Inventing “Populism”: Notes for the Genealogy of a Paranoid Concept

This article proposes a “genealogical” rereading of the concept of “populism”. Following the idea of “genealogical” analysis that was suggested by Michel Foucault, the aim is to show the “political” logic of the reinvention of the concept of “populism”, which was carried out between the 1950s and 1960s by the social sciences in the United States. First, this contribution reconstructs the history of the concept, identifying five different phases: (1) Russian populism of the late nineteenth century; (2) the Popular Party in the United States; (3) the Perón and Vargas regimes in Argentina and Brazil, respectively; (4) the reformulation carried out by the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s; and (5) the subsequent extension of the concept to Western Europe. It is argued that the decisive turning point took place in the 1950s when the social sciences “grouped” the traits of heterogeneous movements into a single theoretical category.

„Praca widma w epoce mechanicznej reprodukcji”. China Miéville: koncepcje „haute weird” i „abcanny”

The aim of the paper is presentation and discussion of China Miéville’s theoretic approach to the issue of horror’s subgenres, including classical Victorian ghost story and Lovecraftian weird fiction. “The abcanny” — in a way a subversive, theoretical category, that Miéville coins in his critical writings — is crucial for both his own speculations and the problems considered here. As it is decisively opposite to Freudian “uncanny” and Kristevian “abject”, it constitutes a relatively new approach to the question of distinction among the aforementioned horror literary genres. The Victorian ghost story, as Miéville sees it, is deeply rooted in the experience of the uncanny, and so it presupposes the “return of the repressed” from the individual or collective/cultural unconsciousness. Hence ghost stories are — just for example — susceptible to hauntological interpretations. Weird fiction — on the contrary — implies the experience of something radically new, something so far non-existent and therefore unacceptable and dreadful. If a classical ghost story can be perceived as an expression of the nineteenth–century fear of the irrationality returning from the past preceding the revolution of the Enlightenment, haute weird narrative embodies modernistic anxiety of the upcoming future, its uncertain nature, cognitive and moral relativism, and — what is most important here — the dubious status of man facing a boundless chasm of time and space.

The Family Thought of Marx and Engels and Its Enlightenment in the New Era

In the Marxist theoretical system, "family" is a very important theoretical category, which is not only the "mystery" Marx and Engels has been trying to solve, but also an important reflection of Marxist philosophy. Marx and Engels held the conviction that the development of the family went through the consanguinity family, the Punaluian family, the paring family and the monogamous family. Marital relationship is the basis of forming a family; blood relationship is the bond of forming a family; family is the organizational form of human social life. Those are the essential characteristics of family. In the new era, while promoting the harmonious development of family, we must know the harmonious marriage relationship is the foundation of family harmony, and that the harmonious parent-child relationship is the key to family harmony. Meanwhile, we should pay attention to the harmonious unity of family and society.

Financial risk as a type of business risk

To fully disclose the category of “financial risk”, the main points of view were analysed to determine the general theoretical category of “risk” and “entrepreneurial risk”. The following main features of financial risk were identified: a high degree of probability of financial risk; occurrence of adverse financial consequences for the business entity; property nature of adverse consequences of financial risk; individual certainty; occurrence of adverse financial consequences due to the influence of certain factors. Based on the selected features, the authors proposed to define financial risk as a type of business risk. It consists in the possibility of adverse financial consequences in the form of loss of income or loss of capital due to the influence of negative external and/or internal factors on professional financial activities. It is established that financial risk is a complex legal category and has the following structure: subject, object and causal relationship between the source (factors, phenomena, influence) and the consequences of financial risk.

Navigating the Drinking Self: A Qualitative Study of Beer Consumption Among the Working-Poor in Botswana

Alcohol consumption studies in sub-Saharan Africa have largely focused on social control and regulatory mechanisms in specific settings without particular reference to how drinkers negotiate and navigate their drinking selves. Existing studies do not give enough attention to how consumers enact, make sense and experience drinking in light of state regulatory efforts. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach among twenty (20) beer drinkers, this study identifies how beer drinkers in Botswana experienced alcohol. Our findings demonstrate a theoretical category of Negotiating the Drinking Self where beer drinkers constructed and enacted a drinking self throughout the life-course, from the point of exposure at home through adolescence and up to maturity. The drinking self-constitutes an important part of the drinker’s identity and adapts to each stage of the life-course. Among the working poor in Botswana, beer drinking is complex, situated and embedded in webs of patterned social interactions.

