In this paper, the author focuses not on the acquisition of knowledge through classroom teaching, but on the process of knowledge acquisition via self-teaching among secondary school students. The analysis of this process is based on the written compositions of secondary school students in which they analyzed their own personal experiences of choosing the most effective methods of self-teaching. The analysis was based on such factors as the volume of material to be learned, time, energy and psychological stress. The author of the study adopts a formalized language in which the individual findings are interpreted not only in psychological terms, but also in terms of formal logic.
Banks have undergone an extensive expansion process in their distribution network. Today, Italy is considered an over-branched country. In Poland on the other hand, we have seen the development of a banking network in a period of economic transformation. All operators have been forced to begin a process of rationalization in their distribution networks. Poland vs. Italy may be a good example of a comparison of the changes taking place in the area of the optimization of the distribution networks of the mature banking market in Italy with the constantly growing banking market in Poland. The aim of this work was to observe on-going processes and to analyse it. On the one hand, there was a focus on the evolutionary point of view causing changes in the optimization network.On the other hand, attention was paid to the identification of the determinants affecting the percentage of persons holding a bank account in Poland, Italy, and in 27 countries of the European Union.
In this article I present a concept of profession as a mission, which was formulated by Max Weber at the beginning of the past century. It has been put by Weber in such a vision of a capitalist society, that emerges (after various ages of “transformations”) as a “greatest power” in the modern world, that is capitalism. Weber had no doubts about capitalism as a greatest modern power and he saw its major force in the rationalization of economics and human relations. On the other hand, he was very full if doubts regarding the issue of attitudes, behavior and actions of scientists. He wasn’t quite sure in the question if we might speak about their calling in the same sense as about the calling of a capitalist businessman or worker. He certainly was aware, that there do exist such “young researchers”, who think and act like they would be an integral part of the capitalist “machine”, but he also made certain reservations. The changes, which occurred later on at many higher education institutions, made this objection valid in many points. Nevertheless it is difficult to find such solutions, which would allow simultaneously to keep the traditional unique character of the world of academics and to fulfill the realization of tasks, which nowadays are being addressed towards the scientifical society from various social groups. This I attempt to show in the last part of this article.
Romantic notions and critical theories of play describe an assault by rationalization processes on the free and spontaneous nature of play. Other theories seek to describe the dialectical nature between rationalization and freedom, between routine, and magic, and between planning and spontaneity. This article seeks to focus on the rationalization processes of play and to examine whether and in what dimensions, these processes shape the characteristics of play and hamper its spontaneity and freedom. Examination of these processes, performed by socio-historical analysis of legal gambling in Israel, shows that rationalization processes were active on both the practical and technological levels, and on the discursive level of the games of chance. Nevertheless, the characteristics of freedom, joy and spontaneity appeared only on the discursive level of the game and were designed to deliberately serve the economic interests of the various agents in the Israeli gambling field.
In the first part of the paper plurality of 'narrations' concerning reality is indicated both in public debates and core social sciences. In the second part author suggests that diversity of such 'narrations' is founded either on 'progressive' thinking including our beliefs in possibility to manage public affairs with such means as 'rationalization', forecasting, risk assessment, evidence based decision making, etc. or on uncertainty and social institutions providing patterns of coping with such uncertainty.
The paper shows an original approach concept to the problem of determining the current state of company finance, based on a theory similar to the Austrian economic school, supplemented by fuzzy approach. The article presents the analysis offering an original approach to solve the problem as well as a discussion and initial verification of such an approach.
In the early 1744, the so called Confraternity of the Star Cross was revealed in Brno. Its members were subjected to interrogations and imprisoned for various periods. An extensive surviving material on the case enables analyses into the individual actors‘ opinions (i.e. the fraternity members, the officials, lawyers, the queen and the church representatives) and a chan of the Star Cross ce to meditate on interpretations of this phenomenon, which mingled magical elements, alchemy, a desire to understand the secret of the nature, Christian rituals as well as certain „all-remedial“ ideas. In this article, I attempt to place this issue within the context of historical-sociological research on rationalization, disenchantment and secularization and show applicability of the given terms in similar research.
Concept of quality, verbalized by customers, is vague and often contradictory. However, properly conducted analysis can specify the quality criteria and define customer requirements, which can be presented on two-dimensional diagram, and create a clear map of preferences. One of the basic assumptions of the Kano model is the variability of the customers' requirements in time. With the passing of time and copying the attributes of the product by competing companies, so called "stunning" factors become common, turn into expected attributes, then the desirable factors, and in the final phase the discouraging factors. Because of competitive pressure and its ability to imitate, it is necessary for company to improve products and services, and its survival in the marketplace and success depend on the ability to explore the unconscious needs of customers and convert them to the characteristics of their products. Description of the needs and expectations of customers in terms of Kano model provides a lot of information to draw valuable conclusions related to marketing analysis. This article presents the approach to the analysis of data on customer satisfaction that allows the classification of satisfaction criteria in terms of Kano analysis, and acting as an effective and efficient evaluation of product attributes that directly affect customer satisfaction.
