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The characteristics of social contact intensity, contact frequency and contact structure in Hungary in 2006 and 2015
102-138Views:35The study aims at comparing the Hungarian results of the questions on the frequency of personal and distance contact with relatives and friends in the 2006 and 2015 ad hoc modules of EU-SILC. According to our results, in line with the findings of previous Hungarian research, compared to 2006, there were fewer contacts in Hungary in 2015. Relations with friends, especially those held in person, were less exposed to weakening compared to relations with relatives. Among the different social groups, the already disadvantaged were typically negatively affected by either the change in intensity or the structure of relationships. However, the situation of the elderly and the inhabitants of deprived households deteriorated in all three dimensions examined: their relations weakened more strongly, and those related to relatives and personal ones further narrowed by 2015. This result indicates that the social disintegration of these groups has accelerated particularly between the two years, which poses a serious social policy challenge.
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Utopia and Social Science – Interpretation of the book Fahrenheit 451
98-108Views:46Utopian and dystopian works have traditions hundreds of years, but their golden era did not begin until the 20th century. The genre is very often depicted as a literary genre, but in reality it is much more than simple fiction. These novels are as much social science and social theory writings as they are works of phantasmagoria. In my writing, I strive to explain this line of thought based on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451. In the course of my work, following the fictional story of Guy Montag, I intend to present the peculiarities of the genre, its social science relations and its relationship with our contemporary society, in parallel with other dystopian works of the 20th century.
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Reframing of Particular Trust
1-23Views:13The paper strives to reconsider the theory of particular trust, i.e. one’s trusting feelings towards her/his most intimate relatives, friends, and personal relations. By doing this, at first, the paper sheds light on two distinct interpretations of particular trust in the literature. One of these approaches addresses particular trust as a kind of core disposition of the self, and it describes how one’s trust towards her/his bonding relations establishes the given subject’s generalized trust towards others, in a broad sense, to people as such. The other interpretation argues that particular trust is important for group-level social dynamics. It claims that if members of close-knit and exclusive groups, dominated by particular trust, are interacting only with each other, and avoiding out-group relations, then broader social cooperation and collaboration are constrained, social integration and cohesion are limited, and on macro level there is an unfolding distrust. As it seems, the above-described readings of particular trust are contradictory. The current paper stresses that just one of these interpretations is coherent and consistent – the first one.
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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. -
Interpersonal relationships in Hungary – an overview
72-93.Views:29Our paper aims to demonstrate that social structure has significant impact on the formation of
interpersonal relations. We review and analyse the characteristics of ego-centric interpersonal
networks of Hungarians based on data from nationally representative adult population surveys
between the mid-1980’s up to 2015. We focus especially on core discussion networks, friendship
ties and weak ties and analyse how the transition to market economy influenced interpersonal
relationships. As expected, the large-scale social changes brought about by the transition
changed interpersonal networks as well. During the first decade of the transition (in the 1990’s)
one could not witness a significant change of personal networks, nonetheless the adaptation
process was easier for people supported by strong, traditional family ties. Non-kin ties, especially
friendships seem to gain significance at the expense of kin relationships. Overall, resources
available through weak ties seem to be decreasing. -
Social contacts and spending of leisure time of the elderly
86-104Views:163The phenomenon of the aging of societies is now well-known, demonstrating its demographic, economic and social impact in many countries around the world. The increase in average life expectancy at birth and the low number of children have naturally triggered the emergence of declining, aging societies. All this has led to a number of tasks for policy makers, domestic and international organizations, primarily to promote active, healthy aging. This article describes some of the results of an empirical study of 167 people conducted jointly with St. Luke’s Greek Catholic Charity in the winter of 2019 in order to assess the situation and needs of the elderly. This article presents the results of our study, which focuses on community activities, leisure, and social relationships. During our analytical work, we found that those living in residential care homes are more open to community-based activities to maintain physical and mental activity.
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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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Beyond „Green finance” – Sustainability aspects of capital markets
123-137Views:40
The accumulation of capital constitutes an enormous obstacle to the sustainability transition.
The role of the capital throughout the whole evolutionary process of civilization is undoubtedly impressive, as it has continuously delivered innovations in our everyday lives. Nevertheless, as
we argue in our study, a dominant part of capital accumulation has not fulfilled this function
in monetary and material terms as well recently; or performs at a low efficiency concerning the
ecological damage generated. Sustainability calls thus for an investment environment in the
near future that allows for the social benefits of capital accumulation through the expansion
of the material services delivered, limiting the accumulation of material stocks, resulting in
significant adverse environmental impacts remarkably in the same time. We will introduce
and compare the gains of savings and capital accumulation considering the monetary and the
material dimensions of our socio-economic system, unveiling the relevance of the capital market
in sustainability transition in this way, beyond green finance. -
In the thick of relationships? Personal and distance relationships with relatives and friends in Hungary in 2015
65-101Views:53The study presents the structure and intensity of the relationships of the Hungarian population over 16 years of age through a descriptive analysis of four variables measuring the frequency of personal and distance contact with relatives and friends from the EU-SILC 2015 survey. According to the data, the relationship structure is on average balanced, half of the relationships are related to relatives or friends, and the relative proportions of personal and long-distance relationships are similar. According to our results, in addition to age, the financial situation of the household has a significant correlation with the characteristics of the relationship structure. One of the lessons of multivariate regression models is that the effect of other background variables on the relationship structure intensifies in parallel with aging, leading to a deepening of relationship inequalities among the elderly. Another lesson of the models is that the inclusion of household characteristics (financial situation, number of household members, material transfer relationship with other households) has a significant effect on the mechanism of individual background variables, thus confirming that a deeper study of relationship intensity and relationship structure within the household is essential. At the end of our analysis, we compiled clusters based on the intensity of relationships, the direction of relationships, and the channel of contacting, with a relative majority of more than one-third of the respondents with extremely weak relationship embeddedness.
