HIFASS-LOPIN-3 Empowerment Programs and the Wellbeing of Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State, Nigeria

This study examined the various empowerment programs carried out by Health Initiatives for Safety and Stability in Africa – Local OVC Partner in Nigeria – Region 3 (HIFASS-LOPIN-3) as they affect the wellbeing of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). Three objectives were outlined to include investigating the relationship between HIFASS-LOPIN-3 educational empowerment program and OVC’s school enrolment; HIFASS-LOPIN-3 provision of health services and OVC’s accessibility to quality healthcare facilities; HIFASS-LOPIN-3 skills acquisition training/financial empowerment program and the income level of OVC/caregivers. An Ex-post facto research design was employed in this study and a sample size of three hundred and eighty (380) respondents was drawn using multi-stage, simple random, stratified and snowball sampling techniques. The reliability test of the instrument was done using the test-retest reliability method. Primary data was obtained using a questionnaire and in-depth interview schedule, while secondary data was sourced from journals, texts, newspapers, internet, unpublished papers. The hypotheses were tested using Pearson’s Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient (r) and Chi-Square statistical techniques, together with frequency/percentage analysis. The study revealed among others that HIFASS-LOPIN-3 educational empowerment has significantly improved OVC’s school enrolment; HIFASS-LOPIN-3 skills acquisition training/financial empowerment program has significantly improved the income level of OVC/caregivers, nevertheless, almost all the OVC who reported having income-generating skills experienced challenges like insufficient start-up capital, insecurity, and crippling economic policies. It was recommended that government should make provision for OVC’s subsidized medical bills and adequate provision for start-up capital/equipment or materials should be made for older OVC/caregivers who receive skills acquisition training.

New Social World: The Great Power of the Network

At the early beginning of the 21st century, it was impossible to imagine how fast the Internet would develop. It was also not obvious that the worldwide network would actually become available in all parts of the planet, and the network itself would become the basis for the birth and development of new global products - social networks, communications, and services. According to the International Telecommunication Union, the Internet and new digital products along twenty years have almost completely absorbed the population of developed countries (87%) and are growing rapidly in developing countries (47%)[1]. The affordable cost of communication for the majority of the population together with free communication services create the basis for the emergence of not only new products but also a constant increase in the number of digital services, which quite recently could only be obtained offline. Together with large digital government services, commercial networks, communicators, and services are creating a new social structure capable of independent machine learning and development. The work aims to show that much faster than it was supposed new digital products will intertwine with each other, forming a new social platform, which is called a New Social World. The analysis of sociological works on this topic together with an analysis of practical research on the Internet and new digital products confirms this assumption. Despite strict user agreements, global online monitoring, constant online control and full access to the data of each user, more and more people become users of social networks and services, and most social network users become loyal users of other new products and services, easily switching on digital consumption and consumption of real products and services provided online. The new social reality, generated by the powerful interweaving of the world's digital products and services will forever change the sociocultural and media world. An urgent and constant study of this phenomenon is necessary since the ways of its further development are unpredictable both in relation to the existence of traditional, social, national identification and with the existence of traditional state institutions and states.

Prospects for the Implementation of Transitional Justice in Ukraine

The study examines the features of transitional justice. The author gives definitions and goals of this concept. As it was noted by the scientists Ovcharenko and Shcherbaniuk, transitional justice includes judicial and extrajudicial mechanisms, such as prosecution, compensation, truth commissions, institutional transformations, and a combination of the above. For the first time, the content, main elements, and mechanisms of transitional justice are described in detail, which is considered in the context of the simultaneous transformation of Ukrainian society from an authoritarian past to a democratic present and from military conflict to post-conflict. Referring to Arkadiy Bushchenko (2017) transitional justice, as a model of society's transition from authoritarian to democratic, and from armed conflict to post-conflict, is currently the most modern approach to solving the problems that Ukraine has been dealing with since the end of 2013. Therefore, given this understanding, there is a prospect of developing a national legal model for the implementation of the basic principles of transitional justice. With the ultimate goal of the process of reconciliation in society, the concept of transitional justice involves the simultaneous operation of the state in four areas: effective criminal prosecutions, reparations, institutional reforms, and official statement of historical truth.

