Bank internetowy (digital-only bank) – nowy model bankowości

The aim of the chapter is to systematize the concepts related to digital-only banks, as well as a strategic analysis of the new banking model, which is the digital-only bank made using the SWOT method. The literature studies and analyses carried out have shown that there is a serious terminological chaos, which contributes to the misuse of concepts related to the FinTech sector for the purpose of characterising digital-only banks. Digital-only banks are FinTech institutions that have emerged after the global crisis of 2007–2009 and provide banking services under a full banking licence. These banks do not have subsidiaries, branches or offices and provide banking services only through mobile devices or the bank’s website. The SWOT analysis revealed that these institutions have many strengths and opportunities that they should competently exploit. However, it is noted that social resistance, fear of innovation or attachment to traditional banking may be barriers to the success of digital-only banks. At the same time, it seems that the coronavirus pandemic may contribute to the growing interest in digital-only banks.

The sociological MRI of a fetish. How ‘odd’ is an oddity and how ‘peculiar’ peculiarity?

We have used the term 'fetish' in a broader sense and especially related to the functions that a 'fetish' has in society. We are talking either about the tags that any 'fetish' receives [as undesirable, unwanted, forbidden, and peculiar], or about the uncertainty of its social approval, about the coagulating role it plays on individuals with the same repulsive vision/orientation that were previously unidentifiable, or many other aspects under which a so-called fetish works socially. The object or action in question passes from individual preference to the group emblem and then determines its actions and ideas, internally as well as in social exchanges with other groups. This is done in a fetishistic way with everything that is 'new' emerging in society, either previously non-existent, or competitive with something already standardized, or - as in the case of many fetishes - forbidden and socially stigmatized. If the first category does not meet a social resistance and does not end up turning into a fetish, for the group and the society, the other two have all the advantages to do so. The odd - competitive and forbidden alternatives - becomes the fetish for the group that adopts it as its emblem because it later regulates all its actions, as well as for the Society, because it keeps around the group and its actions the atmosphere in the sphere of fetishism - equivocal, promiscuous, and detestable. But precisely these very fetishistic attributes are the same ones that determine society to fight against the group and its 'fetish', new and peculiar, that also help disparate individuals to identify with that fetus, to coagulate as a group borrowing precisely this infamous, shameless identity. Therefore, the question we try to find answers here is but legitimate: since and until when oddity is ‘odd’?

Performance as Social Resistance: Pussy Riot as a Feminist Avant-garde

This article describes the short but remarkable sociopolitical life of the Russian rock group Pussy Riot. The group became famous in 2012 not only for the political content of its performances but for its transgressive performativity: its violation of established public settings and its creation of disturbing anti-authoritarianism images of today’s official Russia. The analysis aims to establish Pussy Riot as part of an avant-garde movement and as a radicalization of the very idea of the avant-garde against the familiarity of the public aspect of everyday life. Public ‘normalcy’ reveals itself to be complicit in that what should be criticized is instead taken for granted, and legitimized. Pussy Riot is a new art avant-garde in terms of both how it relates to activism, social justice, feminism, and art, and to the general public, not only to the art world.

State-led Forest Development and Social Protest in East Nusa Tenggara Province

This research examines models of social resistances in response to top-down forest governance in the provincial government of East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. The researcher demonstrates the models of (1) forest management and (2) people’s resistance against the regional government.The author found three fundamental problems through the perspectives of the right to the governing authority of the state and social resistance. First, the provincial government monopolise forest management since 1982 for cattle breeding. Instead of offering prosperity to the people, this forest management model excludes the people from the forest and cattle resources. Second, when the signed contract ended, the local residents refused to extend forest management concessions to the provincial government. Third, the refusal by the residents was carried out through various forms of social movements and cultural politics. However, the provincial government mobilised the police, the civil service police, and the armed forces to intimidate the resistant communities.

Sari, Femininity, and Wall Art: A Semiotic Study of GuessWho’s Street Art in Bengaluru

Graffiti has been conversing with the public for millions of years. In India, this art form is prominent in spaces like historical monuments, schools, colleges, classrooms, public bathrooms, benches, desks, and local transports. With the coming of the Covid 19 pandemic, this art from the streets has come alive in people’s smartphones. This paper explores and interprets the works of GuessWho, a prominent stencil graffiti artist working in the city of Bengaluru, Karnataka, and originally belonging to Kochi, Kerala. This study seeks to understand how the discourse around graffiti can help empower women in their struggle to claim the streets. By focusing on Instagram as a medium of social resistance, the paper explores the role of graffiti and social media in challenging the patriarchal status quo. Semiotics is used to understand the ways in which the production and consumption of forms of street art and graffiti are increasingly shaping the way Bengaluru city negotiates with gender. GuessWho’s graffiti symbolically targets and contests gender discrimination and particularly challenges some of the existing classist, racist, or sexist biases by subverting the use of sari, technology, and gender roles in the artwork.

