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The sociology of sport has developed within and been intricately involved in the critique of neoliberalism. While important, there are certain limitations to this scholarship that are related to the nature of Western liberalism and academia. This paper attempts to argue a role for Marxist–Leninist thought in the sociology of sport. Historically excluded from academia after World War II, this bias is part of what Gabriel Rockhill has described as the "Global Theory Industry," that decries socialism while remaining favorable to Western liberal capitalism. The anti-communism of the theory industry means that much of the work on neoliberalism and Marxism in the sociology of sport has ignored the experiences and efforts of socialist countries, as well as theorists from the Global South. This article broadly critiques existing neoliberal and Marxist studies of sport while arguing that a Marxist–Leninist approach may give those in the field a better account of sport and its relationship to domestic and global politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an integral part of the socialist culture with Chinese characteristics, CPC's revolutionary spirit is the root of promoting the construction of a strong socialist culture. In the more than 100 years of evolution of promoting the continuous development of the CPC's revolutionary spirit, the Communist Party of China has demonstrated its distinct cultural confidence and accumulated valuable cultural experience. To inherit the CPC's revolutionary spirit, it needs to adhere to the guidance of Marxism and its achievements in the theory of Sinicization and modernization, and stick to the central task of the Party, persist in criticizing wrong thoughts and trends，and persist in innovating the content and form according to the changes of the times. Standing on the new journey of comprehensively building a great modern socialist country, to promote the inheritance and development of the CPC's revolutionary spirit, we must strengthen the overall leadership of the Party, enhance the sense of struggle, adhere to the concept of"putting the people first", adhere to the integrity and innovation, and pay attention to the integration of foreign countries, which is of great significance to gather the mighty strength of the Chinese people and devote themselves to building a strong cultural country, building the modern civilization of the Chinese nation, and realizing national rejuvenation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terrorist attacks, as a particular type of negative social event, are a potential threat to the establishment of a "Socialist Harmonious Society" advocated by the Chinese government. To shed light on how Chinese journalists construct reports on terrorist attacks and, more broadly, how non-Western countries report on negative social issues, we compared newspaper coverage of one domestic attack with four international incidents. Starting from Bednarek and Caple's framework, we further developed the computer-assisted Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) they proposed by adapting individual definitions of news values and dividing them into 15 subcategories to suit the Chinese context, the topic of terrorism, and the automatic processing of large-scale datasets. Based on our understanding, we developed an open-source list of Chinese lexical indicators by Part of Speech tagging, sentiment, collocation, and concordance analysis, with a view to providing resources to support future quantitative DNVA. Following this approach, we found that while market factors enabled Chinese newspapers to cover domestic terrorist attacks, media adopted specific media strategies to meet political needs, which differed from those used to cover international attacks. These different media strategies can be explained by the Chinese developmentalist ideology and harmonious cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study proposed a novel scale for assessing the perception of organizational culture (pOC_TSU) for Vietnam employees. Following a step-wise mixed methods research with 52 interviews, experts' evaluations, and a survey of 329 working adults in four organizations in different sectors, the final scale comprises task orientation (8 items), unity orientation (3 items), and status orientation (3 items). Among the existing organizational culture scales, the latter two are unique. The present study furthers our understanding of workplace relationships in the Confucian socialist country and how these influence the perception of organizational culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market socialism emerged theoretically in the early 20th century with the socialist calculation debates and underwent significant transformations, influencing the reforms in Eastern Bloc countries in the 1980s. The practices and theoretical evolution in socialist countries over time indicate a gradual decrease in the emphasis on central planning in market socialism, particularly transitioning to fragmented and enterprise-based planning after the 1970s. Concurrently, strategic planning, which became widespread in developed capitalist countries during the same period, bears similarities to the planning approach in market socialism. The shift from centralized planning to a decentralized planning approach based on macro-level programs and decisions made at the institutional/local levels constitutes a fundamental element of market socialism and strategic planning. Both strategic planning and market socialism gained prominence after the 1970s, riding on the trend of decentralization in planning, which has been influential in different economic systems. This study delves into the theoretical development of market socialism and prominent practices in socialist countries to illustrate the intersectionality in the field of planning between capitalist and socialist countries, while also examining the relationship between strategic planning and market socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Modern Educational Technology is the property of Editorial Board of Modern Educational Technology, Tsinghua University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on interactions and cooperation between peoples and countries of the Global South which are getting more relevant in the contemporary era. It analyses mainly socialist tendencies in the South-South cooperation by specifying three issues: a conceptual typology of states, and interrelated concepts of independence and development. It proceeds in the following sequence