Sociology

We live in a day and age in which information and technology witness a huge leap of development. Entire generations of pupils and students are accustomed to using means and devices of the 21 st Century in searching for information and general knowledge. Moreover, they are continuously bombarded with manipulative messages coming to them in an endless stream of data which pressures them to stay updated and connected to the source. Who is guiding them while surfing through this ocean of information and knowledge? Who is setting landmarks and guiding posts for them? Their rhythm and pace is alert and vivid and they expect nothing less from the schools and lectures they attend. Is education keeping up with the times? It is obvious that the good old ways don't work anymore. The absolute need for a paradigm shift in education dawned a while back, while specialists in the field identified a deep fracture at the very core structure of a system in absolute need for deep reformation. Now is the time the paradigm shift in education becomes instrumental for the wellbeing of society at large, since the outcome of the obsolete educational processes affects generations of young, beautiful, restless minds, dependent on and glued to technology and modern virtual environments. We, educators, need to wake up and start changing and shifting things around or the future will vilify us. We need to realize that our job as education facilitators is to develop means to skillfully interact with these new generations, continuously bearing in mind that conveying information without building transformational relationships within the educational process, knowledge becomes void of valuable content. Boosting creativity through Blended Learning and Flipped Classroom, encouraging the use of Summative Intelligence and peer / self-evaluation within the learning environment are the building blocks of the Interactive Transformational Education method the present paper aims to briefly introduce and describe within the economy of this format.

Quantum Learning – Keeping Up with the Future How do we learn a foreign language in the 21 st century? Are we up to the same old habits or are we integrating the sum of knowledge and experience of this wonderfully inventive and creative century within our way of doing things? Are we left back, keeping up with the future or one step ahead of it? It is only a matter of choice. Quantum physics emphasizes the perspective of the observer and since Einstein's theory, relativity becomes without a shadow of doubt a landmark of our world and influences our ultimate perception of reality. Its effects are spreading around all fields of science with unbelievable speed and results. In medicine, for instance, specialists in biophysics and biochemistry talk about dual behaviors of molecules, both as particles and as waves, as matter and as energy and they can produce measurements and evidence to prove this amazing fact. Clinical psychology embraces the perspective of the observer and develops a brand-new branch called quantum psychology. Neuroscience starts developing new understandings on how the human brain works and functions based on these recent developments in quantum physics while researchers in genetics describe new behaviors of genes and the new field of epigenetics is born. How could education not be influenced by all these human achievements and important developments in so many fields of activity? How could learning processes shy away from such amazing discoveries and go about as if nothing really has happened?

We are living in a century in which science is making big strides. Quantum physics and quantum psychology build a new understanding around classical concepts describing human brain/mind activity, physiology and interaction with the other body systems, bringing a new vision on what humans can achieve through learning, focusing, creativity, and determination. Maybe one day we will face an era in which " quantum learning " will emerge out of this symbiosis and synergy of sciences and teachers will discover new missions and perspectives on teaching. Knowing much more now about the limitless capacities of the human brain and facing every year generations of students who expect more and better information, delivered to them in attractive, interesting formats and creative concepts to help them progress faster (at the speed of light, if possible and with the least effort), we need to adapt to this ever changing environment and produce ways, methods, techniques and learning formats to respond to the needs of a generation seemingly glued to technology and virtual realities. Applying Controlled Linguistic Immersion brings good feedback and positive outcome every year. The Summative Intelligence Concept applied to teaching ESP to young adults brings about teaching techniques that take into account the predominant type of intelligence students use during the process of data/concept acquisition and discusses ways and methods of presenting, (re)enforcing, using, reviewing and (re)visiting information presented in class, bearing in mind efficiency and effectiveness of the teaching act. We are living in a century in which science is making big strides and witnessing an unprecedented wave of knowledge changing perspectives and rewriting myths in many areas of human development. These remarkable achievements overpass at times our understanding of the world around us and familiar things, facts, and proof become more and more part of an obsolete past in the history of human science. " Imagination " , Albert Einstein used to say " is more important than knowledge " since " knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand ". His words were never truer. The elements of knowledge revealed to specialists in neuroscience quantify the invisible and the insufficiently explored power of the human mind puzzles researchers in the field.

