Elite

[Paper in Italian]
The discovery of an ancient borrowing from Arabic in the domain of religion (FAKRU, the "name" of the she-camel of prophet Saleh, derived from "FA-‘AQARU..." i.e. the starting words of the quranic verses containing this story) suggests that the oldest relations with Arabs were not limited to secular, commercial ties, but included religious instruction.

A 7-week, 10-session individual training program was implemented with a youth elite football (soccer) player who had been underperforming because of poor aerobic fitness. The intervention focused on developing aerobic power and high lactate production and contributed to a 32.3% improvement in a football-specific performance test. The player was able to return to play and exceed expected performance levels during competitive match play.

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.

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.

Anthropologists have not participated extensively in the cognitive science synthesis for a host of reasons, including internal conflicts in the discipline and profound reservations about the ways that cultural differences have been modeled in psychology, neuroscience, and other contributors to cognitive science. This paper proposes a skills-based model for culture that overcomes some of the problems inherent in the treatment of culture as shared information. Athletes offer excellent cases studies for how skill acquisition, like enculturation, affects the human nervous system. In addition, cultural differences in playing styles of the same sport, such as distinctive ways of playing rugby, demonstrate how varying solution strategies to similar athletic problems produce distinctive skill profiles.

HOME BRONZE AGE IN NORTHERN KAZAKHSTAN
The work’s author gives a typology of dwellings in the Bronze Age settlement Shagalaly II. Identifies some architectural features of houses of different periods. The materials showed heterogeneity of the stratigraphy of the settlement. The ceramic complex indicates that the territory of the settlement in different periods was mastered by each other replacing archeological cultures. The evolution of the construction of houses shows socio-economic changes. These changes have also affected the egalitarian society, from which strong tribes stand out, led by the elite who concentrate wealth and control over goods and trade routes. At the end of the Bronze Age, different tribes can inhabit the settlement simultaneously, which require further special study.

В работе приведена типология жилищ поселения эпохи бронзы Шагалалы II. На основе выявленных архитектурных особенностей жилища разделены на несколько типов. Выделены следующие типы жилищ: полуземлянки каркасно-столбового типа, наземные жилища каркасно-столбового типа, наземные жилища круглой и прямоугольной формы каркасно-столбового типа, наземные жилища с каменными стенами. Стратиграфический и радиоуглеродный анализы показали разновременный характер тех или иных типов жилищ. Сравнительно-типологический анализ керамики, позволил выделить следующие культурно-хронологические горизонты - раннеалакульский, нуринско-федоровский, саргаринско-алексеевский и переходный от эпохи бронзы к раннему железному веку.

Social classes and groups can be heterogeneous in any society, resulting in a structure that could hamper social order and economic progress. Yet there are institutions that can blend and empower them such as ideologies. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a doctrine adopted by Western businesses in the 1990s that involves a commitment to take into account the interests of their stakeholders in all aspects of their business operations.  CSR has shown different meanings and trajectories in Brazil. While originating in business’ religious and philanthropic movements, CSR has been principally assumed by the financial sector, which, during economic ascendancy, has transformed it to bring visibility to their investment onto their stakeholders’ social interests and, at the same time, reaffirm their commitment to democracy. CSR has met the Corporate Governance Movement, culminating in the creation of the Corporate Sustainability Index (ISE) in December 2005. Under an economic sociology approach, some evidences have shown that the financialization in Brazil incorporates the concept of sustainability, which might create an elite’s convergence. This convergence is interpreted as an intervening movement towards the gradual improvement in the acceptance of the financial world into Brazilian Development Culture.

Background: Assessment of basketball shoes as personal protection equipment (PPE) at the collegiate level is unique. Objective: The purpose of Part I in this pilot study was to examine the effect of shoe design on jump height in elite male and female National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 basketball student-athletes. Method: Each team selected two pairs of AdidasTM branded shoes. The male student-athletes selected the AdidasTM Harden Vol. 3 and the AdidasTM SM Pro basketball shoes. The female student-athletes selected the AdidasTM Harden Vol. 3 and the AdidasTM Captain Marvel basketball shoes. A total of sixteen basketball student-athletes (six males, ten females) performed an acute series of four styled basketball jumps on two ForceDecksTM Force Platforms while trying to maximize jump height by tapping VertecTM Jump Vanes. Two trials were performed in each shoe and for each type of jump which included a countermovement jump, drop jump from 30cm, step and jump, a...

