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Structure and communitas: Subcultural problemsolving knowledge in an alternative high school
153-174.Views:19The paper describes the relationship between subcultural and school/institutional interpretations
in the inner discourse of an alternative school (the ’Diákház’) in Budapest. Interpretations and
practices, that belonging two different interpretive frameworks, appear simultaneously and
intertwined in the Diákház communication scene. This contributes to problem-solving
capacities/knowledge that individually do not appear in either of the two. In this discourse, the
subcultural manifestations of difference, deviance, marginality, resistance or communitas, and
the manifestations of knowledge, autonomy, responsibility and the hierarchical structure of the
school sometimes appear in opposition, sometimes in reinforcement to each other. The knowledge
formed in the discourse can be used by the Diákház to keep (formerly drop-out) students within
the institution, and by the students to reduce their own feeling of invalidity. In this way, the
Diákház is able to use the two opposite social states, communitas and structure, to its own
benefit -
Knowledge, power and discourses in Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis
94-112Views:84Critical Discourse Analysis (or Critical Discourse Studies – CDA/CDS) examines the relationship between texts, discourses and power, dominance, power abuses and social inequalities. Critical discourse analysis is a multidisciplinary research perspective, which not only examines the interactions between the text, the micro level and its surroundings, the macro level, but its main goal is to uncover social inequalities, expose the forms and modalities of abuse of power. The representatives of CDA are committed to social equality and justice. Present paper presents the work of one of the outstanding representatives of Critical Discourse Analysis, Teun A. Van Dijk, by presenting the history and possibilities of CDA, and also the key elements of Van Dijk’s approach. This study aims to show how knowledge, power and discourse are connected in Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis.
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The place and role of field studies in teaching medical sociology
44-55Views:43Introduction: The goals of the subject of Medical sociology are to familiarize and explain the relationships between social environment and health. The theoretical and practical elements of the medical sociology education and the field studies that form a part of practical work serve these goals. During filed studies, we build on the previous knowledge and experience of the
students. Method: The themes of the field studies change from semester to semester. From the series of studies we picked three themes that were connected to and built on each other. We present the role of field studies through their description and the explanation of our experiences. Results: Field studies add empirical skills and experience to the knowledge acquired during the
theoretical and practical training of medical sociology. The field study assignments also serve to strengthen the effects of the “hidden curriculum”, the process of the indirect professional socialization at the medical school. Furthermore, the new knowledge and skills give the students a better understanding of the scientific literature helping them in the interpretation of statistical
and methodological aspects of biomedical results and concepts. Conclusion: Our experiences show that field studies are an efficient teaching method. Its most important outcome is sensitizing medical students towards health related social problems and helping them to understand and handle such problems. -
Understanding Aspects to the Ethnospecific Researches on the Gypsy Jazz
23-39Views:33The early “research of Gypsies”, romology, then the visible and the hidden processes of
“tziganology” in anthropology included a shift in the state of understanding between the
hillside of critical interpretation studies and that of local group psychology. They also involved
the research of folk tales, dancing, poverty, examining segregation and participatory action
methodology as well as innovation and rebirth of the musicological research of Gypsy music.
The terminological aspect of “us” and “others”, expressing alterity and identity, points towards
the more complex study of (ethnic) “minorities”, moreover knowledge and field studies, and
results of examining narratives (such as tales, dances, visual worksof art, publicity, religion and
community), bring us closer (by way of political and scientific pragmatism) to signalling a new
era of empathic understanding. The aim of the paper is to highlight the ways leading to that
goal, putting the musical aspects of the shift in focus, consisting of stylistic inventions, a worldmusic-based openness towards instruments and performance cultures, which nevertheless still
carries the signs of a new era of projection and knowledge contents, first-person-narrative and
narrative identities. Finding answers to the question “where did it come from” might be aided
by contemplating “where does it go”. This would be both the aim and partially the structure of
my thematic essay. -
Training and employment: Information and knowledge flows between training institutions and employers
31-48Views:31For a region's economy to develop, it is essential to develop integrated forms of operation that manage the available resources efficiently. This is particularly true in a border micro-region with a predominantly small population, where for decades farming has been essentially based on agricultural subsistence and employment opportunities have been limited. Matching the employment and training structure, balancing supply and demand in the training and employment system can also be beneficial for the economic and social development of a disadvantaged micro-region. The development of border micro-regions was seriously handicapped before the change of regime. Small and medium-sized settlements on both sides of the border were depopulated and their inhabitants were ageing. Over the past few years, regional development has been based on local needs and existing resources, resulting in the creation of nearly 2 500 small and medium-sized enterprises in 21 municipalities in the Érmellék sub-region, where the research is located. However, the economic and employment functions of the organisations created can only be developed if the specialist needs of the businesses are met in the right quantity and quality structure.