of steps. First, it explains the typology of states in the Global South, specifically by using the global comparative typology of socialist countries in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Second, it identifies the basic kinds of periods of the struggle for independence and the struggle for development since World War II to specify the cooperation conceptually in a chronological way. From perspectives of social and political philosophy and global studies, the article contributes to the understanding of cooperation in the contemporary multipolar and multilateral tendencies in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a book review of "North Korea’s Mundane Revolution: Socialist Living and the Rise of Kim Il Sung, 1953–1965" by Andre Schmid. The book explores the socio-economic and cultural transformations in North Korea during the 1950s, focusing on the everyday lives of its people and the public discourse surrounding mundane issues. The author analyzes primary sources such as newspapers, magazines, and personal memoirs to understand how North Koreans were able to influence their society and how the Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung fit into this process. The book challenges the conventional view of North Korea as a monolithic entity and offers a fresh perspective on its development. [Extracted from the article]

In the context of the Cultural Cold War, China and the Soviet Union jointly established the Asia-Africa Film Festival (AAFF) as a response to the conflict between the socialist camps and the US-led capitalist camp. Chinese and Soviet conceptions of film exchange and political cooperation changed as the festival progressed, and the manner and scale of China's participation in the three AAFFs were completely different. Based on primary sources, this article discusses the AAFF with an in-depth analysis of the complex political dynamics behind China's participation in three editions, thereby providing a fresh perspective on the cultural Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s as well as a deeper understanding of the multifaceted aspects of cultural diplomacy in socialist countries. This article argues that despite being in the cultural sphere, the AAFF serves a more political role by responding to the multiple forces' conflicts and balances in the context of national interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Chinese modernization", articulated systematically by the working report to the 20th National Congress of Communist Party of China(CPC) in 2022, has been gradually become a worldwide-known popular concept, which emphasizes harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature as one of its "five unique features". A significant change arisen from it is that, two green theoretical discourses of "eco-civilizational progress" and "green modernization" in contemporary China have historically converged. In the Chinese context, the two discourses can be to a large extent understood as characteristic forms of a more general green discourse. Both the goals or the objectives to be transformed and the dependent environment are common or shared. As self-contained discursive theories, though, there are also noticeable differences and even a certain degree of tension between them. An ideal situation would be that, on the one hand, both of them are consciously put under a broader framework of green discourse theory, from which they can mutually learn and promote from each other, and on the other hand, it is expected that that can better serve China's practice of building a modern socialist country in all respects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially after reform and opening up, the Communist Party of China has continuously advanced the Sinicization and modernization of Marxist political economy. Through the great practice of economic construction with Chinese characteristics, a socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics has been formed. As the latest theoretical achievement of Marxist political economy in contemporary China and the 21st-century world, Xi Jinping's economic thought deeply reflects the Communist Party of China's new understanding of the laws of economic development. With more pronounced subjectivity, originality, completeness, and theoretical richness, it not only provides a scientific guide for China's high-quality economic development and the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country but also propels the socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics to a new stage, contributing Chinese wisdom to the innovative development of Marxist political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on May Day celebrations in communist Czechoslovakia in the Žďár nad Sázavou district of today's Czech Republic. The communist regime used these celebrations to symbolically communicate several ideological and political messages. By examining one of these messages, the importance of the relationship between the countryside and the city, we see how its presentation changed over time. The variability of this message was caused not only by the changes the communist regime and society underwent during the studied period but also by specific local conditions. This paper concentrates on actors from two villages and argues that celebrations of May Day, an ideological-political holiday, could have been appropriated by local inhabitants as a community event that helped express the unity of the rural community. Holding May Day celebrations that served largely as community events in some villages also interrupted the union of the village and the city in socialist society, one of the messages that was supposed to be communicated by May Day celebrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Angolan independence, proclaimed in 1975, instituted a one-party, socialist-oriented revolutionary regime that vowed to create a nation of workers under a secular state with freedom of worship. However, such a framework existed only on paper. A generation gap opposed Protestant, mission-educated leaders to younger agnostic and atheist militants trained in socialist countries. The government acted to circumscribe the public space of churches and enforce compliance with the heavily contested new order, but also promoted certain denominations as a tool to build hegemony. Further complications arise from African religious practices not being deemed religion but tradition, pointing both to superstition and obscurantism on the one hand, and to the cultural corpus of nation-building on the other. This paper