one was quantitative analysis, i.e. the assessment of the contents was applied to the most popular national and social educational journals; and the second one, from the point of view of several topics, which were identified in each of the chosen issues with general scientific European educational problems and their consequences when their place was essential in the body of a given article. The author makes an attempt to draw the reader’s attention to the unique and scientifically justified character of the reviewed journal. All issues constitute comprehensive studies as far as an attempt to conceptualize processes and their identity for theoretical implications in the period of anomy, anomaly, irregularity and social change.

The paper presents the results of a qualitative research investigating the barriers in the school inclusion of disadvantaged students (low socio-economic status, Roma ethnicity, migrated parents) from seven vocational schools in ClujNapoca. We conducted four focus groups with 32 disadvantaged vocational school students (aged 15–19) and 82 interviews with 34 vocational school teachers, seven vocational school principals, six vocational school psychologists, five school inspectors from Cluj County School Inspectorate and 30 professionals from eight educational NGOs from Cluj-Napoca. Data have shown that students’ lack of interest in school is not only related to lesson content, but mainly to: (a) the difficulties of establishing a close connection with the teachers, of feeling teachers want to help them, rather than just punish them; (b) the high levels of violence in school and the lack of a firm reaction from adults; (c) the lack of a sense of belonging to their class, due to their low income – which impedes them from participating in more group activities that would allow them to know their classmates and develop a group identity. However, the teachers and school inspectors believe that the inclusion problems of the disadvantaged students are due to their families’ lack of involvement in the educational process, and to the lack of training programmes focused on the specific needs of disadvantaged students. The results helped us understand what are the mechanisms behind (un)successful school inclusion in vocational schools and the educational practices in schools with a high rate of low SES students.

Having a disabled child brings strong hardships for the families, with major implications in all spheres of family life. The emotional and financial burden on caregivers may be lightened by support from authorities, family and friends. In this paper we will focus on the effect of received support on the subjective wellbeing of the caregivers. Parents from 172 families living in Bihor County, Romania, have been interviewed, using a questionnaire that measures subjective well-being (life satisfaction), social support from friends, relatives, specialized services in the area, and perceived respect from the community. While income is positively related to life satisfaction, mothers reported lower subjective well-being than males, controlling for other demographics, which seems to show that they are more affected by their child disability. The amount of support received from friends in activities related to child and respect from the communities have a positive influence on subjective well-being of the caregiver, when controlling for socio-demographics and other types of support. On the other hand, emotional support from friends in negatively correlated with subjective well-being. We suppose this was a spurious correlation, this kind of support being regularly associated with dissolution of the family under the pressure of hardships generated by child disability.

The access to paid work is now an intricate part of the hardcore feminist research agenda, mainly from two different perspectives: either from a moral stand that considers it a good thing for women - a construction that relies on the concept of subtle revolution (meaning that private institutions from within the family change at a slowly but steady pace towards empowering women as a result of their involvement on the labor market) - or from a different perspective, that is mainly concerned with the tensions between the performance of traditional and patriarchal roles and those associated with the actual status of women playing an active part on the labor market, the tensions between career and family life, and of the double burden of women. The main research question of my paper is: How do women perceive their involvement on the labor market and how does this specific form of participation is reflected in their everyday life? My results show the link between paid work and women’s empowerment, and also the way in which this empowerment is (re-)interpreted according to the patriarchal norms (which, in their turn, are deeply internalized by the subjects). Thus, participation in the labor market (involving remuneration) is valued both from the view of income providing and economic independence, but especially for the potential of generating a particular framework in which women could manifest themselves autonomously as individuals, professionals and citizens, directly contributing to the social welfare, not only to that of their own family. These women are simultaneously doing the housework and caring labors due to the gender roles, therefore their double labor day being assumed as a manifestation of their independence.

