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Abstract

This chapter - using the opportunity to introduce an indicative bibliography of sociology - analyzes a peculiar phenomenon specific for the sociological literature in this country and connected with the development of the field in Greece. The chapter raises several issues concerning the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of science that have been hardly explored in Greece.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

This article analyzes the introduction and implementation of new media and forms of mass communication using new technologies, in the primary and secondary education. The theoretical and empirical research presented in this study support the main conclusion that this implementation is consistent with a systematic cultivation of conformity and adaptation rather than the advance of a culture of critical orientation in social reality. Furthermore, this can be seen also in the general tendency to transform education into training and to substitute apprenticeship for the development of enhanced cultural skills. The analysis shows that this tendency reflects wider cultural changes, as well as changes in the nature of the social bond.

The analysis is based on data collected through a quantitative empirical research with questionnaires. The research explored the representations of teachers about the introduction and the uses of the computers and the internet in primary education. The analysis summarizes the dominant theoretical approaches and considers also several documents on the education policy of the Greek state. The article closes suggesting the basic principles of an alternative approach to the introduction of new forms and media of communication in the education system.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

This chapter - based on the results from a theoretical and empirical research that used semi-structured interviews - introduces one of the more than 60 communities in Thessaloniki. The study considers the functions of the culture and the arts important for the coexistence of different ethnic and cultural communities in the same region and significant for the cohesion of the immigrant communities in general. In this respect, the profile of this immigrant community includes specific references on its culture and its artistic expressions. A short historical retrospection and the presentation of different aspects and institutions related with this field in the community life, completes the profile, while several other of its aspects (economic, political etc.) are discussed in other parts of the study.

Objective of this study is to contribute for a complete profile of this particular community, given the fact that too little has been done in this respect. As a result of this shortcoming in the local social research, the comprehension of the specific features, needs and peculiarities of different social groups, is rather incomplete, a fact that hardly favors the planning and implementation of cultural, educational, social and other types of policy, consistent and relevant with a multicultural society. This study addresses these issues - being part of a wider research that applies a holistic approach on the more than 60 ethnic and cultural groups that compose the local society.

Last Updated: 07 November 2016

Abstract

Kurt Blaukopf provides a methodological synthesis in his book Musical Life In A Changing Society: Aspects Of Musical Sociology (Musik im Wandel der Gesellschaft), in order to approach music and its changes from a sociological point of view. Max Weber's method, as well as the method founded by K. Marx and F. Engels and elaborated by Antonio Labriola in his theory of factors, are basic elements of Blaukopf's synthesis. A fundamental methodological thesis of Blaukopf is that starting-point for an approach of music should be musical action itself and not any preformulated concepts.

Blaukopf defines musical action in a Weberian sense. Nevertheless, he restricts the specific sociological nominalism and the elements of neokantianism that reside in Weber's method. This restriction results from the thesis that determinations of musical behaviour are possible to be found and therefore causal relations may be searched for in this section of social reality. Besides, studying musical action itself ensures a severe restriction of any arbitrariness implicit in an approach based on ideal types.

There are two main reasons for which the concept of mutation, used by Blaukopf to underline discontinuity in the evolution of musical behaviour, seems rather inappropriate. First, the contents that is seeked to be defined is already designated by the term "qualitative leap" that seems more appropriate to use in social sciences. Second, the term "mutation" is loaded with connotations of early positivism and may be misinterpreted.

A couple of very important elements may be pointed out in Blaukopf's synthesis:

1. First, any reductionism (economic, technological, etc.) is excluded by applying a dialectical approach of social reality using the theory of factors.
2. Second, Blaukopf does not pursue the construction of a total teleological concept on music and its changes that would neglect the particularities of different musical cultures.

Especially the latter element seems to be of utmost importance in terms of the contemporary cultural condition.

Last Updated: 17 May 2023