Corpus Christi : feast, ceremony and performance

W 2011 roku mężczyzna ubrany w strój motyla naruszył porządek łódzkiej procesji organizowanej w katolicką Uroczystość Najświętszego Ciała i Krwi Pańskiej, zwaną w Polsce Bożym Ciałem. Wydarzenie to, o charakterze ulicznego performansu interwencyjnego, jest okazją do podjęcia rozważań dotyczących rytuału, ceremonii i ich miejsca we współczesności. Punktem wyjścia jest uniwersalizująca koncepcji „dramatu społecznego” Victora Turnera pozwalająca na wspólne ujęcie tak rożnych zjawisk kulturowych, jakim jest teoforyczna procesja i performance art. Przedstawione zostały zmiany w świętowaniu i w rozumieniu świąt, a w ich zakresie rytuałów i ceremonii religijnych. Posiadająca średniowieczną genezę procesja organizowana w Święto Bożego Ciała, podobnie jak inne manifestacje życia zbiorowego, została włączona w system religijny i społeczno-polityczny, potem zaś w związku z głoszonymi i realizowanymi w Europie hasłami sekularyzacji i oddzielenia państwa od Kościoła i wydzieleniem się czasu wolnego, w sferę prywatną. Współcześnie funkcjonuje, nadal gromadząc wiernych i będąc dla nich okazją do świętowania, dla niektórych jednak jest już skonwencjonalizowaną, nieznajdującą uzasadnienia, a przez to pustą formą rytualną.In 2011 in Łódź, a man dressed in a butterfly costume disturbed the peace of the procession celebrating a Catholic feast: The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ (Corpus Christi), in Poland known as "Boże Ciało". This incident, which was of an interventional street performance character, provides an excellent opportunity for considerations on ritual, ceremony and their place in the present-day reality. The starting point is Victor Turner's universalising idea of "social drama", which enables us to join together cultural phenomena as different as a theophoric procession and performance art. The article presents changes in the solemnizing and understanding of feasts, and within this area, of rituals and religious ceremonies. Similarly to other manifestations of collective life, the Corpus Christi procession with its medieval genesis was included in religious and socio-political system. Later, the procession was added into the private sphere owing to the fact that a secularisation and disestablishment policy was first signalled, and then implemented in Europe, and time was separated into periods of labour and leisure. Nowadays, this procession is still solemnized in Poland and gathers large numbers of parishioners, giving them an occasion to celebrate; to some, however, it is now a conventionalised, unfounded and thus worthless form of ritual

The new wave of polish migration after EU enlargement - current state, determinants and outlook

Following Poland’s accession to the EU there has been a major change in outward migration patterns from Poland. In the last three years Poland has witnessed an increased outflow of workers, especially to Great Britain and Ireland, two countries that opened up their labour markets as early as in May 2004. By analyzing different sources of data we try to obtain a fairly consistent view of the scale of migration from Poland to these two countries and of the profile of Polish migrants with respect to such characteristics as age, education, jobs held in the country of immigration, earnings, intended length of stay and reasons for migration. In light of the theories of migration, empirical evidence as well as results of recent surveys of Poles working in Britain and Ireland, the wage-differential between Poland and the two destination countries of migration appears to be a valid explanation for the recent post-accession wave of migration. Given this result we run a simulation of development of wages in Poland, the UK and Ireland to find out if the ‘wage-differential’ motive for migration is likely to be influential in the coming years. We find that this motive is unlikely to lose significance, even despite the rapid growth of Polish wages in the last few months.international migration, determinants of migration, Poland, enlargement, European Union

The Demand of the Other in Paul Ricœur’s Philosophical Hermeneutics

The article proposes to view Paul Ricœur’s ethics and the demand of the Other from the perspectives that are mostly explicated in his seminal Oneself as Another, namely: the self and the suffering Other, friendship, the capable human being, and the notion of ‘the good life’ seen as the teleological horizon of a human life. My attempt is to demonstrate that for Ricœur the demand of the Other is set on the premise of understanding viewed as the fundamental mode of being‑­in‑­the world, and that his ethics of the Other comprises mainly such phenomena as mutual vulnerability, the self’s indebtedness to the Other and reliance on the Other, as well as an expression of the feelings of benevolence and solicitude. Significantly, for Ricouer the genuine response to the demand of the Other equals a worthy, fulfilled life manifested in the narrative coherence of a life. This article also touches upon the debate between Ricœur and Lévinas regarding the ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ relation and the underlying difference in their approach to alterity; Ricœur’s presupposition of the response of the Other and Levinas’s model which does not entangle reciprocity.W artykule proponuję spojrzenie na etykę Paula Ricœura i nakaz Drugiego pod kątem treści poruszanych w jego dziele O sobie samym jako innym, takich jak: „ja” i Drugi, który cierpi, przyjaźń, „dobre życie” rozumiane jako teleologiczny horyzont ludzkiej egzystencji. Moim celem jest ukazanie, że Ricœur sytuuje nakaz Drugiego w „rozumieniu”, które jest pojmowane jako fundamentalny sposób bycia­‑w­‑świecie. Etyka Ricœura obejmuje przede wszystkim zagadnienie podatności na zranienie, wzajemną odpowiedzialność, dobroć i troskliwość. Ricœur twierdzi, że prawdziwa odpowiedź na nakaz Drugiego równa się wartościowemu, spełnionemu życiu i wyraża się w jego narracyjnej spójności. Artykuł podejmuje również temat debaty pomiędzy Ricœurem i Levinasem wokół relacji „ja” i „ty”, i różnic w podejściu do niej: model Ricœura zakłada odpowiedź Drugiego, podczas gdy Levinas mówi o relacji, która nie musi być oparta na wzajemności

