This chapter argues that community development policies may contribute to perpetuating social inequalities in spite of the very concept of community development being ideologically underpinned by the fundamental human values, such as equality, social equity, citizenship, participation in communal life and sustainable development. The authors’ argument is grounded in Poland’s post-socialist experiences in building communities, fostering participatory citizenship and advancing community development. Drawing on historical and empirical analyses, the authors seek to establish why, despite changes in the political configurations, profound systemic changes, and social and economic transformations, community development in Poland still persists in the fragmentary and discontinuous stage.
The presidential and parliamentary elections were a political earthquake for the French political system. While the two big parties experienced massive losses of political support, the rise of new political formations took place. Emmanuel Macron is not only the youngest president of the V. Republic so far, he is also the first president not to be supported by either one of the two biggest parties. This article argues that the election results are an expression of a deep crisis of representation in France that is rooted in the economic transformations of the 1970s. The article analyses the political situation after the elections and tries to give an outlook on further political developments in France.
Two aspects of the problem of corruption are discussed in the article. The first one concerns the evaluation of the level of corruption. The method of measuring the size of business corruption market is described. The specifics of its estimation as well as its relation with the main macroeconomic indexes are discussed. The second aspect regards the strategies of corruption reduction. The importance of establishing external control over the bureaucracy is noted. The failure of institutions transplantation as the main method of economic transformations is pointed out. The gaps in social knowledge are discussed, which decrease effectiveness of institutional borrowings.
This book examines how the films of the Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke evoke the affective “felt” experience of China’s contemporary social and economic transformations, by examining the class figures of worker, peasant, soldier, intellectual, and entrepreneur that are found in the films. Each chapter analyzes a figure’s socio-historical context, its filmic representation, and its recurring cinematic tropes in order to understand how they create what Raymond Williams calls “structures of feeling” – feelings that concretize around particular times, places, generations, and classes that are captured and evoked in art – and charts how this felt experience has changed over the past forty years of China’s economic reforms. The book argues that that Jia’s cinema should be understood not just as narratives that represent Chinese social change, but also as an effort to engage the audience’s emotional responses during this period of China’s massive and fast-paced transformation.
