<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> This article scrutinises the usefulness of Sen’s capability approach and other related theories for understanding poverty and traceability of social-welfare interventions. In addition to the capability approach three macro level approaches are discussed: the welfare regime approach of Esping-Andersen, the social investment approach and a new resource theory. While the strength of the capability approach is the interpretation of worldwide data, and welfare regimes better explain the tangible function of welfare institutions, the social investment approach focuses on the meaning of human capital. Resource theory describes the welfare interventions by analysing their effects on equipping individuals with a broad range of resources. Two further approaches show the mode of operation of micro level interventions. Resource orientation and empowerment are social work techniques which improve the situation of disadvantaged people by emancipation. The article concludes that macro level and micro level considerations must be combined to understand, and then fight poverty</abstract>

Understanding and Fighting Poverty – Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Related Theories

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> During the establishment of modern society, luxury consumption played an important role as a symbolic reference for status comparison across class boundaries. But luxury has lost in contemporary sociology the theoretical importance it had in classical sociology. This article develops a historicosociological explanation for this situation. In a first section, it debates on luxury in the 18th century, in which changing evaluations are interpreted in the context of broader semantic changes reflecting the ‘de-traditionalisation’ of social structure. Then selected conceptualisations of luxury in classical sociological approaches, including that of Sombart, Simmel, and Veblen are discussed. These classical accounts are the main reference for common sociological concepts of luxury. They also provide a context for understanding the differences between European and US American social structure and semantics. In the last two sections, the argument that the consumer behaviour of elite members lost the key social function it had in 18th and 19th centuries because of the advent of mass consumption, mass media, and the cultural dominance of middle class consumer habits which were observed first in the US. As a result, then, the attention of sociological research now lies on the more subtle distinctions within the highly differentiated stratum of the middle class. At the same time, material and behavioural patterns of luxury are displayed not by concrete members of a group of the super-rich, but virtually in a mass media based celebrity system, leaving the rich more and more out of the sight of sociological observation.</abstract>

The Domestication of Luxury in Social Theory

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> The concept of an ‘underclass’ originates in the United States and is wide-spread in political and social science discourse today. Its power is most visible in discussions about deep cuts to social safety nets. The foundation of this discourse is the assigning of negative character traits and behaviours to poor people. This promotes the claim that they have brought negative consequences upon themselves and furthers the idea that poor people are personally responsible for their poverty. Discussion about an ‘underclass’ must be understood in the larger context of a comprehensive neoliberal ideological transformation, or ‘Newspeak’. Newspeak is implicitly based on the schema of a game in which everyone has the same chances, but which inevitably results in winners and losers.</abstract>

The 'Underclass' Debate – A Discourse that Maligns People Living in Poverty

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> This research intends to explain the nature of communication and its strategic role from the perspective of faculty deans. In other words, the aim of the research is to analyze the perspectives of faculty deans on communication and its strategic functional role in the organization. The research theme is clarified by three subquestions: What is the function of communication in the organizations from the perspectives of deans? What are the principal advantages and disadvantages of the communication function in the organizations? Lastly, how does the faculty dean perceive himself/herself as a communicator in the management of the organization? Qualitative approach is applied through ten semistructured interviews of faculty deans in the university. The research findings reveal that the nature and functions of communication in the organization are important and are perceived as a vital element of university management. Moreover, the function of communication is confirmed as a key element to success in the strategic plans and in the organizational context of universities.</abstract>

Ege University, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences, Izmir, Turkey

Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Sciences, Çanakkale, Turkey

The Function of Communication in Faculty Management

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> This paper presents some dimensions of the lifestyle discourse which have become relevant in recent years in science and public. The discourse that had initially focused on the limits of growth increasingly showed the destructive consequences of the materialistic consumer way of life and discussed sustainable lifestyles. The commodification and infantilization of the consumers who are involved in the commodity structure of consumerist lifestyle have been criticized. For some time an increasing emphasis is found for problems that extend beyond one's own life. With increasing empathy the personal lifestyle is widely based on relationships and contexts outside the immediate sphere of life. Accordingly, a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity is propagated. The consistent postmaterialistic orientation, which means a renunciation of the consumer capitalism, is regarded as its central feature.</abstract>

