Borut Roncevic – författare

The volume offers a unique and comprehensive reflection on the role of sociology and sociologists in the transformation of post-socialist Eastern European societies. It provides detailed insight on the status of sociology in Eastern Europe, its institutional development, specifics of national sociological traditions, the controversial and ambiguous relationship with the political system and, importantly, state-of-the-art knowledge about the role of sociology as a discipline and sociologists as academics, educators, public intellectuals, experts, politicians, or civil society activists in three decades of transformation. The volume follows a cultural political economy approach and provides a series of national case studies that analyse the role of sociology in re-imagining Eastern European societies. This topical volume is of interest to a wide, interdisciplinary readership in the social sciences, especially students and researchers working on Eastern Europe and on post-socialist societies.

The volume offers a unique and comprehensive reflection on the role of sociology and sociologists in the transformation of post-socialist Eastern European societies. It provides detailed insight on the status of sociology in Eastern Europe, its institutional development, specifics of national sociological traditions, the controversial and ambiguous relationship with the political system and, importantly, state-of-the-art knowledge about the role of sociology as a discipline and sociologists as academics, educators, public intellectuals, experts, politicians, or civil society activists in three decades of transformation. The volume follows a cultural political economy approach and provides a series of national case studies that analyse the role of sociology in re-imagining Eastern European societies. This topical volume is of interest to a wide, interdisciplinary readership in the social sciences, especially students and researchers working on Eastern Europe and on post-socialist societies.

The book provides a compilation of idiosyncratic manifestations of information society in techno-economic, political and cultural spheres. The contributors focus on the increasing complexity within information societies. To manage this complexity, societies develop constantly evolving context-specific modes of meta-governance. The contributions allow a better understanding of well-known conceptualizations and definitions of information society and related concepts such as post-industrial society, post-modernity, as well as network society, and knowledge society.

The book discusses the complex and issues of the implementation of the EU’s grandstrategies. The European Union implementation deficit has become proverbial failure.While the impact of Europe 2020 has yet to be researched in greater detail, existingwork reveals substantial differences in implementation among the Member States,especially along the divisions between North and West on one hand and East andSouth on the other. Using the Cultural Political Economy as the theoretical background,the central focus of our interest is the study of possibilities and limitationsof strategic steering of the economic development in the context of a comprehensivesocietal development, such as the Europe 2020 intention of achieving ‘smart, inclusiveand sustainable growth’.

This book addresses the challenging and exciting issues of the implementation of the European Union’s grand strategies, with a particular interest in the implementation of the current Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals. It provides insight into the impact of this strategic process on some of the current global issues relevant to the European Union, such as the European and global energy market, food supplies, industrial components etc. Some of the challenges have such a strong short-term impact, that already accepted strategic priorities and decisions are being questioned and re-examined. This is a particularly exciting subject, both as a research topic and as a policy issue.

This book addresses these questions in a comprehensive way. It delves into the inter-relations between the major factors of developmental performance and looks at their effects on sustained societal development. A vast amount of statistical data on social and economic factors in selected European countries is grouped into 31 easy-to-handle tables and analyzed along the following constructs: civilizational competence; social capital; cognitive mobilization; quality of governance; entrepreneurial spirit; social cohesion; and openness to the international environment. The analysis, based on theories and indicators of development, reveals that, in spite of the progress since the fall of Communism, countries in Central and Eastern Europe still fall short of having been transformed into propulsive, vibrant societies, with intellectually open-minded, socially and technologically innovative environments.

From the dawn of humanity, the dialectic relationship between technology and society has been one of the driving forces behind changes in both realms. Trends in technological developments and their applications are, ultimately, the result of individual and collective choices. At the same time, technology influences the social choices of individuals, small groups and entire societies. This book focuses on two closely related ideas: technological development and social choices. While relating them, the book shows the relationship between human individuals and their agency; social structures, both as the initial context and as resulting from human agency; and technology that has been developed and applied by human agents’ choices within social contexts.