The Political Practice and its Subjects in of New Critical Theories: Complicities and Points of Adversity

These four theoretical bets on the “multitude” (Hardt and Negri), on the political subject as fidelity to an event (Badiou), on the “people” as a hegemonic interaction of heterogeneous demands (Laclau and Mouffe), on the political subject as an emergent subject of an egalitarian irruption (Rancière), illustrate the seek for new political subjectivities after abandoning the Marxist thesis that gives a decisive role to the working-class in the process of social transformation. Apart from this binding nucleus, they present divergences that place the question about the subject of emancipation in a field of confrontations, and bifurcation points. This work aims at delimiting the lines of combat, voices of consent and dissent found in these new critical theories regarding the connection between political subjectivity, and economic relations, the issue of the strategy, the nationalism/internationalism dilemma and the disjunction between statism and anti-statism.

CRITICAL-DISCURSIVE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM: WHAT IS THE STANDPOINT OF SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISM RESEARCH?

An overview of critical-discursive Social Constructionism is presented, showing its historical development and its critique of any methodological approaches that do not take into consideration the social-historical reality. In particular, it criticises the dualistic ‘external object - cognitive subject’ position of the Positivist current that has its roots in the Enlightenment and later in Modernity, which leads to a conception of reason and scientific truth as supposedly incontrovertible realities outside of any historical and social construction. Finally, social constructionism is presented not as a formal theory grounded of strict methodological principles, but rather as an approach that attempts to show the limitations of certain scientific or methodological views, emphasising the importance of social construction through language and the relative relevance of different positions, from which a certain vindication of epistemological relativism emerges.

GENDER EQUALITY IN TUNISIA: CURRENT TRENDS

Tunisia has come a long way towards achieving gender equality and remains a prominent example to other Arab countries in this experience. Meanwhile, Tunisia still takes only modest positions in international rankings on various indexes measuring gender gap. This work examines, with the help of a comparative-historical method, the formation of the women's movement in Tunisia and the development of legislation on gender equality. Then, through statistical data the author outlines the extent of women's economic, social, and political participation, and, finally, referring to the "concept of representation" by Hanna F. Pitkin (1967), the author looks at the pre-election programs of political parties that won the 2019 parliamentary elections, in order to assess the perception of the problem of women's emancipation in Tunisian society on the whole. As a result of the research, the author comes to the conclusion that, despite progressive legislative framework guaranteeing women's rights, the mass consciousness of Tunisians maintains a set of ideas and norms on gender inequality generated by Islamic tradition and fostering the discrepancy, first in the existing legislation and the objective reality, and secondly, between the rules of family law containing elements of Sharia, and the provisions of the Constitution, as well as the accepted international obligations.

THE CULTURE OF THE LATIFUNDIA

Researching for socio-educational transformation implies elucidating the hegemonic cultural, political and economic problems of a social formation; in this case, of the Venezuelan social formation. In the field of education, the dominant approaches obfuscate the political stance of teachers by minimising their potential as organic intellectuals capable of transforming their environment. Both naïve empiricism and idealism permeate the sociological and pedagogical reflections that legitimise the colonial and neo-colonial phases established by the culture of the latifundia. This article takes a look at the culture of the latifundia as a structural and cultural remnant of Spanish colonialism as found in the novels of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Social and educational changes must start with an analysis of the roots; that is, the epistemic-theoretical and cultural foundations that constitute the processes of institutionalisation of Venezuelan education, with the ultimate purpose of discovering the conceptual and methodological devices that hinder the qualitative leap needed in the socio-educational task, which is mainly political-ideological.

THE NEW AND THE OLD IN THE FILM INDUSTRY: CINEMA, TECHNOLOGY AND NEO-VIEWERS. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LOOK AT THE NEW CINEMA.

Since its invention, the cinema art and industry has drawn a lot of attention from people of all sectors. It is nowadays a mass phenomenon reaching a very large audience, which has increased even more due to the proliferation of screens resulting from technological advances. As a result, going to the movie theatre has become simply an option among others. This investigation searches into what motivates the current spectator to watch films and the way in which cinema interacts with the viewer, projecting the cinematographic arts beyond the screen. In short, the research characterises the current spectator within the values and the context around him and uses an anthropological methodology to describe how the new spectator lives the cinema and the way in which the old structures and the new ones interact in our hyperconnected world. The main objective of the research is to approach generally the concept of film viewer in our times.