Ideile nasc alte idei, ideile nasc apoi cuvinte, cuvintele insiruite nasc carti, cartile nasc si se nasc din alte carti. Textul nascut prin alaturarea cuvintelor rodeste sens peste timp, invingandu-l, atunci cand valoarea lui artistica ii justifica perenitatea. Textul intra apoi in memoria colectiva, in patrimonial artistic universal si de acolo, tronand peste secole, covarseste prin valoare si inspira, peste timp, artistii de geniu ai viitorului. Pentru un text ca Divina Comedie a lui Dante Alighieri, secolul XXI este acel viitor. Textul dantesc a fost tradus in mai toate limbile pamantului, dar un text dens ca Infernul sau ca Purgatoriul este greu de inteles de generatia comunicarii virtuale, indiferent de limba pe care acestia o vorbesc. Textul cu adevarat valoros transcede cuvantul scris, dincolo de litera, permeaza si prinde corporalitate prin universul de senzatii, de lumina, culoare si sunet pe care le transmite. Metamorfoza textului in senzatii audio-vizuale ar fi metoda prin care generatia internetului ar putea accede la valori literar artistice universale, peste care, altfel ,poate, pentru ei, praful timpului s-ar asterne treptat, implacabil. Alchimist al secolului XXI, tanarul regizor Roberto Castelucci descopera piatra filozofala, decodand in amalgam de semne si simboluri arhetipale primare textul Divinei Comedii. Rezultatul este un text/spectacol de imagine, lumina si sunet, un text/pretext de interpretare in cheie dantesca a unui prezent radiografiat cu acuratete, de multe ori violent, adesea inspaimantator sau cutremurator, dar uimitor de profund si de adevarat uman. Gestul artistic infrange limbajul, transcede bariera lingvistica si ajunge la spectator, prin imagine, lumina si sunet, intr-un amalgam de senzatii, emotii si trairi unice. Textul spectacol vorbeste cu glas unic dincolo de cuvinte.

Abstract
Can the theater be an educational tool? Can the theater be seen as a fundamental learning tool, as well as a cultural resistance one?  Can we talk about cultural diversity and multilinguism interpreting the theatrical phenomenon? The present paper aims to positively answer these questions, shedding a different type of light on the Theater of the Absurd in the third millennium, bringing front stage a case study: Samuel Beckett’s short play Catastrophe. First written in French in 1982, Catastrophe is a real manifesto of cultural resistance.  The play is dedicated to Vaclav Havel, writer, poet, essayist and playwright, who was – at the time – jailed by the Check communist regime. The International Association for the Defense of Artists (AIDA) commissioned Beckett to write a play about this aberrant abuse, for the Theater Festival in Avignon.  Catastrophe can be seen as an allegory depicting totalitarianism and the constant struggle against it, a true lesson of liberty and class solidarity. The European spirit and identity are developed through cultural and intellectual opening towards esthetical values of this identity areal. The way in which we build this spirit and this identity within the new generation, teaching modern languages for special and academic purposes, must be filled with creativity and wit.  Citizens of a cosmopolitan world, more and more complex each day, bombarded with all kinds of messages and manipulations, these youngsters pertaining to the virtual communication generation are more and more rooted in a reality which they build studying, questioning, digesting information, searching and thinking with no boundaries to their thoughts, looking for a world that doesn’t hold high  - in clear conscience - uprooted values. 
Key Words: cultural resistance, theater, education, manifesto, multilinguism, Theater of the Absurd

You’ll have to agree with me: we are leading absurd lives nowadays! Dawn ‘til dusk we chase dreams, build careers, families, communities, intricate political structures, but on our way there we lose track of our inner being, getting lost, entangled in a jungle of material needs which most of the time leads us astray from who we really are. How do we reconnect with our inner self? How do we stay true to who we really are? If Shakespeare was right and the entire world is a stage, there might be a way to bridge the gap created this way: my paper is a diatribe for the Theatre of the Absurd, showing how it leads us towards soul searching and the introspection we need in order to reconnect to our inner being. Like abstract art, the Theatre of the Absurd is not for everyone. Not everyone is interested in extracting meaning from a play that presents the meaninglessness of life, just as not many are capable of finding enjoyment in a painting by Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock. Some of us want art to be easily digestible, whether they are in the art gallery or the theatre. It is easier, I suppose, to recognize oneself in a photographic representation, which only reflects what is on the surface, whereas abstract art, surrealism, expressionism, and yes, the Theatre of the Absurd, attempt to get at something closer to real truth - a representation of our inner being, of our fears, our weaknesses, our inadequacies, the archetypal human predicament.
Key Words: reconnect, Theatre of the Absurd, diatribe, soul searching, introspection.

