Blaženka Despot (1930–2001) was a Yugoslav philosopher who applied a critical reading of Marxism to the philosophy of technology and, after the mid-1970s, proposed a form of Marxist feminism that took into account the context of Yugoslav self-managing socialism. In the short text “Women and Self-Management,” Despot summarises the ideas she developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, especially her Marxist-feminist critiques of socialist women’s emancipation in Yugoslavia. She calls for re-focusing on women and revisiting Marx’s concept of nature through a reading of Hegel. While doing so, she raises the issue of violence against women as a key matter of women’s equality. Zsófi a Lóránd, in her introduction, discusses the text in light of Despot’s broader oeuvre and in light of the history of feminism in Yugoslavia.
The article is conceived as a contribution to a critical reading of opinion data and the presentation of ISSP modules on Work Orientations from 1997 and 2005 in the Czech Republic. In the first part, some methodological problems regarding the inspection of work and job values are presented using examples drawn from previous research. In the second part, the framework of systemic transition is set up and hypotheses are presented regarding work values and attitudes from the perspective of gender and age, education and occupation. In the third part, a comparison is made of people's expectations regarding their work and jobs with their perceived fulfilment. In the fourth part, we consider the perceived location of workers between the distant worlds of family and firms and inspect factors of work and job satisfaction. In conclusion, we discuss the role of subjective perceptions in the economy and the question of a 'true' change in values during the transition.
The aim of the paper is to present and analyse the current state of perpetrator programmes in Eastern European and Baltic countries as this issue has barely been raised in the literature. It is connected to the fact that in described region such programmes are still relatively new phenomena and, compared to other European Union countries (mostly in Western and Northern Europe), the number of the programmes is still insufficient. Moreover, the number and character of the perpetrator programmes in Eastern European and Baltic countries is to a large extent determined by traditional gender relations, glorification of the traditional family and specific definitions of masculinities and femininities, as well as by the nature of the anti-violence legislation that exists in particular countries. The presented findings result from research on the specificity of work with perpetrators of domestic violence in the region. The analysis is based on the cases of Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland. It is to a large extent the result of research conducted within the Daphne III project IMPACT: Evaluation of European Perpetrator Programmes (2013-2014) and of analysis of national reports delivered by country experts for a project conducted by the Work with Perpetrators - European Network in 2013., Katarzyna Wojnicka., and Obsahuje bibliografii
This article revisits the case for paying more attention to agency and strategy in theories of post-communist politics and society. The author analyses two trends of major social and political significance in Central and Eastern Europe between 1989 and 2007: the apparent political inconsequentiality of rising unemployment and the causes and consequences of the dramatic decline of organised labour, across a wide variety of political and institutional settings. While the prevailing explanations have emphasised the institutional and ideological legacies of the communist past, the author points to theoretical reasons for why the 'unsettled times' of transformation may have been particularly conducive to elite agency. Looking beyond legacies can shed light on the degree to which elites have channelled the expression of workers' reform grievances towards socially peaceful but, possibly, politically illiberal repertoires of expression. Pointing to past developments across a number of advanced and developing democracies, the author situates the post-communist labour decline within a larger comparative and historical context. Lastly, the author indicates how the erosion of labour power has influenced the particular models of democracy and the varieties of capitalism that have been emerging in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989.