The shrinking phenomenon represents a natural trend into the evolution of an urban community. Usually it comes together with economical decline, unemployment, house vacancy, perforation of the urban grid, local budget decreasing and so on. Timisoara has loosed around 14% of population in almost 2 decades. Can be this considerate a signal for the shrinking process? This paper is based on the partial results of the project FP7 no.225193 “ShrinkSmart – The Governance of the Shrinkage into the European Context”, financed by European Commission, Theme 8 Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities 2009-2012 (http://www.shrinksmart.ufz.de/). West University of Timisoara is partner into the consortium of this project, together with 7 other European Universities. The team from West University of Timisoara is composed from Melinda Dincă, Dan Lucheş, Delia Nadolu and Bogdan Nadolu (the coordonator)

The paper is about the future of development of traditional industrial regions after their restructuring. Creating of tourist trails based on industrial heritage is shown as a good pattern of actions striving to revitalization of such areas. As a confirmation there are presented two examples of post-industrial tourist routs in Europe: “The Industrial Heritage Trail” in Ruhr Metropolitan Area (Germany) and “Industrial Monuments Route of the Silesian Voivodeship” in Metropolitan Association of Upper Silesia (Poland). Regions in which these trail are located are simultaneously very similar and much different so there are compared both determinants and consequences of creating there these tourist routs. As a result it is ascertained that in spite of the difficulties in adaptations of industrial facilities into tourist objects such actions are profitable and may help in further development of traditional industrial regions.

New communication and transport technologies importantly influence the understanding of time-space relations in the micro context of local communities. These influences, usually placed under the common denominator of globalization, seem to affect i.e. transform spatial values and challenge the established interpretations of what is perceived to be traditional, authentic, genuine and local. The paper gives a small insight into the processes of socio-spatial transformation in Slovenia and shows the extensiveness of globalization process on the case of ‘new localism’. Although new localism at the first glance resembles i.e. mimics ‘localism’, it profoundly differs from it on the value basis. Localism can be best described as a relation between place, understood as a space, which is relatively small and limited, and social phenomena that occur in it. This relationship is valorised (ideologised) from the point of observer or actor and becomes a part of his identity. New localism is in this sense more open that localism but still emphasizes the necessity of certain special values, which should be present on the locality. These special values often include aspirations for the transformation of current localities that deny some of the inevitable influences of globalisation process. In fact, a great number of present localities in Slovenia try to reinforce the feeling of community and use different spatial techniques to obtain these objectives. Some of these spatial techniques are much disputable as they are exclusive towards specific cultural representations, groups of people and may even on the long-term scale negatively effect the socio-economic development of Slovenia. This shift from old to new localism in Slovenia is analysed through data from various research projects that were carried out at the Centre for Spatial Sociology in Ljubljana.

The paper analyzes the dynamics of electoral participation and its predictors in Romania, using both official data on turnout and post-electoral surveys’ data. Turnout in the Romanian parliamentary elections has declined by over 50% in the last 20 years of democratic reconstruction. However, turnout decline is unevenly distributed, being more dramatic in the last decade especially in the urban areas as well as among younger cohorts of voters. The decline of turnout in parliamentary elections is also accompanied by a shift in the importance of the predictors of voting. The analyses of electoral participation and its predictors suggest that voting in the Romanian parliamentary elections has become the attribute of a minority of citizens who still feel closer to a political party, are interested in politics, trust the political institutions and leaders, ideologically place themselves at the extremes of the left-right axis, and of those who are more exposed to mobilization attempts both because they live in smaller communities in the rural areas which are more easily controlled by local political leaders or because they are part of social networks that are influenced by political parties or politicians. This is the “hard core” of a generally apathetic electorate which is unconfident in the efficacy of elections as a tool for producing social transformations, a public which is becoming less and less demanding with the politicians after the subsequent disappointments with the democratic governance after 1989.

Analyses of global cities and competitiveness have become dominant in urban studies debates in recent years, putting the focus on the identity of the city and the global economic processes in which it is involved. This attention has been misleading because it has taken attention away from ordinary cities and other aspects of the urban process. The analytical frame for this city renaissance can be described as a combination between the ‘hard’ laws of the new and classic urban economy with ‘soft’ elements of other, often geographical, approaches. ‘Creative City’ analyses in mainstream versions such as those of Florida regard immaterial elements as knowledge and creativity to be essential dimensions for success in post-industrial cities and can be considered the perfect synthesis of the approaches quoted above. In this paper the methodological and theoretical bases of these mainstream policies will be challenged. The case of Rome will be analysed in order to demonstrate that the Creative City narrative can be applied as a label to secondary cities, but that it fails to understand the very core of social mechanisms in a city.

