VALENTINA PRICOPIE, Some “Pictures in Our Heads”: Turkey in the European Media

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

LUCIAN DUMITRESCU, Neoliberalism, the Economic Theory behind the International Financial Crisis

SOCIOLOGY AND GEOPOLITICS

VERONICA DUMITRAŞCU, Romanian Security Space and the Ponto-Baltic Isthmus

RESEARCH REPORT

RADU BALTASIU, OVIDIANA BULUMAC, SIMONA MOTOROIU, GABRIEL SĂPUNARU, The Neointerpretative Methodology. The Level of Field Analysis. Research Report on the Lippovan Community in Dobruja (II)

CĂLIN COTOI, The Anthropology of a Hard to Count Population. The Case of Moldavian Csangos

The Csangos/ Ceangai are a very hard to define ethnic/ religious minority from Eastern Romania (the historical province of Moldavia). The first problems appear when the Csangos are counted.

According to the 1992 census, in the eight counties of the historical Romanian province of Moldavia from 276,650 inhabitants of Roman Catholic confession, 267,739 consider themselves to be of Romanian nationality, 6747 Hungarian, and 2165 Csango. In 2002 the recorded number of declared Csangos was 769.

The huge discrepancy between these figures and the ones used by some scholars – 80,000 is the number of Csangos proposed by Kalman Benda; 62,000 is the number put forward by Vilmos Tanczos etc. – cannot be just a technical problem of counting and even less one of scholarly (dis)honesty.

My central hypothesis is that Csango population is caught between two antagonistic nationalizing projects; the Hungarian and the Romanian one. The Hungarian-based one is stressing the archaicity, the Middle Ages characteristics of the Csangos, transforming them, in the process, in a mirror for the modern Hungarian self.

The Romanian nationalizing strategy appears, at first, as a counter strategy trying to unveil the “Hungarianisation” of Moldavian Cangos. The Csangos are, according to this point of view, essentialy “hybrids”, half-denationalized Romanians, having, as the only alterity sign, differentiating them from other Greek Orthodox Romanians from Moldova, their Romano Catholic religion.

OVIDIANA BULUMAC
SIMONA MOTOROIU
GABRIEL SĂPUNARU
Security Studies Master, Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, University of Bucharest

The Lippovans are a Russophone community with a history that still raises questions, yet mainly linked to the moment of the Reform of Patriarch Nikon, at the end of the 17th century.

Taking into account the religious point of view, they are an archaic community (‘old rite followers’), whose internal coherence is ensured primarily by their language (old Slavonic permeated with Romanian words) and traditions, and less by the Church or by local elites’ capacity to knit together and develop the community’s symbolic order.

On the other hand, the “objective” order reveals the community’s potential for development, where their economic infrastructure is centered outwards, most of the property being owned by people who are strangers to the place, while the resource derives from money earned working abroad or in other parts of Romania. Nevertheless, the Lippovans proved to be fully integrated in the Romanian territory, at least in Dobruja.

*** The first part of this research report was published in Romanian Journal of Sociology, No. 1-2/2009.

The Ponto- Baltic Isthmus area, although is a sensible one, being in a strong resurgence because of the opening region of interest due to Black Sea, is less studied. It has a special importance in geopolitics and Romanian anthropogeography, as Mehedinţi and Gheorghe Brătianu underlined and becomes more discussed inside of Mackinder’s and Spykman’s theories.

The security of the whole area depends on the Black Sea, the Danube and the Straits security. The policy of a state should be interested on the Straits problem, the natural extension of the Danube Delta as well as naval and air bases that dominate Pontic area. We shouldn’t be regardless who mastered them, said the great historian Gheorghe Brătianu.

Romanian sociologists underlined the strategic importance of the Black Sea, its role between three zones of special interest: Europe, Asia and the Middle Orient. The Black Sea represents the key- element for the security of Romania and Europe. Black Sea issue is important because it depends on the security of the energy routes and the security of an entire South East European area.

The interwar Great Depression contradicted the tenets of classical liberal philosophy, according to which deregulated economic activity and selfish economic conduct supported the general interest of society.

After both practical economy and Keynesian economic theory showed that the environment in which Adam Smith’s theories could be verified was rather an ideal typical one, in the late ’70s Milton Friedman revitalized the invisible hand perspective in a context in which Western economies were faced with the phenomenon of stagflation.