The Lifestyle Discourse in Consumer Capitalism

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> There is an increasing public, political and research interest in social solidarity. Even though the concept has a long history and is embedded in solid approaches, there is not much literature concerned with its measurement. The paper falls into the area of the methodological studies of social solidarity and it deals with construct validation. The objective of this paper is to test for convergent validity and nomological validity of two sets of items aiming to measure social solidarity attitudes and acts. The main method employed is confirmatory factor analysis.</abstract>

Measuring Social Solidarity. Some Research Notes

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This study aims to identify the factors that explain students’ attitudes towards entrepreneurship and their intentions to pursue entrepreneurship. The study used a quantitative methodology and collected data from 204 students through a questionnaire survey. The research hypotheses derive from established theoretical models, such as experiential learning theory, planned behaviour theory, social learning theory, and push-pull theory applied to entrepreneurship. The results show that career aspirations, exposure to entrepreneurial models, and the number of people students know as entrepreneurs play a significant role in explaining entrepreneurial attitudes and intentions. Other variables, such as academic performance, residential environment, and gender, also explain students’ entrepreneurial intentions.
</abstract>

Analysing Romanian Students’ Orientations Towards Entrepreneurship: A Survey Study in Sibiu

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
The occurrences of “brain-gain” and “brain-loss” are significant concerns for both the countries experiencing the departure of intellectual talent and those that ultimately receive such individuals. The phenomenon holds significance for stakeholders and their policy recommendations on social, economic and political areas. Moreover, there exists extensive literature elucidating the reasons behind certain nations encountering the phenomenon of “brain loss” while simultaneously observing the return of individuals to their homelands. Simultaneously, there is a limited amount of research conducted regarding the observation and comprehension of the activities in which the returning diaspora is involved post their return. Even more, there is less research done on the way the return diaspora is influencing regional innovation performance. To enhance comprehension, this article introduces a novel theoretical and empirical approach aimed at understanding the engagement of the returning diaspora in the innovation process and its impact on regional innovation performance. The novelty of this approach consists in the combination of classical theories on returning diaspora, Regional Innovation Performance and Social Fields Theory. As a result, the focus will be on the combination of the three social forces (institutions, networks, and cognitive frames) and returning diaspora. The evaluation of diaspora’s impact on regional innovation performance primarily hinges on the combination and comprehension of these two factors. However, this article serves as a theoretical proposal aimed at enhancing understanding of the phenomenon and establishing a model for systematic data collection. The empirical results could lead to policy recommendations for various stakeholders and bring improvements for helping and encouraging innovation activities in the region.
</abstract>

The Diaspora’s influence on Regional Innovation Performance – a new theoretical and empirical approach toward understanding it

Book Reviews

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
Throughout this research we reflect on how the convergence of technology and migration is changing highly skilled labour mobility and the relationship between place and value production. We reflect on the impact of these transformations on the tech sector and IT labour market in Cluj-Napoca. We aim to understand how the pandemic coupled with the current trends in labour mobility and value production have affected labour markets and highly skilled labour migration. The paper stems as reflection from a fieldwork which are currently conducting in Romania with a focus on transnational entrepreneurship, social networks of innovation and labour migration in the tech industry. The article brings forward findings from the field, drawing on the developments that accelerated and changed the way we work in the post-pandemic period and analysing what implications these trends could have on the nature of migration and the connection between value production and place.
</abstract>

Back to the Future: How the Convergence of Globalization and Technology is Changing Labour and Mobility

<abstract>
<title style='display:none'>Abstract</title>
This paper links the concept of social trust and that of migration by exploring the interactions and dependencies between Romanian emigrants and returnees and various institutional and social actors. Consequently, the underlying question of the research is: ‘What are the ways in which migration experience is associated with social trust?’. This research discusses how experiences with public agencies in Romania or in the host country determine trust or conversely, induce the feeling of distrust. Common specific elements were taken into account, such as determinants and effects of trust, life experience as immigrants, level of integration, and level of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with public entities, which linked empirically the two concepts. Drawing on a set of interviews with Romanian emigrants and Romanian returnees1, this research tackles the peculiarities of emigrants’ and returnees’ experiences as key factors in identifying the levels of social trust.
</abstract>

Here or there, who do you trust? Patterns of social trust following the migration experience of Romanians in Spain and France

Editorial Introduction: Exploring Return Migration and its Transformative Potential in Romania and Beyond

