Volume 32, Issue 1

This contribution responds to the ongoing discussion about the narrativity of history and looks at some differences between fictive and historical narrative. The objective of this contribution is to further elaborate on the ideas of narrative transformations developed by Wolf Schmid, focusing particularly on historical narratives. The authors see differences between both kinds of narrative, especially on the level of reference (which is in line with the views of D. Cohn, P. Ricouer and L. Doležel). The problem of fiction and reference is illustrated by Schmid's four tiered narratological model, especially on the level of happening. In fiction, this tier (of happening) is inferred backwards based on the presentation of the narration. This tier is positioned (excluded in absentia ) so the elements of the narrative can be selected. In historical narrative happening has a different status and precedes both the story and the text. Although the shape of the past is related to the presentation of the narrative, it is not determined by nor reduced to it. The authors of this contribution describe the specific character and aspects of narrative transformation in the writing process.

In this paper, we analyze the legal situation regarding physician-assisted suicide in the world. Our hypothesis is that the prohibitive stance on physician-assisted suicide in most societies in the world today seems to be related to our moral attitudes toward suicide. This brings us to a discussion about life itself. We claim that the total lack of legal protection for physician-assisted suicide from international organizations and most countries in the world lies in a philosophical assumption that supports much of our common beliefs about what life really is. This assumption states that life must be thought of as not belonging exclusively to the individual. We argue that this assumption is a misconception that can be heard in the debate on suicide. Consequently we endorse a different conception of life which tends to favor a pro-choice stance towards suicide and assisted death in general. This position takes the patient’s decision about when to die more seriously. We conclude that there is no reason why physician-assisted suicide does not deserve legal protection as an individual right to die under international law.

The study focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of the ideological struggle in social processes as seen through the lens of the Argentinian philosopher Héctor P. Agosti's political philosophy. It discusses the impact of Agosti's interpretation of ideology in social struggle the usefulness of his conclusions for later practical developments in Latin America. The aim of the study is to describe the key aspects of Agosti's view of culture and ideology and to identify specific features of his approach with a view to determining how and to what extent Agosti's political thought contributed to subsequent theories and practice. The following aspects are analysed: understanding culture as a contradictory process in dynamic social development, the role of the intellectual in the social struggle for ideological hegemony and specific features of Agosti's approach to developments in revolutionary thought in revolutionary thought in the Latin America.

This study presents some of the contributions to the process of the constructing Europe since the illustrated ideas of the German philosopher Krause that were promoted and represented by eminent Spanish Krausist legal experts, such as Francisco Giner de los Ríos. His conception of Europe and European civilisation contains theories that, despite being surprising and openly opposed at the time, have today become part of the global heritage of modern day legal philosophy and our social aspirations. We firstly study how the development of the Krausist legal philosophy contributed to the political development of Spain and how this ius-philosophical thinking had a modernising influence on Spanish legal philosophy and science. Secondly, we delve deeper into the basic principles of Krausist legal-sociological theory that have had a major influence on Europeanisation, reviewing its most ardent criticism of the European imperial nationalism doctrine.

The research addresses the effect of sense of control on perceived stress by controlling for the intervening effects of Religiosity and Materialism. A total of 609 emerging adults living in Dhaka city participated in the survey; surveyors used a 48-item structural closed-ended questionnaire to collect the responses. The elicited responses were quantified, and structural equation models were formulated to identify any associations among the variables of interest. The findings suggest that sense of control is a strong determinant of perceived stress; neither religiosity nor materialism mediate the association. The study advances the transactional model of stress and coping.

Textbooks play a strong part in constructing gender roles and status in society. Thus, the images, lessons, and stories of gender portrayed in textbooks affect the perception of prevalent masculine behavior. To develop an insight into the phenomena, this article analyzes the institutionalized patriarchy and patriarchal values embedded in the Urdu and English National Book Foundation textbooks for grades 5, 6, and 7. The study used content analysis techniques to decode the tone, juggling of meanings, pictorial representation, topic selection, word selection, number of pages devoted to each topic, and gender placement of Urdu and Social Studies textbooks. The study explored whether women are portrayed as followers of men and men as having a leadership role. The mother is predominantly presented as a housewife who stays at home, cleaning and cooking all day. While the father goes to work every day and comes home and relaxes after a hard day’s work. Such placement of gendered roles has an effect on the thinking of young students and they internalize the idea that such roles are a natural part of their personality. Moreover, the books reflect a reality which is more male-oriented, while female representations are lacking in the dominant reality.

In Slovakia and the Czech Republic, little attention is paid to the father-child relationship. The aim of this theoretical study is to introduce methods for assessing the father-child relationship in early childhood. There are two methodologies for assessing sensitive and challenging play by fathers – the Sensitive and Challenging Interaction Play Scale – SCIP (Grossmann et al., 2002) and the quality of the father-child activation relationship – Risky Situation – RS (Paquette & Bigras, 2010). The study describes the SCIP and offers a theoretical definition of the basic constructs tackled in the SCIP methodology. The paper then describes the new RS procedure. Special attention is paid to activation theory, which forms the basis of the RS procedure. Finally, the paper contains suggestions for future in-depth investigations of the father’s role using adequate tools that take into consideration the uniqueness of the father-child relationship. The need to validate existing methods – also within Slovak culture – is emphasized.

The paper presents findings on primary teachers’ and other school actors’ constructions of the teacher and parental role. Specifically, it focuses on strategies for maintaining borders between the personal (parent) and professional (teacher) roles in school environments in Slovakia. We approached the concepts of role and identity from the perspective of social constructivism and symbolic interactionism. Thirty-one interviews and focus groups with school actors were analysed using critical discourse analysis. In the next step, discourses on managing the dual role were analysed using thematic analysis. Results show participants described regulating or restricting verbal, emotional and behavioural expression, and engaged in favouritism avoidance as strategies for separating out the roles. All point to the need to eliminate favouritism as a key meaning in the construction of the teacher role through impartialness and parental role as favourably inclined to create inter-role conflict. We stress the importance of exploring teacher and parental roles in various circumstances in order to obtain a complex picture of negotiating these roles in everyday life.

Humble leadership can be described as a positive psychological feature that allows leaders to admit their limitations, be open to new ideas, and give a voice to others while also recognizing their merits. The present study ( n = 268 participants) explored the persuasive effects of a female politician communicating a humble stance by considering the role emotional displays at play (joy, calmness, sadness, and anger) when discussing a moral issue (hosting immigrants). The results revealed that the politician elicited positive emotions and evaluations of her competence and benevolence, especially when exhibiting a sad facial display, by contributing to the intention to accept the moral gist of her persuasive message. Overall, these ‘gendered’ effects are discussed in relation to the ‘political authenticity’, which can be perceived as high especially when the humble message is connected with several social reasons, as is the case with gender or social status.