Inflation and corporate investment – a critical survey

The analysis of inflation’s effect on investment can contribute to a deeper understanding of the benefits of a monetary policy oriented towards price stability. It can also help conduct such a policy effectively. We begin with a review of conclusions about the inflation-investment relationship that can be drawn from traditional monetary models with exogenous growth and no market imperfections. As these conclusions are ambiguous, models of this type could lead economic decision-makers to fail to take proper account of inflation’s impact on investment. We then survey research which, contrary to monetary exogenous growth models, takes account of market imperfections such as the asymmetry of information, uncertainty and nominal rigidities in the tax system. The analysis of the significance of these imperfections for the direction and magnitude of the relationship between inflation and investment forms the bulk of the article. We highlight, on the one hand, the key assumptions of the particular theories (and whether they are in keeping with stylized facts), and, on the other hand, the difficulties that empirical research faces when trying to verify the conclusions from these theories. Finally, we offer some conclusions on the basis of the conducted survey.investment, inflation, monetary growth models, asymmetry of information, uncertainty, taxes

Inflation and investment in monetary growth models

The article contains a review of monetary growth models. We analyze the ways in which money is introduced into these models and the models’ conclusions about the impact of inflation on investment. We find that the models differ widely with respect to the ways in which they account for money and its functions in the economy as well as with respect to the “technical” assumptions, about e.g. the form of the utility function or the production function. Despite these differences most models fail to adequately capture money’s role and are highly sensitive to changes in the assumptions. Moreover, the models differ in their predictions about inflation’s impact on capital accumulation, with some models offering conclusions that are not only counterintuitive but also inconsistent with empirical evidence.investment, inflation, monetary models of growth, monetary search theoretic models

The Polish criminal justice system and recent political developments in Poland a public lecture delivered at the University of Hong Kong on 1 May 1990 /

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The title covered by the exclusive right as the subject of the legal protection

Intellectual property is often defined as ”knowledge which may be transformed into value”. Nowadays, the importance of knowledge is steadily growing in the economic system. Today, not only material goods decide the value of enterprise, but also intellectual property which becomes more and more important. Thus, the management of intellectual property is particularly significant in the growing standard of enterprise. Consequently, in terms of the functioning of business entities it is crucial to register markers as trademarks. Granting the protective right as the exclusive law on trademarks gives possibility to use trademarks in an earning and professional way in the whole area of the Republic of Poland and consequently add many benefits to Polish traders. In this study the author quotes several judgements delivered under the Act of Trademarks of 31 January 1985 (Journal of Polish State Law 1985, No. 5, item 17), which, however, keeps the whole novelty under the currently obtained Act of Industrial Property Law [i.p.l.] of 30 June 2000 (Journal of Polish State Law 2001, No 49, item 508; consolidated act Journal of Polish State Law 2003, No. 119, item 1117). This study aims to present the protection of the title in the light of the Industrial Property Law

Space, Dwelling, and (Be)longingness: Virginia Woolf’s Art of Narration

The supple and ever-present search for the possibilities offered by the narrative form in fictional writing corresponds to the use of the narrative as a mode of understanding and explaining our being-in-the-world in philosophy. The intimate liaison between the realm of fictional imagination and that of human everydayness inspires writers to seek ways to tackle issues of temporality, the conflicting character of human drives, and the ultimately unresolvable tension between finitude and infinitude. As a literary and philosophical category, the narrative remains an inexhaustible space for the exploration of the way we understand our lives. I propose a hermeneutic investigation of the interactions between the art of narration and the categories of space, presence/absence, and (be)- longingness as evoked in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. This article engages Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutics of facticity, and, more specifically, his notions of homelessness and homecoming, to shed light on the inimitable character of Woolf’s artistic representations of the spatial dimension of human existence, reality viewed as both tremulous and solid, as well as of human embodiment and the disparity/closeness between the corporeal and the spiritual

Personal data protection for sole traders

In the context of an open definition of personal data and accepting a broad understanding of the subject range of the PDPA44, information about natural persons who conduct business activity should be treated as personal data, as it is frequently information allowing a specific natural person to be identified. On the other hand, publishing personal data of people with business activity in CEIDG forces the conclusion that the sole trader decides to makes the data broadly accessible, and therefore is aware that its protection is limited. It should not mean that commonly accessible data can be processed absolutely freely with complete disregard for PDPA, as business entities also have a right to privacy. However, from a practical point of view, in their case this right is limited by the rule of the publicness of economic turnover. It can be noticed that the practice of economic turnover forces a more flexible approach to the presented issue45. In this respect, since May 2016, the Act has introduced new provisions that are intended to ensure a realistic balance between the business entity’s and public interest. The purpose of the amendment of the Act on Freedom of Business Activity, adopted in September 2015, is primarily to accelerate the service of undertakings. Undoubtedly, in the content of the business entity’s data the revision of the Act introduced provisions broadening the scope of data contained in the CEIDG entry. The main changes that came into force can certainly stir up controversies. It is difficult to explicitly declare whether those legal solutions are effective and positive. Certainly, introducing regulations excluding the PDPA regarding the personal data of a sole trader, assuming the public nature of the overwhelming majority of their data, results in a situation in which they are not properly protected