In interwar Romania, the Bucharest School of Sociology, founded by academician Dimitrie Gusti, theorized and implemented the first integrated program of community development, financed from the state budget, through the “Prince Carol” Royal Cultural Foundation, under the patronage of King Carol II. In this article we will review the main causes leading to the failure of this project, aimed at culturally and materially lifting the Romanian village from its state of underdevelopment: on the one hand, peasants’ illiteracy, poverty, passivity and distrust of modernity and on the other, intellectual arrogance, lack of resources, Dimitrie Gusti’s utopian vision, combined with the inefficiency of the education system and failure of agriculture.

In this study, we intend to present, using a socio-historical approach, the political and administrative aspects of the interwar Romanian society and state, as it has been investigated, from the perspective of monographic methodology, by the Sociological School of Bucharest, headed by Professor Dimitrie Gusti. The article aims at highlighting the existing legislative conflict between the traditional local government organization in the “old” Counties of Făgăraş and Vrancea, for example, and the modern administrative codes, adopted after 1864, by the “new” centralized Romanian state. Furthermore, we also highlight the negative perception of the population in the Romanian villages of Bessarabia and Transylvania (who lived under the tsarist and Austro-Hungarian rule until World War I) on the deficient administrative functioning of the interwar Romanian state. Although various projects of administrative reform attempted to correct these shortcomings, within the interwar period studied, excessive bureaucratization of the state and poor salaries of the public servants remained constant elements of the Romanian administrative political life.

This article looks at the situation of civil servants in interwar Romania, as a result of global economic and financial crisis, which led, during 1929-1933, to a significant deterioration in the level of wages and living standards for all state employees. As a result of bankruptcies, restrictions in economic activity or application of „sacrifice curves” [curbe de sacrificiu] in the public sector, poverty and unemployment amongst the branches of intellectual labor have reached an alarming rate. Confronted with economic difficulties and the necessity of budgetary compressions, the Romanian state was forced to impose three sacrifice curves (January 1931, January 1932, January 1933) and took various other measures of “harmonization” and “rectification” of the government employees’ remuneration, which resulted in the slashing by more than 50% of the salary of civil servants. As a result of these austerity measures, the specter of extreme hunger, disease, misery and despair (constantly lurking over the troubled, impoverished life of the petty civil servant, whose large families resided mainly in the shabby slums of the big cities) became an objective and recurrent reality for the destiny of this social class throughout the period studied. Dismissals on political grounds, abusive references to the disciplinary committee as a result of “anonymous” denunciation, interminable court processes, complete the picture of the sad miserable lives lived by most of the Romanian petty civil servants.

The purpose of this article is to challenge Ştefan Zeletin’s classical sociological thesis (regarding the economic and politic extinction of the great  Wallachian boyar-class) which is not historically sustainable neither on economic, nor on political grounds. From an economic point of view, we argue that the great Wallachian boyar families expanded their areas of economic interest, between 1774 and 1866, through industrial, banking, land-leasing or commercial investments,
both internally, by founding market-places and fairs, and internationally, by getting involved in the export of cereal and animal commodities. From a political point of view, we want to mention the fact that 95% of the Prime Ministers of the United Principalities of Romania (1859-1862) and of Romania (1862-1916) belong to the boyar social class. Between 1859 and 1916, long after Ştefan Zeletin proclaims the complete political abolishment of the great boyars, 46% of those who held the highest position in the modern state – namely that of a Prime Minister of Wallachia (within the Romanian Principalities) or of Romania – were the representatives of the
23 great Wallachian boyar families. The reason for this amazing phenomenon of the Wallachian nobility’s perfect adaptation to the Western modernity lies on the use –
in the capitalist sense – of the old privileges, monopolies, immunities, exemptions, benefits and favors (of feudal origin) whose exclusive beneficiaries were the great Wallachian boyars.

