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Number of results: 15
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Abstract

Participation – Activity – Agency – step back or progress to develop civil society? The main aim of the article is kick-off discussion about phenomenon of participation in spatial planning and management. Background to the discussion are results of my, more than twenty years, research on citizens’ standards of influence to the local authorities. It is drive me to the question if is the public participation right way to create civil society, especially in the context of spatial management? What do we expect in that context? We would like to provoke Polish local communities to bottom-up initiatives or make citizens to participate “on the call of the authorities” in statutory forms of engagement in spatial management process? There in Poland do we want to create a “civil society” or a “society of civic organizations”? Public participation is a tool and action that provokes the processes of civil society development or part of a bureaucratic planning ritual to tame the “social demon of activity”? Listed questions provoke me to discussion about five, in my opinion, significant, though perhaps not the only, dilemmas accompanying the implementation of participatory processes in the spatial planning and management, especially large territorial units. These are: “institutionalization of engagement”, “formalization of civic engagement”, “erosion of civic engagement”, “diversity of forms of civic engagement”, “exclusion of groups of citizens through involvement”. The listed issues show that participation is not end of process, but only a tool on the road to building or a civil society or a society of instrumental activity.
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Authors and Affiliations

Jacek Kotus
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Abstract

The security of asylum-seekers in the context of conditions of reception has not been frequently researched. This article aims to fill this gap by arguing that asylum-seekers in Poland are stuck in a grey zone between being secure and being securitised by the host society, with little opportunity to use their own agency. The basis for my study is the theory of the Welsh School of Critical Security Studies which focuses on understand-ing security through emancipation. The methodology contains a structural analysis of the reception system through the lenses of the agency–structure relationship and a legal and institutional study, as well as an in-depth examination of security practices combined with a reconstruction critique. The results show that the Polish reception system is a structure which is highly asymmetrical in relations of power, especially in the fundamental case of setting a security agenda. This thus constitutes a substantial constraint on migrants’ agency – with some potential for emancipation, however. In conclusion, the research points out the discrep-ancy between elements of the reception system driven by principles of liberal democracy and the nation-state and calls for a more inclusive, empowering and participatory security provision within the reception system in Poland.
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Authors and Affiliations

Mateusz Krępa
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Doctoral School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Political Science and International Studies, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, Poland
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Abstract

The process of social remitting is complex and multilayered, and involves numerous social actors that at each stage face several choices. By definition, the process of socially remitting ideas, codes of behav-iour and practices starts with the migrants themselves and their social context in the destination country. This paper focuses on the as yet unexplored issue of resistance performed and articulated by migrants confronted with potential change influenced by social remittances and the generalised process of diffu-sion. Faithful to the understanding of social remittances as ultimately a process where individual agency is the crucial determinant, the article follows the ideas, practices and values travelling across the trans-national social field between Britain and various localities in Poland. Resistance to change and new ways of doing things is a continuous dialogical process within one culture’s power field, which is un-derstood here in anthropological terms as a porous, open-ended field of competing meanings and dis-courses. Notions of bifocality, infra-politics of power relations and resistance are an important aspect of remittances and their reinterpretations, and resistance to social remittances by migrants, both in their destinations and in their communities of origin, is a crucial component of the whole process without which our understanding of remittances is incomplete.

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Authors and Affiliations

Michał P. Garapich
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Abstract

The transformation of the former docks in Dublin was one of the major urban regeneration projects in Ireland, which was built during the recent economic boom. Since the start of the project in the nineties, more than six thousand apartments have been built in the area. The construction of the apartments allowed for the diversifi cation of the character of this district into a living quarter. Initially the Docklands were considered as an offi ce district that would serve the Ireland’s service-based economy. New projects also allowed for the development of housing in a close proximity to existing city centre, although it did not happen not without avoiding the gentrifi cation and social polarization of this area.

The key role in the process was played by the operator – the urban development agency (Dublin Docklands Development Authority). It acted both as a strategic landowner and the coordinator of the development. The agency was responsible for the delivery of the infrastructure and the sale of the land. The actions of the operator included setting up the of the housing standards, requirements for the development of the infrastructure, both social and technical and public transportation systems. In the hindsight, the agency was praised for the management of the development of such large site. On the other hand, the lack of procedural oversight and a few dubious fi nancial decisions, as well as the other eff ects of the neoliberal policies, such as gentrification, fi nally lower the assessment of DDDA efficiency in that matter.

The article summarizes the main aims and achievements of the DDDA’s development policy and its assessment from the long-term perspective of two decades of transformation. This includes the eff ects of the actions in the aftermath of the fi nancial crisis. Such perspective allows to highlight the various stages of the development of the agency and to examine the efficiency and efficacy of these actions.