"Analizamos el papel del transporte fluvial tradicional (bongos y champanes) en la vida económica y social de Barranquilla durante la primera mitad del siglo XIX. Mostramos que su concentración en manos de empresarios, al igual que el comercio, generó una estructura social jerarquizada, reflejada en la prestación del servivio personal subsidiario.

Analyze the role of traditional water transport (bongos and champagnes) in economic and social life of Barranquilla in the first half of the nineteenth century. We show that the concentration in the hands of employers, like trade, created a hierarchical social structure, reflected in the provision of personal servivio alternative."

The Tunisian state that emerged from independence (1956) set up a system of training for its executives that tends to reproduce the characteristic duality of the French system between "grandes" and "petites" schools or faculties, and between "petite porte" and "grande porte". However, this opposition took on a specific form in Tunisia insofar as the courses of excellence reserved for the best students are located abroad, first of all in France, in the Grandes Écoles d'ingénieurs. Since the mid-1960s, the French Grandes Ecoles have constituted a place of production and reproduction for part of the Tunisian elites, thus confirming the statement by Anne-Catherine Wagner (2007, p. 59) according to which the passage through a foreign university or Grandes Ecoles is part of the conditions of reproduction of the upper social strata in the dominated countries. But this production/reproduction requires, at least in part, that graduates trained abroad return to their country of origin. Consequently, this mode of training of the elites leads directly to the question of the dynamics of expatriation and the return of graduates.

Located in Transylvania, one of the most multi-denominational re gions of Europe, the University of Kolozsv?r/Cluj/Klausenburg had 4000 stu dents graduating from its Humanities and Science faculties in the period under examination. The ratios regarding the religious background of these graduates are: one third Roman Catholic; one third Calvinist, one eighth Lutheran, and the rest were affiliated with the small Unitarian Protestant and Jewish denomi nations of the region. Members of Eastern churches (Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox) were also present in small numbers. The principal means of estimat ing the underor over-representation of religious denominations in the student body was analysing the religious composition of graduates from Transylvania only (almost 60% of graduates). Concerning the mainly Hungarian denomina tions, Unitarians were four times over-represented among graduates, Calvinists 2.7 times, and Catholics 1.8 times. In national surveys, Calvinists and Roman Cathol...

The present study aimed to investigate the prevalence of dietary supplements usage (types, reasons for usage, sources of information, purchase venues) among elite female football players, using a self-administered questionnaire. The study participants (n = 103) were recruited through team physicians during an official international tournament. Overall, 82% reported using dietary supplements at least once during the last 12 months. The most common dietary supplements were vitamin D (52%), omega-3 fatty acids (49%), and protein (45%). Primary reasons for dietary supplement use were to stay healthy (66%), to accelerate recovery (58%), and to increase energy/reduce fatigue (54%). Supplement advice came mainly from medical doctors (46%), dietitians/nutritionists (43%), and coaches/fitness coaches (41%). Most dietary supplements were acquired from supplement stores (30%), a sponsor (26%), or drugstores/pharmacies (22%). Elite female football players are frequent dietary supplement users. Further research needs to explore the frequency, dose, and timing of these supplements.

The (re)construction of the Judiciary in post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has seldom been studied and never sufficiently explained. This monograph reveals that transnational networking empowered elite, interlocked Judiciary revisionists to entrench their minority institutional template in the constitutions of CEE, setting these transitional democracies on a path toward the judicialization of politics, now a global trend. The first, crucial step in that process is traced: the formal disempowerment of democracy through Judiciary revisions that ordinary people and politicians little heeded, with attention to the causal nexus converging on this outcome. Significantly, the revisionist template reorients this most venerable of non-majoritarian institutions above and beyond adjudicating under legal certainty the guilt or innocence of subjects of state power – the classical role of modern courts – toward the improvisation of public policy, with or without the consent of a majority of the governed, by ‘finding’ it in constitutions the unique legitimacy of which, ironically, derives from their prior ratification by supermajorities. The question who shall have final disposition of contested constitutional meaning – Executive, Legislative, Judiciary, the People, or All of these – implicates sovereignty itself and whom it shall rest on: for the last word is sovereign for all practical purposes. The interdisciplinarity of this monograph will appeal to a wide audience, from scholars of law and politics and socio-legal studies, to social scientists researching elite transnationalism and regional integration (not only in Europe), and institutional design practitioners.