The deregulation of economic life preached by the neoliberal philosophy has engendered, among others, the unprecedented spread of investment funds, that we consider the main cause of the global financial crisis. This article emphasizes the underlying principles of the neoliberal thought.

The expected adhesion of Turkey to EU, not realized, creates emotions that are represented by rhetorical and symbolic medial constructions.

Consequently, we find ourselves in a situation where the experience remains a potentiality: an experience which has begun, but which is not completely actualized.

This might be the general condition for all (media) events; always in transition, waiting for the integration, creating a scene of complex and insecure emotions. The difficulty of this situation resides on the fact that on the one hand it is dominated by a potential, and on the other hand it is ruled by differentiation. The potential state, in our context the one created by the printed media, becomes an unknown field of experience for the new applicants as well as for the member countries.

The present paper proposes a panoramic analysis of French and Romanian journals and their discourses concerning European integration of Turkey. How the press presents the integration process of Turkey? Certainly, our analysis has its limitations; however, our aim in this study is not to judge editorial transformations, but to reveal emotional implications and stereotypes via discursive constructions.

Our study is framed by several theoretical premises, primarily based on discourse analysis, and will integrate and discuss fundamental concepts of stereotypes and emotions creating “pictures in our heads”, as a result of the predictability marking the EU-Turkey diplomatic relationships and also of fears and emotions of the European citizens.

ILIE BĂDESCU, Deconstructions of the European Identity. The Permanence of Iconoclasm
MĂDĂLINA MĂNDIŢĂ, A Noological Approach to Jewish Messianism

ECONOMY AND SOCIETY

CRISTINA LEOVARIDIS, ANDREEA NICOLĂESCU, Characteristics of Employment-Key Factors of Economic Growth. Comparative Analysis between Romania and the European States

RESEARCH REPORT

RADU BALTASIU, OVIDIANA BULUMAC, SIMONA MOTOROIU, GABRIEL SĂPUNARU, The Neointerpretative Methodology. The Level of Field Analysis. Research Report on the Lippovan Community in Dobruja

ECATERINA BALICA, DAN BANCIU, Agresseurs dans le milieu familial – les particularités des agresseurs impliqués dans actes de violences qui déterminent la sollicitation des services de médicine légale

STRATEGIC ARCHITECTURES

CIPRIAN BĂDESCU, New Perspectives on the Organizational Performance in the Business Environment.: Methods and Techniques

STUDIES OF COMMUNISM

ADELA ŞERBAN, Controversial Issues Regarding Resistance and Dissidence in Romania (1945-1989)

SOCIOLOGY AND GEOPOLITICS

VERONICA DUMITRAŞCU, Russia, Eastern Europe and the West

LUCIAN DUMITRESCU, Strategic Identity and Reform in the Peripheral Area

Using the social constructivism paradigm, this article displays the social consequences of development programs, which are subsumed to the concept of strategic identity, undertaken in Russia and China.

When deeply embedded social practices are ignored by economic and political reforms tailored by elites that don’t know or do not take into considerations local specificities, social chaos is very likely to emerge.

Nowadays, many geopoliticians underline the fact that Russia has become a great power, with great resources and a great role in the international relations. It is a revival of old imperial supremacy, a revival of super-ethnos and what Lev Gumiliov named, “passionarity”.

Stanislav Secrieru proposes a new vision of post-sovietic Russia, using the concept of “strategic identity”.

The strategic identity is a way of geopolitical representations about Russia, the construction of Russia’s cognitive map; it may be seen as a way of the restoration of Russia’s internal and external supremacy, as Stanislav Secrieru says.

In this way, Putin tried to monopolize the decisional processes and to stress the importance of geo-economical aspects in Russia’s relations with the West. Euro-Atlantic integration of ex-soviet countries from the eastern border of the European Union depends on the relations between Russia and the West, the Russia’s influence upon them and depends on their internal stability. But the eastern border of European Union seems “to suffer” from geopolitical instability.

The ex-soviet countries (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia) have still many problems related to economic, political and decisional instability. The geopolitical picture in this area is still unclear and vague.

The present article is an analysis of Romanian society transition from communism to democracy, which pinpoints the mechanisms of the options and historical behavior of political, cultural and civic elites in Romania, Romanian communities and religious institutions.