From communist control to glasnost and back?: Media freedom and control in the former Soviet Union

The last decade has seen dramatic changes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union: the end of the Cold War with the West; the loosening of the Soviet Union's hold on part of Germany; movements for independence by regions in the USSR; and the public rejection of Communism by Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland, as well as by key leaders within the Soviet Union. Radical changes in political philosophy have been accompanied by transformations in mass media communication.These changes are inextricably linked to how public relations is practiced in these nations, many of which are attempting, to varying degrees, to adopt a democratic system of government. This article frames the role of public relations in a self-governing society; discusses three environmental factors that affect the practice of socially responsible public relations, reviews the historical media philosophy of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union; and examines examples of media practice that have occurred during the region's transformation and their implications for media freedom and independence, and for the practice of public relations.     

De-Americanizing the global?: Overcoming fundamentalism in a volatile world

Abstract

This article discusses the role of different fundamentalisms in the dramatic escalation of the desire to 'de-Americanize' the global in the post-September 11 world. I argue that the line between fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist tendencies in world views is blurred, and that fundamentalism should not be dismissed as something totally alien from the life of liberal-democratic societies. In particular, the current process of US-dominated globalization has tended to produce a rise in fundamentalist ways of thinking in different parts of the world, as people resort to defending their embattled traditions and identities as a mode of resistance against the unsettling forces of globalization. And as the US mode of dominating the world is couched in an American fundamentalist frame, it will inevitably engender and reinforce new anti-American fundamentalisms.     

Where in the world does neoliberalism come from?

Neoliberalism is generally understood as a system of ideas circulated by a network of right-wing intellectuals, or as an economic system mutation resulting from crises of profitability in capitalism. Both interpretations prioritize the global North. We propose an approach to neoliberalism that prioritizes the experience of the global South, and sees neoliberalism gaining its main political strength as a development strategy displacing those hegemonic before the 1970s. From Southern perspectives, a distinct set of issues about neoliberalism becomes central: the formative role of the state, including the military; the expansion of world commodity trade, including minerals; agriculture, informality, and the transformation of rural society. Thinkers from the global South who have foregrounded these issues need close attention from the North and exemplify a new architecture of knowledge in critical social science.     

A future for the humanities?

The future of the humanities is an extremely complex question as it bears upon the status of a particular form of knowledge in society, the flexibility of a set of academic disciplines and institutions, the openness of political leaders to changing conceptions of education, and a host of other difficult issues. In order to illuminate these problems, it is necessary to focus upon the peculiar character of humanistic knowledge, why such insight is indispensable to individual and collective self-understanding, how the humanities as they are conventionally practised contribute to their own malaise and why the humanities must be accorded pride of place among the studies of human action. There is, in fact, a considerable demand for humanistic knowledge and the fruit of humanistic scholarship in our technological culture, especially in the area of adult education. The discussion ends with several examples of various ways in which that demand is being met.     

Transition and Foreign Aid Policies in the Visegrád Countries: A Path Dependant Approach

The paper argues that the current emerging international development policies of the Visegrád (V4) countries are heavily influenced by the certain aspects of the Communist past and the transition process. Due to these influences, the V4 countries have difficulties in adapting the foreign aid practices of Western donors and this leads to the emergence of a unique Central and Eastern European development cooperation model. As an analytical background, the paper builds on the path dependency theory of transition. A certain degree of path dependence is clearly visible in V4 foreign aid policies, and the paper analyses some aspects of this phenomenon: how these new emerging foreign aid donors select their partner countries, how much they spend on aid, how they formulate their aid delivery policies and institutions and what role the non-state actors play. The main conclusions of the paper are that the legacies of the Communist past have a clear influence and the V4 countries still have a long way to go in adapting their aid policies to international requirements.

Volunteers for NPOs in Welfare Services in Iceland: A Diminishing Resource?

The question of declining membership of non-profit organizations (NPOs) has been central in academic discussion and research has indicated changes in the way people volunteer. Less emphasis has been on the functions of volunteers as a resource for NPOs and how changes such as increased reliance on professionals in their operations can influence the volume and type of volunteering. This paper examines the value of volunteers as a resource for Icelandic NPOs in the field of welfare services. It is based on a study of the majority of active Icelandic NPOs in the welfare field, as well as an analysis of their respective websites. The findings show that volunteer contributions do not constitute a significant part of the activities of most Icelandic NPOs in welfare services. Apart from membership of boards, volunteers seem to be used primarily as a means of supplementing other resources, such as temporary fundraising efforts. However, the level of volunteering varies according to the size and operational type of organization.     