posits that the study of secularity in Angola does not fit into the usual theoretical dichotomy but must take into account the intersections and interplay of tradition with both religion and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the trade-off between the demand for efficiency and the demand for meaningful work. It asks whether this trade-off should be treated as inevitable or potentially resolvable, at least under reformed conditions. It compares historical and contemporary debates where the trade-off features. It focuses initially on Adam Smith's account of the division of labour in which less meaningful work is assumed to be the necessary price of higher efficiency. It then examines Karl Marx's analysis of work, showing how it differs from that of Smith. Marx addressed the scope for achieving meaningful work whilst supporting needs fulfilment in a future socialist society. In addition, the paper looks at how the ideas of Smith and Marx relate to modern discussions that focus on the capacity of new digital technologies to lighten work. Finally, it draws lessons for welfare economics on how meaningful work and efficiency might be reconciled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, Xi Jinping's Ideology on the Rule of Law has been formed as a major theoretical achievement in order to build a modern socialist country governed by the rule of law and a new form of Chinese style modern human civilization. The Marxist rule of law theory is the theoretical origin of Xi Jinping's Ideology on the Rule of Law. The traditional philosophical thoughts of Confucianism and Legalism in traditional Chinese legal culture, as well as the accumulation of legal practice and excellent cultural traditions of ancient Chinese dynasties have created the cultural roots of Xi Jinping s Ideology on the Rule of Law. The Communist Party of China's more than one hundred years of exploration in leading the construction of the rule of law has laid a practical foundation for it. The organic unity of "people first" and "rule of law" thinking in Xi Jinping's Ideology on the Rule of Law demonstrates the theoretical background, the Marxist view of human rights, the view of the rule of law and the "two combinations". The integrated combination highlights the theoretical penetration of Xi Jinping's Ideology on the Rule of Law. In-depth study and implementation of Xi Jinping's Ideology on the Rule of Law have important value and connotation of the times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our main goal is to provide a preliminary, descriptive, and thematic overview of civic education courses in Serbia until 2020 from the perspectives of international political sociology, critical pedagogy and critical curriculum studies. After clarifying pertinent conceptual assumptions of curriculum analysis, we review the methodology employed to examine the curriculum. Firstly, our task is to describe how a civic education course in Serbia looks in relevant educational aspects. Secondly, we explore the role civic education plays in postsocialist and post-conflict Serbian society within the educational system and policies, considering transformative processes and reconciliation goals. Among the main findings, we emphasise the inadequacy of the initial phase of implementation of civic education in Serbia. There is insufficient recognition in the broader public regarding the cosmopolitan and social justice values crucial for generating a democratic political culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After World War II, socialist states developed a new schooling system aimed at building an egalitarian society. While there is a solid body of research discussing the relationship between the intent and effect of the egalitarian design of socialist school systems, the importance of school maturity assessments for the socialist project has received only minor attention. This article discusses how the introduction of school maturity assessments developed by experts in medicine, psychology, and pedagogy in 1960s Hungary and East Germany contributed to the visibility of children who were deemed immature. It shows that both socialist states developed institutional solutions beyond the standard school system for tackling the problem of school immaturity in children; these solutions, in turn, evoked different reactions from parents. As the article discusses, parents used various avenues to oppose the official expert assessments with which they disagreed. In both countries, parents increasingly voiced their opinions in complaint letters addressed to the state in a quest to overcome what they perceived as a severe threat to their children's 'normal' development. By tracing parental bottom-up initiatives, the article investigates how parental agency ultimately shaped state policies and expertise despite the asymmetrical power relations that were present in these authoritarian societies. To show the interplay of parental agency, experts, and the state, we employ a combination of two methodological approaches, the sociology of expertise and the concept of Eigensinn, for understanding the spaces of negotiation and the role expertise plays in it. This article thereby sheds light on parental agency and its impact on expertise and state policies concerning school maturity in two socialist states that offered very different institutional answers to the problem; bureaucratic approaches towards complaint letters also varied significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After World War II, infant mortality rates started dropping steeply. We show how this was accomplished in socialist countries in East-Central Europe. Focusing on the two postwar decades, we explore comparatively how medical experts in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany saved fragile newborns. Based on an analysis of medical journals, we argue that the Soviet Union and its medical practices had only a marginal influence; the four countries followed the recommendations of the World Health Organization instead, despite not being members. Importantly, we analyze the expert clashes over definitions of livebirth, which impact infant mortality statistics. We analyze the divergent practices and negotiations between countries: since the infant mortality rate came to represent the level of socioeconomic advancement, its political significance was paramount. Analyzing the struggle to reduce infant mortality thus helps us understand how socialist countries positioned themselves within the transnational framework while being members of the "socialist bloc." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The seminal contributions of the esteemed Italian Marxist scholar, Domenico Losurdo, have significantly enriched the theoretical and methodological landscape surrounding the study and practical application of historical-dialectical materialism. This article elucidates Losurdo's principal perspectives on the intricate challenges inherent in the construction of socialist societies. In stark departure from prevalent Western Marxist paradigms, Losurdo's analyses of revolutionary historical praxes are imbued with a rigorous self-critical lens, eschewing adherence to revisionist or liquidationist doctrines that characterized the prevalent trend of anti-communist pseudo-Marxism fashionable within some academic circles. This discourse systematically unpacks the salient themes of this intellectual inquiry, meticulously assessing Losurdo's oeuvre as a distinctive and invaluable contribution to the nuanced exploration of the complexities and prospects entailed in the development of authentic socialist experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literary debates of the first two decades of the German Democratic Republic, the work of Franz Kafka generally served as a foil for how not to write socialist literature. Assessments of Kafka's work and legacy either opposed the modernist Kafka against socialist realist principles or fashioned the Prague author into a perceptive critic of bourgeois, capitalist society who, nevertheless, stopped short of grasping the underlying causes of the circumstances he critiqued and whose insights into the alienation of his times remained irrelevant for the socialist present. This article complicates this early reception of Kafka in the GDR by focusing on contributions of the East German delegation to the 1963 international Kafka conference in Liblice, Czechoslovakia, which invited Marxists from both East and West to discuss Kafka's potential relevance for socialist societies, resulting in an unprecedented political critique of alienation under really existing socialism from many invitees. While the East German delegation largely refrained from such conclusions, critic Ernst Schumacher's speech departs from the consensus of his East German peers: coining the notion of 'double estrangement' (doppelte Verfremdung) to describe the interpretive uncertainty of Kafka's writing as well as its emancipatory, imaginative dimensions, Schumacher eventually extols its utopian potential to allow it to reflect the new social reality of the GDR's future as negotiated by the GDR's community of readers and writers (Literaturgesellschaft). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article, titled "Letter to the Editors," explores the author's personal experiences and reflections on migration and immigration. The author, Dosia McKay, discusses her own journey as an immigrant to the United States from Poland and the complex emotions and challenges she has faced in assimilating into a new culture while still feeling a sense of alienation. She also shares her recent discovery through an ancestral DNA test that revealed her mixed heritage, causing her to question her identity and sense of belonging. The article raises broader questions about the long-term consequences of immigration and the reliability of historical accounts in shaping individual and national identities. [Extracted from the article]

High-quality development is the paramount task for comprehensively building a socialist modernized country. The low-carbon city pilot policy, with cities as the unit of action, provides new opportunities for high-quality economic transformation. Based on panel data from 261 cities between 2005 and 2018, this study calculates the level of high-quality economic development in Chinese cities, constructs a multi-period difference-in-differences model, analyzes the impact of the low-carbon city pilot policy on high-quality economic development, and explores the policy's heterogeneous effects on high-quality development in different types of cities and its transmission mechanism. The research findings show that the low-carbon city pilot policy can significantly promote high-quality economic development in cities and has heterogeneous effects in terms of regional differences, city types, and city scale. The effects are relatively greater in the eastern region, non-resource-based cities, and mega-cities. The low-carbon city pilot policy promotes high-quality economic development through mechanisms such as technological progress effects, resource agglomeration effects, and government action improvement effects. Combining theoretical analysis with empirical results, this study proposes policy recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of the low-carbon city pilot policy in promoting high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collapse of the former Soviet Union signaled failure of large-scale experiment in communitarian property. Privatization reform consequently was taken as the start point to transfer the planned economy to a market economy by the post socialist countries. This also occurred in economic transition countries such as China. However, in overcoming the tragedy of the commons privatization might create anticommons problems. Here we develop a nested common-private interface framework from the perspective of resource system and resource units and apply this framework to explain reforms of rangeland property in China and Kyrgyzstan. We confirmed that the root of the dilemma, either caused by commons or anticommons, can be attributed to the interface mismatch between individual elements and common elements. Trying to overcome the dilemma by changing property arrangements alone cannot eliminate the incentive mismatch caused by the common-private interface. Institutions aimed at alleviating the mismatch are accordingly required. Theoretically, this framework converts Ostrom's concept of commons into liberal commons that the members have options to exit, which is becoming increasingly common in the current global context of marketization. In the real world, this framework can serve to understand the property reform progress of transition countries, and may enlighten future property reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of industrial capitalism in the 19th century undoubtedly changed production processes in factories, and mass production theories and practices emerged for the first time in human history. Pioneers, namely Taylor and Ford, had revolutionary factory production and management innovations under industrial capitalism. However, the basic rights of workers, along with those of large factories, have been largely neglected. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Gramsci began to formulate theories and practices of workers' emancipation based on the mass production of industrial capitalism. As the two most important socialist countries on Earth, the Soviet Union and China have practiced emancipatory policies at the factory level based on the Marxist ideal. Through a triangular comparison model, this article examines whether the Soviet Union and China have achieved their ideals of worker emancipation. This article proposes a theory of workers' emancipation, mainly based on the Marxist ideal, while Soviet and Chinese practices are compared horizontally. In the end, the article concludes that both the ideals of the Soviets and Chinese on workers' emancipation have not been fully achieved despite both having some contributions to worker emancipation; the failure of achieving the emancipatory ideal rendered both countries' claims on emancipation as mere 'illusions.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies have explored the history of consumerism in communist Eastern Europe, suggesting that socialist consumption followed its own rhythm and logic. However, when it comes to waste-making and recycling existing literature focuses on post-industrial waste practices of the Soviet bloc, paying little attention to post-consumer waste. However, socialist societies did not follow the West's example and refrained from introducing single-use materials, such as disposable beverage containers. Could this also mean that socialists did a better job to deal with their own post-consumer waste than the West? The current scientific knowledge does not answer that question. To cover that gap in the research, this article situates socialist beverage containers and especially recyclable soft drink bottles made of glass in a wider discourse about the meaning of waste, discards, recycling, and material culture in socialism, particularly in Hungary. It suggests that the socialist waste dilemma was unique to Eastern European economies because of its social, ideological, and cultural layers, of which the scientific community has limited understanding. It proposes that despite different ideological foundations, the socialists battled with similar waste problems than in the West, however systematic differences were large enough to produce less post-consumer waste and recycle that waste more efficiently compared to the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the new era of building a socialist modernization country with the goal of promoting highquality development, we deeply analyze the knowledge system of the Introduction to Architecture course. This analysis is based on the cross-disciplinary specialties of local applied universities and the orientation of prioritizing employment and integrating industry and education. We propose the teaching reform of “theory-practice alternation” which is adapted to the current times and societal needs. Finally, we comprehensively summarize the effectiveness of curriculum construction, in order to provide theoretical references for the implementation of fostering character and civic virtue and deepening the reform of collaborative education mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The novel The Gadfly (1897) enjoyed enormous popularity in the Soviet Union, China, and other socialist countries in the twentieth century. The novel was first canonized in the Soviet Union, listed as an extracurricular reading for middle school students, and then canonized in China in the 1950s and early 1960s. Instead of inviting open-ended interpretations, the authorities endorse a politicized interpretation of the novel, portraying the Catholic hero "Gadfly" as a romantic revolutionary fighting for national independence. In contrast to its immediate success in socialist countries, the novel is hardly known and even largely forgotten in the West. This essay looks into the translation, circulation, and reception of the novel in the Soviet Union and China, particularly the political power structures inherent in the processes of its canonization in these socialist countries. Despite the political effort to elevate it to the status of a literary canon in the socialist bloc, the novel never entered a canon of world literature as such, which, I argue, should be tested out by its intrinsic literary values and appreciated by worldwide communities of enlightened readers, free from heavy-handed political interventions and ideological manipulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates the novel Eugenia (1919) by the Cuban-Mexican doctor Eduardo Urzaiz within the post-revolutionary Mexican discourses on eugenics. Set in the distant future, the novel imagines the culmination of a successful statist attempt to perfect the national body. In fact, the state's tight control of physical reproduction helps overcome the traditional family unit, a fact that has led many critics to highlight the liberating potential of this fictional society, particularly for women. That said, the novel shows how these social changes have had traumatic results in the lives of the various characters. This article seeks to reconcile the utopian discourse with the trauma of so many of its characters, identifying an ethics of aesthetics that justifies authoritarian actions and the sacrifice of individual freedoms in the name of the aesthetic perfection of society and the reproduction of a socialist and Utopian order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a significant dearth of knowledge regarding changes in intra-metropolitan local labor markets in former socialist countries, which encompass extensive parts of Eurasia and where industrialization and urbanization were centrally controlled by the state. This paper aims to contribute to the existing body of research by (a) illuminating and explaining changes in the spatial structure of urban regions in Poland during the transition from 'extensive' to 'intensive' socialist urban development (1973-1983), and (b) investigating changes in commuting patterns and their socio-demographic composition during the transition to 'mature' socialism. We selected four major city-regions for analysis: gdański, katowicki, łódzki, and warszawski. These regions were carefully chosen to represent different types of polycentric development and diverse economic profiles. The main findings of our paper are as follows: (a) despite the substantial population growth and the unprecedented rate of new housing development in the four city-regions, the