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Authors and Affiliations

Łukasz Pancewicz
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Abstract

Clients’ satisfaction with financial advice provided by professional advisors depends on how this advice has fulfilled their expectations and goals. However, once a recommendation is made, a client is unable to predict and evaluate the real financial outcome of the advisor’s proposal. In such a case, she/he can base her/his assessment on the characteristics ascribed to the financial advisor: her/his epistemic authority (competence) and level of caring. Additionally, clients expect to receive a “tailor-made” solution that takes into account her/his individual needs and characteristics. In the present study, we asked participants to evaluate financial experts who had recommended risky vs safe investments. The recommendations were congruent or incongruent with the clients’ risk tolerance (high vs low). The kind of recommendation influenced the participants’ evaluations of the advisors (and as a result, the clients’ perceived satisfaction) only for low-risk tolerance clients. For these clients, investment recommendations that were not adjusted to their levels of risk tolerance led to lower evaluations of the advisors and consequently to lower evaluation of satisfaction with their visits. These lower evaluations regarded both dimensions: the interpersonal aspect (caring) and competence in the field of finance (epistemic authority). Such incongruence between risk tolerance and the riskiness of the recommendation did not affect high-risk tolerance clients’ advisor evaluations.

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Authors and Affiliations

Barnaba Danieluk
Rafał Muda
Mariusz Kicia
Katarzyna Stasiuk
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Abstract

Dynamic changes and the increasing diversity of migrant societies support small-scale enclave businesses in Poland. Female migrants from Belarus and Ukraine appear to have found their niche in the beauty and cosmetology sector. Nevertheless, their entrepreneurship goes beyond the enclave market. Specialists provide services to migrant communities and simultaneously target Polish clients to ensure the success of their ventures. This article presents the results of qualitative research based on 13 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian and Belarusian beauty specialists. I focus on these businesswomen’s narratives about their entrepreneurial trajectories. My aim is to explore how they use and extend their social relationships in order to acquire entrepreneurial agency. Entrepreneurship can be understood as a socially embedded practice. I apply an intersectionality approach to investigate the complexity of socially constructed identities and the dimensions of individual entrepreneurial agency. Incorporating a mixed embeddedness approach, I examine the impact of structural factors on entrepreneurial activity and the importance of social networks for women’s self-realisation as independent beauty specialists.
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Authors and Affiliations

Kseniya Homel
1

  1. Institute of Applied Social Science, Faculty of Applied Social Science and Resocialization, Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw, Poland
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Abstract

In contrast to the usual integration of migrant workers in the ‘bottom jobs’ on the labour market, the em-ployment of Ukrainian workers in Hungarian electronics plants seems to take place in a more beneficial way. With the active mediation of temporary (temp) agencies, Ukrainian migrant workers are offered regular blue-collar assembly work, together with the same social rights and benefits as their local Hungarian col-leagues. Relying, in our analysis, on the literature on industrial sociology, migration research and global value chains, we are developing a critical perspective in which migration and employment are not seen as separate spheres but as mutually reinforcing each other. We combine bottom-up empirical research based on interviews with workers and a sectoral inquiry on industrial and employment relations in the temp agency sector supplying multinational corporations. Our main argument is that complex contracting also means subtle controlling. Such contracting is not the cheapest form but it creates a different, efficient employment regime with dependent, controllable, flexibly available, ‘fluid’ employees. Employee respondents described their position as dependent, ‘out of control’ and a temporary earning opportunity. Devoid of clear mecha-nisms for controlling their work conditions or growth within the job, all respondents turned to a more instru-mental approach, in which they invested in building up social capital through friendships, networks and personal relationships. Obtaining Hungarian citizenship and learning the language were two other main strategies for dealing with insecurity. Their efforts correspond with and reinforce a more globally integrated but ethnically motivated immigration regime, characteristic of post-socialist Hungary.

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Authors and Affiliations

Tibor T. Meszmann
Olena Fedyuk
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Abstract

Building upon Gasiorowska and Zaleskiewicz's (2021, 2023), we explored how a control threat and attachment style influence social relationship preferences. This experiment aimed to investigate how experiencing a control threat affects individuals with secure, anxious, and avoidant attachment patterns when they can choose between seeking assistance from the market, asking a close person for help, or coping with the situation alone. Participants with different attachment styles were randomly assigned to either the lack of control condition ( n = 290) or the having control condition ( n = 277). Individuals with an anxious attachment were more inclined to choose the market-exchange option and less likely to select the agentic and communal options when faced with a control threat. Meanwhile, those with an avoidant attachment exhibited a higher tendency to choose the agentic option, while their preference for noncontingent help decreased after exposure to the control threat. Surprisingly, secure attachment individuals showed an increased preference for noncontingent help and decreased preferences for market exchange and self-reliance when exposed to the control threat compared to when they had control. These findings suggest that participation in market relationships may meet vital psychological needs and serve as a safeguard against attachment insecurities.
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Authors and Affiliations

Agata Gasiorowska
1
ORCID: ORCID
Tomasz Zaleskiewicz
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. SWPS University SWPS University, Wrocław, Poland
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Abstract

The author outlines a basic framework for anarcho-capitalism, a stateless social order in which safety, law and adjudication of disputes are provided by private companies (private defense agencies) competing with each other in the free market. In the course of presentation, three fundamental problems of anarcho-capitalism are addressed. (1) Is a peaceful cooperation among agencies possible? (2) Would agencies respect the rights of their customers? (3) How would the law look like in an anarcho-capitalist society? The last problem is especially vexing, since anarcho-capitalists seem to be caught up in a contradiction here. On one hand they are proponents of a specific moral theory (based on non-aggression principle), on the other hand they do not allow for any central, monopolistic agency to impose that moral theory on society. Is it possible for the law in the anarcho-capitalist society to be simultaneously produced by competing agents and remain libertarian at the same time?

