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This paper aims at exploring feminist social science literature and the issues revolving around the standpoint theory, and situated knowledge. Standpoint theory holds significant importance in feminist scholarship as it challenges traditional mainly men’s perspectives, by emphasizing the influence of social position and identity on one's understanding of the world. Developed within feminist scholarship, standpoint theory argues that individuals situated in marginalized or oppressed positions (this being often women across cultures) possess unique insights into societal structures and power dynamics. While addressing some of the major debates in the area, the focus of this paper is to look critically at the plausibility of the feminist epistemology and the problem of objectivity, brought from the debates in standpoint theory. Objective knowledge also presupposed a unified concept of a woman or some kind of female experience, which has been questioned by the more constructivist scholars like Haraway (1991). The aim of the paper is to tackle some of the implications arising out of science, realism, objectivism, and relativism filtered through the prism of feminist social science literary production. While it appears that the endeavour for objectivity in knowledge is a necessary basis for rendering a feminist political undertaking meaningful, a careful analysis of some of the scholarly works on objectivity may prove somewhat dangerous to feminism in general as it might deconstruct the concept of a woman and female experience all together. Agreeing that the efforts and contributions of feminists in the area of epistemology are crucial in challenging traditional epistemological frameworks that have often marginalized or ignored the perspectives and experiences of women, this paper aims to critically reassess the attempts for preserving or building new doctrines of objectivity, and the potential consequences of such attempts for feminism itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Krotz (2018) argues that the interest in different societies and therefore, the variety of forms of organizing human life are shared by, what seem to be distinctive forms of knowledge, anthropology and utopia. According to him, the category of alterity is what brings them closer and makes them complement each other. This paper looks into the similarities between the dystopian literary genre and cultural anthropology. It does so, by looking at some of the contemporary problems that cultural anthropology treatsand the themes of dystopian literature. The origins of the dystopian novel go back to around 1880s, marked by the strong intervention of sciences in human life. Most of these dystopian novels, talk about the perils of technology, technocracy and its controlling power. It is interesting to analyze then, that much of the contemporary problems that anthropology deals with in the 21st century, fall within the realm of dystopian literature. The rising trend of new dystopian novels can offer foundations for a vision, whereby dystopian literature can serve as a warehouse of topics from which social anthropology can borrow in its active engagement with contemporary global issues and the new human condition. Comparing the motives of dystopian literature, its questioning of the moral and human aspects of war, science, violence, technology, etc, with the most recent issues that contemporary cultural anthropology deals with will be the primary focus of this paper. The aim to show the strengths of this interdisciplinarity for a critical grasp of the contemporary human condition, underpins this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: enrolling at a university represents a significant life change and an overall challenge for adaptive potentials of older adolescents. Coping skills represent a central role in successfully adapting to these stressful events of a new environment, new friendships, and fear of failure. The students need to find more functional ways of coping by using adaptive coping strategies that they already possess and those that they can yet learn. Failing to complete the year represents additional major stress, for students who, as a rule, have a previous history of outstanding achievements in education. This stress may reduce their self-esteem and further compromise academic performance. Aim: to assess possible relationships and differences between assertiveness and coping strategies in the first-year medical students. Materials and methods: the study included 225 first-year medical students of the Sarajevo Faculty of Medicine. They were divided into two groups: those who enrolled for the first time (n=133) and those who failed the first year and re-enrolled (n=92). We tried to examine the association between assertiveness and coping strategies on the entire sample, and also to determine possible differences related to assertiveness and coping strategies between female and male students, and between students who changed residence during the study and those who did not. The study used a coping strategy scales (Folkman & Lazarus, 1988 adapted by Arcel-Tata and Ljubotina, 1994), Rathus Assertiveness Schedule, and a socio-demographic questionnaire developed for this study. Results: our results show significant differences between assertiveness measured by Rathus scale and coping strategies assessed by Folkman & Lazarus scale between two groups of students. Significant differences on the two scales were also found between male and female students and students who moved from the place of residence to Sarajevo in order to enroll at university and those who did not need to change their residence. We found a significant positive correlation between assertiveness measured by the Rathus Assertiveness Schedule and the Folkman & Lazarus sub-scales of confrontation and solution planning on the level of p<0.01. Assertiveness was found to significantly correlate with acceptance of responsibility and avoidance/escape on the level of p<0.05. Conclusion: our results may provide further evidence for the idea of providing non-stigmatizing counseling and psychoeducational services and assertiveness training for the first-year medical students within the Faculty. Implications for further studies have been discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes symbolism pertaining to and popular receptions of the project Skopje 214, an architectural journey in the capital of the Republic of Macedonia. While attempting to understand the multifaceted symbolic meanings and perceptions associated with this project, we pay attention to the existence of previous narratives of Macedonian national identity prior to the announcement of Skopje 2014 and therefore position the project against that backdrop. We want to argue that Skopje 2014 represents a monumental and spectacular turning point in official narratives of Macedonian national identity. The gap between the previously dominant narrative of Macedonian national identity, and the new official discourse offered and realized in and through Skopje 2014, and the multicultural reality of the country are the central themes of this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]