overall impact of the socialist transition to intensive urbanization on their spatial structure was relatively minor, (b) the intensification of urbanization process in Poland contributed to the reduction in commute distance for all socioeconomic and demographic groups of workers. • The impact of the socialist transition to intensive urbanization on the spatial structure of urban regions was relatively minor. • Intensification of the urbanization process in Poland in the 1970s had a significant impact on commuting patterns. • Irrespective of the impact of central planning on urbanization, there were significant differences between the study regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1950s, a commitment to democratic socialism connected networks of intellectuals, activists and political operators in both Europe and Asia. Many of these were women, who built informal and intimate networks of solidarity that underpinned the movement. The rich set of correspondence between European and Asian socialist women speaks to their role as connectors of global and local civil society within international socialist circuits. It also indicates the importance of friendship, mobility and hospitality as a crucial factor in sustaining such networks, as well as building the trust that facilitated the exchange of subversive information. While Asia was seen as the great hope of international socialism in the 1950s, by the middle of the 1960s, many of its socialist parties had imploded, pointing to the limits of international socialism for Asian women amidst global anti-communism and the rise of authoritarian states. Transnational socialist networks nonetheless helped further both European and Asian women's campaigns for gender equality, development and democratic socialism in decolonizing Asia, adding vital new dimensions to the history of internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the existence of Yugoslavia (1945–1991), the leading political ideology of "brotherhood and unity" had to be manifested in all forms of cultural life. Promoting the physically capable body as part of a larger cultural movement, Yugoslavia witnessed the transformation of physical daily regimens into mass bodily spectacles performed at stadiums, called sletovi, demonstrating the power of mass-choreographed discipline. Similarly, Yugoslav choreographers were encouraged to develop a distinct performance aesthetic based on stylization as a rhetoric for modernization, using folk dance as a medium to showcase and promote the collective body of the people through choreographed folklore spectacles. Focusing on these two case studies that exemplify how mass choreography was used as a strategy to choreograph the Yugoslav society, this paper analyzes how political ideologies and their constructions through physicality supported the Yugoslav state project, thereby pointing to the present-day remnants of these aesthetics in the post-Yugoslav republics, evident in mass protests. By utilizing archival and choreographic analysis, I demonstrate how movement and dance impacted the public understanding of unity and helped the creation of a Yugoslav socialist society, drawing from Andrew Hewitt's thesis on "social choreography". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Great Leap Forward (1958–1961), the state attempted to rapidly transform the country into a socialist, industrial powerhouse, necessitating the mobilisation of all members of society, including children. This article demonstrates that during the Great Leap Forward in particular, periodicals, storybooks, and newspaper stories portrayed children as independent problem-solvers and political actors, who often acted outside of, and sometimes in defiance of, adult authority. However, during this period, in daily life, teachers, parents, and Young Pioneer counsellors rewarded children for many aspects of the same behaviour as in the early years of the PRC: studying hard, helping one's classmates, supporting the teacher, doing chores at home, and being kind and obedient to adults and authority figures. Thus, the heroic child of national media and the obedient child of daily life diverged significantly during the Great Leap Forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been the socialist country since 1949, when the new country was established. Communist Party of China (CPC) selected Marxism as the governing ideology for China which is consistent with the hierarchical and centre government system. CPC is dedicated to improving happiness of society for the citizens within the framework of Marxism ideology. However, the concept of Marxism happiness, and its development are still limited in terms of understanding and study. This paper explored the development of concept of Marxism happiness through the different works of Marx from his early writing to the authoritative academic book. The researcher then defined the concept of Marxism Happiness. This paper employs document analysis and thematic analysis to provide a clear understanding of the concept of Marxism Happiness and its implication for the happiness of Chinese citizens, meanwhile, it would be conducive to the researchers and policy makers in ideological construction of a country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the uncritical use of chronological time and the strict division between past, present, and future when thinking about mobility behavior or mobility decisions. On the basis of this critique, it introduces the concept of intentional automobility, which relies on the Bergsonian–Deleuzian conception of time—duration (la durée). It shows that transport-mode decisions are not only made in the present, separated from the past and the future, but that the past and the future are part of every such decision. Using the example of the metropolitan area of Brno, Czech Republic, a postsocialist space, we show how differently socialist and postsocialist societies can be temporally normalized. At the same time, contemporary postsocialist mobility decisions are still influenced by socialist time norms—chrononormatives. Our main research question is how everyday mobility decisions between the car and public transport are influenced by the temporal norms of the society. To answer this question, we have employed a mixed methods research design that has been divided into a quantitative analysis of mode choice for individual trips and a qualitative analysis of statements about mode choice. Key findings include the relationship between transport-mode preference and a particular chrononormative. We identify four contexts—time, routing, alcohol, and