One of the most popular sports globally, soccer has seen a rise in the demands of the game over recent years. An increase in intensity and playing demands, coupled with growing social and economic pressures on soccer players means that optimal preparation is of paramount importance. Recent research has found the modern game, depending on positional role, to consist of approximately 60% more sprint distance in the English Premier League, which was also found to be the case for frequency and success of discrete technical actions (Bush et al., 2015). As a result, the focus on soccer training and player preparedness is becoming more prevalent in scientific research. By designing the appropriate training load, and thus periodization strategies, the aim is to achieve peak fitness in the most efficient way, whilst minimising the risk of injury and illness. Traditionally, training intensity has been based on heart rate responses, however, the emergence of tracking microtechnology such as gl...

Many countries globally support and continuously seek ways to achieve and sustain elite athlete success. Governments spend significant sums of public or government controlled funding in elite sport to improve or maintain success at the international level. However, elite athlete development is the result of a combination of elite sport policies, athlete development pathways and interactions between various stakeholders that are involved in the delivery of athlete development pathways. These factors make elite athlete development a complex, multi-layered and multi-faceted field of study that necessitates specific research efforts that focus on how these factors contribute to elite athlete development in specific sports. This thesis examines these factors and progresses from a macro-level examination of broad international policies to a meso-level exploration of specific strategies for player development pathways. Then, it moves into a micro-level analysis of the inter-organisational ...

Tiriant buvo analizuojamas elito požiūris į tris potencialias išorės grėsmes ES vienybei: Turkijos įstojimą į ES; glaudžius santykius tarp kai kurių ES valstybių narių ir JAV; Rusijos kišimasis į Europos reikalus. Belgijos, Vokietijos, Lietuvos ir Lenkijos politinių bei ekonominių elitų apklausose atsiskleidė, kad skirtingos europinės tapatybės konstruojamos atsižvelgiant į šalies narystės statusą. Taip pat svarbus elito politinis tapatinimasis, skirtingi požiūriai į ES vaidmenį, šios Sąjungos ateities vizijos, skirtingai suvokiama nacionalinė tapatybė.

Our research expands earlier studies on elite human capital by widening the geographic scope and tracing the early roots of the European divergence. We present new evidence of elite numeracy in Europe since the sixth century CE. During the early medieval period, Western Europe had no advantage over the east, but the development of relative violence levels changed this. After implementing an instrumental variable strategy and a battery of robustness tests, we find a substantial relationship between elite numeracy and elite violence, and conclude that violence had a detrimental impact on human capital formation. For example, the disparities in violence between Eastern and Western Europe helped to shape the famous divergence movement via this elite numeracy mechanism and had substantial implications for the economic fortunes of each region over the following centuries.

This article aims to explore the theoretical structures that influence the formation of the elite class – or the elites – analysing the affirmation of these structures within the circulation of professions that have access to the political sphere, while comparing Foucault’s studies on parrhesia and eluteria with Weber’s concept of social closure by means of politicl parties, to understand how political professionals articulate their existence between civil society and public service. This analysis is orientated towards understanding the distinct traits of professional groups, as an objective characteristic for access to, and use of, power for personal benefit. Based on a study of MPs of the Portuguese Assembly of the Republic and the finding that “economists”, “lawyers” and “teachers” are the predominant professions, detailed analysis is provided of two structures of cohabitation within this elite class: characterised on the one hand, by nonchalance, fearlessness and the capacity to...

