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Conflicts and democracy: Considerations on political conflicts and the need of their delimitation
8-24Views:35According to our common experience of political life, the relationship between politics and
conflicts seems to be obvious. However, it is also common to think about delimiting the intensity
of conflicts in a democratic context. This kind of complexity of the relation of democracy and
conflicts can be cexplained from two theoretical perspectives. First, in order to protect democratic
order, conflicts may lose their relevance in comparison to the value of consent or compromise. Second, even if we accept the importance of conflicts, we also should take into account the limits
of their intensity. These theoretical problems arise in the context of contemporary politics which
nature is eminently public and in which every announcement is open to discussion. This is what
discourse as a theoretical horizon means. The core concept for theorizing the conflictual character
of politics in a discursive manner is political debate. The article explores three kinds of debate
and communicative conflicts: John Stuart Mill, as a classical nineteenth century liberal, sheds
light on the importance of debate in issues of collective truth-seeking and emotional devotion
to our personal values. Márton Szabó, a leading theorist of political discourse in Hungary, also
treats debate as a core concept of political discourse studies, and theorizes debate not only as
a series of singular acts in the realm of politics, but as a mode of existence of politics itself.
Contrary to other contemporary ideas of communication and politics, discourse is therefore
inherently conflictual in its character. Similarly, but more embedded in contemporary debates
over democracy, Chantal Mouffe, one of the eminent theorists of agonism, interprets conflicts
in the context of democratic order, and emphasises the democratic conditions for constructing
democratic identities. Her ideas on agonistic democracy can fathom the relation of valuable
conflicts and their limits in a democratic regime. -
Globalization theory of late modernity and identities in risk society
101-121Views:31Modernity is the sum of the fragmented cultural systems of meaning, that are mutually influential
on each other, plus of economic and political relations continually changing and transforming –
a complexity that manifests itself in the structure of the (world) risk society even on the level of
the individual. Following the late modern turn, the phenomenon of the means and opportunities
determining the ability of choice is not being shared equally, but multiplied as regards global
actors, as well as choice of identity, perceptibility of risks and facing them. The study presents
the new inequality factors and the asymmetric power relations of the late modernity along the
works by the recently died sociologists of the globalization theory (Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt
Bauman). In the world risk society, each community and individual bear the risks indifferently.
Accordingly, the ascertainments of the study are that the globalised economy and the subjects
of the local poverty do not possess the same degree of the freedom of maneuvering. In order
to demonstrate this and also to identify each postmodern life-strategy, the study relies on the
works on identity by the discussed sociologists. According to the latter, the study concludes, that
the reflexivity of the risk is the most profitable for those who are in the high position of the new
inequality, thus, have the power to determine conflicts generated by them and inflict them on
those excluded from the struggle of definition of risk. -
Forms of parental control in the case of postadolescent youth
123-141Views:111The present study addresses control factors that emerge during the detachment of young people in the post-adolescent age that may delay or hinder the detachment process of the young adult. It aims to highlight that childhood upbringing, the child-parent relationship, and the communication that takes place between them allow the creation of a new type of typology in which not only parental control tools can be identified but also social control mechanisms can be identified. Most post-adolescence research traces the success or extent of detachment mostly to the financial situation of young people. This paper, however, aims to briefly demonstrate that a deeper understanding of the dimensions of detachment as conceived by László Vaskovics is possible through the study of attachments and bonds.
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Europe’s most visited countries’ coastal areas affected by overtourism
98-122Views:39Tourism has a constant impact on the environment and on society, taking these impacts into
consideration reveals that these are not always beneficial. Negative impacts include increased
pollution, inappropriate construction, conflicts between local society and tourists, crowding and
congestion. The objective of my research is to study coastal areas affected by overtourism in
southern European countries. By examining tourism in the European countries that received the
most international tourists in 2019, I illustrate the importance of 3S tourism (sea, sand, sun), the
mass of tourists it attracts, and its effects. The tourism of France, Spain and Italy, with their sunny sandy coasts, are presented by summarising data sets from various international databases.
I analyse the cases of some destinations from the three countries that are the main focus of the study, based on previously published articles. Coastal areas that have been associated with the
overtourism phenomenon by other authors are also presented. -
Neo-Hobbesian democracy: The theory of modus vivendi and democratic legitimacy
25-41Views:24In political theory, the criticism of Rawlsian constructivist liberalism has been articulated in
theories of political realism. John Gray, one of the promoters of realist liberalism, recommends
a neo-Hobbesian way of social coexistence which is based on the conflictual and antagonistic
idea of political life. It takes social values and forms of life as incommensurable in modern
multicultural societies. Taking value-pluralism and its conflicts seriously, a theory of modus
vivendi has been articulated among realist political thinkers. Being a post-liberal (or post-Enlightenment) theory, modus vivendi is more a practice oriented and open-ended theory than
philosophical constructions based on high morality. Modus vivendi theorists make an emphasis
on the peaceful co-existence of social groups and a moral minimum of the political society. One of
the deficiency of the theory is that it says not much about democracy, though it would be highly
useful according to two contextual considerations.On the one hand, a modern political system
would be impossible or outrageous without any form of democratic legitimacy. On the other
hand, there is an exhaustion of the liberal project(s) and the societies featured by multicultural
prosperity. Besides constitutional protection, defending democracy in this new context means
balancing between cultural and other value-oriented groups in modern societies. In my paper,
I make an attempt to examine the concept of democracy in the light of modus vivendi theory. -
From an acquaintance to a true friend – the idea of friendship among university students
139-159Views:30The idea of writing my essay comes from the book ‘Embert barátjáról – A barátság szociológiája’
written by Fruzsina Albert and Beáta Dávid. I am especially interested in the appearance and
significance of the typical social capital, i.e. friendship, among the students of the Sapientia
University of Miercurea Ciuc (Csíkszereda) and that of the ELTE (Budapest). In order to
investigate the phenomenon of friendship, I chose a qualitative strategy, namely focus group
research.
Although I have expected greater contrasts by comparing the students of these two distinct
locations, I have found that friendship among the interviewed young people constitutes universal value with more common than different patterns.