everyday activity planning—in which the chrononormatives associated with the car and public transport are substitutable. It is on this basis that we introduce intentional automobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Discourse: Journal of Childhood & Adolescense Research / Diskurs Kindheits- und Jugendforschung is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, in the journey of building a modern socialist country in the new era, perspective taking has gradually attracted the attention of Chinese scholars due to its contribution to improving social civilization and the adaptability of Chinese citizens to society. New perspectives and empirical research are constantly emerging, and scholars are constantly exploring and improving relevant theories while conducting research based on China’s own national conditions. In order to improve social civilization, they are exploring the specific development of Chinese citizens’ perspective selection, and starting to focus on the intervention and application of perspective taking ability, integrating research into various aspects of education, management, and other aspects of China’s modern social construction. In this essay, we explored the new research achievements of Chinese scholars in the past decade, focusing on the relationship between perspective taking and prosocial behavior, perspective taking and inter group relationships, perspective taking and management of special populations, and the impact of gender factors on perspective taking. It also provides inspiration for China to improve social civilization and solve corresponding social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socialist realism grew out of the political agenda of educating the masses on the inevitability of class struggle and out of the need of mobilizing them to contribute to the building of a socialist society. The targets of education were not solely the illiterate peasants but also the intellectuals who needed to overcome their petit-bourgeois outlook. Scholarship has elucidated the limits and potentialities of socialist realism as an aesthetic practice at the service of a political project, but the question of how socialist realism sought to educate both peasants and intellectuals begs for reflection. Focusing on Zhao Shuli's (1906–70) 1955 socialist-realist novel Sanliwan Village, this article asks how the text responded to the task of transforming both the masses and the intellectuals. It argues that Zhao's text performs the process underlying the subject's transformation into a new socialist being. The analysis of nicknames, "cinematic storytelling," speed and rhythm, and of tools as "touching things" sheds light on the textual strategies that produce an affective narrative. As such, Zhao's novel points to socialist-subject formation not simply as an effect of discursive practices, but as the outcome of a renewed sensorial engagement with the material world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Should the regulation of production and distribution in a socialist society be based on the law of value? In this article we ask (1) Is this question not based on an ontological understanding of labour, on a rational and therefore conceptual understanding of abstract labour and, ultimately, a transhistorical understanding of value and the so-called 'law of value'?; (2) is it not precisely this deception and power of the fetishism of commodities that, by eternalising value and the 'law of value', limits the horizon and perspective of 'realistic politics' (Realpolitik)?; and (3) whether this question does not treat socialism as a political situation where the solution to its 'economic' problem is unrelated to its very identity? In order to answer these questions, we provide a novel understanding of Marx's fundamental category of value, its substance, form and magnitude, with the help of the German expression Formgehalt , translated as form-content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a socialist country with a large population, China has a tight censorship system in various visual fields, including film, television and online communities. To censor films, China's central and local film authorities have successively established their own censorship systems. This article analyses the contemporary formation of local film censorship committees by combing through the history of film censorship in China. By discussing the relationship between intellectuals and the power behind film censorship, this study seeks to penetrate why and how intellectuals are co-opted by power and define the location of intellectuals in Chinese politics. Authorities reviewing films in a screening room symbolizes their 'powerful' gaze in the darkness, this visual mechanism of intellectual complicity with power, which requires Chinese filmmakers to learn how to survive under the combined influence of 'self-censorship' and intellectual vision. Furthermore, when exploring film censorship in contemporary China, the political logic of socialist China needs to be touched upon, where film censorship experts are in fact only the eyes of the power, not the power itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jürgen Fuchs (1950-1999) was one of those GDR-born writers, whose biographies were not only shaped by the SED regime, but which also successfully deformed it. He was one of the few individuals who eloquently and unwaveringly exposed the taboos and mechanism of the totalitarian state. Fuchs's literary oeuvre is a testimony of his times as well as a confrontation with the communist regime and its legacy in the form of the Stasi records. Coloured autobiographically and saturated with his own life experience, his writing takes the reader on a shocking journey into the time of the second German dictatorship, allowing them a look behind the scenes of the (post) socialist society. At the same time it brings about a realisation that as an intellectual Fuchs felt obliged to interfere whenever it was necessary to prevent violence, lies and forgetting about the past. This article traces the literary development of Fuchs as an independent writer and examines his motivation not to remain silent, to strive for truth and justice, and to provoke debate, whenever necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If Southern Vietnam literature (1954-1975) can be considered as a continuation of prewar culture (1932-1945) to a certain extent, then Northern Vietnam literature breaks away from prewar culture to create a new culture, namely, socialist realist culture, and a new type of reader who has