“Il faut défendre la subjectivité”: Vulnerability in Levinas’s Ethics

Levinas conceived ethics as a contestation of the ontological imperialism and its asphyxiating order dominating Western culture, arguing that, rather than ontology, ethics is first philosophy. Supported and led by a phenomenological description of the concrete life of the embodied subject, his philosophical work achieves a radical critique of the sovereign subject by emphasizing the exceptional ethical significance of subjectivity. This paper discusses three key features that, according to Levinas, define human subjectivity, namely, vulnerability, passivity, and weakness, stressing how he thinks of subjectivity in terms of both welcoming and persecution at one and the same time. Lastly, by relying on Butler’s critique of the Levinasian ethics, the paper addresses Levinas’s take on politics, pointing out why political issues enter his ethical discourse

The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Organizational Citizenship Behavior (OCB) in the Workplace: Case study at the Recycling Company Rec-Kos, Kosovo

This research examines whether there exists a positive correlation between the transformational leadership style and factors such as civic virtues, responsibility, altruism, correctness, and civility to practice Civic Organizational Behaviour (OCB) constructively. Employees who tend to support colleagues with the above factors become more outstanding later on. Additionally, these employees excel by acting beyond the set minimum to successfully complete a task. Indeed, OCB can be stimulated by the transformational leader. The quantitative data from the case study in REC-KOS, a private company based in Kosovo, highlight that factors such as age and less work experience are related to the creation of an OCB-supportive work environment. An environment in which the flexibility of rules is praised by the transformational leadership style shows no relevant influence on the promotion of the empathic side of employees. On the other hand, full identification with the company for which one works is achieved primarily through organizational culture

Overweight, obesity, and reality television: Exploring health data and the popularity of local versions of The Biggest Loser in the European context

With rates of overweight and obesity on the rise around the world, there have been numerous reality television shows dedicated to this complex and enduring issue. This exploratory contribution outlines the global epidemiological situation relating to overweight and obesity in the European context, before seeking to discover whether there is any linkage between the rates of overweight in a given European country and the popularity – as demonstrated through the number of seasons broadcast – of the local version of the weight-loss reality show The Biggest Loser. Through the analysis of online sources, preliminary data is gained, providing useful information for further research on the topic at a later date

Face masks in education: The cases of Greece and Singapore

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, governments across the world implemented practices and rules related to masks in educational settings and beyond. Through a desktop analysis and systematic literature review, leveraging educational, governmental and journalistic sources, this article provides an extreme comparison of two nations’ intra-period responses on the use of face masks in education. Taking the examples of two different countries (Greece and Singapore), we discuss their contrasting approaches to face mask use in education, ranging from pre-schools to universities, while taking into account the macroenvironmental dissimilarities of their educational systems and technological capabilities. There are significant opportunities to learn by examining the governmental, pedagogical, and community reactions of different countries about mask use, in order to strengthen educators’ collective response to COVID-19 now and into the future. These various threads could then be pulled back together in a discussion across borders

Expectations, challenges and achievements of primary school teachers during their first year of work, in Kosovo

The first year of work in the teaching profession is characterized by many dynamics, which can be best understood by the voices of the teachers themselves who have passed the first year of work. This qualitative research conducted through semi-structured interviews with 10 primary school teachers, from different places of Kosovo, reflects the expectations, challenges and achievements that they have experienced throughout their first year of work. The findings show that the teachers have had expectations to be supported, to be given help and cooperation from their colleagues, school board and from the parents and students. They have expected from their students to be polite, committed to lessons and disciplined. There is a difference between the expectations and the reality that these teachers have faced. Teachers have experienced many challenges during the period of the first year of work, difficulties in building relationships of cooperation and understanding with the school leadership, parents of students, classroom and student management but also achievements in relation to these

Negotiating Identity During the Macedonia’s Name Change Period in Media Discourse

The name is an essential mark of one’s identity, and if someone is pressured to change it under any circumstances it would naturally lead to feelings of uncertainty, fear, anxiety and doubt, because it is not only important how people see themselves, but also how they want to be seen by others, as well as how others see them. This paper analyses the discursive processes used by the media sources to negotiate and construct the identity of Macedonians in the period before and after the change of the name of the country from the Republic of Macedonia into the Republic of North Macedonia in 2019. Taking interaction and language as central to the construction, enactment and negotiation of identity, a corpus of 20 articles of both pro- and anti-governmental newspaper outlets, written before, during and after the name change were analysed and parallels were drawn in terms of the language used by both media sources to discuss the identity of Macedonian people. The analysis showed that while the pro-governmental media were attempting to portray a new identity of Macedonians in the EU, the anti-governmental ones presented the name-change as a threat to a complete identity loss (Trajkova, 2020). This situation left the Macedonian citizen confused, scared and in doubt of what was the right or wrong path to take

Lexical and Grammatical Interference in Translation from Albanian into English

This study aims to investigate lexical and grammatical interference in translation from Albanian into English. The study raised the questions: To what extent students rely on their mother tongue when learning a foreign language grammar? In which cases does mother tongue interfere in translation from first into a foreign language? To reach the objective of the study and answer these questions, the research examined students’ errors in translated sentences from Albanian into English. Results demonstrated that the problems that occur from interference are lexical and grammatical. The results also proved that these kinds of interference occur as a result of students’ lack of knowledge of the source and target languages. For the purposes of this study it was designed a translation test and it was used with students whose native language is Albanian. The aim is to show that native language interferes to a high extent in learning L2 grammar, especially when the two grammars differ in structure

The Duplex World: Keizaburo Maruyama’s Elaboration on Saussure’s Principle of the Arbitrariness of Linguistic Sings

This paper has two objectives. It intends, first, to elucidate Ferdinand de Saussure’s discourse on the arbitrariness of linguistic signs and, second, to expound Keizaburo Maruyama’s unique, epistemological thesis developed based on Saussure’s ideas. The argumentation goes as follows. After illustrating that the Swiss linguist’s case, having been understood too diversely, requires an accurate recapitulation and Maruyama’s texts have received little heed, the first section which proves Saussure’s original opinion entails that not only the relationship between a linguistic sign’s signifier and signified but a language’s classification system itself is absolutely contingent. The second section, scrutinizing Maruyama’s theory about our interpreting the world, shows its gist is humans construe the universe through the duplex articulation structure. The third, concluding section describes his view on music as another attribute of his thought, and closes the discussion by indicating that his texts, albeit written decades ago, can help us address today’s conundrums

Harmonization of state legislation with EU legislation – the case of the so-called anti-defamation media law in Albania

Albania is a European country that has been involved in the long process of EU accession since the fall of the communist regime at the beginning of the 90s’, but is yet to meet a number of requirements to join the European Union. One of the policies that is being scrutinized and going through the EU adaptation framework is the media policy. This article adopts a single case study approach, specifically the most debated media law package in Albania in the last three decades, the so-called anti-defamation media law. The focus of my research analyses concerns the role of the stakeholders involved in the process for the alignment of the media legislation in Albania with the EU regulations. To that end, I have used the expert interviews method, with experts who have been engaged and set out recommendations in this long process which has not finished yet. The research gives a general overview of the interactions of the stakeholders involved in this process, such as national and international journalists and human rights NGOs; international institutions which operate in Albania and have been quite active in this debate, and independent journalists. Another crucial part of my research is investigating through policy analysis methods how the stakeholder’s input has been incorporated into this complicated policymaking process or most of the time totally ignored by the decision-making institutions such as the Albanian government and parliament