O diálogo como experiência constituinte na formação inicial do professor de Matemática

Based on the Freirean premises, this work makes explicit the dialogical relevance in initial teacher training, being the result of an experience developed in the context of the Supervised Internship with 14 undergraduate students of the Mathematics course of the University for International Integration of the Afro-Brazilian Lusophony (UNILAB). In this investigation, the dialogue assumes the condition of theoretical category, and the methodological assumptions are based on the qualitative approach. The reflections coming from this dialogic moment highlight the importance of the contact of teachers in training with more experienced professionals and strengthen the Supervised Internship as an opportunity to contact diverse practices and knowledge, beyond the knowledge of the complexity that permeates the school.

Democratic Backsliding in Poland on Example Drafts Amendments in Electoral Code During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic occurred in Poland during the campaign before the presidential election scheduled for May 10. This non-military threat changed the election campaign’s dynamics, leading to an unprecedented failure to hold elections and postponing them. Around the changes in the election procedure, many constitutionalists and political scientists voiced their inconsistency with the law and the provisions of the Constitutional Tribunal. Both the proposed provisions and the manner of their organization raised objections. The article classifies these changes as manifestations of democratic backsliding, weakening democratic institutions and leading to a decline in the quality of democracy. The research goal is to analyze the records in the selected source material and relate them to the selected theoretical category (democratic backsliding). In the course of the research, the following hypothesis is verified: in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic in Poland, attempts by the ruling elite to change the provisions related to organizing the presidential elections scheduled for May 10 are an example of democratic backsliding, which, by weakening democratic institutions, has threatened the constitutional provisions and the essence of the democratic system.

Creative thinking as methodical category of foreign language learning

This article is devoted to the development and improvement of the creative thinking approach of foreign language learning, namely speaking process. In that sense, the authors of the given article consider creative thinking as method and technique of foreign language learning and means of communicative competence development. The authors also describe the estimation system of the given method and its content in a form of methodical algorithm and theoretical principles of foreign language learning using creative thinking as an approach. The aim of the given article to develop a new approach for better development of foreign language communication, especially in skills of speaking, to be based on unique thinking as a technique in learning. The authors of the given article also developed and presented notion called “creativization” as methodical and theoretical category in foreign language learning process comprising some theoretical aspects of the given foreign language learning approach including its own specifics and conceptual points described in the given article. Creativization is also described by the authors of the given article as a technique in foreign language learning especially concerning speaking. The notion “creativization” presents concept ideas and basic principles of creative thinking approach in foreign language learning in a form of several methodical principles and theoretical aspects.

Time, Money, and Race: Simone de Beauvoir on American Abstraction

In 1947, Simone de Beauvoir traveled to the United States for a four-month stay, during which she toured the country extensively. Her copious notes taken during this time eventually became the travelogue, America Day by Day (L’Amérique au jour le jour) as well as a piece written for the May 25, 1947 edition of the New York Times Magazine, “An Existentialist Looks at Americans.” In both of these writings, Beauvoir offers an astute criticism of American culture from a foreign perspective.This paper explores Beauvoir’s treatment of American abstraction and race with three goals in mind: first, to understand the American relationship to time and money as abstractions. Ignoring the past and projecting an idealistic (but ultimately vacuous) future, leads to a strange kind of fatalism and lack of passion that profoundly impacts White and Black Americans but in distinctively different ways. The second part of the paper explores these differences through an analysis of how White Americans attempt to live with “good” consciences through the positing of and attachment to abstract values and things. This attitude, in turn, produces a largely instrumental and racist treatment of many populations, in particular, Black Americans. The final section focuses on how Beauvoir confronts the fact of her own whiteness, and in so doing undergoes the movement of race as an abstract theoretical category to one of lived embodiment.

Negation of Universalist Ontology as the Basis for the Conceptualization of the “Postmarxism” Concept

The article addresses the problem of etymological and theoretical uncertainty of the “postmarxism” concept, which is traced in both domestic and specialized Western studies. The basis for the formation of mental constructs, in the direction of clarifying the specifics of postmarxism, is its setting on “overcoming metaphysics”, which is expressed in an actual refusal to decode social phenomena / processes through the reference to their basic values. The study identifies the main theoretical and methodological contradictions in the understanding of postmarxism, and at the same time, in order to confirm the subject of the work, attention is paid to the avoidance of contradictions and oppositions by postmarxism itself. Because any opposition in postmarxism is questionable, it is a prerequisite for superstructure, which is meaningless itself. Also, a theoretical-comparative and semantic analysis of the "postmarxism” concept is conducted, the historical-political context of the evolution of the concept as a theoretical category and as self-identification is analyzed in order to define its position by some philosophers. The background to its formation is fundamental to explain the denial of universal ontology in postmarxism. Namely, they are decentralization, “breaking up” of structure, derriadian critique of the transcendental meaning, which in postmarxism is expressed as an artificial fixation of meaning and “ideological arrangement”.