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From Sunday lunch to the ballot box: Political socialisation and political homophily in Hungarian society
8-36Views:151Political socialisation is the process of forming an individual’s political identity, in the course of which the individual’s attitude to politics and political worldview is formed. Political socialisation takes place in different spheres, of which the family and parents are of particular importance. Previous research in Hungary has confirmed that the family is an “incubator” of citizenship. However, there is little data available in Hungary that would allow for a more precise understanding of the transmission of political attitudes. This study investigates political homophily within the family (between parent and child) and the effects of parental political characteristics on the individual in Hungary. Our data are drawn from a nationally representative telephone survey of 2000 respondents sampled in 2023. The results show that in nearly two-thirds of Hungarian families, family members held the same political views during the respondent’s childhood, with the highest proportions of homophily indicators, fathers’ and respondents’ voting activity, and mothers’ and respondents’ conservative-liberal attitudes. The effect of parental characteristics was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). Parents’ political interests and ideological positions had a strong direct effect on the same child characteristics, but the individual’s political participation and party preference were only indirectly influenced by parents. The success of attitudinal transmission was strongly enhanced if the parents were themselves, homophiles, along with the trait in question. Our results point to the important role of the family as a primary agent in political socialisation and suggest new research directions.
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Obstacles for women in career advancement
65-83.Views:34Today the level of knowledge, qualifications of female are immensely increasing, but despite
their skills there are still encounter obstacles in their careers, and women still appear to be
underrepresented in top-level leadership positions. Many analysis findings indicated that there
is a strong negativ relationship bertween the impact of the old traditions and women career
developement.
This paper attempts to identify all the obstacles and gender-related segregation of the
labour market such as vertical and horizontal segregations and also raises awareness of that
complex problem. Because there is a triple burden on graduate and leading women, work at
home, their job and the struggle with the sexist working environment. -
College and university students’ attitudes towards democracy in Hungary
47-69Views:32The existence of education for democracy has positive impact on citizens’ political knowledge
and the identification with the democratic values. In the process of civic education, the
universities and high schools play an important role. Many scholars argue that the high schools
have a civic mission to serve a public good or the university is the civic mission itself. To examine
democratic citizenship among high school and university students we use a dataset composed of
three surveys (2011/2012, 2013, 2015) of 4800 Hungarian students. We build on the literature
about the empirical and theoretical framework of democratic citizenship to answer the question
if 25 years after the collapse of communism we can witness the emergence of a new generation
of democrats in Hungary? Have young people successfully come to terms with their countries' authoritarian past and developed a commitment to democracy as a system of rule? Are they
ready to defend it in the face of challenges? Based on the empirical framework of citizenship we
derive a number of significant lessons from the Hungarian case, with important implications
about the ability to teach the norms and responsibilities of democratic citizenship in the world’s
emerging democracies. -
About the Understanding of Discursive Social Sciences and its Possible Aspects
93-107Views:30This article observes a paradigm shift occurred in several disciplines of social science which
also differs in theoretical and methodological aspects from science pursuing objectivity. The
interpretative social sciences primarily focus on the study of meaning and sets texts and talks
into the centre of understanding. Social facts are taking place in an intersubjective sphere,
namely among each other. In this paper they are consequently called ‘socially meaningful facts’.
Therefore, understanding and meaning of these socially meaningful facts can be study without
snapping social reality by means of different survey techniques, which would also necessarily
reduce the richness of social meanings.
In this paper the vote is given for the transition of discourse approach into a paradigm.
A couple of aspects are introduced in order to make an attempt to prove its scientific significance. On the other hand misunderstandings are also falsified. According to these misconceptions, a
text-based approach and an actual postmodern scientific scheme is nothing else than a literary
project, which also denies the pure existence of reality and only considers all previous knowledge
as relative. Instead of that, this paper states that every single fact of society has meaning which
is mediated through narratives by the language itself. -
Hungarian Videoblogger Networks Online
43-67.Views:23The web 2.0 phenomenon and social media – without question – not only reshaped our everyday experiences, but they have established an environment for new types of social practices and social actors. The demotization (Turner 2010) effect of such technologies has created entirely new fields where celebrities might emerge from: one of them is videoblogging. Many video bloggers gained great reputation through peculiar micro-celebrity practices (Marwick 2015, Senft 2012), and, as a result, became key figures in distributing ideas, values and knowledge in today’s society. These cognitive patterns are disseminated with a discursive apparatus that is largely based on social media activity, including posts, tweets, self-imagery and the videos themselves, which are tied to a certain logic according to environmental affordances, creating the possibility for fans to interact (share, comment, like, retweet etc.) with artifacts of the celebrity. This mechanism puts the celebrity in a so-called expert system (Giddens 1990) position as they provide adequate schemas of attitude, mentality or behavior. Most importantly, all of these public interactions are accessible for scholars to conduct scientific research. With the help of the SentiOne application this research attempts to reconstruct online networks of video bloggers based on mentions, which either occurred in an artifact (post, video description etc.) or in a fan comment. Apart from the network itself, SentiOne enables us to get insights regarding each individual connection established in it with different types of aggregated data.
