Values and Virtues as Correlates of Quality and Stability of Romantic Relationships and Marriage in a Post-Socialist Transitional Society

An individual’s value system plays an important role in their intimate relationship or marriage. Most marital satisfaction research to date has been carried out in high-income liberal Western societies. We conducted an original quantitative empirical survey of virtues and values to examine their effect on relationship quality and stability in a sample of 511 respondents from Slovenia, a post-socialist society in transition. The results showed that respondents rated health, love, and safety at the top of their hierarchy of values. The key finding was that the presence of love was associated with an individual’s subjective perception of relationship quality but had no effect on the self-evaluation of relationship stability. In addition to love, both family safety and comfort were significant correlates of relationship quality while self-respect was negatively correlated with relationship quality. Only excitement was found to have a statistically significant effect on relationship stability.

Social Memory: From Oblivion or Construction to Cultural Trauma

The formation of social memory is an important component of the state humanitarian strategy. It acquires special significance in the conditions of postmodern transformations of a transitional society, which directly relate to the functioning of the political system. Thus, the process of democratic transition is becoming an undeniable and peremptory reality. The necessity for liberal political and economic reforms is also not much controversial. With this state of affairs, ideological discussions acquire a retrospective direction, their subject is not the search for development models for the future, but the construction of models for assessing the past. The novelty of the study is determined by the need to assess social participation on the part of both individual and public entities. The authors classify not only the population as social entities but also the carriers of the cultural code, who may belong to extraterritorial groups. The article shows that social memory can also be considered as a method of socio-economic development of a territory, and in order to achieve political objectives by individual groups of capital. The practical significance of the study is determined by the possibility of structuring social memory and building on this basis socio-economic strategies for the development of a sustainable society.

Pasikowski’s Pigs as an illustration of vetting in a transitional society

Pigs, a 1992 movie directed by Władysław Pasikowski, has become an iconic picture over the years, growing into a source of quotes and becoming a cult classic. The film, while remaining commercially attractive, outlines many problems within transitional justice and opens a discussion regarding the vetting of the SB officers carried out at that time, including the selected model. The plot of the film takes place in 1990, the period of political transformation in Poland after the fall of communism. Before the purely sensational action comes to the fore, the movie is largely about a reform of the MSW and the SB, about vetting of its officers and their fate while trying to find themselves in the new reality. It also shows that it is remarkably difficult to carry out reforms simultaneously in many fields: political, economic and social, and that it may be the source of a crisis. The aim of this article is to present Pasikowski’s Pigs as a film that demonstrates the practical issues related to one of the mechanisms used in the framework of transitional justice, namely the vetting process. The movie as an artistic representation of individuals subjected to vetting opens discourse on transitional justice and the problem of dealing with undemocratic system. The paper concentrates on a general outline of the movie, paying attention to the vetting committees and their function within the framework of transitional justice. While presenting the normative model of officers’ vetting and juxtaposing it with the image shown in the film, the author displays basic moral and social problems related to the vetting.

What Citizenship for What Transition?: Contradictions, Ambivalence, and Promises in Post-Socialist Citizenship Education in Vietnam

In 1986, the Communist Party of Vietnam officially approved reform policies known as đổi mới (doi moi) which transformed the country from a centrally-planned to a market-oriented economy. Since then, as Vietnam has been integrating into the global economy, the transitional society has become more open and diverse. The transformations have apparently impacted the ways in which citizenship has been understood and practiced in Vietnam. This study specifically investigates changes in state visions of citizenship as reflected in educational discourses. In addition, it examines teachers’ interpretations of good citizenship and their experiences of teaching citizenship in Vietnam’s schools.

Beyond Carrot and Stick: The Effect of Conflict Resolution on Crime Control in China

The question of what works in crime control has been frequently discussed over the past few decades. However, knowledge about and evidence from China is limited. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of three strategies of crime control—the ‘stick policy’, the ‘carrot policy’ and conflict resolution—in China, using a provincial panel data from 1988 to 2014. The results suggest that (1) the ‘carrot policy’ with social welfare provision helps to prevent crime, while the ‘stick policy’ with increasing judicial expenditure does not have a significant effect; (2) conflict resolution functions as an effective strategy of crime control. The policy implication is that, to prevent crime and maintain social order in a transitional society like China, government might need to shift its policy orientation away from strengthening coercive power to focussing on improving people’s livelihood and facilitating conflict resolution.

Participatory Representation in a Non-Western Context: The Case of Homeowner Associations in Beijing

This article examines the concept and practices of “participatory representation” in the Chinese context, a subset of substantive representation that emphasizes “authenticity” and participatory engagement in solving neighborhood problems. Through examining Chinese homeowner associations (HOAs), we explain how representation operates at the neighborhood level in a grassroots organizational context without a Western style of democracy, identifying the determinants and capacities of participatory representation. By proposing a model of representational capacity and using logistic regression analysis, we find that four factors have an impact on the quality of participatory representation: (1) homeowner attributes (i.e., gender, occupation, and length of residence), (2) problem-solving effectiveness of representative organizations, (3) transparent and open elections, and (4) level of homeowner participation. We further suggest that in a transitional society like China, these representative organizations, namely, HOAs, act as important training grounds for democratic skills, through which participatory citizen engagement is being learned and cultivated. This study contributes to contemporary accounts of participatory representation by identifying the informal representation patterns within HOAs and their potential to foster civic participation and social democracy in China in the coming decades.

THE IMAGE OF AN UKRAINIAN LECTURER AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH – 21ST CENTURIES: EXPERIENCE HISTORICAL OF THE BEGINNING OF THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

The article unveils the teaching penalty against the background of the transformation of the higher education system of Ukraine at the end of the twentieth century - at the beginning of the twenty-first century, an attempt is made to present a holistic view of it from the point of view of the emotional and psychological state, motivation, and assessment of its consciousness. Information is also provided on external factors that have a direct impact on the effectiveness of the teaching environment. Its general quantitative and qualitative characteristics are also provided. It is concluded that the image of the Ukrainian teacher in the indicated period was determined by the state characteristic of a transitional society with the inertia of the manifestations of post-Soviet consciousness. This, in turn, determined their value series and motivation, which still often gravitated to the paradigm of the past. It turned out to be a permanent support group for the transformation of the higher education system - young teachers as natural carriers of innovation.