Electronic Library of Scientific Literature - © Academic Electronic Press
Volume 33, 2001, No. 4, p. 333-416
Ladislav Macháček
Sociologický ústav SAV, Bratislava
Sociological Reflections on the Youth Unemployment in Slovakia The constituent conditions of social contract between generations in Central and Eastern European countries have undergone a rapid change. The social contract can be understood as a tool designed to secure social appreciation among people possessing unequal resources. In our case, the inter-generational social contract implies the readiness of young people to fulfill their duties imposed by the society of adults after the state will support their life programs through creation of favourable conditions for their realisation.
The support is usually identified when society enables young people to respond adequately to the three challenges of modernisation in sectors of new literacy: linguistic, information technology and civic. We have justified the existence of a program, which would respond to another civilisational challenge: gaining the ability to produce a work performance. The process of transition of young adolescent to adulthood shall end up by acquisition of practical experiences and skills in the working process, which would test the efficiency of basic qualifications (languages, IT skills, business spirit and social communication skills) acquired in formal and informal educational processes. New program TRANSITION (transition from school to work) shall begin with the encouragement of parents to engage their children in the household and communal work, continue with large supply of small job opportunities for students and culminate in the renewal of well-tried journeyman mobilities in the united Europe.
Sociológia 2001, Vol 33, (No. 4: 335-352)
Terézia Lenczová
Slovenská spoločnosť
pre rodinu a zodpovedné rodičovstvo, Bratislava
On the Conception of Family Policy in Slovakia. The article is a response to a critique of explicit family policy conception in Slovakia, formed around the defence of implicit family policy conception. Implicit family policy aims primarily at the protection of citizens (individual members of families) against the poverty through the complex system of social policies while the explicit one focuses exclusively on the strengthening of institutionalised family and concrete families fulfilling their family functions. The critique of Erika Kvapilová argues for ”new” family policy, which enforces ”the development of diversified forms of family coexistence”. She fears that these ”new” forms of family coexistence could be discriminated to the advantage of marital families. To prevent this discrimination, Kvapilová promotes the social policy aimed at individual family members instead of ”the conservative family policy”.
The article introduces the basis and main emphasis for the selection of basic principles and strategic aims of state family policy in Slovakia, effective since 1996. It also concentrates on the principles and aims of five identified areas of state intervention towards the families and their living conditions.
Analysing the social-cultural changes in the family sphere, the author highlights two significant concluding points: 1. The review of many critical opinions about the processes of social and family change indicates that the living family values actively participate at the creation of social system and the integration of society. Family policy is thus recognised as relevant value creating and sustaining agent. 2. The suitable conditions for the physical, psychical and social development and safe family environment of children are the main emphasis of state family policy. This is also a criterion for the creation of conditions for the secure perspective of children as well as for the informed freedom of choice for the adults, even between ”the diversified forms of family life”.
Sociológia 2001 Vol. 33 (No. 4: 353-374)
Ľudovít Turčan
Sociologický ústav SAV, Bratislava
Social Question in Slovak Christian Sociology in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (Part 2) The article draws attention to the less known or unknown ideas in Slovak history, which were, due to their relation to religion and the activities of Christian churches in the previous period, absent in social enquiry. It focuses on Christian socialism, that was well known and influential in Europe even before the middle of the 19th century, but spread to Slovakia only after the publication of the Encyclia Rerum novarum in 1891. The different social context - proletarisation of working class in agrarian Hungarian monarchy developed in a different course as in the industrial countries of Europe - led Christian socialists to a specific appreciation of the encyclic as the document of the head of Catholic church, ignoring its appeal to social problems of society. They defended the Encyclia in the polemics against social democratic ideas and solutions and even the first sociological texts in Christian periodicals were taken from sociologists with social democratic orientation simply because the Christian sociology had not been formed yet. The Slovak Christian socialist had also rather a small influence, which partly increased after the publication of Encyclia Quadragesimo anno in 1931.
Sociológia 2001 Vol 33 (No 4: 379-386)