Children in self-care: Homeless in the afternoons or socially provided for?

This study examines the adaptation of children in self-care compared with children in adult-care to out-of-school relationship contexts and solitude. Thirty-six French children aged 9–11 years were interviewed about their out-of-school activities and responses to solitude. The theoretical framework integrates Weiss' (1974) notion of relational provisions and Valsiner's (1984, 1987) constraint theory to understand individual adaptation in the social and solitary contexts of self-care. Triangulation of quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed complexity and variability of the structural organization and children's adaptation in self-care contexts. Although self-care children reported more activities outdoors alone than did adult-care children, the development of the capacity to be alone may protect children's psychological well-being. Moreover, the inherent structure of self-care, i.e., parental absence, demanded that children lead the promotion of their own development in self-care contexts. In a few extreme instances, children were indeed homeless in the afternoon.This study was carried out with the Self-Care Research Team including Professors Janine Beaudichon, Pierre Coslin, and Annick Cartron of theLaboratoire de Psychologie du Developpement et de L'education de L'enfant, Universite Paris V, La Sorbonne and was funded by the French Ministry of Education.     

Urban change in the third world: are recent trends a useful pointer to the urban future?

"This paper has three aims. The first is to examine the reliability of the data base for the statistics which are used as the basis for commenting on urban change in 'the Third World'. The second is to explore whether valid generalisations about urban change can be made for the Third World. And the third is to examine the validity of United Nations projections for the Third World's urban future."     

Reproductive health technologies and gender: Is participation the key?

This article discusses the impact of a community-based contraceptive distribution (CBD) project in Eastern Province, Zambia, on reproductive health and gender relations. Participatory learning action techniques with peer groups analysis were used in the evaluation. Both men and women appreciated the modern contraceptives because they were easy to use, free and reliable. The most frequently cited negative effects of contraceptive technologies were menstrual irregularities, infertility, and side effects associated with pill and injectable hormonal methods. Both sexes cited more harmonious marital relations as the most positive impact of the service-delivery component on sexual and gender relations. The impact of involvement in the CBD project on the CBD agents themselves was also assessed. Many felt that their training helped improve gender relations with their marital partners. Participatory approaches can enable providers of reproductive health services to gain a better understanding of their clients' needs.     

A Christian identity for the liberal state?

It seems to be impossible for the liberal state to embrace a Christian identity, because ‘liberalism’ is exactly a device for separating state and religion. Discussing the implications of a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights, Lautsi v. Italy (2011), I argue that this is not necessarily so. If paired with a liberal commitment to pluralism, a Christian identity might even be more inclusive of minority religions than a narrowly ‘liberal’ state identity, which has been the dominant response in Western Europe to the challenge of immigrant diversity, especially that of Muslim origins.     

Masculinities in the construction industry: A double‐edged sword for health and wellbeing?

Construction remains a male‐dominated industry and men in construction suffer high rates of illness and injury compared to other industries. Consideration of men and masculinities may support any attempt to maintain and promote the health and wellbeing of construction workers. This article discusses qualitative case study research conducted with stakeholders in the UK construction industry around health and wellbeing. Our thematic analysis highlights how masculinities operate to both inhibit and promote healthy practices. On the one hand, a culture of stoicism pertaining to illness or injury was evident, whilst a competitive ethos between occupational groups was observed to increase risk‐taking and poor health choices. However, interviewees identified homosocial camaraderie and respect for lived experience as a means to promote positive health behaviour. Differences between younger and older generations of employees were noted. Overall, we argue that men's work and associated health practices can be understood as ‘rational’ individualized responses to structural deregulation and insecurity within the construction industry.     

What Accounts for the Variations in Nonprofit Growth? A Cross-National Panel Study

Previous studies of nonprofit growth have lamented the lack of cross-national longitudinal data measuring the size of the nonprofit sector across countries, which has made it difficult to assess the current state of knowledge about the nonprofit sector beyond national boundaries. Recent progress in measuring nonprofit growth using panel studies or cross-national data has compensated for the limitations of the existing research, but even the recent data are either country specific or cross sectional in nature. This study takes on the challenge of supplementing the current research by measuring nonprofit growth using internationally comparable longitudinal data. Specifically, this study focuses on whether certain key indicators of the overall state of the economy can be used to predict and explain the size of nonprofit sectors cross-nationally. The overall state of the economy has considerable relevance for nonprofit growth, as it influences the levels of government funding and private philanthropy that benefit the nonprofit sector. The results indicate that the existing theories about the nonprofit sector account for variations in nonprofit growth but are limited in their explanations of the underlying dynamics of such variations beyond national boundaries. Social origins theory is a useful addition that helps to explain cross-national variations in nonprofit growth. Importantly, the interplay among the government, private philanthropy, and the nonprofit sector is dynamic, and its effect on economic indicators varies across nonprofit regime types when sociodemographic variables are controlled.     