Among other phenomena of epistemological relevance, the Romanian anthropological literature is currently characterized by a research orientation to the study of minority or ethno-cultural groups, which, due to the continuous development of thematic working themes and objectives, reveals an important theoretical resource for the scientific horizon of cultural anthropology. In this paper, I shall discuss first the categories of analysis in the Romanian anthropological documentation and interpretation of ethnicity, in an attempt to concretize the conceptual vocabulary specific to such a disciplinary approach. Afterwards, I shall identify some thematic correspondences (as represented by terminological series) between ethnographic accounts that belong to local communities of Szeklers, Saxons, Căldărars, Rudars, and Lipovans. My article is intended to contribute to the clarifying of anthropological criteria in the study of ethnicity, to the extent to which language, ethno-history, territoriality, sociality, economy, ethos, and worldview might be accounted for conceptual landmarks within a comparative investigation on the ethno-cultural variability. As will be argued, establishing some correlations between theoretical categories and ethnographic accounts is to develop perspectives of a conceptual continuum with a heuristic potential for the understanding of the ethnic facts, and of the critical reflection upon them, as well.

The paper discusses the symbolic capital of Saxonness in the Romanian and Transylvanian public sphere and its uses as a political and cultural resource. I am examining the historical representations of Saxonness and the local, national and European context in which they are activated and re-signified, acquiring contemporary meanings. I focus on the mechanisms behind the political support of Klaus Johannis, representative of The German Democratic Forum in Romania, the Saxon mayor of the city of Sibiu (Transylvania), currently serving his third four-year long mandate. My analysis will attempt to capture the relation between his noteworthy success as elected local representative and the apparently contradictory local demographic evolution: a Saxon minority whose numbers dropped severely in the last decades, reaching a lower limit of under 2% of the total local population. The study explores some of the possible mechanisms that lie at the foundation of the contemporary political capital of Saxonness in Sibiu, by focusing on the salience of ethnicity in elections media discourse and in the collective imagery as reflected in the Ethnobarometer, supported by historical arguments of the “myth of the Saxon”.

In social life, people try to know, to build, to maintain, to change, to destroy and to avoid hierarchies. At the social level, the hierarchical systems are considered to be desirable for their capacity to increase efficiency, communication and control in the human actions, and undesirable for generating stratification of social actors, impeding participation and democracy. In this paper we focused on the consistency of the hierarchies, answering to the question of what happens when one and the same person hierarchizes the same set of objects using two different ways. We applied this in a particularly research field - the work motivation – being interested to study the consistency of the hierarchies of satisfaction sources. We used a list of 24 factors of work satisfaction and motivation that we applied to a group 56 young workers in an enterprise, asking them to fill an indirect hierarchization questionnaire in which all the factors were compared among themselves (resulting 276 diads), and a direct hierarchization, by asking the subjects to select, in order, the most important five factors for generating work satisfaction and the most important 5 factors for generating work dissatisfaction. We found that the highly trained subjects are more "coherent" than the low educated. Scalar hierarchization seems to be more natural, because more subjects are consistent in this case, compared with pairs examination. Finally, the respondents violated independence condition with the same ease as they produce Condorcet paradoxes, making us think at the cost of avoiding such paradoxical results when dealing with complex data.

The paper discusses the symbolic capital of Saxonness in the Romanian and Transylvanian public sphere and its uses as a political and cultural resource. I am examining the historical representations of Saxonness and the local, national and European context in which they are activated and re-signified, acquiring contemporary meanings. I focus on the mechanisms behind the political support of Klaus Johannis, representative of The German Democratic Forum in Romania, the Saxon mayor of the city of Sibiu (Transylvania), currently serving his third four-year long mandate. My analysis will attempt to capture the relation between his noteworthy success as elected local representative and the apparently contradictory local demographic evolution: a Saxon minority whose numbers dropped severely in the last decades, reaching a lower limit of under 2% of the total local population. The study explores some of the possible mechanisms that lie at the foundation of the contemporary political capital of Saxonness in Sibiu, by focusing on the salience of ethnicity in elections media discourse and in the collective imagery as reflected in the Ethnobarometer, supported by historical arguments of the “myth of the Saxon”.