Numerous diagnoses of contemporary transformations of love and eroticism emphasise the fact that the intimate life has become democratised and liberated. Anthony Giddens argues that personal relationships increasingly become compatible with the model of pure relationship, which means that they are more egalitarian and that both partners are free to choose and to negotiate the shape of their relations. Jeffrey Weeks claims that in “the world that we have won”, women, homosexuals and queers are increasingly considered as equal to heterosexual men. Most scholars agree that feminism(together with gays’ and lesbians’ movements) is one of most important factors that enabled the democratisation of intimacy. Yet, it is possible to distinguish some interesting approaches that examine the unintended consequences of women’s emancipation. Sociologists like Arlie Russell Hochschild and Eva Illouz recognise the importance of feminism in democratising intimacy, thus they also claim that liberation of women has entailed rationalisation and commercialisation of intimacy. One of Hochschild’s main thesis is that feminism commercialises intimacy by legitimising “the commercial spirit of intimate life”. What is more, she argues that instead of humanizing men feminism is capitalising women. On the other hand, Illouz persuades that feminism – together with therapeutic discourse – rationalises intimacy by emphasising the necessity of analysing and quantifying all aspects of intimate life. Hochschild and Illouz claim that feminism unintentionally makes intimacy “cold” – that is that it suggests focusing on personal autonomy and perceiving warm and close bonds as an endangerment for that autonomy. The cooling entails loosening of family and intimate relationships and making individuals more attached to the market. In the end, both sociologists agree that “cool” branches of feminism make women similar to men and intimacy similar to the market
In this paper, we focus on consumption practices reflected on blogs of Polish minimalists. We analyzed 16 top blogs of the minimalists present in the Polish blogosphere. The objective of the minimalists is to consume less and live simple life without the excess of material objects. We studied the instructions of everyday conduct which the minimalists give on their blogs, as well as the meanings they assign to their practices: their personal stories of becoming a minimalist and statements of their values. The authors belong to one generation-their childhood took place in the times of the shortage economy in the 1980s. This influenced the whole trajectory of their lives and their consumer choices. To interpret their practices we use the categories of rationalization of Max Weber and modern hedonism of Colin Campbell. It appears that minimalists strive for reaching certain emotional states, e.g. peace and wellbeing they imagine, in line with the theory of modern hedonism. A path to those emotional states consists of rationalization of all the temporary, impulse-based pleasures and control over emotions involved in consumption.
This article presents two different traditions of perception of parliament existing in the French doctrine of constitutional law. In the fi rst one — called the Jacobin tradition — parliament is treated quite exceptionally, as an authority expressing national sovereignty and, therefore, unchallenged. That tradition has found its fullest expression in the political system of the Third and Fourth Republic, and especially the Third Republic which developed an extremely strong position of parliament, called the monistic parliamentary system, one-sided, predominant pathological or extreme parliament. From that time on in France a specifi c meaning ascribed to the phrase “parliamentarism” which has ceased to be only the system of government with specifi c relationships between the three elements of the system, i.e. the government — parliament — the head of state, and has become synonymous with exuberant, extremely strong position of parliament. This position was, inter alia, refl ected in: the lack of formalized procedures for holding government to account, an exclusive character of acts of parliament and their unrestricted scope, or election of the president of the Republic by parliament, which led to the situation in which he became “a hostage of the parliamentary majority.” This position of parliament, so shaped or rather deformed, has driven the reform efforts, known as rationalization. All of them belong to the second section of French parliamentary tradition, associated with criticism and, consequently, the weakening of the position of parliament in the system of government. This tradition, called the Bonaparte tradition, found its fullest expression in the political system of the Fifth Republic. Therefore, Gaullism is sometimes called a contemporary version of Bonapartism. Their common denominator is the desire to restrict parliament in the name of balance of powers. They are refl ected e.g. in the limitation of statutory matter, the introduction of constitutional judiciary or wider use of referendums and the establishment of universal and direct presidential elections. The latter two instruments especially have anti-parliamentary connotation, because they juxtapose parliament with two other institutions which also express national sovereignty.
