scholarly journals Social innovation in traditional Norway: background and features

Author(s):  
I.S. Balanchuk

When we hear someone say “Norway”, in the imagination immediately emerges pictures of the ideal world: fairytale houses, bright green grass, picturesque nature, incredible fjords and wealthy and happy people. All in all, the above is the case in traditional Norway. This northwestern kingdom is perhaps the only state of its kind in which economic and political reforms are perfectly combined with social change and the evolutionary stages of civil society, giving what we now call the “ideal of socialism” model. However, it is quite obvious that the path to such a model was quite difficult; the Norwegians received their “ideal” state, through a total restructuring of their own consciousness, the creation of a unique system of upbringing of the younger generation, the belief in the common future of every Norwegian, which is both unique for each and for all. It is harder for a person who is not accustomed to hearing such postulates and, moreover, to live by following them, to grasp the whole content of these ideas. However, to make it easier to understand, there is only one fact: the gap between the very rich and the very poor in Norway is the lowest in the world. However, in Norway there is no such thing as “very poor”. Like the “very rich” by the way. Every Norwegian lives in the community, following the ten so-called “Yanté laws”, according to which “you, as an individual, do not exist; there is only a collective organism”. And as in every normal healthy organism, all the components cooperate together for the sake of further health of that organism. Amazingly? Yes. Radically? Yes. But does it work? Yes. Following this logic, the Norwegians have built a practically ideal place where all migrants and the needy want to live. Norway has become a kind of “Eldorado” for residents of third and, what to hide, second world countries. The author suggests in this study to familiarize with the main components of Norwegian “ideal socialism”, the preconditions that prompted the government to move in one way or another, as well as to list some of the most significant socially oriented innovative projects in Norway.

Author(s):  
Ērika Žubule ◽  
Anita Puzule

The scientific objective of the research is to carry out the country's fiscal space for the study of public finance policy affects the context of sustainable development. The selection and topicality of the research issue is justified by the fact that each country's sustainable development is affected by the government's policies. One of its main components is fiscal or budgetary policy. Traditionally, it is defined as the money required for setting revenue and expenditure policy that is needed to ensure the government operation, but the economic interpretation says it is the economy regulation system through taxes and government spending. It is emphasized that it is closely linked with the state's role in the redistribution of society profits, determining the state budget's proportion in the gross domestic product, defining objectives for the common tax burden, budgetary expenditure, allowable deficit, volume, and structure of the government debt. In addition, the concept of “fiscal space” correlating with application of the fiscal policy measures becomes topical. Thus, the government is able to influence income of both the society generally and certain groups of residents, their purchasing power and impact on economic development in general. It defines the need of concept fiscal space.


2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathews Mathew ◽  
Debbie Soon

Debates in Singapore about immigration and naturalisation policy have escalated substantially since 2008 when the government allowed an unprecedentedly large number of immigrants into the country. This essay will discuss immigration and naturalisation policy in Singapore and the tensions that have been evoked, and how these policies are a key tool in regulating the optimal composition and size of the population for the state’s imperatives. It will demonstrate that although the state has, as part of its broader economic and manpower planning policy to import labour for economic objectives, it seeks to retain only skilled labour with an exclusive form of citizenship.  Even as the Singapore state has made its form of citizenship even more exclusive by reducing the benefits that non-citizens receive, its programmes for naturalising those who make the cut to become citizens which include the recently created Singapore Citizenship Journey (SCJ) is by no means burdensome from a comparative perspective. This paper examines policy discourse and the key symbols and narratives provided at naturalisation events and demonstrates how these are used to evoke the sense of the ideal citizen among new Singaporeans. 


Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte

The introduction ‘Philhellenism and Theatromania’ retraces the emergence of these two phenomena in the German middle class. The year 1755 marks a watershed in this regard: it saw the publication of J. J. Winckelmann’s treatise Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks and the premiere of G. E. Lessing’s first domestic tragedy Miß Sara Sampson. Both share the common root and motivation once and for all to banish Frenchified German court culture. While Winckelmann’s treatise praised the ‘noble simplicity’ and ‘quiet greatness’ of the Greek masterpieces, Lessing’s play advocated new family values and the ideal of ‘naturalness’ as the true virtues of the middle class. The merging of Philhellenism as the cult of beauty with theatromania as the quest for identifying in a social group and as an individual provided the basic condition for staging Greek tragedies.


Author(s):  
Gregory A. Barton

This chapter traces the expansion of industrial agricultural methods after the Second World War. Western governments and the Food and Agriculture Organization pushed for increased use of chemical fertilizers to aid development and resist Soviet encroachment. Meanwhile small groups of organic farmers and gardeners adopted Howard’s methods in the Anglo-sphere and elsewhere in the world. European movements paralleled these efforts and absorbed the basic principles of the Indore Method. British parliament debated the merits of organic farming, but Howard failed to persuade the government to adopt his policies. Southern Rhodesia, however, did implement his ideas in law. Desiccation theory aided his attempts in South Africa and elsewhere, and Louise Howard, after Albert’s death, kept alive a wide network of activists with her publications.