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Studying further in higher education as a human capital investment
134-144Views:68In our paper, we examine the motives of further studies in higher education among higher education students, as well as how socio-demographic variables modify these motives. Our research method is quantitative. We used a research database gathered in the historical Partium region in 2014 (N = 1792). The theoretical backgrounds of our research are the human capital theory and Bourdieu’s capital conversion model. Based on ten motives of further studies, we made a cluster analysis and examined the relationships of these clusters and the socio-demographic background variables. Our finding is that the most important motive of further studies among students was expanding knowledge. Therefore, the motive of getting higher wages in the future, which is the central aspect in the human capital model, proved to be of minor importance. Based on the capital conversion theory students wanted to gain cultural and social capital when they decided to study further, as both can be profitable for them in the future. However, while the motives of further studies were affected by the social background of students, contrary to our hypothesis, financial motives were not more important for those students coming from disadvantage backgrounds than for other students
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My healthy life: a health and skill developing program in the child care services
109-122Views:85We present a health education and skill development program for two groups (N=30) of 7-14 years old children in this paper. The target group of our program were children in the family care system. In their case, primer prevention regarding a healthy lifestyle is an important goal. Their families often have difficult life circumstances thus the “social culture” of their (Wessely 2003) may endanger their healthy personality development. The program aimed the development of their physical, psychic and mental health, focusing on the holistic understanding of the concept of health according to the bio-psychosocial health paradigm. As a result of the program, we experienced positive outcomes among the children like higher level cooperation skills, more cognitive knowledge about health, development of their communication, improved self expression and expression of emotions. In the group of adolescent children we experienced the improvement of tolerance, empathy, adaptation and problem solving skills. We consider their wish for further education, the forming of their future plans and life goals as a great result.
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The Career-building effect of volunteering in higher education
146-160Views:70Nowadays the motives for volunteering are changing among higher education students, and
besides traditional altruistic motives, career-building motives also appear (the acquisition
of work experience and professional knowledge, professional development, networking,
the presentation of voluntary work in the resume). In this paper, we use data from a survey
conducted in five Central and Eastern European countries (N=2,199) to examine through linear
regression analysis the factors affecting the strength of career-building motives and to analyse
through a logistic regression model the determinants of whether or not volunteering is related to the field of study. Our hypotheses are formulated based on the literature. Our results show
that career-building motives are more pronounced among women and students who have a
close relationship with external friends outside the university, study outside Hungary, and study
something other than engineering, computer science or science. Voluntary work is more likely to
be related to the field of study among teacher education students, students with an unfavourable
financial situation, those who study in Romania, and those who have a close relationship with
faculty. -
The interpretation of prejudice among students in Debrecen
232-243Views:44Negative discrimination has always existed, we have always had an opinion about the other individual, despite the fact that it was often without any background knowledge. It was in the first half of the twentieth century that the scientific, social psychological study of prejudice began in the United States, dominated by the antagonism between whites and blacks. It was at this time that human society came to realise that the problem was a global one, and that it was essential to examine it, starting, among other things, from the massacres of the Second World War, which were partly the result of prejudice. Unfortunately, however, we do not need to go back to the great events of history to realise that prejudice has serious consequences. In our everyday lives, we are also confronted with a plethora of cases of crime, discrimination and conflict based on an image of the other person that is based on incomplete information.
Although the image of a world free of prejudice may be a utopia, these types of feelings and attitudes can and must be dealt with, but above all it is very important to map the situation and to examine it scientifically. -
Integrating excluded children through experiential games
58-70Views:109The study focuses on children who have been verbally, physically and/or socially bullying by their peers. In the last three decades, the investigation of the phenomenon of school bullying has become an increasingly researched field, one of the main causes of which is the significant increase in the number of child suicides. As a result, the development and application of numerous prevention and intervention programs became a priority, the aim of which is to reduce this deviant phenomenon in educational institutions. The existence of these programs and initiatives helps to create communities in which hurtful behavior occurs in low numbers. In the course of this research, I chose experiential pedagogic games. In the center of the reform pedagogy method I have chosen, the promotion of the creation of social relations and the strengthening of the existing ones becomes the priority. During experiential pedagogic games, children can experience flow, the positive benefits of interdependence, and the new knowledge they get when leaving their comfort zone. The obtained results will be presented and interpreted in the experimental part of the study. As a research tool, I chose sociometry, which demonstrates the relationship network of the given class. During the pre-survey, two children (a girl and a boy) did not have a mutual relationship, and then, through the consciously guided experiential pedagogic game, the result of the post-survey was that these children managed to establish a mutual relationship.