Artykuł jest polemiką z rozdziałem Zaufanie w nauce z ksiązki Piotra Sztompki Zaufanie. Fundament społeczeństwa, w ujęciu którego erozja zaufania do nauki wynika z upadku jej etosu, czego przyczyną jest z kolei nowa struktura organizacyjna i instytucjonalna systemu nauki (w tym mechanizmy finansowe) oraz nowy typ relacji z „szerokim społeczeństwem” - czyli fakt, że system nauki nie jest już tak ekskluzywny, jak niegdyś. Według autora, logika procesu może być nieco inna: to kryzys zaufania do nauki byłby jedną z przyczyn zmiany formuły organizacji i finansowania badań naukowych, nie najważniejszą zresztą. Niezależnym problemem jest coraz większa złożoność badań i ich rosnący koszt, a w konsekwencji konieczność bardziej efektywnego zarządzania ludźmi i pieniędzmi. W tym ujęciu zmiany w nauce wpisują się w weberowski meta-proces racjonalizacji życia społecznego w wielu jego wymiarach. To oczywiście (w drugą stronę) osłabia zaufanie do nauki, ale należy mieć na uwadze, iż pozytywizm ustawił poprzeczkę tego zaufania wyjątkowo wysoko. Nauka nie jest w stanie spełnić wszystkich społecznych oczekiwań, stąd naturalna redukcja poziomu zaufania na niższy, ale bardziej racjonalny i stabilny pułap.
EN
The paper discusses Piotr Sztompka's book "Trust in Science" with its thesis that the erosion of trust in science is caused by the downfall of the scientific ethos, generated by the new organizational and institutional structure of science (e.g. the financing system), and a new model of social relations, which means less exclusivity of the scientific world. To the paper's author, the logic may be slightly different: the lack of trust in science would be one of the reasons for reforming the system of organizing and financing research, but not the most important one. The main and substantive problem is how to effectively manage people and money, considering the growing complexity and cost of research. In this sense the evolution in science can be analyzed in the meta-context of rationalization described by Max Weber, which reflexively weakens trust toward scientists. But one must be conscious that this level of trust was extremely high due to all the expectations which emerged in the age of positivism, and which could not have been fulfilled. That is why the level of trust is now being reduced to a lower, but more rational and stable level.
The phenomenon of wave-particle duality, dependent on the technical incorporation of micro-reality, emphasized that conceptualization of substance on the micro-level could be adapted neither with its classical conceptualization, nor with the human’s common sense. Therefore, new experience needs new conceptualization. Inspired by Gaston Bachelard’s reflections about the surrationalism, in the present article is realizing the presentation of microphysics’ substance as sur-stance and the experience of micro-reality as the peculiar empirical transcendence. In turn, this refers to the perspective of investigation of microphysics as new metaphysics.
In the first part of the paper plurality of 'narrations' concerning reality is indicated both in public debates and core social sciences. In the second part author suggests that diversity of such 'narrations' is founded either on 'progressive' thinking including our beliefs in possibility to manage public affairs with such means as 'rationalization', forecasting, risk assessment, evidence based decision making, etc. or on uncertainty and social institutions providing patterns of coping with such uncertainty.
The magnitude of Max Weber’s work is overwhelming. However, with it, comes its great insight into the social reality. Reinhard Bendix has called Weber the magical name of the modern social sciences. Agreeing with this claim, The Author of this article takes on one of the fundamental problems of the social sciences – the problematic concept of rationality. This concept remains a key element of the works of Max Weber. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to analyze the intricacies of its definition by the famous German scholar. First comes the analysis of the multiplicity of contexts in which Weber makes the use of the term rationality and the rationalization. Then, after the realization of the impossibility of a precise definition of the rationalization without taking the context into account, the transition to the rationalization of law follows. The look at the division of rationalization of law into various planes on which it can manifest its rationality or irrationality (be it the material or formal aspect) is concluded with the summary, where The Author poses questions about certain issues that require further research.
PL
Skala rozważań Maxa Webera bywa przytłaczająca. Rezultat stanowi jednak źródło znakomitej perspektywy badawczej na rzeczywistość społeczną. Reinhard Bendix nazwał Webera magicznym nazwiskiem współczesnych nauk społecznych. Zgadzając się z tym twierdzeniem, Autor niniejszego artykułu podejmuje się rozważań w zakresie jednego z fundamentalnych problemów nauk społecznych – problematycznej koncepcji racjonalności, stanowiącej kluczowy element prac Maxa Webera. Celem niniejszej pracy będzie analiza zawiłości leżących u podstaw jej definicji. Po pierwsze, zbadana zostanie mnogość kontekstów, w których autor Gospodarki i społeczeństwa posługuje się pojęciem racjonalność i racjonalizacja. Po stwierdzeniu, że właściwie niemożliwe jest precyzyjne zdefiniowanie pojęcia racjonalizacji, bez umieszczenia jej w określonym kontekście, nastąpi przejście do problematyki racjonalizacji prawa. Spojrzenie na typologię racjonalizacji prawa, zgodnie z różnymi płaszczyznami na których system prawa może manifestować swoją racjonalność bądź irracjonalność – w materialnym, czy też formalnym aspekcie. Powyższe zostanie skonkludowane podsumowaniem, w którym Autor zarysowuje wątki winne zbadania w następnej kolejności.
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