The purpose of the research "Bulgarian Elite Political Attitudes in Transition" is is to make a cross-section of the upper layer of the Bulgarian society.  The Bulgarian elite as is the case with elite in general, constitutes this group of people which is continuingly involved in influencing popular opinion and allocating values in Bulgarian society.  The elite can be divided into political elite and specialized elite, the latter one deriving from the various non-political sectors of society.  Such a dichotomy is, however, somewhat artificial because the political elite may also be a specialized one.  There are several characteristics that are usually attributed to the elite group and these are decision-making capacity and implied efficacy, high educational level, critical positional location in an institutional context, and high income level.

The "Bulgarian Elite Political Attitudes in Transition" report deals with elite's perception of political liberties, authority, leadership, the role of the individual in society, the characteristics of a fair economic system.  Elite's attitudes towards U.S.A.-Bulgaria political and economic relationship shifts the focus of the study to a different aspect of the attitudes of the present Bulgarian elite. All these different aspects of the research provide important information and contribute to a more comprehensive elite characterization.  The basis of the research is a survey conducted in October 1994 by the Center for the Study of Democracy (Sofia).

The aim of the study was to identify the morphological structures that determine achievement of top results in karate. The study included a sample of 85 karateka competing as senior category athletes within the Croatian Karate Society, aged 18-29 years. Sixteen morphological parameters were used; technical efficiency was assessed using 8 variables, i.e. evaluation of particular karate techniques, whereas fighting efficiency was estimated on the basis of results achieved at a number of contests. Factorial analysis of morphological space revealed the presence of four major factors: factor of muscle mass, followed by skeleton transverse dimensionality, factor of skeleton longitudinal dimensionality, factor of subcutaneous adipose tissue, and factor of shoulder width determining optimal trunk proportions (athlete type) in karateka. Regression analysis showed the isolated group of morphological factors to significantly determine both technical and fighting efficiency of karate athletes. ...

Sex is a major factor influencing best performances and world records. Here the evolution of the difference between men and women's best performances is characterized through the analysis of 82 quantifiable events since the beginning of the Olympic era. For each event in swimming, athletics, track cycling, weightlifting and speed skating the gender gap is fitted to compare male and female records. It is also studied through the best performance of the top 10 performers in each gender for swimming and athletics. A stabilization of the gender gap in world records is observed after 1983, at a mean difference of 10.0% ± 2.94 between men and women for all events. The gender gap ranges from 5.5% (800-m freestyle, swimming) to 18.8% (long jump). The mean gap is 10.7% for running performances, 17.5% for jumps, 8.9% for swimming races, 7.0% for speed skating and 8.7% in cycling. The top ten performers' analysis reveals a similar gender gap trend with a stabilization in 1982 at 11.7%,...

Cultural hegemony, a construct developed by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, is the process by which an elite dominates society through manipulating culture. To do so, they portray their worldview as inherently beneficial to everyone, even as it functions as a socio-cultural product to advantage that same ruling class. Today, the cultural conception of globalization serves as the horizon of meaning (weltanschauung) for orienting social action, and the contemporary ruling class is perhaps best embodied by the kind of elites poised to attend this week's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland — the so-called Davos elite. Empirical research and theoretical elaboration in the field of social sciences — starting from the Mead and Cooley's theory of symbolic interactionism (in the 30's), passing for the Berger and Luckmann's social constructivism and of Moscovici's social representations (in 60's and 70's), up to the Matte Blanco's Bi-logic theory of mind (in the 70's) and the Carli's theory of collusion (in the 80's and 90's) — indicates that social behaviour is driven by socially shaped and shared meanings of the subjective experience of reality. This perspective is useful for investigating the cultural factors underlying the Davos elite's political and economic action. The aim is to better understand the processes — as well as the cultural determinants — which have created our contemporary economic, political, cultural and environmental crises. To fully grasp the political and economic actions of the Davos elite, it is necessary to pick apart their discourse on globalization. We can do so, in part, by looking at the language used by the WEF's Board of Trustees. Text Emotional Analysis, as developed by Carli and Paniccia is particularly appropriate as a means for determining the reciprocal affective symbolization of a given context by the people who participate to it. This method of discourse analysis seeks the latent meaning of text by deconstructing its narrative sense, focusing analysis on interactions between certain dense words (grouped into specific clusters through statistical techniques of multivariate analysis) and then using specific psychological models of social relationships developed within this theoretical model. Dense words are those words that convey emotional meaning by themselves, independently from the narrative sense of the text. In this case they are The examined corpus of texts is composed of speeches, articles, interviews and statements of the WEF's board members around the issue of globalization gathered through keywords research on the internet. In examining these words, we gain insight into the root problems of the current individualistic neoliberal and globalist paradigm. Only then, may we identify strategies for intervention that enhance democracy, generate socioeconomic justice, increase quality of life and facilitate a move from a system of belonging to a system of coexistence in the global ecosystem. This concept of social coexistence is based on Carli's theory which is based on relationships between systems of belonging and strangers, mediated by rules of the game. In this perspective, systems of belonging represent a social system that functions in a self-referential and conservative way and, thus, configures the other's diversity as a threat to immutable reproduction. In other words, the stranger represents the unknown diversity of the other as compared to oneself and this other is perceived as a threat to stability. A preferable model would see rules of the game facilitate the transformation of systems of belonging, which exclude differences by searching for and building of similarities, into systems of coexistence,

