Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Sociologia

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE ROLE OF THE SCHOOL IN SOCIAL MOBILITY

Traian ROTARIU — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The role of the school in the process of status attainment for individuals with different social origins should be analysed both from the perspective of social mobility flows (absolute rates of mobility) and inequality of social chances (relative rates and odds ratios). Inspired by Raymond Boudon’s earlier studies in the 1970s, the author scrutinises the complex relationships between expanding access to higher levels of education, social mobility trajectories, and inequality of chances of status achievement in the context of persistent inequalities in contemporary capitalist societies. He concludes that at the societal level, an increase of the dependency of achieved social status on educational qualification will lead to greater immobility if the inequality of educational chances remains constant. At the level of individuals, the same process will lead to greater probability of upward mobility in the case of people with higher levels of educational qualification, and greater probability of downward mobility for those with lower educational qualification.

A TYPOLOGY OF SHRINKING CITIES: THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC DYNAMIC OF ROMANIAN URBAN NETWORK 2010-2020

Norbert PETROVICI, Vlad BEJINARIU — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The aim of the paper is to open the issue of multiple shrinkage trajectories in a context of extended urbanisation (Keil 2018) by delineating the different trajectories of Romanian cities. We employed principal component analysis to allow for a multi-criterial classification of Romanian cities based on k-means cluster analysis. Beyond the dominant representation of shrinkage as a process that is mainly correlated with population loss and economic decline, this paper calls for bridging together distinct dimensions which have been either under-studied, such as the aspect of human development, or studied separately across the existing literature, such as governance of shrinkage and economic growth. Therefore, the typology developed here accounts for understanding the process of shrinkage as a complex process, having multiple causes, which determine peculiar trajectories. The outcome confirms the existence of distinct and highly localised shrinkage identities (Martinez-Fernandez, Audirac, et al. 2012). We show that regrowth is not strictly related to the urban core, but it has more to do with a process of complexification of the landscape and social relations existing at the periphery of the city. Shrinking core cities coexists with growing peri-urban areas.

SEMANTIC AMBIGUITIES AND CLASSIFICATION STRUGGLES IN THE POST-SOCIALIST INFORMAL MEDICAL ECONOMY

Cristine PALAGA — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper I will engage in a process of highlighting the way in which liberal and, later, neoliberal political agendas regulate and establish formal semantic registers in the field of medical informal economy within the Romanian public healthcare system. How accurate is the legalistic approach, which classifies any extra-payment as a bribe? Despite the questionable legal status, the voluntary informal economy acquires the role of establishing bridges at human level between doctor and patient. Far from pleading to accept the conditioning of the medical act by an additional payment from patients or their family members, facts that obviously fall within the scope of illegality, I claim that the labels of “corruption”, “bribe”, “informal payment” cannot be correctly applied to the whole phenomenon of informal exchanges. Moreover, the gifts offered as a form of gratitude or to tame the “medical gaze” even have a role of social link between doctor and patient, helping to bind an unwritten human contract between the two who, in fact, are victims of the same system and its political decision-makers.

CENTRALISED MULTI-NATIONAL PRACTICES OF TRANSFER AND MANAGERIAL DISCREPANCIES: EVIDENCE FROM A ROMANIAN CALL CENTER

Zoltan MIHÁLY — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This paper describes workplace dynamics in a call centre located in Romania, a subsidiary of a multi-national corporation (MNC). Positing a centralised practice transfer and global management strategy, the company relies exclusively on home-country decision makers. Placed within Romania’s dependent economic profile alongside its deregulated employment relations, centralised managerial decisions create widespread organisational uncertainty with numerous hire and fire and downsizing procedures, followed by subsequent recruitment campaigns designed to replace the previously displaced workforce.

DISTANCE AND BOUNDARIES ISSUES IN THE TRANSITION FROM FACE-TO-FACE TALKING THERAPY TO ONLINE THERAPY IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

Veronica Maria MATEESCU — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The primary main aim of this article is to explore the changes and adjustments brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic to the therapeutic process in the transition from face-to-face talking therapy to online therapy. Online therapy sessions, once a niche, have now become the norm in therapeutic work. This, more than ever before, raises the question of the efficacy of online therapy compared to face-to-face talking therapy. A related question is how the “classical” elements of in-person therapies (especially the psychodynamic, affective and relational-based), such as: the therapeutic alliance, the therapeutic containing space, the therapeutic relationship, etc. work in the on-line setting. This article draws on a primary qualitative exploratory research carried among Romanian clients who undergo a psychodynamic type of therapy and who transitioned from face-to-face to online therapy as a reaction to the new constraints engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic and after the measures were relaxed, the transition from on-line to in-person therapy. Our focus is on how they experience online therapy compared to face-to-face therapy in terms of intimacy, therapeutic frame and efficacy, as well as on the boundaries challenged, erased and created by the switch between the two types of therapy settings.

BOOK REVIEW "Forma urmează situației: Orașul contemporan anticipat de situaționiști (The Form Follows the Situation: The Contemporary City Anticipated by Situationists)", Silviu Medeșan, București: Ozalid, 2021, 334 pages.

Vlad BEJINARIU — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The book “The Form Follows the Situation: The Contemporary City Anticipated by Situationists”, written in Romanian, focuses on a theoretical analysis of the contemporary city and its practices, in this case Cluj-Napoca, from the standpoint of the concepts developed by the Situationist International (SI). Silviu Medeșan aims for an alternate understanding and researching the field of urbanism, by rejecting the functionalist paradigm and switching to a see-from-below point of view (hence the title which intentionally distorts the modernist motto: Form follows function). The book is structured around three parts which develop the theory and the concepts used (as the first part), the three case studies (as the second part) and, lastly, tries to put them in dialogue and draw some conclusions. Besides these three main parts, the book also contains a photographic documentary which serves as an illustration for both the theoretical and empirical sections.

IN MEMORIAM TRAIAN ROTARIU, EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AT BABEȘ-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY (12.02.1943 – 28.12.2021)

Veronica Maria MATEESCU — Thu, 30 Dec 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Traian Rotariu, emeritus professor of Sociology at the Babeș-Bolyai University, passed away on the 28^th of December 2021, leaving behind an outstanding oeuvre for the Romanian social sciences and a legacy of institutional building that materialised in the creation of the Department of Sociology, after the fall of the state-socialist regime and, ten years later, of the Centre for Population Studies at the same university. His academic career started in 1968, when he joined as a research assistant the Sociology Laboratory within the Babeș-Bolyai University, led by the late professor Ion Aluaș (1927-1994). At the time, he had already earned a BA in Mathematics (1965) and, after working as a high school teacher for a couple of years, he commenced studying for a second BA in Philosophy. Motivated by his increasing interest in social sciences and quantitative methodologies, he successfully competed for a scholarship of the Ministry of Education to pursue doctoral studies at Paris V René Descartes University (Sorbonne), under the supervision of Raymond Boudon, between 1974 and 1977. His PhD thesis, entitled Education et mobilité sociale (1977), addressed the problems of social mobility in developed capitalist societies and concentrated on the role of the school system in social reproduction. Its Romanian translation was published in 1980. In 1977, he became a research assistant and in 1979, he earned the position of lecturer at the Department of Philosophy with Babeș-Bolyai University. The late 1970s and 1980s meant an intensive period of empirical social research alongside Professor Ion Aluaș and fellow young academics, despite the formal restrictions on social sciences imposed by the regime. They analysed the social changes induced by industrialisation and urbanisation, ranging from internal migration to social mobility, demographic changes, family life, and transformations of rural households.