Kultura i polityka zagraniczna

The Maastricht Treaty includes as the “second pillar” of the European Union a Common Foreign and Security Policy that is designed to improve co-operation in foreign policy, co-operation which has existed informally since 1970. However in recent times (for example, the Libyan crisis), the European nations have not found the single voice that has been expected of them. The article asks for the reasons for the difficulty in improving this policy. As hypothesis a linkage to culture is established, understood as values and attitudes but also memories and remembrances. The article explores the possibility that the differences in the foreign policy are linked with the long life of these elements in the collective mentality.Traktat z Maastricht stworzył II filar Unii Europejskiej – Wspólną Politykę Zagraniczną i Bezpieczeństwa, która powstała w celu poprawieniu współpracy w zakresie polityki zagranicznej, współpracy, która istniała nieformalnie od 1970 roku. Mimo to ostatnio (na przykład w odniesieniu do kryzysu libijskiego) europejskie państwa nie znalazły wspólnego głosu, którego od nich oczekiwano. Przedmiotem artykułu jest pytanie o przyczyny trudności w udoskonalaniu tej polityki. Artykuł bada możliwość wynikania różnic w polityce zagranicznej z długiego okresu trwania tych elementów w mentalności zbiorowej

International Economic Integration, National Autonomy, Transnational Democracy: An Impossible Trinity?

democracy; constitutional change; WTO; national interest; Nation-state; supranationalism

Managing intellectual capital : individual rights and the public interest

Managing intellectual capital and intellectual property is a challenging task, especially for knowledge-based organisations vested with a public interest. Scientific ethics and freedom of information may clash with copyright law or with other intellectual property enactments, thereby engendering conflicts of interest. International law and treaties make for a complex regulatory framework. World-wide advocacy of the open access principle has led to some statutory changes, but its proponents mostly assume that copyright owners will act voluntarily. The implications for knowledge management are elucidated

The German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP): Scope, Evolution and Enhancements

After the introduction in Section 2, we very briefly sketch out current theoretical and empirical developments in the social sciences. In our view, they all point in the same direction: toward the acute and increasing need for multidisciplinary longitudinal data covering a wide range of living conditions and based on a multitude of variables from the social sciences for both theoretical investigation and the evaluation of policy measures. Cohort and panel studies are therefore called upon to become truly interdisciplinary tools. In Section 3, we describe the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), in which we discuss recent improvements of that study which approach this ideal and point out existing shortcomings. Section 4 concludes with a discussion of potential future issues and developments for SOEP and other household panel studies.SOEP, household panel studies, survey design

Legitimizing Indigenous Knowledge in Zimbabwe: A Theoretical Analysis of Postcolonial School Knowledge and Its Colonial Legacy

This article is a theoretical discussion on the social construction of knowledge in colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwe. It examines effects of hegemonic knowledge constructions and how they may be delegitimated through incorporating indigenous knowledge in postcolonial school curricular. The article questions the importance attached to Eurocentric school knowledge and the devaluation of indigenous knowledge in postcolonial states. It further argues that indigenous knowledge as informal knowledge plays a major role in society and should be formalized in educational institutions to constitute a transformative and inclusive educational system. The article proposes hybridization of knowledge to give voice to the formerly marginalized in school curricular in Zimbabwe. It also proposes that knowledge as a historical, cultural, social, spiritual and ideological creation should be a product of collaborated efforts from all possible stakeholders to foster social development and self-confidence in individuals

Pendulums of Personhood? Exploring the Multitudes of Immigrant Womanhood in Spanish-Maghrebi Literature

Often considered articulations of in-between-ness and bearers of fraught selfhoods, the work of Spanish-Maghrebi authors has been widely debated in literary fields, with academics arguing that it constitutes a largely homogenous set of texts about the standard immigrant experience. However, by placing these texts in a single category, such arguments end up erasing the immensely varied identities expressed and represented by Spanish-Maghrebi authors. This thesis seeks to address this issue by paying particular attention to how Spanish-Maghrebi authors negotiate different types of immigrant subjectivities in their writing. Specifically, I analyze the works of three contemporary Spanish-Maghrebi writers, Najat El Hachmi, Lamiae El Amrani, and Laila Karrouch, in order to demonstrate the heterogeneity of their hybrid identities. Through close readings of their texts, I argue that Spanish-Maghrebi identities are not monolithic. Rather, Spanish-Moroccan authors like El Hachmi, El Amrani, and Karrouch negotiate their dual identities differently. Consequently, this thesis pushes us to consider the varied experiences of immigrant womanhood and underscores the importance of acknowledging such diversity amongst Spanish-Maghrebis

Pandemic Dreams : Network Analysis of Dream Content During the COVID-19 Lockdown

We used crowdsourcing (CS) to examine how COVID-19 lockdown affects the content of dreams and nightmares. The CS took place on the sixth week of the lockdown. Over the course of 1 week, 4,275 respondents (mean age 43, SD = 14 years) assessed their sleep, and 811 reported their dream content. Overall, respondents slept substantially more (54.2%) but reported an average increase of awakenings (28.6%) and nightmares (26%) from the pre-pandemic situation. We transcribed the content of the dreams into word lists and performed unsupervised computational network and cluster analysis of word associations, which suggested 33 dream clusters including 20 bad dream clusters, of which 55% were pandemic-specific (e.g., Disease Management, Disregard of Distancing, Elderly in Trouble). The dream-association networks were more accentuated for those who reported an increase in perceived stress. This CS survey on dream-association networks and pandemic stress introduces novel, collectively shared COVID-19 bad dream contentsPeer reviewe

A Memetic Analysis of a Phrase by Beethoven: Calvinian Perspectives on Similarity and Lexicon-Abstraction

This article discusses some general issues arising from the study of similarity in music, both human-conducted and computer-aided, and then progresses to a consideration of similarity relationships between patterns in a phrase by Beethoven, from the first movement of the Piano Sonata in A flat major op. 110 (1821), and various potential memetic precursors. This analysis is followed by a consideration of how the kinds of similarity identified in the Beethoven phrase might be understood in psychological/conceptual and then neurobiological terms, the latter by means of William Calvin’s Hexagonal Cloning Theory. This theory offers a mechanism for the operation of David Cope’s concept of the lexicon, conceived here as a museme allele-class. I conclude by attempting to correlate and map the various spaces within which memetic replication occurs