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Authors and Affiliations

Stanisław Wójtowicz
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Abstract

The philosophical tradition defines the subject as a reflective being, in principle aware of its agency which makes it capable of making free decisions and taking responsibility for them. Agency, understood in this way, is clearly attributed only to people. However, the technological development of artificial cognitive enhancements and of increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence, that has been taken place in last few decades, casts doubts whether such an approach is not too anthropocentric. This doubt is indicated by some proponents of extending cognitive processes beyond the human brain; they argue for the need of appropriate extension of the subject as well. Moreover, there is an increasing number of proposals attributing agency to artifacts. In the first part of the article, I refer to the two most commonly used philosophical criteria distinguishing the subject of cognition from all information processing systems: being a reflective system, and being the subject of intentional stance. Next, I assess, from such a perspective, the attempts to attribute agency to both one-person extended cognitive systems and artificial systems, such as relatively autonomous computer programs. I argue that the gap between conceptions of the extended subject and the artificial subject, and the standard approach incline toward the usage of the term “agent” designating this phenomenon. The term is already widely used in cognitive science to designate any relatively autonomous information processing system performing a cognitive task. The need of the clear distinction between “the subject” (“subjectivity”) and “the agent” (“agency”) is especially noticeable in Polish, where the difference in meanings of these concepts is not so evident as in English. The awareness of the applying in cognitive science these two different notions of agency prevents against a conceptual misuse which could lead to erroneous explanations and predictions.

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Authors and Affiliations

Barbara Trybulec
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Abstract

In this text, a critical reflection is presented on assessment practices in early childhood education, which are discussed in the context of the creation by those practices of the students’ sense of agency which, according to J. Bruner, is treated as a category of school culture. The discussion is based on the results of the recent research conducted in Poland on students’ agency and an analysis of the data collected as part of the author’s own research.

The picture obtained by using the triangulation of methods and sources confirms that assessment in early childhood education strips children of the opportunity to build a sense of agency, even in terms of independent control of a task situation. The surveyed students, admittedly, are capable of a relatively independent reflection on the context of school assessment, but the world of their educational experience is limited to the incapacitating culture of the school grade. It is a culture that becomes one of the sources of children’s self-restraint in the perception of themselves as agents, perpetuating their external steerability and passivity. To change this situation, external regulations will not suffice, but only the organizing of the learning environment based on the relationship between the teacher and the student, which is free from the daily pressures of assessment and the worship of formal correctness.

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Authors and Affiliations

Grażyna Szyling
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Abstract

Parental work migration can pose important risks for adolescents, such as joining inappropriate peer-groups, poor results in education or school drop-out. It can also facilitate positive changes in young people’s behaviour, as many become aware of the sacrifices their parents make to provide them with a better lifestyle and education and behave responsibly in return. Given that the literature highlights both negative and positive transformations related to parents’ migration, our aim is to address the impact of migration on adolescents left behind in rural Romania from their own perspective. We focus on teenagers’ experiences of separation from their mother, father or both, in different situations (family life, communication and rela-tionships, caring and concern for others, school achievements, future migration plans). Young people’s agency – their capacity to self-educate and organise themselves to perform well at school and in everyday activities following parental migration – is less studied in Romania. Thus, in addition to making the reality of these adolescents better known, our approach provides information that can be turned into policy solutions aimed at improving their life quality.
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Authors and Affiliations

Georgiana Udrea
1
ORCID: ORCID
Gabriela Guiu
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. College of Communication and Public Relations, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Romania
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Abstract

This article explores the reception of French Theory in Poland after 1989. I argue that post-modern tendencies entered the Polish humanities in a distorted form, having travelled via the USA. I propose the hypothesis that the transplantation of the concept of power‑knowledge, which was central to the US‑American take on Michel Foucault, led to something that I term “the Foucault Effect.” It became entangled in the processes of democratization and political and economic transformation taking place in the 1990s, meaning that on the one hand it “raised consciousness” of power mechanisms, while on the other hand promoting a sense of subjecthood that was a product of power relations and thus was deprived of agency. I argue that regardless of the critique of anthropocentrism that is prevalent in the contemporary humanities, the socio-‑political situation in the world today demands a return of the strong subject, whose figuration would take into account lessons learned from French Theory.
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Authors and Affiliations

Ewa Domańska
1
ORCID: ORCID

  1. Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań

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