yet to be seen in the history of literature: the reader-people. The entire North Vietnam education system was oriented toward communist ideology and became part of the propaganda machine. Mass education is an essential revolutionary strategy of politicized literature and art in socialist countries. Through various comprehensive and dominant cultural policies, the ultimate goal of this educational process was to create a unified mass of people and mobilize them to fight and sacrifice themselves for the revolutionary cause. The reader-people of socialist realist literature were the product of this comprehensive and dominant educational process. This article delves into several cultural and political mechanisms that served as a tool to create the reader-people as a hybrid triad consisting of authorities (party censorship agencies), party-led "red" writers and artists, and the masses as the readers. However, inadequacies remained after the construction of the reader-people, which is characteristic of the political services of socialist countries though beneficial for two primary goals: to build socialism in the north and liberate the south to reunify the country. In Vietnam, the reader-people gradually disappeared before the decline of socialist realist literature after 1975. This article contributes to the scholarship of socialist realist culture not limited to only Vietnam a specific analysis of the construction of the reader-people via all-encompassing and dominantly politicized cultural policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jenny Morris argues that cultural representations of disability mostly centre on the feelings of the non-disabled and their reactions to disability, instead of focusing on the disability itself. Addressing Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957), a movie based on an agrarian society of Western Gujarat in the newly independent India, the paper examines the implied meaning of being disabled in a socialist society of India through its cinematic narrations. Post-independent Hindi popular cinema embraced farming life as its fundamental narrative trope to disseminate the idea of a self-sufficient independent nation, especially in the wake of Jawaharlal Nehru's Five-Year Plan for industrial development. Interspersed between nationalism and the myth of socialism, the subject of disability has, however, been overlooked over the years. This paper, thereby, examines the rural/peasant/agrarian nexus within the conflicting cinematic representations of the absent-disabled citizen as a lacuna in this newly emerging independent India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses why Cuba, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia attempted to establish air transport agreements with Chile, as well as their objectives and those of their airlines. It also examines the response of the Allende government and other Chilean key actors. The paper shows that the interest in signing these agreements lay in the Socialist bloc countries. Their reasons varied depending on their particular situation and foreign policy goals. By contrast, Chile saw the negotiation of agreements as a means of strengthening its ties with the Soviet bloc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Former socialist states made great progress in the institutional set up and development of civil societies after the fall of their non-democratic regimes. However, the gap in levels of political participation between former socialist states and old democracies remains. Using two-wave panel data, this study explores how four different types of participation are related to each other and whether a sense of internal political efficacy is a prerequisite or a product of these types of participation. The results imply that facilitation of a sense of internal political efficacy is the key for enhancing the level of youth political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wider context of the Cold War in the 1980s, a rare exception was a proposal for the potential co-hosting of the 1988 Summer Olympics between Seoul (South Korea) and Pyongyang (North Korea). While diplomatic exchanges between the two countries in other areas had produced inconclusive results, a series of joint meetings were organised by the International Olympic Committee to facilitate North Korean participation in the Games while preventing any action that might undermine the Games' organisation. This historical analysis of these tripartite meetings aims to reconsider the frequently essentialist position of North Korea as a 'Games saboteur'. While the talks ultimately proved to be a failure, they did have an effect on sports diplomacy. The threat of a massive boycott by the socialist countries, which did not occur in the end, and the progress of the negotiations show that there can be compromises to the host city principle enshrined in the IOC Olympic Charter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This current study aims to investigate the impact of anti-corruption on bank performance in Vietnam, an emerging socialist country with a high level of perceived corruption. An increasing number of financial frauds and corruption have been made public in Vietnam as a result of a vigorous anti-corruption drive in the country. Using a news-based approach to measure anti-corruption in Vietnam, the results of our empirical analysis suggest that anti-corruption has a positive impact on the profitability of Vietnamese commercial banks, however, it manifests in the long term. We do not find an immediate impact of anti-corruption on overall bank performance, but we find that bank profit per branch increases under intensified anti-corruption in the country, suggesting that optimizing branch structure is important to Vietnamese bank under uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During most of the 20th century, Chile played a prominent role in the multilateral arena; however, the overthrow of President Salvador Allende buried the diplomatic prestige of this small country. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to characterize Chile's performance at the United Nations between 1973 and 1978, a period in which a diplomatic style called "praetorian-ideological" prevailed. This research seeks to analyze the multilateral offensive of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries against Chile in this international organization, as well as the circumstantial alliance systems established by Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in the General Assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]