Hawad has a unique voice, one that in its quieter moments fills with the wry observations of a latter-day Benjamin of Toledo, a traveler abroad in the world. He is a North African outsider, a poet who sees Europe from the perspective of a desert nomad.

V drugi polovici 19. stoletja so se vzporedno z vzponom meščanstva in njegove morale načini poročnih izbir začeli znatno spreminjati. Proti koncu 19. stoletja so se ustvarile nove zapovedi in posredne prisile »odgovorne izbire poročnega partnerja oz. partnerke«. V tekstu preko analize slovenskega tiska, literarnih del ter ego dokumentov, predstavljamo tovrstni diskurz. Preko analize vzorca poročenih parov slovenske elite (v Ljubljani in Trstu) pa predstavljamo dejanske poročne izbire slovenske elite.

Philipp Korom: The Rise of the Expert Intellectuals. A Critical Analysis of Bourdieu´s Sociology of Intellectuals The contribution presents a new type of the intellectual: the expert intellectual. Up until now, experts and intellectuals were considered two distinct categories in the social sciences. Recently, however, we witness a transformation of the classical concept of the intellectual that can be analyzed only by using hybridization methods. Expert intellectuals, who typically work for universities or think tanks, possess specialized knowledge and envision their social role to be charged with political responsibility. They strive to fashion public opinion in their statements, which is unusual for pure experts. In order to empirically examine whether expert intellectuals fulfill some of the classical functions of the intellectual, I conduct a content analysis of op-eds written by the most prominent contributors for the world’s largest newspaper syndicate (»Project Syndicate«). A...

The authors of paper analyze the sports activities and the process of physical training of the Byzantine elite in the 9th–12th centuries. Based on the materials of tangible, visual and written sources, the authors review the examples of the participation of emperors, commanders and their entourage in various types of physical activity: battles, spectacular competitions, non-public sports games, hunting and athletic competitions. It is concluded that all forms of physical training of the representatives of the Roman elite were dedicated to a single goal – the upbringing of a physically strong and stress-resistant commander complying with both antique and modern images of the physical and moral ideal. Systematic physical training was accounted for both by the ethos of the Byzantine elite, which sought to imitate the aspirations of the ruler, and by a purely practical necessity: with the increase in external military threats, the process of militarization of the ruling circles became more extensive. The sports activities of the Byzantine elitists studied in the paper are practically were unalterably associated with military training. And even the periodic participation of the basileuses and their entourage in public competitions was not the result of excitement itself, but was subordinated to a political concept aimed at solving specific political tasks.

Anthropologists have not participated extensively in the cognitive science synthesis for a host of reasons, including internal conflicts in the discipline and profound reservations about the ways that cultural differences have been modeled in psychology, neuroscience, and other contributors to cognitive science. This paper proposes a skills-based model for culture that overcomes some of the problems inherent in the treatment of culture as shared information. Athletes offer excellent cases studies for how skill acquisition, like enculturation, affects the human nervous system. In addition, cultural differences in playing styles of the same sport, such as distinctive ways of playing rugby, demonstrate how varying solution strategies to similar athletic problems produce distinctive skill profiles.