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Through the perspective of world-ecology, one of the most recent approaches in international relations, we aim to analyse global capitalism as an ecological project based on the appropriation of human and extra-human nature oriented to support capital accumulation process. Agriculture and its labour force occupy a central role in maintaining the world-system in which global chains, international migrations and centre-periphery relationships interact. This paper shows how global processes occur at this intersection. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the analysis of the current world-system through this innovative approach, developed mainly by Jason W. Moore, and then show how the world-system’s structure and its crisis have articulated a highlyinternationalized production model whose most significant effect has been the generation of large migrations of cheap labour across the planet. It is also proposed to descend to the local context to highlight examples because the organization of work at this territorial scale is representative of global agricultural production.</abstract>

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Centre of Human and Social Sciences, Institute of Economy, Geography and Demography (IEGD), Albasanz Street, 26-28, 28037, Madrid,

University of Salerno, Department of Political, Social and Communication Sciences, Giovanni Paolo II Street, 132-84084 Fisciano (SA),

Producing Cheap Food and Labour: Migrations and Agriculture in the Capitalistic World-Ecology

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Voluntary simplicity is not about living in poverty; it is about living with balance. This contribution illuminates the pattern of changes that an increasing number of people around the world are making their everyday lives as an active response to the challenges of our times. By embracing a lifeway of simplicity - characterized by a compassionate and ecological consciousness, frugal consumption, and inner development - people can change their lives and, in the process, move the world toward sustainable prosperity.</abstract>

Voluntary Simplicity – A Path to Sustainable Prosperity

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> By analysing interviews from a larger qualitative study conducted in a Romanian village (Vulturu, Vrancea County) from the South-East region of the country, this paper explores the ways Romanian migrants’ children who were born in the country of origin but migrated to Italy or the so-called 1.5 Generation (Rumbaut 2002; 2012) talk about their ties with the home country. In other words, is Romania presented as more - or something else - than the original homeland? The study analyses the concept of home attachment in terms of transnationalism understood as affective ties (Huynh and Yiu 2012; Paraschivescu 2011). Based on evidence from interview data a typology of attachment to the home country is outlined and further discussed. The results point to the conclusion that the issue of attachment to the home country is discursively constructed by respondents both explicitly and implicitly by multiple references to the family migration project and their immigrant status at destination. Moreover, I argue that the different types of attachment identified in the interviewees’ discourses are mediated by the subjective assessment of the integration experience into the host country.</abstract>

Children of Romanian Migrants between “Here” and “There”: Stories of Home Attachment

<abstract><title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> Large scale comparative studies, such as the value surveys (EVS and WVS) or the Eurobarometer, include measurements for parental/child-rearing values. This reflects a persistent interest for the topic, which produced salient studies starting with the first half of the twentieth century (Lynd and Lund 1929; Duvall 1946). Various scholars report data on parental values which use versions of the Q-sort methodology (Kohn 1977), ranking variables (Alwin 1990; Lenski 1961), scale indicators (Tulviste et al. 2007). Q-sort methodology remains the most widely employed. One of its versions is included in the value surveys as well. However, it fails to produce comparable indicators in different countries (Rabušic 2011; Xiao 2001) or at different moments in time (Wright and Wright 1976). This paper uses original data, provided by a Romanian convenience sample, to check if using various versions of the EVS/WVS items may lead to better ways to produce synthetic indicators for parental-values at individual level. SEM models are used to show that the best analytic solution would be to use individual items instead of producing summative indexes.</abstract>

CEPS/INSTEAD, 3 Avenue de la Fonte, L-4364 Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg

Romanian Academy, Research Institute for the Quality of Life, 13 Calea 13 Septembrie, 050711 Bucureşti, Romania

Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Department of Sociology and Social Work, 2-4 Lucian Blaga, 550169 Sibiu, Romania

Measuring Child-Rearing Values. A Research Note

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Social Change Review

 Publishing House and Owner: Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania  Social Change Review was founded in 2003. Between 2003 and 2009 the...

 Publishing House and Owner: Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania  Social Change Review was founded...

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Volume 21 (2023): Issue 1 (December 2023)

Volume 20 (2022): Issue 1 (December 2022)

Volume 19 (2021): Issue 1 (December 2021)

Volume 18 (2020): Issue 1 (December 2020) Special issue: Migration, food and agriculture: Insights into what we eat and how our food is produced at the beginning of the third millennium