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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. -
Informality: the Culture of Treating Others Instrumentally: An Essay about the Dynamics of the Relationship between Social Relations and Trust
49-64Views:20The current paper, without scientific systematization and artistic meditation, tries to address
life itself (the normatively understood ‘good life’) in an essayist way. It strives to draw up some
core pillars of a research program about a commonly known everyday phenomenon, informality,
more precisely its distorted form which is inducing social inequalities and injustices, and which,
because of this, should be seen reflexively and critically. The proposed argument is a theoretical
reflection on József Böröcz’s still actual and progressive scientific endeavor to create a framework
for the sociology of informality. -
Labour law and insurance from patriarchy to the beginning of nationalisation
279-282Views:18If the reader picks up Zsombor Bódy's The Society of Industrial Labour, the title page will probably lead him to a long discussion of the new problems and tasks caused by industrialisation, and the structure and situation of social relations that it changed.
However, reading the first pages, we understand that Bódy, touching on the deeper social context, selects only a slice of the complex problems of industrial society of the time, the development and change of the institutional system related to work from the mid-19th century to the end of the Second World War. The author, who has extensively processed relevant volumes of international and national literature and numerous archival and printed sources, has synthesised his findings in this volume after several smaller studies. The work contains a number of new approaches and new problem definitions, which I would like to reflect on below. From the book we can learn about the views and plans of the time in relation to labour, the provisions that were born, from the patriarchal view to the beginning of the era of nationalisation. A great advantage of the work is that it analyses at length the prevailing social policy ideas of each period, contrasting the different views. It deals not only with governmental ideas, but also with the views of the opposition, the interest groups and, last but not least, the experts and their associations of the time. It examines the power of each organisation in each era and the influence it could exert on decision-makers, achieving different results, even against other groups. All of this is to the advantage of the essay, and the author perhaps sometimes over-details the battles between different views. -
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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182-185Views:23Számlálni az időt, hallani a mendemondákat, szorulni az
emlékektől, s félni a jövőtől – kinek ne lenne saját élménye, közvetett vagy szomszédos tapasztalata, kor-közérzete és felelőssége? Lesz-e nyugdíj, elegendő, akad-e, aki
majd gondoz, fáj-e majd az elmúlás, küzdeni kell-e a túlélésért? -
The Cult of Reflexive Efficacy
70-77Views:18This essay elaborates on the reflexive efficacy cult of the technocapitalistic Western modernity,
unequivocally demonstrating its profit-driven, compulsive trends which naturally lead to
dehumanization and decontextualization both on the individual and societal levels. As such, the
present work is also an exclamation for humans, for humanism, being further supported by its
”impressionist” style and humanized narrative. -
The slave trade and trust
172-177.Views:29Does culture have an impact on society, and if so, how? The study by Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon set out to examine the impact of the slave trade, which has left its mark on the African continent and its economy, but which ended some 100 years ago, on the cultural, norm-following, beliefs and values of individuals. Their aim is to explore the reasons that led to the historical disconnect within Africa between local governments or municipalities (politics), between the outlying communities (neighbours) and even within family relations, which may still influence economic development today. Nunn and Wantchekon's hypothesis is based on an earlier study by Nunn, which showed a causal link between the 400-year slave trade and the income conditions of the African population today, looking at the long-term economic effects of the slave trade.
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Elite relations in the age of globalisation
109-113Views:51Pogátsa, Zoltán (2022): A globális elit. Kossuth Kiadó, Budapest, p, 319
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Cseh fotográfia a két világháború között a művészet, társadalom és politika hármasa felől közelítve
105-122Views:39A tanulmány a két világháború közötti cseh fotográfiára fókuszál a média és technika szemszögéből. A fotózás jelentős szerepet játszott a 1920-as és 1930-as években a modern kultúra kialakításában az újfajta tömegtájékoztatás, az iparosítás, a megváltozott szabadidő és kulturális
kapcsolatok révén. A tanulmány tehát a fotóművészetre mint gondolkodást befolyásoló tényezőre összpontosít. A tanulmányban fontos cél, hogy az eszmék fordított áramlását mutassa be, tehát azon dimenziók felől közelítsen a fotográfiához, amelyeket maga a fotóművészet ragad meg.
