The author is using a series of examples from her three-year research on social perception of the European Union in Croatia in order to pose several critical questions regarding the current application of the Balkanist criticism in the region and beyond. The research was conducted with three groups of interviewees who were, in different ways, related to the EU. Various notions of Europe and the Balkans, which appeared throughout these interviews, differed from the predominant discourse of the 1990s. The article (...) also indicates the decline of the importance of symbolic geography in the interpretation of notions associated with the EU. In the questioning of metatheoretical level, the author suggests several new paths of research in Balkanist and other, closely related fields of study: admitting the importance of economy, which has been, in the past twenty years, secondary to the examination of questions related to culture and history, and also the production and flow of knowledge. In conclusion, the author proposes examining the approaches which would also enable the inclusion of the enriching, non-repressive and useful encounters between the center and periphery. Autorica koristi primjere iz visegodisnjeg istrazivanja drustvene percepcije Europske unije u Hrvatskoj kako bi postavila niz pitanja o primjeni balkanisticke kritike u recentnoj akademskoj produkciji. Kroz intervjue s pripadnicima triju skupina, koje su na razlicite nacine povezane s Unijom, na vidjelo izlaze predodzbe o Europi i o Balkanu koje nisu u skladu s prevladavajucim diskursom devedesetih godina proslog stoljeca. U radu se naznacuje i opadanje vaznosti simbolicke geografije u tumacenju predodzbi o EU. Propitujuci metateorijsku razinu, autorica predlaze nekoliko novih smjerova za balkanisticka i srodna istrazivanja: priznavanje vaznosti ekonomije, koja je posljednjih dvadesetak godina bila u drugom planu u odnosu na tumacenja kulture i povijesti, te preispitivanje pitanja proizvodnje i slobode proto?ka znanja. Posvajajuci terminologiju Europske unije, autorica u zakljucku ispostavlja prijedlog uvodjenja?varijabilne kriticnosti? u odnosu na srediste kontinenta. Rijec je o pokusaju uzimanja u obzir i svakog ravnopravnog, ne?represivnog i korisnog susreta sredista i periferije. (shrink)

In Portugal, research productivity is nowadays essential for the positive assessment of academics, research units and study programmes. Academic inbreeding has been highlighted in the literature as one of the factors influencing research productivity. This paper tests the hypothesis that inbreeding is detrimental for research productivity, measured through the number of publications listed in Scopus. The study resorts to a database provided by the national Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education, which comprises all academics teaching in all Portuguese (...) institutions in the academic year 2015/2016. The sample selected for the analysis contains all academics with a PhD in Sociology. The study uses a special regression model for the analysis: the negative binomial logit hurdle. This was necessary given the large amount of academics with no publications or citations in Scopus, which were the dependent variables to assess research performance. The analysis provides separate results for the probability of inbred academics of having no papers/citations, and for the probability of producing more papers/citations than the non-inbred. Findings suggest that academic inbreeding, defined at the institutional level, has no negative effect on research productivity, contrary to what was expected. However, when defined at the national level, academic inbreeding is detrimental for the recognition and the impact of research: academics with a foreign PhD are more likely to have citations compared to academics who obtained their PhD in Portugal. A tendency was also noted that inbreeding might be more detrimental to research productivity in faculties of Economics than in Social Sciences and Humanities. (shrink)

The paper elaborates specific perceptive purposes and structural procedures generated by the various experimental abstract films and shows the ways how abstract film engages spectator’s attention. By “liberating” our visual system from representational experience, the abstract film encourages us to cultivate different sensory and sensual sensibility, explore new associations and alternative paths for moods and emotions. Various streams of abstract film will be analysed, relying primarily on classical abstract films.

ObjectiveThis study aimed to analyze the influence and measurement of the relationship and interaction between the elderly lifestyles after the appearance of the SARS-CoV-2 variant and the factors analyzed comprised life satisfaction levels, social relationships, and daily-life activities.MethodsThe study population was ≥ 65 in Castile-La Mancha. The research design was quantitative and arose from primary data collected via an ad hoc survey carried out through the Computer Assisted Telephone Interview system by randomly stratified sampling. The sample size was made up (...) of 1,065 cases, and the participants were selected through a random sampling stratified by gender quotas, age, province, and habitat size.ResultsThe results obtained revealed two main lifestyles, from which a notable behavioral change in personal relationships led to infer toward alternative lifestyles.ConclusionNotwithstanding the variation in lifestyles of the elderly after the pandemic, certain relationships remained unaltered. Thus, from the analyzed variables, relatives and friends relationships were scarcely influenced by the supervened incident. (shrink)