„Periferia ca istorie” ar putea fi cel mai potrivit titlu pentru lucrarea de faţă; o temă care nu este detaliată doar din perspectivă spaţial-temporală cât mai ales din perspectiva comportamental-patologică a locuitorilor. Pentru a realiza această completare autorul a folosit informaţii şi interpretări de antropologie culturală, studii de sociologie, psihologie şi patologii urbane; materiale de geografie umană şi economică, de demografie, etnografie, mitologie, mentalităţi şi istoria ideilor.
Volumul cuprinde mai multe tipologii de „periferie istorică” şi în fiecare capitol sunt prezentate interpretări interdisciplinare care fac trimitere la reprezentarea domeniilor de mai sus. Prima parte a demersului abordează problema periferiei istorice din perspectiva spaţialităţii şi temporalităţii, luând drept cazuistică şi oraşul Bucureşti.
Urmează apoi o secţiune foarte valoroasă despre mentalitate şi comportament în Valahia secolului al XVIII-lea. Ruperea de ritm, realitatea antagonică dintre stapân şi sclav în societatea valahă, potenţialul de vrăjmăşie ades gratuită, lipsa meritocraţiei şi dobândirea poziţiilor sociale prin „vorbe goale” şi bani mulţi. Iată reperele unei societăţi zis fanariote, repere încă atât de prezente în cotidianul românesc de azi! Devălmăşiei administrative şi legislative i s-a adăugat şi o continuă devălmăşie sufletească. Corelarea acestor devălmăşii în civilizaţia valahă, surprinsă cu naturaleţe de autor, este ineditul demersului istoriografic prezent în volumul de faţă.
O monografie istorică a periferiei istorice din perspectiva cercetărilor interdisciplinare credem că reprezintă o noutate în literatura de specialitate. Pentru a susţine acest demers complex şi variat, Bogdan Bucur a folosit întreaga bibliografie la care a avut acces: documente de arhivă; documente edite; memorialistică; cotidiene şi periodice; monografii; biografii; antologii; enciclopedii; planuri, hărţi, atlase, catagrafii; dicţionare; lucrări de specialitate; beletristică şi diverse alte lucrări.
Lucrarea de debut a dlui Bogdan Bucur aduce în istoriografia românească o sinteză necartografiată şi foarte greu de sintetizat în reperele atât de clare ale unui studiu istoric de anvergură, aşa cum se conturează a fi volumul Devălmăşia valahă (1716-1828). O istorie anarhică a spaţiului românesc.

This paper – which is a summary of my doctoral thesis – consists of studies of the politico-administrative works published by the Sociological School of Bucharest, as a result of the monographic campaigns, conducted in the interwar period, under the leadership of Professor Dimitrie Gusti.

In this study we aim to reveal how small boyar families from Dragus area (Fogoros, Trambitas, Rogozea, Sofonea, Tataru, Jurcovan) were able to gain access, over time (since the eighteenth century, through the interwar period and up to 2011), to the most prestigious trades, occupations or professions in the political (mayor, deputy mayor), educational (teacher), spiritual (priest), economic (craftsmen, merchants, tavern-owners or owners of various „capital goods”) or traditional fields („Neighbourhood Father” – traditional leader of the local community organized on the basis of neighborhood, „Small Bailiff and Great Bailiff of the Christmas Procession” – traditional leader of the young unmarried men of the comunity) available at the local level.
The situation of the small boyars in the Dragus village (former Fagaras county, currently Brasov county) of the Fagaras Country, has been documented for the eighteenth-century period by means of tax assessments or land records drawn up by the Austrian government in Transylvania. For the interwar period, the works published by the Sociological School of Bucharest as a result of the monographic or documentation campaigns conducted in this locality in 1929, 1932 and 1933 have been consulted. The situation for 2011 has been drawn up following a documentation stage conducted by the author of the study this August. On this occasion several people were interviewed and a series of documents, made available by the extreme generosity of some of the locals, were collected.
Another point of interest of this study is the analyze the conflict observed in the interwar period (absent today) between traditional, legitimate and functional structures of organization and local government (as was the case of the „Neighbourhood Father” and the „Small Bailiff and Great Bailiff of the Christmas Procession”) contrary to legal and constitutional rules of operation of the modern interwar Romanian state (following the recent, at that time, addition of Transylvania to Romania).

Înrudit prin căsătorie sau descendent direct din trei familii boiereşti valahe de rang terţiar - Brătăşanu (de secol XVII), Djuvara (de secol XVIII) şi Pangal (de secol XIX) -, care, împreună, au dat Românei moderne cel puţin doi miniştri, un subsecretar de stat şi şase deputaţi sau senatori, Jean Pangal este personajul central al acestui volum. Om politic, diplomat şi conducător absolut al masoneriei române din perioada interbelică, Jean Pangal este subiectul principal al celor 474 de note informative, publicate, pentru prima dată, integral, în această carte, şi întocmite, între 1932-1942, de Serviciul Secret de Informaţii al Armatei Române şi de Poliţia de Siguranţă a Ministerului de Interne. Supranumit de presa vremii Prinţul Suveran al masoneriei române, Jean Pangal este foarte puţin cunoscut astăzi, dar a fost extrem de controversat şi influent în perioada interbelică, mai cu seamă datorită relaţiilor sale personale şi contactelor directe cu întreaga elită politică, socială, economică şi diplomatică a Românei, şi chiar a Europei.