This article examines the St. James Infirmary, a nonprofit occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers in San Francisco, to consider how particular organizational spaces and practices may challenge gender ideologies in the United States—in this case, of women sex workers as “victim-criminals.” Drawing empirically from multimethod qualitative research and theoretically from feminist institutionalism, I indicate how the SJI’s broader institutional context has produced a victim-criminal ideology of women in prostitution. Next, I consider the SJI’s organizational emergence and operations (...) to argue that, by deploying particular spatial-discursive practices and operational procedures, nonprofits with legacies of activism may draw from these to challenge dominant gender ideologies, even as they work alongside the broader institutional structures that promote them. Although single case studies like the SJI cannot establish broad theoretical generalizations and propositions, I use it to build knowledge and highlight important lessons about nonprofits, gender, and institutional change. (shrink)

Polazeći od osnovnih postavki Gadamerove filozofske hermeneutike, u članku se tematizira mogućnost njene primjene u književnoj teoriji. Prostor Gadamerova promišljanja, a tako i njegove hermeneutike, otvara pitanje »kako je moguće razumijevanje«? Odgovori na to pitanje impliciraju etičko-estetski zahtjev »filozofije slušanja« u kojoj se mora uspostaviti dijalektika pitanja i odgovora. Proces dolaska do značenja tako se odvija u jeziku, koji nam omogućuje, u najgorem slučaju, da se stvari barem približimo, ako ne i da je razumijemo. Tumačeva situacija obilježena je njegovim predrasudama, (...) preduvjerenjima , a situacija teksta prezencijom, ali i temporalnošću. Upravo je temporalnost umjetničkog djela osnova Gadamerovu poimanju tradicije, odnosno predaje, kojoj, pod Heideggerovim utjecajem, Gadamer pridaje regulativni karakter. Procijep između dvaju horizonata, tradicijsko-povijesnog i predrasudno-tumačeva, rješava se »stapanjem horizonata« kao krajnjim ishodom dijaloga, a to stapanje ujedno postaje temeljem razumijevanja. Iako je Gadamerova hermeneutika bila kritizirana, ona je ujedno nezaobilazna u proučavanjima interpretacije teksta.Beginning with basic postulates of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, the article challenges the possibility of its application in literary theory. Ther space of Gadamer’s thought, as well as his hermeneutics, opens up a question: “how understanding is possible”? The answers to that question implicate ethico-aesthetical claim of “philosophy of listening” where this dialectics of questions and answers should be established. The proccess of coming to meaning is happening in language, that makes possible, in the worst circumastances, at least to approach to the matter of things, if not to understand it. The interpreteur’s situation is marked with his prejudices, prethinking , and the situation of a text by its presence, as well as with temporality. It is precisely temporality of artwork, that is the foundation of Gadamer’s conception of tradition, i.e. heritage, which is, under Heidegger’s influence, supplied by regulative characteristics. The gap between two horizons – traditionally-historical and prejudice-interpreteur’s – is solved by “merging of horizons” as the final result of dialogue, and that merging is at the same time the basics of understanding. Even though Gadamer’s hermeneutics was criticized, it was also unsourmountable in the studies of interpreting texts. (shrink)

The focus of this study is alternative spiritual groups among the urban population in Slovakia. Those who participate in them may be characterized as “spiritual, but not religious” —people who are not affiliated to a traditional church, and may even have negative opinions on the Church, but who seek a different kind of spiritual experience. As Willard and Norenzayan pointed out the “spiritual, but not religious” have “an experiential relationship to the supernatural, and see themselves as more connected to the (...) universe as a whole”. The authors studied spiritual gatherings containing elements of rituals, dance and narrative sharing and that were charged with different kinds of emotions. We are interested in people’s motivation to seek out alternative spirituality and in their preferences for group experiences. Based on theories of collective rituals and shared emotions, we assume that these gatherings may have a positive impact on general well-being and be a form of social and emotional resilience. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to bring together quantitative and qualitative methodologies in order to examine, within a broadly Bourdieusian theoretical framework, connections between positions in social space and strategies agents deploy in their everyday life. The data are derived from a study of social structure in today’s Serbia, combining survey and interviews with selected respondents. Strategies are conceptualized as a continuum ranging from a more sustained and cumulative, or ‘strategic’, pole to the unsystematic, ephemeral ‘tactical’ pole, as suggested (...) by Michel de Certeau. On the basis of interview data, four types of life strategies are identified. These strategies are presented through their generic practices and the typical habitus of the agents, along with individual portraits as illustrations. In conclusion, some theoretical implications are derived from data analysis, including departures from Bourdieu’s model. (shrink)