2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helge Dedek

Every legal system that ties judicial decision making to a body of preconceived norms has to face the tension between the normative formulation of the ideal and its approximation in social reality. In the parlance of the common law, it is, more concretely, the remedy that bridges the gap between the ideal and the real, or, rather, between norms and facts. In the common law world—particularly in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth—a lively discourse has developed around the question of how rights relate to remedies. To the civilian legal scholar—used to thinking within a framework that strictly categorizes terms like substance and procedure, subjective right, action, and execution—the concept of remedy remains a mystery. The lack of “remedy” in the vocabulary of the civil law is more than just a matter of attaching different labels to functional equivalents, it is the expression of a different way of thinking about law. Only if a legal system is capable of satisfactorily transposing the abstract discourse of the law into social reality does the legal machinery fulfill its purpose: due to the pivotal importance of this translational process, the way it is cast in legal concepts thus allows for an insight into the deep structure of a legal culture, and, convergence notwithstanding, the remaining epistemological differences between the legal traditions of the West. A mixed jurisdiction must reflect upon these differences in order to understand its own condition and to define its future course.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 00127
Author(s):  
Anna Volkonskaya ◽  
Olga Pashkina ◽  
Natalia Galenko ◽  
Oleg Kurlikov ◽  
Velta Parsova

Today in Russia the main components of digital economy are as follows: electronic trading, public services, export-import activity and constantly developing system of purchasing activity at state enterprises. The system of purchases has to conform to the requirements of modern digital technologies For this purpose at the end of 2018 the President of the Russian Federation proposed to transfer the government and corporate procurement to an electronic form. However, the analysis showed that procurement activities carried out in the form of electronic bidding in agricultural enterprises had a number of problems. These problems are related to the nature of agriculture. For example, seasonality is a key to agricultural performance. In this regard, the system of commercial transactions, including electronic trades, should be as adapted as possible to the peculiarities of agricultural production.


1974 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Pettman

Zambia inherited a system of government and administration in 1964 which was ill-suited to the tasks of political development to which her new leaders were dedicated. What little national unity and mobilisation had been achieved in the independence struggle declined with the removal of the common enemy. The Government rested on a fragile base, without the support of agreed rules and practices to limit and contain conflict, and without adequate instruments available for the implementation of its policies. So the search began for a more suitable political system, which could cope with the new needs of independence, and provide for the stability of the state and the survival of the Government.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto Ferreira Vasconcellos ◽  
Bernardo Henrique Leso ◽  
Marcelo Nogueira Cortimiglia

Purpose This paper aims to identify challenges and opportunities for social enterprises (SE) in civil engineering in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach Starting from the transformative social innovation theory and inspired by grounded theory principles, this paper conducts three-stage exploratory research. First, this paper mapped the Brazilian SE civil engineering ecosystem. Next, this paper classified the SE initiatives along with an organizing framework. Finally, this paper conducted 11 interviews with key ecosystem actors and analyzed data through iterative, parallel and interrelated content analysis procedures. Findings The 37 SE found were classified along “Sustainability,” “Housing,” “Transportation” and “Sanitation” pillars, which are aligned with the United Nations’ social development goals. This paper found 50 challenges and opportunities, which were aggregated along seven dimensions. Three elements are particularly relevant as opportunities: opportunities for SE with ecosystem supporters, specialized investors and partnership with major companies; while government and early investment are the most relevant challenges. Research limitations/implications Research findings and conclusions cannot be extended to other sectors and countries. Usual limitations associated with exploratory qualitative research must also be highlighted. Practical implications The government should offer financial and technical support for civil engineering in working in partnership with ecosystem supporters. Academy could use SE content and ecosystem for its students and should offer diverse resources for network creation. Originality/value Focusing on civil engineering SE in Brazil, this study sheds light on a high-impact sector that has not been studied yet.


2021 ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Boris Martynov

The article deals with the evolution of views of the Brazilian authors on the role, played by the Soviet Union in the WWII and its contribution to the victory of the anti-Hitlerian coalition. It contains a historiographical review of the works, written by the Brazilian authors on the theme, beginning from 2004. One follows the process of their growing interest towards clarifying the real contribution of the Soviet part to the common victory, along with the rise of the international authority of Brazil and strengthening of the Russo – Brazilian ties. One reveals the modern attitude of Brazilian authors towards such dubious or scarcely known themes as the Molotov – Ribbentrop pact, the battles for Smolensk and Rhzev, town–bound fights in Stalingrad, liberation of the Baltic republics, the Soviet war with Japan, etc. The author comes to conclusion, that in spite of the Western efforts to infuse the people`s conscience with the elements of the “post – truth” in this respect, the correct treatment of those events acquires priority even in such a far off from Russia state, as Brazil.


Author(s):  
Bertram M. Gordon

Second World War tourism in France includes two main components: tourism by the Germans and French during the war and memory tourism to war sites thereafter. Contrary to what is often assumed, tourism in France did not stop with the war. Thousands of German military personnel were given tours in occupied France and French civilians continued to take vacations as well. Many turned out with tourist gazes to watch General de Gaulle march down the Champs-Élysées at the time of the Liberation and sites frequently acquired new significance as in Normandy where Arromanches changed from a spa village to a war tourist destination. Based on French and German archival materials, memoirs, films, the press, and personal interviews, this book addresses the conflicts and competition between the 19th and early 20th century French tourism narratives and the German-dominated tourism version of the Second World War that replaced it, followed by the Gaullist/Resistance accounts after 1944. Although the Germans hardly treated the French kindly during the war, France was not relegated to the position of occupied Poland. Paris was spared the fate of Warsaw during the war. Postwar memory tourists brought home memories of Normandy and other sites that informed their own understandings of war. Narratives changed but war tourism remains a significant contributor to the French economy.


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