What accounts for the variations in children's subjective well-being across nations?: A decomposition method study

Studies have shown that there are important differences in children's subjective well-being across nations. However, it has been difficult to explain why this level is lower or higher in certain countries. Using data from the Children's Worlds project, this study examines how much of the country-level children's subjective well-being can be explained by various social and cultural contextual factors. More specifically, we decompose the levels of children's overall subjective well-being to seven factors that are known to be important for children's well-being including leisure, environment, learning, money, relationship, freedom to choose, and self. After the decomposition, the unexplained part (intercept and residual) for each country is considered to represent cultural reporting bias. We found that cultural reporting bias cannot explain all of the variances in children's subjective well-being across nations. Rather, we found that the freedom to choose and self are the two most important factors that explain vast share of the variances in the overall levels of children's subjective well-being across nations. The paper also provides social policy implications of the study results.     

Specialization Versus Diversification in EU Economies: A Challenge for Agro-Food?

Much attention has been paid to industrial differentiation versus specialization. In EU, the phenomenon of secondary production is important enough since it absorbs 6.3% of the total output at basic prices. Through the development of new symmetrical indicators, we point out the ability of economic branches to diversify, penetrate and invade others. This analysis is applied both to EU countries and to economic system branches, focusing the analysis on the challenges facing Agriculture and Food and beverage industry. We can assume that the most advanced countries belong to a post-modern or post-industrial stage of development. The only way to continue to stay on the market is to diversify production and to emphasize the search for a quality/price ratio attractive for the consumer. On the contrary, less advanced countries of Central and Eastern Europe are rather in the initial or intermediate stages of industrialization in which agriculture, crafts and traditional services still have a certain importance and, as we know, undertake more differentiated activities. What emerges is a watershed between continental and Mediterranean countries. Eastern Europe is still anchored to a traditional behavior. In synthesis we find three fundamental trends: (a) a long period continuity of those complementary activities that have always characterized agriculture; (b) the different structure of secondary production in the EU countries; (c) different barriers to entry, that explain asymmetries in the behavior of branches otherwise more or less related. Remark that these barriers may be not only physical or economical but also normative, thus introducing more differences in the behavior of different countries.     

Taking former masters to court: civil cases between former masters and slaves in the US South, 1865–1899

This essay analyses the trial records of civil cases between former slaves and their former slaveholders between 1865 and 1899 to consider the different, often competing, ways in which these parties portrayed the antebellum and postbellum worlds. In courtrooms around the post-war South, former slaves and former masters wove diverging narratives about slavery, capitalism and labor, family and authority, and sexual violence. Litigants sought to leverage these tales and their interlinked histories to win legal disputes against each other, while also working to advance their own visions of the post-war world.     

A Chinese Model for Labour in Europe?

Based on long-term fieldwork in multiple locations, our article questions the approach that posits a Chinese model of work and employment relations as increasingly exporting its form of labour management and dominating worldwide. It does so by focusing on Europe and discussing two labour regimes considered as typically Chinese: the Chinese fashion workshops in the Italian fashion industry, and the Foxconn electronics plants in the Czech Republic. Our findings bring new insights to bear on issues for which research is still thin on the ground and challenge the hypothesis of a ‘Chinesisation’ of work and employment practices in Chinese small firms and MNCs operating in Europe. We move the focus away from the simple analysis of firm management prevailing in the literature and suggest that, in order to understand the firm’s behaviours, the role of the state, the unions, the migrant workers and the role of temporary work agencies should all be taken into consideration.     

Informational cascades in the laboratory: Do they occur for the right reasons?

Recently, the theory of informational cascades has been tested in an experiment by L. Anderson and Ch. Holt (American Economic Review, 87 (1997) 847–862) who report that their data support the theory amazingly well. In this paper we report on an experiment designed to find out whether observed cascades are indeed due to rational Bayesian updating. However, we find little support for rational updating. The simple heuristic “follow your own signal” does much better in explaining our data than Bayesian rationality.