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Drawn Commuters: Caricature as a visual historical resource
125-150Views:41Despite of the fact that during the time of state socialism commuters meant a continuously
growing social group both in proportion and in size, writing about their social history has
been pushed into the background so far. The author’s aim is to fill this gap by trying to discover
the most of the available sources of different genres. The present study shows part of this
larger volume work, it shows what it can add to our knowledge about a social group through
traditional sources if we include caricatures of a given social group as visual historical sources
in the analysis.
In this paper, the author analyses sixteen caricatures of commuters, published in “Ludas
Matyi,” comparing written and audio visual sources. In the study, she tries, among other things,
to find out if there was a definite commuter picture of “Ludas Matyi”, and if so, to what extent
did this commuter’s image differ from that of other products in the press? To what extent did the
satirical portrayal of commuters refer to long-distance commuters and to what extent to daily
commuters? Were the real anomalies of commuting in the era reflected in Ludas Matyi?
The analysis discusses the economic and social processes that characterize the time of
publishing the caricatures, and denominates the external and internal characteristics and
emotions commuters were endowed with.The aim of the author is to present the method of
caricature analysis, which emphasizes the comparability of resources. -
Career planning and competences assessment among university students
34-45Views:45Planning a career cannot be started soon enough. The determination of following a
career path preceded by significant decisions and aims. Several pieces of research are
dedicated to the affiliation of young adults self-awareness and career paths in terms of
seeking work. University students rarely have the appropriate amount of self-knowledge.
Nowadays in the labour market beside the qualification, competencies are growing in importance. It is crucial to have certain communication, integration and strategic
skills to successfully find a quality job. The University of Debrecen provides a wide
variety of available services regarding individual job search support or consultation
and the commitment of a career path. The surveyed university students valued the
importance of these services and competencies related to improving the finding of a
job after graduation. The conformity between the knowledge of the available services
and the required and existing skills could be helpful in the labour market after getting
the university degree. The questionnaire was filled out by students from the University
of Debrecen and valued by the IBM SPSS Statistics programme. -
The moral restoration of business relations: Management from a Christian point of view
71-90Views:22Globalisation is a complex and worldwide process overarching historical times and continents.
It started with the great geographical discoveries, continued with the emergence of world trade
and the development of a truly global market reaching its present status. Globalisation has both
negative and positive effects. Out of the positive effects it has to be emphasised that more and
more zones of our planet benefit from the advances in sciences and techniques, more and more people have better access to work, education and the necessary commodities to meet their basic
needs. Globalisation has brought efficiency and new opportunities to companies, providing practically free access to raw materials, labour and knowledge. Out of the negative effects degradation of the biosphere, the greater social and economic inequality especially in the developing
countries has to be pointed out. Some companies are operating worldwide and have acquired
great economic power and influence. Governments have only limited possibilities to regulate
their operation. The expenses of profit maximisation are high, which are often ‘paid’ by the social-natural environment (as externalities). The aim of our study is to overview how current
business relations could be formed to be more human and environment friendly from the point
of view of Christian philosophy. It has to be pointed out that our study is focusing on the Christian
point of view, although in our globalised world when studying business relations we should not
forget about the role of other world major religious groups. -
The choice of medical career – What do our field work experiences represent?
5-21Views:54Background: One of the greatest challenges of the XXI. century is the changing of the medical profession. Beside of the process of deprofessionalism, the demographic and social composition of the medical society have also been altering. More women became medical doctors in recent years. Parallel to these changes, the career motivations of medical students are transforming. Method: 175 first year medical students from the Semmelweis University participated in our study. They wrote about their career motivations based on a fixed set of viewpoints. The narratives were analysed by both quantitative and qualitative (content analysis) methods. Results: The female students are committed to medical profession at younger ages. The most important factors in career choices are altruism and scientific interest for both genders. There is a male dominance in career motivations of experiences, knowledge and benefits. Conclusions: The changing face of career motivations has a significant impact on both the physicians and the patients. This issue opens up possibilities for following research.