THE CYPRIOT THEATRE IN THE MIDST OF GLOBAL CRISIS

In the 21st century, the era of globalization, the technological advancement and the ongoing migration movements, the global com-munity experiences a deep and multi-dimensional crisis (sociopolitical, financial, and cultural). This paper discusses the impact of these multi-ple aspects of the crisis in the theatre of Cyprus, especially during the second decade of the 21st century. The theatre in the time of crisis seems to suffocate within the traditional frames of dramatic theatre. As a re-sult, a group of young directors, without hesitation, confront and keep up with the new trends observed internationally, thus introducing new theatre forms (devised theatre, site-specific theatre, happenings etc.) in the Cypriot theatrical landscape and seeking to develop a new way of dialogue with the audience. Cypriot theatre today uses methods and approaches (ideological and aesthetic) that renounce fundamental the-atrical conventions of dramatic theatre. This fact allows us to talk about experimentation, as well as about presence of elements of post-dramatic theatre in the country. The making of theatre in the public sphere is now an act of social resistance to local and global events and the first step that may lead to political and social change.

Development Stages of Islamic Movements in the Pashtun Tribal Environment: The Case of the Rawshaniyya and Beyond

The Rawshani movement is the first well-documented example of supra-tribal unification and subsequent successful integration of the movement’s leaders into the alien state structures. But by no means is it an isolated phenomenon in Pashtun history. Similar pattern of religion-motivated supra-tribal unification, which should be considered as a product of historical relationships of power, remerged inter alia during more recent crises in the Afghan history. Due to the volatile nature of the Afghan state fluctuating between tribalism and ethnic pluralistic participation, military and Islamic dimensions have always been of paramount importance for state-community relations where religion, tribalism and ethnicity were often the means of state’s control of social resistance and its vehicles. In the time of crises, religion-inspired militia-type independent military formations were able to challenge the might of the state and occasionally even initiate the incipient state formation opposed to the communal institutions and those of the old regime. When this community-based military activity went beyond the scope of traditional annual cycle of violence it often acquired a supra-tribal or ethnic and regional dimension, which was legitimised by the Islamic ideology and institutions. This article offers some directions towards making a calibration tool or even identifying a pattern that may be used as an epistemological paradigm that may provide a sense of orientation and bearing in the intricacies of a complex historical interaction between Pashtun Islam, tribes and state.

The Commodification of Body Positivity: Constructing a Neoliberal Fat Citizenship

From inspirational messages to celebrated pictures of cellulite and belly rolls, body positive content has become increasingly popular on social media platforms, particularly on image-based networking sites. With the rapid growth of communication technology, it is not surprising that social networking sites, such as Instagram, have become one of the most dominant and influential mediates to cultivating awareness, foster community, and advocate for social change. Instagram’s transition to an advertising platform, however, has introduced a consumerist structure to user activity for corporations to better direct advertisements at target audiences. A once social movement advocating for the rejection of thin beauty ideals in favour of a more inclusive and positive conception of body image has felt the impact of commoditization on its message and advocates. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, this research study seeks to analyze the impact of Instagram’s transition to a commercialization platform on the self-representation of body positive advocates to better understand the influence of neoliberal and capitalist structures on social resistance movements and strategies.

The Commodification of Body Positivity: Constructing a Neoliberal Fat Citizenship

From inspirational messages to celebrated pictures of cellulite and belly rolls, body positive content has become increasingly popular on social media platforms, particularly on image-based networking sites. With the rapid growth of communication technology, it is not surprising that social networking sites, such as Instagram, have become one of the most dominant and influential mediates to cultivating awareness, foster community, and advocate for social change. Instagram’s transition to an advertising platform, however, has introduced a consumerist structure to user activity for corporations to better direct advertisements at target audiences. A once social movement advocating for the rejection of thin beauty ideals in favour of a more inclusive and positive conception of body image has felt the impact of commoditization on its message and advocates. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis, this research study seeks to analyze the impact of Instagram’s transition to a commercialization platform on the self-representation of body positive advocates to better understand the influence of neoliberal and capitalist structures on social resistance movements and strategies.

Manifestations of social resistance in craft processes

This paper aims to analyze craft objects that could contain inherent meanings of social, cultural, ecological or political resistance. The creative processes of makers from the Iku and Nasa indigenous peoples of Colombia and the Sami people of Sweden have been studied. The paper encompasses a theoretical reflection on the communicative capacity of objects and their implicit meanings as well as of the basic concepts of resistance and craft paired with a brief description of the Iku, Nasa and Sami indigenous peoples. An analysis of the manifestations that could be considered as resistance in the studied artisanal processes is brought forward through 11 interviews with artisans and the paper proposes a final reflection on how craft objects can have the capacity to communicate social, cultural, political and ecological resistance.