This paper reconstructs common concepts of Europe, cultural region and locality, worded by inhabitants of southern Poland, referring to their involvement in cultural changes that appeared after accession to European Union. Ethnographic research and in-depth interviews in small towns at the borderland show strong cultural changes that happened under the influence of opening the borders and reception of the EU’s funds and regulations. The most common belief among people who decide about the shape of local culture in those towns is that the constitutive features of the European community are multiculturalism and cultural openness. There is the point to analyze the relation between the experience of the cultural and political changes and the process of construction of the European, regional (supranational) and local identity. That goal is realized by use of the qualitative method of the sequential analysis of text. The results of that analysis show the mechanisms of building one’s own identity and perceiving the social world by people with clear nationalistic views and positive attitude to Europe and the EU. The fundamental characteristic of this vision of the world is the existence of two ways of identification with the community: by the community of interactions (the local community and transnational region) and the community of ideas (Poland and Europe). The conclusion is that the process of creation of the European identity is similar to the well-known nation-making processes and the idea of Europe could be created only by translation of transnational experiences of individuals to the level of ideological, imagined community.

This paper is based on the results of the cross-cultural comparative ENRI-EAST project, and aims to explore the various aspects of people's national and ethnic affiliations and the social psychological characteristics of national and diaspora identity among ethnic minorities living along the Eastern border of the EU. The goal of our approach is to reconstruct the image of the national identity, which is created through everyday observations, attitudes and value judgments in the individual's mind, as well as the image, which is organized into a coherent identity as some sort of collective stock of knowledge at societal level. Also, we can learn what kind of broader political consequences, value dilemmas, or perhaps tensions may accompany the mechanism of how ethnic diasporas and migrant groups create their own national identity in the context of their home and host nation. Our analyses include four ethnic dyads in the border region of Europe: Lithuanians in Russia, and Russians in Lithuania, Ukrainians in Poland and Poles in Ukraine, Belarusians in Poland and Poles in Byelorussia, Slovaks in Hungary and Hungarians in Slovakia.

The extremely radical (mostly youth) political organizations may be regarded as peculiar youth subcultures. We believe it is true not only for Hungary where relatively rich social scientific knowledge exists on the majority perception of such organizations. However, not many instances are found for the empirical sociological study of the organizations. The sample of the survey conducted in the autumn of 2010 by the Centre of Conflict Research at ELTE and the Sociology and Social Policy Department at the University of Debrecen consists of members of a right-wing paramilitary organization (The National Army of Guardsmen Heritage Protection and Civil Guard Organization) founded three years ago and, as control sample, the members of an environmental protection (non-radical, non-militant) organization (E-mission) operating in the same region (N=100-100 persons). The research focuses on new authoritarianism, which only partly rests on the “classical” authoritarianism, i.e. the socially determined pattern of the modern individual interiorized throughout socialization, as described by freudo-marxism in the beginning of the 20 th century. In developing the theoretical background and the operationalization, besides traditional dimensions and socializational characteristics, we relied on theories (e. g. social dominance) and topics (e. g. conflict perception and reduction) which have not been applied in such studies before. Based on interpretational-statistical models, this paper analyses the socio-cultural factors that shape the social dominance orientation characteristics for the two sub-samples.

This paper has an interdisciplinary character and highlights certain aspects of the demographic and economic evolution in the post-communist Romania, with their peculiarities. Population ageing, foreseen by specialists, is highlighted here also on country regions, and at national level, it is debated in relation with development economic indicators. In a comparative approach at European level, we show that the share of old people, as well as the dependency rate of old people, have, for the moment, lower values in Romania, realities that do not allow a break, a lack of initiative for specific policies. The reason, which we underline, is that in our country, in comparison with the western countries which became rich before ageing, the rhythm of demographic ageing has outrun the rhythm of economic development. Moreover, the data available for the last 18 years have allowed us to show the economic and social consequences of this ageing on several major directions such as: economic dependency, impact on the employment of work resources, impact on the economic growth and on the public expenditure. The worrying evolutions in these social-economic segments are the result of the calculated indicators and their correlations, and these are: the economic dependency rates; the employment rate of the work resources; the correlations between the GDP/capita evolution and the share of the ageing population out of the total of population, between GDP/capita and the economic dependency rate of the ageing people, between the share of the savings in GDP and the share of the ageing people out of the total of population; the cost of the demographic ageing. In conclusion, acknowledging these realities, only to the extent to which the country will involve the ageing population in the process of goods and services creation, the economic development is possible. Without such a strategy, the macroeconomics disequilibrium will deepen and the demographic ageing will be a permanent obstacle to the growth of the standard of living.