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Chapter 6 - No Wealth without Networks and Personal Trust: New Capitalist Agrarian Entrepreneurs in the Dobrudzha
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- By Christian Giordano, University of Fribourg, Dobrinka Kostova, Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge
- Edited by Ger Duijzings
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- Book:
- Global Villages
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 05 February 2014
- Print publication:
- 01 October 2013, pp 105-122
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- Chapter
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Summary
At first sight the title of our chapter may seem paradoxical and controversial, especially for a reader familiar with Francis Fukuyama's work. The main thesis of this Japanese American author in his famous book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity is that, from a socioeconomic standpoint, individual and social prosperity cannot be created on the basis of purely personal trust relationships. as they are essentially located in the private sphere. According to Fukuyama. individual and social prosperity can only emerge in conditions of impersonal and systemic trust anchored in the social organizations and institutions that make up the public sphere. For such organizational structures, the neoliberal thinker Fukuyama focuses mainly on the democratic institutions of civil society (alliances, associations, NGOs. parties, unions, etc.), but also the state's institutions should not be left out as instruments of legitimate authority. Fukuyama's theoretical model posits an ideal-typical division between ‘high-trust’ and ‘low-trust’ societies. Although this dichotomy is rhetorically effective and to a degree scientifically plausible, from an anthropological or ethnographic standpoint it should not be received uncritically as it contains obvious as well as hidden ideas of an ethnocentric nature which should not be unquestionably accepted. Despite the undeniable heuristic significance of Fukuyama's theoretic framework, anthropologists ought to be critical of the evident ‘Orientalist’ (Said 1978) and respectively ‘Balkanist’ (Todorova 1997) connotations inherent to the dichotomy of high-trust versus low-trust societies.
Four - Bulgaria
- Edited by Irena Kogan, Michael Gebel, Clemens Noelke
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- Book:
- Europe Enlarged
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 21 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 16 July 2008, pp 97-122
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Summary
During Bulgaria's political and economic transition, changes in its political institutions have been rapid and fundamental. However, Bulgaria's socio-economic systems have changed much more slowly mainly due to the inherited backward structures from pre-socialist and socialist times, the locational disadvantage of the country in terms of its distance to the core markets of Western Europe, general instability in the Balkans and discontinuities in the government's process of privatisation and orientation to a market economy. As a whole, the socio-economic system can be characterised as developing towards diversification. The analyses of the education, labour and welfare systems in Bulgaria illustrate this assumption.
During Bulgaria's period of transformation, its education system passed through substantial reforms from changes in the legal framework and its orientation to the private sector. Two major tendencies developed. First, the phenomenon of students dropping out from school emerged and has resulted in a group of citizens with little or no education. Second, there has been an increased interest in university education.
The labour market of the former centrally planned Bulgarian economy has suffered from quantitative and qualitative imbalance during the transition period. Its unemployment rate increased from 0% to 18%, and decreased to about 7% at the end of 2007. During the 1990s, the crucial problem was unemployment. Currently, the lack of an adequately qualified and educated labour force is the most significant issue in the labour market.
The transition period has negatively affected the welfare system – its resources are very limited and decreased during the period of transformation. Bulgaria's welfare system could not compensate the groups experiencing declining living conditions with the economic difficulties that began in the 1990s. This induced tensions between the state institutions and the economically disadvantaged groups.
Education system
Structure of the Bulgarian education system
Overview of the Bulgarian education system after the Second World War
The problem of illiteracy was tackled quite successfully in Bulgaria long before the Second World War. However, secondary education and in particular higher education lagged behind average European standards. The beginning of the 1950s marked a period of great expansion for higher education, with Bulgaria's education system developing in accordance with socialist ideas. The number of its institutions rose initially from five (in 1939) to 13, then to 20, with 33 faculties and over 100 specialties (Topencharov, 1983: 15).
EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE AND ORGANISATIONAL COMMITMENT: AN EAST-WEST EUROPEAN COMPARISON
- Duncan Gallie, Dobrinka Kostova, Pavel Kuchar
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- Journal:
- Work, Employment and Society / Volume 13 / Issue 4 / December 1999
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 December 1999, pp. 621-641
- Print publication:
- December 1999
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This paper compares the level of organisational commitment in three former state socialist societies (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) with that in a market-based society (Britain). Among the former state socialist societies, Bulgaria represents the country that had remained closest to the patterns of work organisation that prevailed before 1989, whereas the Czech Republic and Slovakia had moved further towards marketisation. The analysis draws on data from nationally representative surveys of the workforce in the four countries. The results show that organisational commitment was lower in all of the former state socialist societies than in Britain, but that it was lowest of all in the societies that were more fully engaged in the transition to a market economy. There is evidence that the patterns of work organisation typical of state socialism did have the effect of lowering commitment, most importantly because of the way they restricted initiative and self-determination in work. However, it seems likely that this was exacerbated in the case of the transitional societies by sharper aspirations for work enrichment and by the greater unpredictability of organisational developments in a rapidly changing environment.